Feminist Advice Friday: Things are unequal, but my husband still brags about his contributions.
A reader wonders how to get cooperation from a husband who is very proud of his inadequate contributions.
A reader asks…
When we were dating then later, engaged and living together, my husband would cook and do dishes and there honesty wasn't a lot of housework to do, we only lived in a studio apartment. We weren't exactly 50/50 then, maybe 60/40. Looking back I realize that every time he did something.. dishes, dinner, cleaning.. he would post it on social media. A picture of food on a plate, video of it cooking on the stove, a picture of a clean room, wanting likes and good jobs from friends. We also had jobs in the same field and although we had crazy schedules, they were often the same hours.
Flash forward several years, we are now homeowners and he has a career change that is more work from home than anything, and I have changed jobs but stayed in my industry. He chooses his own hours, I have a set schedule of 4 days on, 3 days off. I am technically the breadwinner, though he has a small trust fund as well, that has allowed him to make this career change and start in a new industry. His choice may pay off, but it hasn't yet.
My issues are multiple. One, he continues to post on social media and converse with friends and family members, and now clients, showing off his family accomplishments. For example, I may be trying to get our kid ready to go out the door and he may be watching tv and the phone rings. The person on the other end will be told that he's trying to get our child ready to go out, when that is what is happening, but he is not helping that along in any way. He'll also post what he made for dinner, he'll tell clients he's working on his daughter's hair, getting her dressed, etc, etc.
Since he is work from home, sometimes in the evening I see him on the computer, I assume it's work. He sits with his back to the wall on his laptop. If I have a reason to go over there, it's social media or a game more often than not.
The other issue I have is I feel like we have a custody arrangement. With my four days/3 days schedule, I work a full time job of 45 hours or more, it's just more hours in the day. I miss out on everything that happens in the morning for 4 days, and by the 5th day the house is a pigsty. Multiple trips out of the house with garbage, heaping garbage in kitchen and bathroom, sink full of dishes, laundry that I don't mind doing, but have to locate from multiple locations throughout the house. Toys everywhere. Four cups on the end table in the living room, things piled up on every surface in the house, mail collected from outside and placed in four different places, four hangers to pick up from the living room, things that fell on the floor and never picked up. I have a fit on every 5th day for the last couple years. There's been no change.
He does a lot, but not enough. He gets her ready for school in the morning because I start my day very early. When I get home, he says it's my turn. I have had no downtime since I started this job. He makes dinner and does dishes 4 days later. He says he likes to digest after eating. We go out to eat a lot. Sometimes because he doesn't want to do the dishes first. Sometimes because he doesn't feel like it, or I got home to late, so it's takeout. I've gained so much weight from eating out all the time. I'm not cooking on top of everything else.
When I break down about the maintenance of the household, he'll have a heart to heart with my daughter that begins with "Mommy really wants the house to stay clean." and ends with emphasizing that it's her mess. I'm not liking the message he is giving her.
He's the type of person who will start a new kitchen sponge, shampoo bottle, etc., without getting rid of the old one. He doesn't clear the kitchen table while making dinner, so we may eat with our plates on arts and crafts projects, or piles of mail and receipts. He'll take clothes out of the dryer if I ask him to, and won't fold them. I spend so much time decluttering on my three days off that I can't ever get to things to clean them. I feel like the walls of my house are closing in on us. I have a to-do list a mile long. In the meantime, he's watched two seasons of a tv show in the last week.
I really don't know where to go from here.
My answer:
I kept opening your email and then closing it again several times before I got through the entire thing. I found myself really overwhelmed by it, and didn’t know how to begin to go about answering it.
Then I realized the overwhelm is the point.
Your husband is resisting you on multiple fronts. He’s wasting tons of time creating a public facade of an equal partner (who somehow deserves praise for the very things he doesn’t seem to think warrant praise when you do them). He’s resisting you on basic cleaning and decluttering. He’s undermining you to your daughter. He’s being evasive about whether, when, and to what extent he’s working. He has reasons for all the things he doesn’t do, and he knows you don’t have the time to resist all of those reasons. And in spite of his endless bragging about how Very Busy and Self-Sacrificing He Is, he still has time to do all the things you never get to do.
No wonder you’re overwhelmed. No wonder I’m overwhelmed trying to tease out what I think the core issue is. There are lots of foundational issues here. The whole man is broken.
Let me tell you a story.
My brother is a master of getting what he wants. It’s always been this way. If I couldn’t get my parents to do something, I’d turn my brother on them. He would ask them, over and over and over again, till they finally broke. As an adult, he would sometimes call my mom a hundred or more times a day until she agreed to give him money just to make the phone stop ringing.
I asked him once what the hell it was he was doing.
“When a circus takes a baby elephant, they tie it to a post and it tries to escape. So they beat it every time it tries to escape. Eventually, its brain becomes overwhelmed and it can’t separate the beatings from the post. So it thinks the post is actually effective at keeping it in place. You have to overwhelm everyone with more resistance than they’re prepared to handle. Then all you need is a little post to keep them doing what you want them to do.”
My brother had convinced everyone the cost of resisting him was too high. Your husband has, I think, done a similar thing. Your marriage is the post. He’s broken your spirit and made every interaction exhausting.
He won’t just make food. He has to take photos and demand praise.
He won’t just clean the house. He has to involve your daughter in an unhealthy way.
He won’t talk to you about working hours. Instead, he plays games.
He won’t communicate with you directly much at all.
This man is a master manipulator, and it’s apparent he has been doing this for years.
How do you break through his passive-aggression and manipulation?
You avoid the same tactics. You need to get very clear and very specific about what you want. You need to tell him once. And you need to be prepared with consequences if he does not follow through.
He won’t follow through because he sees you as someone to exploit. He’s already grooming your daughter to be exploited, too—convincing her the house is your problem, not his. I suspect there’s a lot of abuse here that you may not even notice because you’ve become so desensitized to it.
So start being more direct. At the very minimum, you need to demand a family schedule—specific hours he will be working, specific tasks he will do, specific tasks you will do. If he is unwilling to agree to an equitable distribution of labor, kick this man’s ass to the curb and enjoy the many good years you have left without him.
Don’t let him make you feel crazy. You’re not.
What a great answer. And you are right, I felt very overwhelmed reading the question too. I hope it works out for her.
Tough love! I like it. He will be tough right back. He thinks he is “special”