5 ms·

I was a wife and homemaker for a lot of years, so some thoughts: I was married about 16 years before it finally sank in with my husband that when he dropped hi

by Mz 9y ago

I was a wife and homemaker for a lot of years, so some thoughts: I was married about 16 years before it finally sank in with my husband that when he dropped his dirty clothes on the floor instead of putting them in the hamper, it left me in the position that I could either pick up after him or just be in a messy space all day. So, it was a lose-lose situation for me. I was home a lot more than him and this was where my work was done. It would be kind of like if I went to his place of employment and dumped dirty clothes on his desk. Whether your wife has a job or not, the odds are good that she is doing more of the house work and child rearing than you are. That doesn't necessarily mean you need a bigger house, but it does mean that if she is not happy with the house, it is not a good idea to be all "meh -- not like she will divorce me over this." Men typically have very different priorities than women and the work you have been doing on the house may in no way meet her needs. It may be possible to make this house work for all involved parties, but you likely have blind spots as to what she needs. A good kitchen and laundry area can make the women's work vastly less burdensome. If your entertainment area is awesome, but her work spaces are terrible, this may be a case that it bothers you less than her because you have completely different experiences of the same house. Since this issue persists, it really would not be a bad idea to get some professional mediation rather than asking HN.

J-dawg 9y ago
>if she is not happy with the house, it is not a good idea to be all "meh -- not like she will divorce me over this." Implying that you think living in a too-small house actually is grounds for divorce?
- Mz 9y ago
  Implying that fundamental lack of respect for her as a human being whose opinions are equally important as her husband's in determining their lifestyle is grounds for divorce as it tends to cause all kinds of very serious problems.
  - soineuh 9y ago
    Is not gratifying your wife's complaints about the size of her house a fundamental affront to her dignity, or is it merely settling one of the many compromises that individuals make when they choose to pool their responsibilities, energy, spirit, attention, and resources? Presumably someone winds up with a too-small house because they can't afford a bigger one. Coming to afford things in the first place usually involves purposely enduring a significant amount of discomfort. Very often two people in the same place find themselves both unhappy with circumstance, and there's no way to bring them both to paradise. That's why it pays to have someone by your side who isn't a complainer. You relieve burdens from each other not because on the whole it makes your lives objectively better in sum, but because it's easier to endure the unavoidable pains of life when you have a good human reason: Family.
  - J-dawg 9y ago
    But what if there just isn't enough money for the bigger place? What if he doesn't enjoy being the breadwinner, and would rather live modestly and save like crazy so that he has a chance of early retirement one day? The rare occasions where women drop the facade and talk honestly about this stuff are always interesting. In spite of all the feminist rhetoric that we're exposed to these days, the truth is that women want (and often expect) a provider. >a human being whose opinions are equally important For day-to-day stuff, of course this is true. But in decisions that are largely financial (such as home ownership), the opinion of the person earning the money should probably carry more weight. Perhaps that's a controversial opinion. (And before you accuse me of sexism, I'd have the same opinion when the main breadwinner is a woman.)
    - Mz 9y ago
      You are putting all kinds of words in my mouth and completely overlooking things I actually said. I see no means to engage you in good faith because this so strongly comes across as you hanging your crap on me and making no good faith effort to actually understand anything I actually said.
      - J-dawg 9y ago
- Klockan 9y ago
  Stop shaming people over stuff like that, living space is important! It is kinda like when companies are shaming employees for wanting to leave if they don't get a decent salary.
  - soineuh 9y ago
    Discouraging poor values is precisely the purpose of shaming. Do you think that a large home is more valuable than marital fidelity? This is a cartoonish question to any sane person.
  - J-dawg 9y ago
    So a marriage should be like a contract where each party is expected to fulfil certain obligations? You might want to rethink that analogy.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  I'm not the poster, but I'll take a stab at the answer - mostly drawing from my experience being a housewife and in a relationship where things weren't split very evenly. Small places are usually good for one person. The more folks you add to a small space, the more work there is for a single person. This is especially if folks happen to have a lot of things they aren't using, have hobbies that require a fair amount of physical space, or have differing hobbies/interests that take a smaller amount of space. Additionally, some things make for daily frustrations, depending on the housing situation. Fighting with your own storage space to put the dishes away, for example. These sorts of frustrations add up and affect the quality of life. One person winds up having to deal with it most of the time, and there aren't coworkers there to vent to. There is no one. One solution is to gain more space and more efficient "work" or "duty" areas (laundry, restrooms, and kitchens). Another solution is to do things that make the other's daily life easier, hence the picking up after oneself. Making sure to split the chores up fairly evenly so that both parties get days off or simply doing it more often so a homewife/husband gets some time away from the monotonous daily grind. The answer is both yes and no. Edited for clarity.
  - J-dawg 9y ago
    Ok, I agree that all things being equal, a lovely big house is a lot nicer to live in than a cramped apartment, and that this has a greater effect on the person who stays at home more or does more chores. I just find it depressing that women in 2017 will quite casually talk about divorcing someone for not being a sufficiently good provider of material things. I cannot imagine men talking like this. I grew up believing the feminist rhetoric and hoping that my eventual spouse would be an equal partner, but the truth is that (most) women want somebody to provide for them, and a man's value in the relationship marketplace is still largely determined by his ability to provide.
    - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
      You've missed the point. This isn't about providing for someone, but more about understanding the point of view of the other one. This doesn't diminish the equality. I've personally been in most roles - housewife, the only breadwinner, and both parties working. My own house runs more on fairness. It is harder to understand these roles when you haven't done them yourself. It is easy to highlight only the positives and things like that. Most housewives/husbands have the option of going to work to improve the standard of living if they would like, and I view that as their responsibility instead of relying on their spouse to earn more. This isn't their situation, though - affordability didn't seem to be an issue. Look, if I'm working and the job gives me monotony and frustration daily - where folks aren't doing their basic things and I'm having to make up for their shortcomings - I'm likely to quit after a while. This is more similar to staying at home, except there aren't really days off and you can't escape. One of the possible solutions to improve it is to move. Just one, and this isn't available to all. Others are her working, him making sure to pitch in more, remodeling, and so on.
thatwebdude 9y ago
Whoa, this escalated. You're assumptions are incredibly wrong. > Whether your wife has a job or not, the odds are good that she is doing more of the house work and child rearing than you are. That doesn't necessarily mean you need a bigger house, but it does mean that if she is not happy with the house, it is not a good idea to be all "meh -- not like she will divorce me over this." She works harder than I do full-time; I am at home many nights without her, with the kids, while she wins more bread. We split responsibilities quite well but she'll be the first to tell you I am an All-Star dad. I usually clean the house as I'm the neat-freak of the family, and what most people consider clean is just getting started for me. I spent the first 9 months of our first child's life at home being a semi-stay-at-home dad, rearing her almost completely as my amazing wife positioned herself into a career that helped us tremendously and really aids in our lifestyle now. We appreciate each other, but don't value one's output over another, except maybe at our places of work. We're a team and we play like one. > A good kitchen and laundry area can make the women's work vastly less burdensome. Agreed, although we upgraded these features and requests to pinpoint issue we both had, as we both split duties performed in these areas at least 50% (different areas and different weeks demand different percentages).
- thatwebdude 9y ago
  ... Sorry I took that so personally. I understand where you're coming from; but before we started a family I decided to play a much more important role in my child's lives than just the check-writer.
  - Mz 9y ago
    My email notifications do not include these two reasonable comments, but do have a really ugly personal attack against me that I am not currently finding here. I can only assume you changed your mind and deleted it. I made a good faith reply based on sketchy information, thus drew on aggregate statistics to fill in the gaps. I stand by my actual suggestions to you that it might make sense to get mediation, etc. There is nothing in my actual suggestions to you in my first reply that is ugly or any of the other things I have been accused of here. I realize this is your question and you are probably feeling like everything I have said here is thus about you. But most of what I said here was in defense due to being randomly attacked by some guy who swears he does not have baggage, yet feels perfectly fine with putting ugly words in my mouth and upping the ante with every single comment and not backing down. But instead of fussing at him for derailing your question, you chose to fuss at me. Maybe you should wonder why that is. I am only bothering to point that out to suggest that if you really want to work things out with your wife, it may help to wonder how you are coming across. Because the pattern for how this conversation went of he-said-she-said and the shit show just escalates is an all too common one. It does not build bridges. I sincerely hope you and your wife can find a way to work this out. But I am feeling quite crapped on overall here and wondering why I bother to try to build bridges, keep the peace etc. I am not your wife. Presumably you two have positive things going on as well. But this entire conversation is all too emblematic of what is wrong with the entire men vs women crap in the world today. So I plan to step out of this discussion permanently. At this point, whatever else gets said, I just don't feel any good can come of me trying to make further good faith efforts to participate and I am incredibly tired of feeling like I got shit on for the crime of being female in a majority male forum.

by Mz 9y ago

J-dawg 9y ago

>if she is not happy with the house, it is not a good idea to be all "meh -- not like she will divorce me over this." Implying that you think living in a too-small house actually is grounds for divorce?

Mz 9y ago
Implying that fundamental lack of respect for her as a human being whose opinions are equally important as her husband's in determining their lifestyle is grounds for divorce as it tends to cause all kinds of very serious problems.
- soineuh 9y ago
  Is not gratifying your wife's complaints about the size of her house a fundamental affront to her dignity, or is it merely settling one of the many compromises that individuals make when they choose to pool their responsibilities, energy, spirit, attention, and resources? Presumably someone winds up with a too-small house because they can't afford a bigger one. Coming to afford things in the first place usually involves purposely enduring a significant amount of discomfort. Very often two people in the same place find themselves both unhappy with circumstance, and there's no way to bring them both to paradise. That's why it pays to have someone by your side who isn't a complainer. You relieve burdens from each other not because on the whole it makes your lives objectively better in sum, but because it's easier to endure the unavoidable pains of life when you have a good human reason: Family.
- J-dawg 9y ago
  But what if there just isn't enough money for the bigger place? What if he doesn't enjoy being the breadwinner, and would rather live modestly and save like crazy so that he has a chance of early retirement one day? The rare occasions where women drop the facade and talk honestly about this stuff are always interesting. In spite of all the feminist rhetoric that we're exposed to these days, the truth is that women want (and often expect) a provider. >a human being whose opinions are equally important For day-to-day stuff, of course this is true. But in decisions that are largely financial (such as home ownership), the opinion of the person earning the money should probably carry more weight. Perhaps that's a controversial opinion. (And before you accuse me of sexism, I'd have the same opinion when the main breadwinner is a woman.)
  - Mz 9y ago
    You are putting all kinds of words in my mouth and completely overlooking things I actually said. I see no means to engage you in good faith because this so strongly comes across as you hanging your crap on me and making no good faith effort to actually understand anything I actually said.
    - J-dawg 9y ago
Klockan 9y ago
Stop shaming people over stuff like that, living space is important! It is kinda like when companies are shaming employees for wanting to leave if they don't get a decent salary.
- soineuh 9y ago
  Discouraging poor values is precisely the purpose of shaming. Do you think that a large home is more valuable than marital fidelity? This is a cartoonish question to any sane person.
- J-dawg 9y ago
  So a marriage should be like a contract where each party is expected to fulfil certain obligations? You might want to rethink that analogy.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
I'm not the poster, but I'll take a stab at the answer - mostly drawing from my experience being a housewife and in a relationship where things weren't split very evenly. Small places are usually good for one person. The more folks you add to a small space, the more work there is for a single person. This is especially if folks happen to have a lot of things they aren't using, have hobbies that require a fair amount of physical space, or have differing hobbies/interests that take a smaller amount of space. Additionally, some things make for daily frustrations, depending on the housing situation. Fighting with your own storage space to put the dishes away, for example. These sorts of frustrations add up and affect the quality of life. One person winds up having to deal with it most of the time, and there aren't coworkers there to vent to. There is no one. One solution is to gain more space and more efficient "work" or "duty" areas (laundry, restrooms, and kitchens). Another solution is to do things that make the other's daily life easier, hence the picking up after oneself. Making sure to split the chores up fairly evenly so that both parties get days off or simply doing it more often so a homewife/husband gets some time away from the monotonous daily grind. The answer is both yes and no. Edited for clarity.
- J-dawg 9y ago
  Ok, I agree that all things being equal, a lovely big house is a lot nicer to live in than a cramped apartment, and that this has a greater effect on the person who stays at home more or does more chores. I just find it depressing that women in 2017 will quite casually talk about divorcing someone for not being a sufficiently good provider of material things. I cannot imagine men talking like this. I grew up believing the feminist rhetoric and hoping that my eventual spouse would be an equal partner, but the truth is that (most) women want somebody to provide for them, and a man's value in the relationship marketplace is still largely determined by his ability to provide.
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    You've missed the point. This isn't about providing for someone, but more about understanding the point of view of the other one. This doesn't diminish the equality. I've personally been in most roles - housewife, the only breadwinner, and both parties working. My own house runs more on fairness. It is harder to understand these roles when you haven't done them yourself. It is easy to highlight only the positives and things like that. Most housewives/husbands have the option of going to work to improve the standard of living if they would like, and I view that as their responsibility instead of relying on their spouse to earn more. This isn't their situation, though - affordability didn't seem to be an issue. Look, if I'm working and the job gives me monotony and frustration daily - where folks aren't doing their basic things and I'm having to make up for their shortcomings - I'm likely to quit after a while. This is more similar to staying at home, except there aren't really days off and you can't escape. One of the possible solutions to improve it is to move. Just one, and this isn't available to all. Others are her working, him making sure to pitch in more, remodeling, and so on.

thatwebdude 9y ago

Whoa, this escalated. You're assumptions are incredibly wrong. > Whether your wife has a job or not, the odds are good that she is doing more of the house work and child rearing than you are. That doesn't necessarily mean you need a bigger house, but it does mean that if she is not happy with the house, it is not a good idea to be all "meh -- not like she will divorce me over this." She works harder than I do full-time; I am at home many nights without her, with the kids, while she wins more bread. We split responsibilities quite well but she'll be the first to tell you I am an All-Star dad. I usually clean the house as I'm the neat-freak of the family, and what most people consider clean is just getting started for me. I spent the first 9 months of our first child's life at home being a semi-stay-at-home dad, rearing her almost completely as my amazing wife positioned herself into a career that helped us tremendously and really aids in our lifestyle now. We appreciate each other, but don't value one's output over another, except maybe at our places of work. We're a team and we play like one. > A good kitchen and laundry area can make the women's work vastly less burdensome. Agreed, although we upgraded these features and requests to pinpoint issue we both had, as we both split duties performed in these areas at least 50% (different areas and different weeks demand different percentages).

thatwebdude 9y ago
... Sorry I took that so personally. I understand where you're coming from; but before we started a family I decided to play a much more important role in my child's lives than just the check-writer.
- Mz 9y ago
  My email notifications do not include these two reasonable comments, but do have a really ugly personal attack against me that I am not currently finding here. I can only assume you changed your mind and deleted it. I made a good faith reply based on sketchy information, thus drew on aggregate statistics to fill in the gaps. I stand by my actual suggestions to you that it might make sense to get mediation, etc. There is nothing in my actual suggestions to you in my first reply that is ugly or any of the other things I have been accused of here. I realize this is your question and you are probably feeling like everything I have said here is thus about you. But most of what I said here was in defense due to being randomly attacked by some guy who swears he does not have baggage, yet feels perfectly fine with putting ugly words in my mouth and upping the ante with every single comment and not backing down. But instead of fussing at him for derailing your question, you chose to fuss at me. Maybe you should wonder why that is. I am only bothering to point that out to suggest that if you really want to work things out with your wife, it may help to wonder how you are coming across. Because the pattern for how this conversation went of he-said-she-said and the shit show just escalates is an all too common one. It does not build bridges. I sincerely hope you and your wife can find a way to work this out. But I am feeling quite crapped on overall here and wondering why I bother to try to build bridges, keep the peace etc. I am not your wife. Presumably you two have positive things going on as well. But this entire conversation is all too emblematic of what is wrong with the entire men vs women crap in the world today. So I plan to step out of this discussion permanently. At this point, whatever else gets said, I just don't feel any good can come of me trying to make further good faith efforts to participate and I am incredibly tired of feeling like I got shit on for the crime of being female in a majority male forum.