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Translation Assistance: I cannot make sense of this test

Bobsfreestuff · 2017-11-19T13:13:01+00:00

I am cannot make progress on solving the current test that is being thrown at me. Wife repeatedly keeps saying: I do not appreciate her and I do not show any...

Bobsfreestuff

November 19, 2017

2 upvotes

/r/askMRP

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Title	Translation Assistance: I cannot make sense of this test
Author	Bobsfreestuff
Upvotes	2
Comments	20
Date	November 19, 2017 1:13 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askMRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/askMRP/comments/7e0hv2/translation_assistance_i_cannot_make_sense_of/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askMRP/translation-assistance-i-cannot-make-sense-of-this.205153 https://theredarchive.com/post/205153

Comments

[–]BobbyPeru8 points9 points10 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]SteelSharpensSteelMod / Red Beret2 points3 points4 points 8 years ago (10 children) | Copy Link

[–]Bobsfreestuff[S] 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (9 children) | Copy Link

[–]man_in_the_worldRed Beret10 points11 points12 points 8 years ago* (4 children) | Copy Link

She will complain that I am too much of a passenger when it comes to domestic plans.

Or, complaints that she plans and keeps track of the kids schedules. Guess what you are and want to be a SAHM, that is the job.

Making decisions takes significant mental energy, whether the decision is important or inconsequential. Most working men fail to appreciate that a SAHM must make hundreds of decisions every day, such as "Do I change the toddler's diaper now, or wait until I've finished washing these dishes?" "Uh oh, the baby just woke up and started to cry; should I leave the five-year-old alone with the crayons while I go get the baby?" Infants need attention and low-level decisions to be made every few minutes for the entire day. Your wife's decision-making circuit is exhausted by the time you get home, and it desperately wants a break.

Now of course yours is tired from the 10-20 decisions you had to make at work, so you lazily turn it off and leave it to your wife to decide when and whether you or she will do the dishes, to remind you to take out the trash, change a diaper, etc., thereby offloading the "decision labor" for your chores onto your wife. (The femisphere has been calling it "emotional labor," which is a misnomer, but the mental effort involved is very real, which is why you offload it onto her.)

You hamster the excuse for yourself that because her SAHM decisions are mostly inconsequential, they are easy. But deciding how to respond to a crying kid may be as mentally and emotionally taxing for her as your much more consequential decisions as to whether to submit a $29,000 or $32,000 contract bid to a prospective client, or what programming language to use for a task, or whatever profoundly important shit it is that you do, are for you.

When you dump your "decision labor" on your wife, she resents the hell out of having to own yours too; she feels unappreciated because you dismiss as insignificant what feels difficult to her, and she also loses respect for you for being weaker than her in bearing it. This is a main reason why owning your shit often works wonders when drunk captains take the wheel again, and why we advise you to be decisive about little things such as choosing a restaurant.

Owning your shit means owning its decision labor as well.

[–]WesternhagenWinner-2 points-1 points0 points 8 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]man_in_the_worldRed Beret3 points4 points5 points 8 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]WesternhagenWinner2 points3 points4 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Infants need attention and low-level decisions to be made every few minutes for the entire day.

Been there, done that. It is NOT that hard.

Most working men fail to appreciate that a SAHM must make hundreds of decisions every day... Your wife's decision-making circuit is exhausted by the time you get home

Cry me a fucking river. Millions of women have done that job for thousands of years, generally without bitching about the "decision labor" this involved. The only reason we have to care about this problem today is that since the 1960s, women can take their resentment to court to claim cash and prizes.

Here's a thought experiment for you. Let's say, tomorrow your wife dies and you win the lottery (a utopian dream, I know). Now you hire a woman to do the former SAHM jobs for you; cook, clean, supervise kids. She starts complaining about how exhausting this "decision labor" is. Would you care about this? No, you'd say, do the fucking job you are being paid to do, or you're fired. That is pretty much the attitude men had back in the day when they could fire their wife very easily if she got too whiny and obnoxious.

The fact that a wife today is a demanding employee who doesn't do her job, bitches about how hard it is, and is enormously expensive to fire is yet another reason not to get married. (But of course women in every other place of work act that way too, so why should it be different in the home?)

[–]man_in_the_worldRed Beret0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]askmeanything22 points3 points4 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]oak_waterRed Beret0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

My wife recently cheated on me because, according to her, I don't appreciate her enough. I've figured out what was really happening.

But I'm also years into this and have a clear head on my shoulders.

You're not ready to decide if she's the problem or you're the problem. For now, the best path forward for you is that YOU'RE ALWAYS THE PROBLEM.

If she wants appreciation, throw her a bone and up the beta comfort when she's really gone above and beyond to earn it. (And you're showing her appreciation in the ways she wants it, right? Think "Five Love Languages".) But overall your job is to act as though you're single. She's feeling unappreciated for her grocery shopping and keeping track of the kids' schedules? "Ok honey, sounds like you're stressed. I'll take care of it." Make a fun family outing out of the grocery shopping, and learn the kids' schedules so well that all she has to do is drive them around. Change all the emergency contact info to you instead of her.

Don't do this all at once, but as you can, take over some of the responsibilities. This will appear at first like you're heeding her and lightening her load selflessly, but in reality you're proving to yourself that you can do it. There's a not insignificant amount of freedom you gain when you realize that you don't NEED your wife for anything, grocery shopping or tracking the kids' schedules.

PS Reading your other responses, I think you're missing how she wants to be shown appreciation. Don't talk to her about 5LL, but do you know what really makes her feel appreciated? Maybe simply saying "thank you" and doing the tit for tat thing isn't what she notices. Meh. I don't like 5LL generally because it can devolve into covert contracts quickly. But you might be a social autist like me and need the pointer.

[–]RPWolfAlpha_as_Wolf_2.01 point2 points3 points 8 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]Bobsfreestuff[S] 1 point2 points3 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]drty_prRed Beret0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]screechhaterRed Beret0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]Bobsfreestuff[S] 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]screechhaterRed Beret0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]Bobsfreestuff[S] -1 points0 points1 point 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]screechhaterRed Beret1 point2 points3 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link