The great detective writer Agatha Christie has repeatedly claimed that she comes up with the best ideas for her books while washing dishes by hand. When your hands do routine mechanical work, your brain is freed up to think about new characters and the intricacies of the plot. True, if my memory serves me right, Agatha Christie is perhaps the only person in world history who really liked washing dishes.
But, for example, neither the user u/ApplicationOdd8566, the author of our story today, nor her husband like doing dishes. And even putting everything in the dishwasher too. And it was precisely on this basis that a woman recently had a conflict with her husband. However, let's talk about everything in order.
More info: Reddit
The author of the post is a woman in her thirties, and she has a husband and a 4 Y.O. son
Image credits: Vitaly Gariev (not the actual photo)
The spouses both work fulltime but the woman is the one who usually cooks for the whole family
Image credits: ApplicationOdd8566
Recently, the woman asked her spouse to help her do the dishes after cooking but the guy flatly refused saying that it's her mess to clean up
Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)
Image credits: ApplicationOdd8566
So the very next day, the wife plated food for her and their kid only, leaving the husband with no dinner
So, the Original Poster (OP) and her husband are people in their thirties, and they have a 4-year-old son. Both spouses work full-time - according to the author, she has a desk job, while her spouse's job is manual labor mainly. And after work, the woman prepares dinner for the whole family.
Usually, as the author says, all family members, having finished eating, rinse their plates and put them in the dishwasher themselves - even the kid, especially since he's already big enough for this, the mom notes. A couple of days ago, the woman asked her spouse to help her with washing the dishes left after cooking - frying pans, pots and whatnot.
And here an unpleasant surprise awaited our heroine - the guy flatly refused to do this, saying something like since his wife started all this mess in the kitchen, then she should cope with this on her own. If you thought that it was at this moment that the scandal broke out, then you are mistaken. No, the OP got mad, but she didn’t show it, postponing her revenge until the next day.
This day came - and the woman plated food for dinner for herself and her son, leaving the hubby with an empty plate. In response to the husband’s perplexed question about where his portion was, the woman reasonably objected that since he didn’t bother to help her with doing dishes after cooking, then she wouldn’t cook for him either.
Image credits: Annushka Ahuja (not the actual photo)
Well, experts are sure that cooking (and doing dishes as well) together, especially when both spouses work full-time, is not only fair, but can also significantly improve the atmosphere in the family. "Any quality time spent together will help to build your relationship," the Wren Kitchens blog states. "As your confidence grows in cooking together, you'll find you can chat about other topics while you cook, making it more into a conversation with cooking rather than the other way around. Communication, after all, is key to any good relationship. "
However, sociological studies claim that women are still more involved in doing chores than men. So, according to this research by Gallup, women prepare meals either on their own (51%) or together with men (32%), while only 17% of men cook themselves. The data on cleaning the home is even more versatile: 51%, 42% and 7% respectively.
In other words, if the author’s husband is involved in kitchen chores, at least with doing the dishes, this will be completely fair. Many people think so in the comments to the original post as well. "If that's his view, he can deal with cooking for himself then," one of the commenters noted quite wisely.
Moreover, according to commenters, in this situation the man may well go further, dividing absolutely all chores in half - no matter how surreal it may look. "By your husband's logic, you should also stop doing his laundry, making his side of the bed, and any other household chores that involve things he uses," another person in the comments was being a tad bit sarcastic.
Well, all that remains is to wish the author of our story a fair resolution of her family drama, and for her husband, for example - to read probably this post of ours, about a man who deliberately took paternity leave at work in order to help his wife after the birth of their second child (and was sorry for not doing it with their first kid, by the way).
Or perhaps this story about a mom who, after returning from a business trip, found her home a complete pigsty and issued an ultimatum to her fam, refusing to do any chores until they put things in order. Or some of the tales from your own personal experience - in case you share them in the comments here, of course.
Most commenters claimed that the husband had behaved ugly here, and praised the mom for being both witty and calm
Image credits: Amina Filkins (not the actual photo)
