Whose Responsibility Is It?

This is a much needed reminder for many guys, as I see this issue come up a lot. Men Little boys often get in fights with their wives about the allocation of chores around the house. "She does do the majority of the work," they say, "so I really should start chipping in more." "She has a valid point." "A good captain, should listen to his first officer. That's all I'm doing."

Guys, guys, guys ... whose house is it?

The husband's job is to be the manager over his family and household. 1 Timothy 3:5, Ephesians 5:22, 1 Cor. 11:3, 1 Peter 3:1-7, Genesis 2:20-24 and 3:16. Need I go on? It's YOUR HOUSE.

It's YOUR kitchen to clean. YOUR deck to build. YOUR car to fix. YOUR bathroom to scrub. YOUR bed to make. YOUR living room to pick up.

It's also ... YOUR career to advance. YOUR mission to fulfill. YOUR bills to pay. YOUR social influence to develop.

When God created women, he did not say, "Some things are her responsibility, and other things are the man's responsibility." He said, "I'm giving Adam the mission, but he's going to need someone to help him do it." Let me emphasize this so you can't miss it:

  • YOU DO NOT HELP HER WITH HOUSEWORK; SHE HELPS YOU.

How Can I Do All That Myself?

Got it? "Yep, I should be doing all the housework too. But that seems impossible. I can't do EVERYTHING."

Idiot. No. You can't do everything. Gee ... if only God thought about that. If only he'd said something like, "It's not good for man to be alone. I shall create a helper suitable for him." Wouldn't it be nice if God gave men a helper to get all this stuff done that he's responsible for?

Just because you're responsible for doing something doesn't mean you must personally do it yourself. Is a CEO responsible for making sure his company's product gets sold? Of course! How else is he going to get the company to succeed? But is he the one actually going out on the sales calls and dialing the phone to the customers? No. He has a sales team that does that.

Field Report: A Solution

When I first started my RP journey I tried something bold in my house. I wrote it up here. My wife used to stress over all the things that needed to get done around the house. This stress only existed because she felt responsible for getting them done. She felt responsible for getting them done because I wasn't taking that responsibility. If I wasn't going to do it and she wanted it done, by default it falls on her. Then it became an argument over the fact that she couldn't do it all by herself. So, she would nag me to help her with things on her list of chores. Sound familiar?

  • She was doing the exact same thing to me that I'm suggesting you, as men, should be doing in the reverse.

So, one day I spoke plainly to her: "For the next few days, I'm going to be responsible for everything that needs done around the house. I'm going to give you a list of chores to do and when you're done, you can do whatever you want. Go shopping. Watch TV. Crochet. Hang out with friends. I don't care - whatever you feel like. You are to do nothing else productive - not even think about being productive - unless it's on my list. If something needs to get done and it doesn't get done, that's on me, not you."

Then I gave her a list of all of the exact same things she was already doing regularly anyway. Result? She was no longer stressed. Suddenly we were having sex again. And all the chores got done the same as before. Very quickly, I was able to stop micro-managing. I didn't need to give her clear lists because she understood the general allocation I was giving her.

Why did this work? First, because women are more stressed thinking about what needs to be done than by actually doing it, so I took the thinking part out of the equation. Second, when the weight of responsibility was off her shoulders and onto mine, that pressure relief felt great to her. Third, because I actually took responsibility instead of just leaving responsibility into limbo while pretending to take responsibility. I legitimately started thinking about what needed done and kept track and made sure attention was being given to things that were often neglected. Sometimes this meant adding more things to her list, other times it meant doing it myself. But that balance was entirely up to me, and she gladly helped with whatever I asked, rather than her nagging me to help her.

A LAW OF ATTRACTION

No woman wants to be married to a husband. Weird concept, I know. "Husbands," in a cultural sense, are not generally portrayed in very attractive ways. I started watching Workin' Moms, a Netflix original show, and it provides a prime example. Three husband archetypes are shown:

  • Kate's husband is a typical beta. Even though he seems to have a decent job of his own, he exists exclusively to be his wife's yes-man. What she says goes, even when he obviously disagrees. She acts totally dismissive toward him.

  • Jenny's husband is a stay at home dad/wanna-be writer who is appropriately paranoid that his wife constantly wants to cheat on him with her new boss.

  • Anne's husband is a go-with-the-flow guy who we pretty much never see because he's so irrelevant to anything going on. She rolls her eyes and ignores him.

  • Bonus points: Frankie's "husband" is an actual woman (lesbians) and they're not doing it either.

Lots of sexual dysfunction. This is how the media portrays husbands. The show also appropriately notes that these women are totally unattracted to their husbands. If that's what the media says it means to be a husband, no wife wants a husband.

Instead, the only attraction-based sexual tension that exists is from the girl who's into her bachelor boss. Girls like bachelors. Your wife was attracted to you when you were still a bachelor. You were sexually available and weren't the type of guy who was pinned down to whatever list of chores a woman was telling him to do. Even if you met your wife while you were still married to another woman (and therefore you weren't a bachelor), the fact that you were with her showed that you DNGAF about your wife's rules and boundaries, which certainly would not have included an allowance for cheating on her.

Women want bachelors - but not just any bachelor. They want a guy who has his crap together. I've never met a single woman in my life who would say, "I've got it all together." Every woman I've ever met would say, "I don't have it all together, but somehow those people seem to. Why can't my life be more like theirs?" They meet a bachelor with a decent job, a well-managed home, and hobbies that keep him entertained. She thinks: "I don't have it all together, but he seems to. Maybe I can leech off of his togetherness." So, she moves in (presumably after marriage) and lives it high for a couple years before she realizes that he's a beta who no longer has it all together because he became the guy who's pinned down by a woman's expectations on his life. See how that works?

APPLYING THE LAW

If you want your wife's genitals to well up for you the same way as when you were a bachelor, you've got to become a bachelor again. When you were dating, she came over to your house and used your kitchenware to cook with your food from your cupboards. She may even have used your vacuum to clean your carpets or folded your laundry and put it in your drawers.

Then she started testing boundaries, right? She wore her sweater and left it on your floor. So, you put her sweater in your drawer until she comes back. Then she leaves her lipstick on your dresser. Then she has a pile of her things in your house, so she asks for a drawer. Now she keeps her stuff in your her drawer in your house. Then you get married and she puts her body in your her house that she calls "our" house - "our" because it's hers, but she needs to convince you that you have an interest in taking responsibility too.

Notice all the "your ... your ... your" here? That's what I was conveying in the first section, above. Go re-read it with the bachelor-mentality in mind and see if that makes more sense to you now. Does she have a drawer in her dresser, or does she have her own dresser drawers that you're not allowed to encroach on? Try putting a few of your shirts in her drawers for a few weeks and see what she does. She might tell you to stop a few times first, then finally blow up at you when you don't. "Honey, it's my dresser. If I want to put my clothes in my dresser, I'm going to do it." You DNGAF.

Simply put, start acting like a bachelor again. Hopefully you weren't a slob of a bachelor who left dirty underwear on the living room floor for days. Make her feel like she is a guest in your home, not a co-owner of the home. This is a huge frame-shift, but if you pull it off properly you get to be king of your castle once again and she'll swoon at the opportunity to help you take care of your stuff and to help you raise your kids.

Field Report 2: Asking For Help

Should you go around acting all possessive over everything and telling her "mine ... mine ... mine" like a 2-year-old? No. Don't be an idiot. Just start taking on the responsibility and ask her to help you. I remember the first time I tried this out. I bought a golden honeydew melon. I was heading off to the gym and asked my wife to have it cut up for me by the time I got home. It was so weird. It was the first time in 8 years that I'd ever asked my wife to do something for me that she wasn't already going to do for herself anyway. Like the Nice Guy I was, I thought that asking for help would be off-putting and make her not want to have sex with me. "She already has enough on her plate," I told myself. "I shouldn't add more things to her to-do list." And I was right. She didn't like it ... at first.

But as I often say, if you're not satisfied with the life you're living, it's probably because you're not living the life you were designed for. She was designed to be a helper. How much would it suck be to be a wife in a marriage where your husband never asked you for help? You literally could never do your job. You could never feel fulfilled or satisfied. At best, you could guess at what would be helpful to your husband, but never actually know. That would be depressing.

And to stick on that point for just a second: this is something I need to work on too. I rarely verbalize the ways I need help from my wife. The things she innately does are often the helpful things I'd ask her to do anyway. But because I didn't ask, she doesn't know if I find it helpful or not. Indeed, when she can't do them, I do it myself anyway and everything's just fine. So, do I really need her? Is she really helpful? Does she have a role in our marriage? Those are the questions that fish through her head. Don't leave the "ask for help" part off the table like I have for too long. Why?

  • If you don't ask for help and just let her decide on her own how she's going to be "helpful," you might not get the type of help you want.

  • She may not feel helpful, and you'll be left wondering why she's unsatisfied and feels worthless in the relationship, affecting her sexuality as well.

  • By asking for help, you are subliminally communicating that you're in charge - you're the responsible party and she's the helper, establishing an appropriate biblical framework for the marriage and displaying dominance.

  • By asking for help, you're breaking your nice-guy habits and developing a spine, which will eventually get your household more on-track with your vision as you become comfortable asking for help not just in basic areas that she's already doing, but in more mission-oriented areas that actually matter to you.

  • When you ask for help, even if you don't need it, you're mirroring Christ in the way he asks us to do things on his behalf, even though he could make the rocks cry out if we refused. God doesn't need our help, but he asks for it anyway - and you can reflect God's character in your marriage by doing this.

CONCLUSION

It's your house. You take responsibility. Ask for help you when you need it. Don't let her be the one to decide how she's going to help you. Mirror the image of Christ, who asks us for help, even though he could do it all by himself too.