Ask Ally
Dear Ally,
Hoping that some outside perspective will shed light on the issue I’ve been facing with my partner since 2022 …
My partner and I have lived together for years and had our own routine down pat when it came to fair division of household duties. When Covid hit, we settled into the WFH (work from home) lifestyle, setting up our own office spaces throughout the house and tackled our respective household tasks between meetings and after the workday was finished.
Fast-forward to mid-2022 and my partner's company comes out with an RTO (return to office) mandate and they're now working five days a week in office. Since this change, I’ve slowly begun to take on most of the household duties. Dishes, laundry, basic tidying, vacuuming, yard work, etc. At first this didn’t bother me because it was so new, but a year and a half later the resentment is at a level that isn’t tolerable.
Like a muscle that’s atrophied, he has stopped cleaning or tidying up at all. It’s like he thinks that if he just leaves the mess long enough, it will be magically cleaned up by the time he returns from work. It would be so much easier if he would just pick up after himself.
We’ve had conversations about this before and things improve for a short time, but we always fall back into our old routines. My resentment grows.
This may sound like a mundane, cliché problem but it feels so disrespectful to me and my time. We both work during the day, why am I solely responsible for keeping up the house? How do I get him to understand that this is so much deeper than dirty dishes?
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Disgruntled
Dear Disgruntled,
You’re right. This issue is so much more than dirty dishes. Your partner is not seeing or hearing you. There’s a gazillion scientific studies that prove your point (just a few are below), but they are useless when your needs are invisible to the one person on earth who needs to hear them.
I’m so sorry.
The good news is that he’s done it before during Covid.
Remind him that he succeeded once before.
You need to sit down with him, away from home and distractions and have this difficult conversation.
Put your heart in your hands. Let your partner know that you do not feel seen or heard. You need help. Ask him if he remembers what it was like during Covid. Tell him that it would mean the world to you if you could return to the household sharing that you did back then.
Be vulnerable. This gives him permission to also share from his heart.
You can do this. This is real courage.
Wait. Give him time to answer and space for his heart to express itself. Stay silent.
Let us know how it goes.
A new report from Gallop shows that even Millennial men, who embrace equity in relationships and the workplace, fall into traditional “male” roles like car maintenance and yardwork.
The New York Times reported that after a birth, women’s total work: childcare and housework increased 21 hours, while a men’s increased by 12.6 hours.
The Pew Research Center cites that even as women’s salaries increase, their burden at home increases as well.
But the most interesting study is one that cites that “men and women are trained by society for different possibilities to take action.”
“A woman looks at a dirty kitchen surface and immediately is pulled into action to wipe it clean. A man sees the same surface and it doesn’t even register”. (Amanda Singh, The Swaddle, exploring the intersection of environment, gender and health.)
If you choose to share the above studies with your partner, you will need to teach your partner again to “see” the dirt. He must have seen at least some of it during COVID.
Congratulations to those mothers who have taught their sons about the importance of household chores. You did the right thing!
Here for you,
