29
votes
It took divorce to make my marriage equal – I spent twelve years fighting for an equal partnership, when what I needed was a divorce [2020]
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- It Took Divorce to Make My Marriage Equal
- Authors
- Lyz Lenz, Hanna Lustig, Brigitt Earley, Kristine Thomason, Abby Gardner, Jenny Singer, Amy Klobuchar
- Published
- Sep 17 2020
- Word count
- 545 words
Commenting as the husband in a heterosexual married couples who was the primary person working outside the home during all the years we had kids, up until 6 months ago:
Throughout our marriage (almost 17 years), I made a good faith effort to support my wife in taking care of our home. Although no one is perfect, I would have rated myself "better than most" in the husband department. Yet I always did get a feeling of dissatisfaction from my spouse.
After six months of being a full time stay at home Dad, I now have a much different perspective on housework, sharing, and what the burden of being the primary parent and responsible for the house is really like.
Now I look back and see all the many ways my "support" fell short of fulfilling the real need. And that's with my daughter being older and more independent. I'm sure I still have blind spots about the greater level of care she would have needed when younger. So I don't consider the problem "fixed" in any final sense, just that I'm making much better progress on it.
I think the best way to summarize the new perspective is something like: I can't help my wife with the chores because if I'm offering to help, then I'm not really taking ownership of the task.
This is basically the conclusion of the article – she needed her husband to take ownership, and he wouldn't or couldn't do so. That her mechanism for forcing the issue was the most extreme measure mostly makes me realize how much grace my wife has been giving me all these years.
I do think it it's worth reflecting on the "couldn't" aspect of the previous paragraph, which is tied in to my own "good faith" efforts. I think as the person who benefits from the inequality, I should have the responsibility to make the change. But I also want to be clear how hard it was to understand what that meant. I have been hearing about being equal partners in housework pretty much my whole life, and it took a really radical change for me to finally begin to grasp it. I don't know if it's fair to ask for empathy for that, but I think it might help someone struggling with this (as the author and my wife have) to have a better meeting of the minds with their partner.
As I look to return to work, we will need to rebalance things again, but I'm thankful for the perspective shift because I think I will be able to approach it with a better measure of equality.
I remeber when I took parental leave with my first born. My partner had stayed home for ~6 months and now it was my turn while she headed back to work. It was a major eye opener experiencing the day to day struggles. Before this when I came home after a long day at work it was hard to imagine that my partner's day had been challenging. She had "just stayed home". I think the shift in domestic responsibility was revealing for us both. She had a good understanding of the challenges of taking care of the home, but now realized that after a day at work you could be wrung out too. I realized that staying home with a toddler isn't all roses (wouldn't trade that time for anything, but it could be exhausting). Super grateful that we have a generous social safety system here that enabled us to each take turns at home. If we hadn't I don't think we would appreciate each other as much.
After my own experience, I would advocate role swapping for all parents. It is much less the norm in the US (to our detriment) due partly to minimal mandates for maternity/paternity leave (although that seems to be slowly getting better). But I think there are also patriarchal cultural norms at play that we're really steeped in, and it warps everyone's perception of normal (also, generally, to our detriment).
This is something both myself and my partner had to learn in our relationship, too.
I (woman, hetero relationship) noticed very early on that I was doing a lot more cooking and cleaning than my parter. At the time (pretty long time ago now), I had no way to express this to my partner beyond "I need help" or "You need to help more", and his reply was always "Of course I'd love to help, just tell me what to do". It bothered me but I didnt understand why.
One day, I read an article about emotional labour, which touched on this exact situation. I'm so grateful to have read it, it helped me understand my own frustrations, and express that to him. To his credit, he listened and worked to understand. It was no longer "Do we need groceries, what do we need?" but rather became "I'm popping by the store for the usual, want anything special?" Over the years, we've found a pretty good balance, not perfectly equal but perfectly equitable.
Thank you for sharing this. My fiancée and I got in probably the biggest “fight” we’ve had last week over a similar thing (which was kinda scary because we’re getting married next month), and I think it was a very similar issue to what you just shared.
We split cooking about evenly, and I do the dishes no matter who cooks because it dries out her hands too badly (and I don’t mind jamming out and doing dishes).
But our fight was mainly about cleaning and chores, and I think it’s for the reason you mentioned - I find myself to be very task-oriented, so if I’m asked to clean something I’ll do it, or if I notice an area needs cleaned I’ll clean it (or in the case of the dishes, because it was something we talked about before moving in together). But for regular or shared cleaning, it seems my perception of when something needs cleaned is a bit “messier” than when she wants it cleaned, so usually she would say “we need to clean this” and then we’ll both clean it. And I don’t think I fully understand why that was bothering her as much as it was.
I’ve found some resources on how often to clean things, so I’ve set up some recurring reminders on my phone - so that way I can be told to clean something, regardless of if I think it “looks dirty,” and she won’t have to be the one telling me to clean it, and I really hope that helps.
Congrats on your upcoming wedding! In my humble opinion, one of the most important aspects of a strong relationship is being committed to overcoming the bumps together, which it sounds like you're doing.
I feel like I should probably add that I was being a litttttle glib when I finished by saying my relationship is "perfectly equitable". It's quite equitable, but like everything in a relationship, it's all about communication and adjusting as our lives change. Over a decade in, and we're still finding ways to improve our communication.
It took us a long time to find a balance that worked for us. I think we first tried weekly "chore rotations". It was a good starting point in helping us shift responsibilities, but we both hated being on a strict schedule.
There're a few other tricks I've heard of, though we never tried. One is to take photos of your spaces when they're very clean+tidy, so you have a point of reference to help you notice messes more easily.
I've also heard of the idea of each partner writing down every single chore/task they do in a day or week, so the other can better put themselves in the other's shoes; this one honestly seems a little dicey to me and ripe for starting a fight, but who am I to judge, different ways of communicating work for different people :)
I think you’ve really captured a lot of how I work too, and the differences between myself and my partner that causes friction too. Even down to my partner and I having different tolerance thresholds. To make it worse, I’m bad at internal motivation, so external reminders (like phone alarms) will help with that too!
Any chance you can link me that resource of how often things should be cleaned, and I’ll see how I can incorporate them into my own life too?
I’m using the checklists from here:
https://www.unfuckyourhabitat.com/cleaning-checklists/
In the vein of emotional labor, I have lately enjoyed this song by Paris Paloma called Labour.
her sound is right up my alley, thanks!
Unmarried here so I don't have much experience, but that sounds very similar to things I've experienced at work. If I get another person on a project they can't just help. They're there to completely take something off of my plate such that I rarely need to think of it again. That means it needs to be done correctly, on time, and to high enough standards.
My first reaction was "Good. I'm glad she realized what she had was not sustainable or fulfilling."
Then, as I read, little things nibbled at me. For the record, I'm not out of hand dismissing her points.
Wait, why? I know why, I've heard all the reasons people say but if you're hiring a cleaning crew...
You don't even have a lid for the trash? No wonder you don't want the cleaning lady to see how you live.
Look, I don't want to be all personally attacked and such but
She's been married to one man for the last twelve years and feels she has the ability to report on what "all heterosexuales in America" go through.
In my house, I cook, take care of trash, clean, scrub countertops and floors, handle auto maintenance, clean the gutters, get the mail, pick up and drop off the kids, and work full time. I'm not going to pretend that I'm somehow the standard but I was oscillating between empathy for her obvious struggle from having a shit husband and, I dunno, ambivalence for her wide paintbrush?
Not all couples suck and I hope she finds someone who can be her partner but this feels more like a pint of Hagen-Daz than an article. Maybe more women can chime in and let me know if reading articles like this might be cathartic and that's just an avenue that I'm not considering fully.
I also have a hard time with articles about the difficulties of women doing the housework in their marriage. I'm a man who has that role reversed--I do the majority of our housework and fail to get my wife to help, and I'll be honest, reading this kind of criticism of men in general hurts me to read. It's frustrating that this kind of anti-male sentiment is okay. I get that she's justified in her feelings about her husband, but it sucks, especially since otherwise I empathize with her completely.
Other than the whole 'being able to afford a maid' thing. I cannot outsource any of the housework, including most repairs and such.
Having dipped my toes into "mommy instagram" I gotta say the feeds do not help. It's just chock-a-block full of people posting through their post-partum depression and taking out their frustrations with their lives on their husbands instead of attributing it to the lack of social infrastructure and support for parenting (where it belongs).
I've been to about 4 baby showers for friends since having mine and, if asked for advice, my go to wisdom is to find something to do with your phone that isn't social media. Read comics or ebooks, play Sudoku or Marvel Snap. Something that isn't Instagram or TikTok. It's just not healthy between the unhealthy expectations it sets on parenting, the fear-mongering about literally everything you could eat or buy, and the constant negativity and incitement to family discord disguised as "just blowing off steam."
Hear hear. I look forward to being able to vent about inequality of chores in gender indifferent terms. Unequal relationships are unequal.
What always gets me in these articles (and it's always there) is the "he expects not only credit, but lavish praise." Like, does he? Really? Maybe so, but maybe he just wants confirmation that he did the thing to your standards, which seems like a fair ask. Maybe these pieces aren't for me and my situation, but my partner and I thank each other constantly, multiple times a day, for all kinds of "expected" little things. I do most of the cooking, and he thanks me every day, even if it's just leftovers. He pays the bills, and I thank him. Taking out trash, tidying up, scheduling routine house maintenance.... Of course these things have to be done, but it's a nice positive feedback loop of "hey, I see you contributing, and I appreciate it." It seems like the women who write stuff like this would like a little praise for what they do, as they should, so praise him a little and see if he doesn't send it back, ya know?
It's great that you and your partner do that for each other, but I think the praise is just how the issue manifests, rather than the core issue itself. The real problem is when the man feels like they've gone above and beyond, when in reality they haven't actually made up for the imbalance that existed in the first place. Like, it's great that they emptied the dishwasher this time, but it needs to happen every time if things are actually going to change. If the man only does it when they get a lot of praise for it, or if they never learn it well enough so that the woman always has to finish up afterwards, they haven't actually taken the matter off her plate; there's still a significant amount of emotional labor that remains.
And while praise is nice, I think what most of the women who write stuff like this are looking for is balance in a relationship of equals. Getting praised for how much harder you work or how much better you are at working more often doesn't feel that good if you're supposed to be partners.
Yeah. There's a uniquely shitty feeling about busting your ass especially hard to have a house clean, laundry done, dishes complete, dinner cooked, trying to go out of your way to make sure that when your partner comes home they have absolutely nothing they need to worry about; even the things that are normally their responsibility, and have them not only not praise you, but not even acknowledge the work. It sort of makes you feel like what's the point.
When my partner goes above and beyond and does those things for me I always make sure to thank her for it, because I really do appreciate it.
It's not usually a "crew". IME with cleaning ladies/maid services, they typically work alone or in pairs, only come once a week or every other week, and they just try to do as much as they can in the limited time they're there (4-8 hours, depending). So they typically focus on the biggest jobs (vacuuming, mopping, dusting, cleaning windows/mirrors, disinfecting surfaces), and the jobs that require a deep cleaning that most homeowners don't want to do themselves (toilets, showers/baths, sinks).
So homeowners often do still have to clean up before they come, or at least they should, merely so the cleaning ladies can get on with the big jobs and deep cleaning stuff without having to waste time tidying up the house first. E.g. My mom would not only clean up, but actually always vacuum before the maid came too, just so she wouldn't have to waste time doing it first before mopping.
Framing her divorce like a logistical correction and talking about statistical trends is kinda weird and gross.
I get what she's going for, but I'm hesitant to make the jump that the communication issues between her and her ex-husband regarding chore distribution are indicative of a global upward trend in sexism. Or that divorce can be contextualized as a time management tool.
I don't know, I guess it's interesting that these associations can be made, it's just really generally dehumanizing to frame them as the primary reason they severed their relationship.
From my perspective, GenX, cis woman, sexism has trended significantly down since my youth, but there has been an algorithm driven bounce with figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate.
This article is a different one that gets at some of what I saw in the original article and may be more sympathetic. She divorced me because I left dishes by the sink
This article much more closely captures my feelings on the topic as a heterosexual man who has been in a few domestic relationships with women.
For most of my life, I've felt like I've done at a minimum, half of the domestic labor by my estimation while holding relatively time consuming and stressful jobs where I was the primary earner, but the person I was with felt differently.
That feeling is so familiar, where you feel drained and exhausted because you spent a full day at work, paid all of the bills, vaccumed the house, folded the laundry, fixed the car, and now are relaxing for an hour before going to bed, but none of that matters because a glass was left out and suddenly I don't do anything around the house.
Comparatively, after my divorce, I spent a few years single, and was able to work a demanding job, keep my house and yard clean, always have laundry folded and put away, care for a dog, and still have plenty of time and energy to have a lot of hobbies, and still have time to just veg out in front of video games when I wanted to, which sort of tells me I wasn't crazy; my ex was making more work for me by not pulling her weight in the domestic chore front; and by forcing me to do a ton of emotional labor by constantly having to regulate her emotions on her behalf.
Studies like the ones referenced in the OP where "men only do 1/3rd of the domestic labor" have been thrown in my face as proof that I'm wrong, as if that somehow applied to all men all the time everywhere.
I've also noticed that domestic chores that needed to be done and were primarily handled by me, and primarily considered "masculine" tasks like fixing the lawnmower or the car, configuring the router, security cameras, trimming brush, power washing, and so on were commonly interpreted as "playing around" rather than doing something that was critical; despite me not enjoying any of those things (and actually detesting some of them; I hate working on cars); there are a thousand other things I'd much rather have been doing.
I try having patience in those situations because I'm sure there's a lot that my partners have done that I haven't noticed, and I'm also sure that I have hot button things that disproportionately annoy me despite them not being that big of a deal, but it can often feel very unfair and upsetting in the thick of it.
I'm curious to hear if any other men have had similar experiences, if I just have some massive blindspot on this that I haven't put together, or if my situation is just very uncommon.
On any bell curve there is a wide range of individual cases.
I read an interesting book called Fair Play by Rodsky, that creates a game where marital partners distribute cards representing chores and get a better sense of who is carrying the greater load and where equity would exist for them in their unique circumstances.
Freeloading spouses come in all genders regardless of how that is distributed statistically in populations. I'm not a man, so can't speak to that part of your question, but that sense of being overburdened and taken advantage of that you felt is what the woman author in the OP article was talking about.
I've played the Fair Play game! My wife found it and brought it to me. I was skeptical, but gave it a fair shake. We got about half way through dividing cards and she started to lose interest (I had a large number of cards). We got all the way through the cards, and.... then it was never mentioned again.
I still found it helpful to go through the chores and clarify who does what, and I think it opened our eyes to some of the things the other was doing unprompted. I also like the concept of each chore having a "go to" responsible person. Really cuts down on the "did you do X?" passive aggressiveness.
But I don't think it played out quite the way my wife envisioned. :)
I've seen this as well in my relationships, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to tie it to sex or gender (or anything else for that matter). I think humans are just bad at empathy. We tend to amplify our own contributions while downplaying others naturally, and especially when times are busy we don't get the time to reflect and acknowledge the other side of the coin. I try really hard to see things from all sides, and it sounds like you are doing the same... but not everyone is going to be able to self examine like that.
Oh god yeah. It's all sort of "invisible" labor and the assumption is that we enjoy these things and that's why we volunteer to do them. But what's actually happening is those are the things the spouses don't have an opinion on, so you can just go and get them done without being hassled and micromanaged.
I’ve read that one before, and I re-read it again now to see if it still bothered me as much; it really does.
Division of labour, and the very important fact that the managing/thinking/realising a task needs doing is a huge part of the job? Yup, totally clear to me - I’m dismayed at the idea so many men don’t live up to that standard, but I’m quite willing to believe it’s a prevalent problem because so many people are saying it is. Those few bullet points halfway down the one you linked give an echo of that behaviour, and make me think maybe that was the real reason for the divorce: a pattern of behaviour across all facets of the household where he just. Didn’t. Think.
But the author doesn’t ascribe it to that. He doesn’t dive in to the real, practical problems that his not taking on a fair share of the thinking as well as the doing would entail. He doubles and triples down on something objectively trivial and then says with a shrug that his ex wife must have been somehow justified in her own mind reading so much into it, so he should have just accepted that and changed his behaviour.
I really dislike the implications. The idea that her grievances were because of an emotional reaction to what he was communicating by a trivial task, rather than a totally rational reaction to him not pulling his weight in myriad other ways, seems a very belittling way to frame it. In this hypothetical world where it’s a reaction to what he’s communicating rather than a reaction to him not doing his part in an actual, meaningful way, he comes to the conclusion that he should have just shrugged and accepted this nonsensical situation.
I dunno, to me it comes out sounding like he’s saying “since, as we all know, women are flighty and emotional and read so much into tiny things, it’s our responsibility as men to accommodate those whims in the way that women want”, rather than “I fucked up by meaningfully failing to contribute my share of both tangible and intangible tasks”. I read it as simultaneously reinforcing negative stereotypes about women and perpetuating the idea that the man should just accept he’s the one in the wrong even in situations where that makes no sense.
Perhaps I’m misreading, or missing the point. I don’t want to pile on when some people clearly get something out of that article, and I’m genuinely open and interested in hearing another perspective on it. But I can’t parse it in a way that doesn’t simultaneously belittle women and promote unhealthy behaviour in men.
[Edit] In case it helps frame what I’m saying, I see this as a pretty much perfect take on the subject. It’s clear, straightforward, and makes it readily apparent that the woman’s grievance is totally justified, rather than just her way of interpreting an objectively tiny thing.
Ooh I knew it would be "You Should've Asked", that's one of my favorite takes on the subject.
I love the comic you linked!!!
The one I linked seems to me to be about something being a last straw and also about the danger of ignoring/disrespecting repeated requests to do a specific thing because you don't understand them or relate to them. But, it could be better done no doubt.
It seems reasonable to me that division of domestic labour could be the cause for a breakdown of a relationship? It's also pretty common to discuss wider trends in opinion pieces, and not just specific cases I think? I think we read the article differently but I didn't think it was really weird and gross?
If the article had been framed as a self-reflective "these are the mistakes I made in committing to an imbalanced lifestyle with my life-partner and how I learned about my/our inability to communicate my/our true needs (to them and myself)," that would've gone over better, and had some philosophical and educational value. It also would've been more relatable to all races and genders.
I'm going to take some direct quotes, in context, and put together a more wholesome and engaging synopsis.
Instead, people are picking up on a lot of negatives and maybe a perspective that needs some more improvement. And we should all be trying to improve and perceive the world better, and we all need some pity, or reassurance, or support sometimes. But even though these words above are what the author wrote, the above very much isn't what she said or how she said it.
I am sad and happy for the author. Good for her for figuring out what she needs and acting on it.
I know my experience is not typical, but my husband carries a fair share of the household work. The longer I know him, the more I respect him.