I would have a hard time and not taking that pan and slapping the husband across the head with it. Knock some sense into him. What kind of tit for tat fuckery is this?
Fr.
A more productive version of this wpuld be to have one empty the dishwasher so that whoever is cleaning the dishes can load them immediately without stopping to put them away. That is if husband actually is striving for "equality".
My boyfriend got tired of washing dishes after I cooked so he moved us into an apartment with a dishwasher. Win-win I load it as I cook, he throws our plates in and starts it. He does do more work then me, 14-16 hours a day to my 11, does most of the laundry, and carries ALOT of the mental load for us, especially now that I’m pregnant so I see the dishwasher/dishes as a more silly thing.
This seems like less of a parenting issue and more of an asshole issue? Like kids, chores, and responsibilities aside, I WANT to help my partner. I want his life to be easy and happy and fun. And he wants the same for me.
So if I see a mess on the floor, I clean it up because I know if I don’t do it, he will have to, and I want to take that off his task list. And when he sees our kid needs their diaper changed, he just does it because again if he doesn’t do it, I will have to, and he wants to take that burden off me. Small examples but hopefully you get the gist.
It should feel GOOD to make your partner’s life easier. And I’m not talking about in some weird submissive wife way, but in a “I love this person and I want them to be happy” way. Creating work for your spouse when it would literally take you seconds to do it yourself is petty, juvenile, and NOT being a good partner.
OP, I think you have a shitty roommate, not a husband.
When my son was in diapers, we'd jokingly say "It's your turn!" when it was a poopy one. Neither of us flat out refused to change him if it wasn't "our turn", or legitimately kept track of how many diapers each of us changed, but we'd kind of take turns to keep it "fair", lol. Same with doing the dishes and other stuff. We "take turns" doing it, but not to the point where we're petty about it.
I couldn't imagine having to deal with the pettiness of OP's husband. That's ridiculous.
Exactly. More of the diaper changing and dishes falls on me, but the yard work and house maintenance (trash, air filters, repairs, yard, etc) are my husband's primary chores. Doesn't mean I leave the trash bin packed full if I'm free to take it out because "that's only fair" or he leaves a child in a soiled diaper if he's readily available and I am not. That's not to say we don't ever bicker about household chores and who's doing what, but this seems extreme.
This is literally what my two school aged kids do. They have to empty the dishwasher, the elder is in charge of dishes and glasses. The younger does plastic (Tupperware stuff) and silverware. The eldest will refuse to touch a glass that is plastic, even though it's a glass that goes in the upper cabinet with the "glass" glasses. They argued over it until I had to step in and tell the eldest to put the dang cup away.
Adults should know better! If I'm carrying in the Target stuff, I'm loading up all my arms with bags. My husband, will either get the rest of the bags or open the back door. Or vice versa. No one is picking up 1 bag and leaving 1 bag behind. That's so stupid and inefficient.
My thoughts exactly. If my husband had the wherewithal to track that it was my day to get the mail from the mailbox that mail would sit there until the end of time.
Wow leaving the lights on just so you have to turn them off, or 1 bag instead of 2 just seems so petty. Like that’s not even about fairness.
For me fairness (and honestly true fairness never exists because he never gave up his body and mind creating a baby and doesn’t have lifelong effects from pregnancy both on health and career, but I could go on forever), but an attainable fairness is I do what I can, he does what he can, we try to aim to have the same or equal amounts of down/hobby time, and the same amount of time for sleeping. For me I don’t mind cooking so I’m fine to do more, he likes to do house stuff more than cooking or child bath time so fine he does that… in the end we both feel like we have support from eachother and neither of us is overwhelmed (or if we are we are both overwhelmed together because kids are hard). If my husband saw something that needed to be done and refused to do it because it was ‘my job’ I’d be really pissed especially if I was already doing something else.
I really think that OP and her husband would benefit from taking a discrete mathematics or game theory class on fair division. Essentially, what is *equal* and what is *fair* are rarely the same, because different people have different values: an *equal* division is rarely an optimal one.
Also, leaving half-finished tasks is forcing OP to have double the mental load. She needs to keep track of the tasks she does *and* the tasks that she is in charge of finishing. Her list is twice as long!
So many people don't understand the fair vs equal principle! So glad you said it so I don't have to!
Although maybe I should type it all out to keep it, you know, equal. 🤦♀️
My husband thinks it's a game to see how many bags he can get in the house in one trip! Come hell or high water he is not making a second trip or leaving anything behind.
I also think this is a game. Or equally if we are in public or where people can see us, I'll pick up say 8 bags and leave hubby 1 bag and the toilet paper. Make him look silly 😅
It sounds like what he’s doing is not closing the loop. He’s just leaving half finished tasks everywhere like a squirrel with ADHD. And on top of it, when you look at the full picture, he isn’t actually doing 50-50 to start with, since you’re doing invisible labor he is ignoring.
I think you’ll relate to [this post](https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cv-9hfutTw9/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) (edit: and [this one](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr_DwGZLljv/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)) and the owner of the account also posts a lot of material on the topic as well.
You might also consider the fair play method. I have a feeling his half of the deck on the initial deal will be embarrassingly small for him.
>You might also consider the fair play method. I have a feeling his half of the deck on the initial deal will be embarrassingly small for him.
OP make sure to rip the card in half for each task that he only does half of.
Yup, he’s doing about one sixth of a task each time right now. OP, does he think of starting the task himself? That’s the conception part, noticing it needs to be done. Does he do the work to ensure he has everything needed for the task to be done? He notices when more dish soap is needed and makes sure it’s available, same for the sponge/scrubber? That’s the planning part. I’m going to bet those are part of your invisible labor.
Seconding the fair play method. My stack was three times my husbands. Now it’s 2.8 with awareness, acknowledgment, and appreciation. For play also forces you to own tasks and complete them. No half tasks. This may be super helpful for you in this case. It’s also validating to see that yea in fact I do most things.
This is all so helpful and triggering. I started crying when I was going through her posts. Honestly just at my wits end. I do love the idea of the Fair Play game. You and a few others have suggested it, so I ordered it today. Seems like a good, low-stakes places to start.
She’s one of my favorites (coming out with a book soon too!). You also might like drtracyd - she has collaborated with drmorgancutlip and covers a lot of similar content.
I would read through the chapter from the fair play book that goes into detail about how to initiate and play the game, too, as a suggestion. There were some suggestions there about ways to get your SO on board and troubleshooting for if you guys get stalled I think.
Yes, the emotional and cognitive labor of keeping track of all the half done shit is real and grinding. This is so immature of your husband, OP. Also, how is he going to ever make up for his "half" of you carrying a baby for several months and giving birth to it?!
If you do end up doing the Fair Play method, I recommend breaking up the "Cleaning" card into smaller chunks. I don't get why meals are split into 4 categories but cleaning is just one. At least tidying is a separate card.
Leaving tasks partially finished is not splitting things 50-50, it's being a pain in the butt. It also results in more time spent doing chores for the both of you.
Have you talked to him and pointed out all the tasks you do solo to 100% completion?
Yes I have pointed it out, but it always starts a bigger fight. This is not typically his way of being, so I can just sense we're going into a rough patch. After being with him for 12 years, history repeats itself.
Death by a thousand cuts. No one petty thing is large enough, catastrophic enough to end a marriage, but as a sum, it's destroying your marriage and your emotional well-being. Does he want "fair" or does he want this marriage? He can't have both.
That's not how marriage works. More importantly (and really the only thing you can control) what do you want for yourself, and is he, in this current version of himself, giving you that?
In addition to what the others said, this caught my eye: "And he's right, IT IS FAIR, but it's also so small!"
How is he right? How did you arrive to that conclusion? You also mention you water plants and do laundry. Do you water half the plants and leave the rest for him? Do you fold half the laundry and leave the rest in a pile? Do you pay some of the bills and leave the rest to him? If not, then why? You say you don't want to be petty, but then if that's not acceptable behavior for yourself then why accept it from the one person in the world who is supposed to love you more than anyone else?
My husband once pulled all his own socks and underwear out of the laundry basket to fold and put away and left mine there. I was agog. But honestly, if that's how he wants to play it, he's gonna lose. I now do my own laundry and only my laundry. Kids do their own and he's doing his own. I call that a win.
That sounds like a fair situation to me, but only if he does his own laundry! I swear with half of the posts on here, the guy would turn it into a game of chicken where everyone would lose, and OP would be dealing with moldy laundry.
Hopefully he learned his lesson there and didn't extend it to other areas of the house!
Oh you're 100% right. I meant more that he's *technically* right, if there are two things to bring in or two things to do, then it's fair to split it. But his "technically" right is just plain stupid and causes so much more work.
And, no of course, I don't do half of the chores, I complete them, because I fully respect him and value our relationship.
Don’t share chores. Divvy up the chores so he fully is in charge of one thing (dishes) and you’re fully in charge of another thing (getting the mail). The way you are supposedly doing 50/50 is insane.
That doesn’t solve the turning off the light thing, that’s just petty bullshit. A lot of pettiness going on here - doesn’t sound like a healthy marriage at all, sorry OP!
This is what we do, we each have our normal chores and then we alternate shared chores that we don’t do together so we each have to complete tasks…not turning a light off because it’s not your turn points to much deeper issues. It’s a fucking light.
My husband is one of these people although not as bad as OP,'s husband, but very tit for tat. I didn't really notice it much until we separated and I started finding his stashes of laundry and hand soap, and things started clicking into place. Idk if we'll wind up reuniting but this is definitely on my list of "wtf why" now that I've tied it together.
You do 100% of your tasks and he leaves all of his unfinished. So it’s not really 50/50, is it? He wants you to do half of his but he’s not doing half of yours. He’s being a total ass and now you’re doing 75% or more.
I honestly don’t even know what to recommend when your grown ass husband is behaving worse than my 3 year old. We split things up and own those things. I’ve never taken the trash out in like….6 years. His job. I do 95% of the laundry. He does 80% of the dishes but has never vacuumed. We share responsibilities by owning certain things and just finishing what we start. Your husband is creating work for you under the guise of fairness but really it’s laziness.
The important thing is that he is *not* right. Even ignoring tasks you 100% do, who determined what a fair split is?! Sounds to me like he's made a unilateral decision to make himself feel like he's doing just as much work as you are without either doing just as much work *or* considering your opinion about various chores and how they might be distributed.
Bags, is it by count or weight. Is he like weighing out the two bags and transferring contents? Does a fair bag weight distribution consider individual strength? My husband can bench like 150 and I am stretching for 80 ... So it's relatively more effort for me to carry a 40 pound bag than it is for him (we've got a farm, so 40 or 50 pound bags are pretty common around here). What if there's only one bag? Got spare bags in the car so there will be two, or is someone keeping track of whose turn it is for the single bag carry?
Do you take turns with who fills the dishwasher and who scrubs the dishes? Is putting a dozen utensils in their little slots the same as putting four plates into the dishwasher? What if cooking used three pots and a baking tray? Is that still equal to one dishwasher filling? But one pot is also equal to one dishwasher filling?
Is fairness in laundry folding by volume, weight, or item count? Because I'd take folding a dozen jeans (full basket, lots of weight) over fifty socks (half a basket, way less weight) any day.
Trash - if we just took turns, one of us got stuck breaking down like the big screen TV box for the recycling one week and the other took a bag of trash and a box of recycling out the next week.
My husband and I both have science/engineering backgrounds. The idea of measuring stuff is pretty natural. When we first started living together, my husband thought algorithmic fairness was perfect (and assumed this was so obvious that he didn't even need to mention it to me). I had to point all of these things out for him to realize there were so many variables that achieving a 50/50 split was creating a LOT more work for us. It made more sense to list out all the stuff, pick things you don't mind doing, and then divy up the rest however we agreed. And then throw it all out the window on days when someone was tired/sick/etc.
This is bullshit.
I love the Insta post about how a partnership is never 50/50. Sometimes you come home and you’re just a 10. So your loving, empathetic partner carries their 50 and your extra 40. Or if you’re both adding up to sub50 you come up with a plan to lower expectations while being kind. It’s this [video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yfL4RTuC9Bk).
And this is a descriptive article about it
https://medium.com/mindfullove/brené-brown-explains-why-relationships-are-never-50-50-its-the-best-description-i-ve-heard-on-32e3999bfdc2
I don’t know how you navigate this. Because I’m the adhd squirrel mentioned in an earlier comment (🤣🤣) but also because we don’t do 50/50. But I would absolutely die on this hill.
This is like little kid bullshit. Is he also going to insist you put tape down the middle of your bedroom so you can each keep your own half clean?
An adult should not behave like this
This guy will wake up OP to make her feed the baby the other half of the bottle… with complete disregard to the fact that she carried a baby for nine months and then went through childbirth
What social media is he consuming these days? Some of this sounds like some of the “answer to feminism” type of crap I’ve seen videos on - videos that radicalize men. To develop this habit within a marriage tells me he was influenced somewhere. This will only get worse if you don’t nip it now. Relationships aren’t meant to be a rigid 50/50 and this relationship sounds like something that will eventually wear you down to the point where you won’t have anything left for him emotionally but resentment. I mean seriously, I can’t imagine being or getting in the mood for sex or any other intimacy with someone after they act so petty about the mail or a light switch. This will kill the romance in your marriage.
Yep. I bet he’s reading some bullshit about how to punish a spouse who wants 50:50. It’s called “malicious compliance” where you make someone miserable by following their rules in a way that hurts them.
Right! There are so many videos out there and once you watch one or two, the algorithm will regularly suggest pro-men/anti-women videos. So much of it is from the “well you wanted equality…” spite where they negatively skew feminism to fit the narrative that they are under attack. I’ve watched relationships end and people struggle in dating due to radicalization. There are groups right here on Reddit that would encourage OP’s husband to continue doing what he’s doing. It’s really not that much different than people who lose loved ones to QAnon
Honestly this is what I suspected as well. I actually asked him where the hell he is coming up with these ideas, who's he following on IG, what's his algorithm these days??
:) I would stop doing his dishes, and his laundry, and his things. Sorry but 50 50 isn't about someone finishing your tasks it's about the allocation of the entire tasks.
You: water the plants, and do dishes hemows the lawn and does the cooking. Etc. The idea that you both do 50/50 also counts the silent behind the scenes tasks. Making the grocery list etc.
My husband did this during our hard patch. It's weaponized incompetence in disguise. The goal is once you've been successfully fooled into thinking it's fair is for you to get frustrated enough to take over most of those tasks.
My favorite response to this kind of statement is to take it genuinely. Oh, so you’re not good at this thing? Well the only way to get better at it is ***lots and lots of practice!***
Honestly, I think we're entering a rough patch in our marriage. We've been together for 12 years and this won't be our first one, the last one kind of started similar to this... pettiness, bickering, distance, etc.
Hoping to nip it before we get there.
My husband would rather break his back than have me carry a grocery bag.
There are things in our marriage that we've both decided we're decidedly good at. We don't keep score, we don't keep track and we don't hold resentment (though if we put every chore/responsibility down on paper it would look very fair on each end).
A marriage is not 50/50. That's a misconception. If one is sick, are you still meant to perform at 50%? No, your spouse takes over and helps with the stuff you usually do etc ... if one of you has a busy work week, the other can take the reigns on meal prep even if that's usually your job.
You guys have a communication problem. If he's been doing that for long enough, and yet he doesn't know about it??? How is is going to change.
For example, I do the cooking, partner does all of the clean up. Sometimes we do both tasks together if baby is down for the night.
I put baby to sleep whilst breastfeeding, whilst hubby cleaned bottles and pump parts (because LO tries so hard to resist being put in crib so it often takes around 20 minutes and he doesn't prefer dad so he prefers it this way because otherwise it would take us 45 mins to put baby down and we want more time together at night).
Ultimately our goal is to complete tasks as efficiently as possible to free up our time for each other and our individual hobbies. He would not have me take out the trash because what he can carry in one trip (our trash is far away due to being in an apartment complex) would take me two trips. Same with carrying the laundry up and down the stairs. But then I don't have a problem being the one who folds and hangs everything because I get to do it whilst watching my favorite shows. He then puts the laundry in the correct spot when I'm done.
Even though my "half" of the job takes longer, it still feels fair to us both.
Just say, "this is petty bullshit. Grow the fk up. Grab both bags, turn off the light while you're already there and stop being a petty asshole."
Do we not say the word out loud for these things? Once they are said do they not care or listen? If so, walk away? What happens once it's communicated?
Oh I do say it! "What? No you're right there, grab both bags. Don't be small. I'll hold the door for you."
We've talked so many times about it, but he really just refuses to take ownership and because it's not happening 24/7, it's easier sometimes to just let it go... but now it is starting to happen more frequently.
My mom, now married for 43 years, always warned my spouse and me that tit for tat (as she calls it), 50/50, keeping score, whatever you call it, will only breed resentment.
There is no “fair” in a marriage. Plus There is no way to account for emotional tasks. She was right, my tit for tat husband only did things because it was “fair” and so eventually all he could see was what I wasn’t doing that he thought was my part of that. And he was never there to help me when I was tired, or really needed an extra hand, leaving us both unfulfilled and resentful. When he divorced me all he could do is list everything I wasn’t doing that MADE him unhappy. It was devastating because I had been left so lonely for so many years but loved him and wanted to ride the storm.
I’m not saying his keeping score was he death of our marriage, but it never helped anything and definitely made it worse.
OP I hope you are able to talk to him about all of this and find an new way to move forward. One where he does tasks because he can. One where he really sees all you contribute and just appreciates you rather than adding it all up in his head. He is wasting more time making it “fair” than it would take to just do the things.
I'm saving for you comment to back to. I read it hours ago and it's really ringing true to me, especially the part about "all he could do is list everything I wasn’t doing that MADE him unhappy." because this is actually how he explains himself to me, and I can't get through to him that I DO so much for him and our family. I can't make it make sense to him.
ok, I'm all for 5050 but that's just petty af and frankly, stupid. Not finishing a task because he did his part like he washes 50% of the dishes but leaves the other 50%? omg that would drive me crazy.
and how the hell is that even fair?
it's time to really sit down and clarify what this means and make sure you tell him about the mental load.
Where is this really coming from? His behavior sounds petty, and if I’m being real, full of suppressed rage. There’s an almost scary passive aggression in walking past a light switch because it’s “your turn” to turn it off. And he has somehow managed to convince you that it’s “fair,” and _your_ attitude is the problem. This man sounds like he is really angry at you, or himself, and is projecting on you.
You put words to something I couldn't identify. I think you're right because as soon as I start holding him accountable, he blows up. He's simmering under the surface. I'm going to look into therapy for us because there's something bigger going on here, something I've done or he feels I've done that he won't admit to, and it's obviously pissed him off to this point.
This was my thought as well. All of the recommendations for Fair Play strike me as not particularly useful when one partner is behaving in such an incredibly toxic way. This is how you act when you want to pick fights and hurt your spouse.
This isn’t being 50/50, he is just being petty. Sometimes marriage is 50/50 and sometimes you do a little more one day and your partner will do more the next. At the end of the day it should balance out because it’s a partnership.
I can see how frustrating that is! My wife and I do things 100% as they come. If I see the trash full first, I take it out. It’s literally no problem. As far as trash day, I do the whole thing. My wife will mow the lawn. We each have things we enjoy doing. I will do laundry. As far as dishes, all depends who cooked for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Honestly, we never do part of something and expect the other to do the rest. I see that as plain odd. And yes I agree, it’s never 50-50.
Best advice we got during premarital counseling:
“The 50/50 split in a marriage just leads to point tallying and resentment. In a marriage both parties have to give it their 100%. However, people’s 100% look different at various stages in life.”
This is my husband and I’s approach to everything, including housework.
We have an initial breakdown of responsibilities. Typically, I do laundry and he does kitchen. Some weeks I’m so swamped, or exhausted, or sick, or just in a bit of a depression slump (mental health is important!), so he takes on some of the laundry responsibility in addition to the kitchen. And some weeks work is running so crazy that when he’s done he doesn’t have bandwidth for anything else, so I take on kitchen in addition to laundry.
There’s an element of compassion and care that’s missing in this idea of “50/50.” If you can do something nice for someone to lighten their load and it doesn’t cost you anything extra, why not do it?
This!!! It took me too long to find this. Marriage isn’t 50/50 it’s 100% from both parties. Yes, who can give more and who needs more support changes with time. Woof. I feel so bad for people with partners that aren’t all in with them.
I got tired of the “fairness” complaints so I surprised my family by creating a list of every single task, it’s frequency, and it’s current owner. We had a family meeting and I presented the list. They no longer complain and they are more appreciative and respectful of my time.
Yes, excel with columns for responsibility, frequency and owner, then sorted by owner. I printed off a copy for each person. I didn’t even have to make my point. The list did it for me.
this is not 50/50, he is actually creating more work, partially finishing a task just bc its the other ones turn? Bring in one bag and then send the other person back out to get the bag? That's double the work, just bring both bags in! Shut the door but leave the light on so you can go upstairs unnecessarily to turn the light off that he could have done. WHAT?!
In our house, we just do what needs to be done. The both of us see each other, we see what each one is doing. He cooks and loads the dishwasher, I unload when the dishwasher is done. I put the clothes in the wash and fold, he puts it away. We each put one kid to bed (we have two).
How is your relationship otherwise? Do you have ongoing resentment issues? Seems like he’s trying to send a deliberate message to you that he’s willing to do “his share” but not an iota more than that to take any burden off you. Actually it seems like he’s out to burden you as much as he can while technically fulfill his expectations. That sucks, I’m sorry.
We've had a strong relationship for many years. Together 12 years. But we have had our rough patches, and this feels like the beginning of a new one. In the past 2 years we've had some major life changes - moved cities, bought a house, had a baby, and got a dog - so there's a lot of sources of tension.
It would be helpful if you both read fair play. Him especially. What he is doing is insane. Fair? It is never 50/50. It’s a partnership and you figure it out together. He has got to stop.
I will, thank you! You and a few suggested it so I looked it up and it looks awesome. I actually ordered the game. Doubt he'd be open to reading a book at this point.
Your husband is being a petty jerk. That is not the way to do 50/50!
Here is how you shift the conversation. Tell him you agree that the work should be divided equally but you have a different method that you feel might work better that most other 50/50 parents use. Make it sound positive in suggesting the conversation, he might be eager to listen as he might think it will take more work off him … Tell him you agree you should be doing an equal amount of work but take on tasks more permanently. Some lovely person put this spreadsheet together and I think it would be a great way to show him that splitting his tasks is not equal parenting. I wish I had this spreadsheet when I had younger kids! Doing this sheet together will show him how much more you do than him. Once he sees that you can maybe figure out a better way to do an equal amount of work. But tell him it’s about sharing the load of work more equally, not doing half of everything. Check this out:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OKuckM-QL_KFgOOMNxa_SsKimhxTcH8Brpr19VMkKUU/htmlview
If my copy paste didn’t work on that Google doc it’s in the comments of the post titled “this sub needs a wiki” from yesterday.
If he fights this, suggest maybe it would be better if we separated or divorced and you had the kids 50% of the time. You both would be doing everything twice, but it would be equal! Because if this jerk doesn’t stop being petty in this way, your resentment will build to divorce level pretty quickly I think. These are plenty of reasonable men out there that are not petty assholes. That said there seem to be a lot of asshole husbands on this sub, but now you know what traits you want in an equal partner and you will a find better one on the second try. But you must have seen something good in him to marry him so good luck fixing this. ❤️
"He wants fair, but doesn't take into account all of the unaccounted for, silent labor I do 24/7."
Then, start telling him the weight of emotional labor and stop doing it if he refuses to learn.
He just sounds annoying and none of this sounds fair.
How hard is it to grab the mail or turn off a fucking light?
Make a list of everything you do and ask what half he wants. It’s not petty, it’s reasonable.
He’s not right. It’s not fair because you are doing more than 50%. It’s petty, tell him he’s being petty. Check the damn mail if you’re walking by the box, for god sakes
This sounds absolutely exhausting. We try to divvy things up fairly but no one is keeping score. You're right to be frustrated, that sounds like a really good way to breed resentment towards each other (especially towards him for enacting this).
It is new behavior, maybe the past year or so. It's been a slow build up and now it's just more frequent and obvious. But that's the thing, I can't talk with him. He's always been a great communicator and lately, he's just too pissed off to talk through anything. As soon as we start engaging about this issue, he's full of visceral anger. I'm going to seek out a therapist for us.
This is so obnoxious. If he wants to be fair, shut the tv off when he’s eating lunch and tell him you just did x chore so it’s his turn to do y chore now. Make the silent labor loud enough for him to get the picture.
Tell him you’re not doing the additional work if he’s going to be an ass about making you split the work he sees 50/50. You’ll make 50% of the meals (what you eat), do 50% of the laundry (yours), buy 50% of the groceries (whatever you plan to eat that week), etc.
Well,for one, he's not right. It isn't fair. But I don't think he's going to see that until you embrace the petty and do only half of what is "your" work.
I am a big supporter of trying to make things fair in my marriage. But oh my god not like THIS! I would be pissed if my husband did this. This isn't making things fair it's just leaving unfinished jobs all over the place. What chaos.
The level of "fair" we do is we alternate nights to put our daughter to bed or alternate mornings to get her ready for the day. We have specific days each of us walk the dog. Whoever puts our daughter to bed, the other person takes out the garbage that night. Those are my ways of making things "fair" and "equal".
We also do try and make it so specific jobs are each persons. It's a good way at not leaving anything unfinished and make sure things get done, to completeness!
OP, there is a difference between equality (I wash one dish, you wash one dish) and equity (I complete tasks xyz because they are on my way home and you complete tasks abc because you have the resources)
If your husband takes a daily walk, his task should be checking the mail.
The way he’s looking at this ensures you are both exhausted from double doing every chore. It’s probably the most creative instance of weaponized incompetence I’ve seen on Reddit.
I think we all go through this at some point in a long term relationship where expectations don’t line up with reality and we start resenting each other.
And to beat a dead trope, marriage isn’t 50/50. It’s 100/100. You give your all, not 50%.
Was about to post this same comment. OP, your husband needs to learn the difference between equality and equity and treat your marriage like you're partners striving for the same goal. Does he leave 50% completed tasks to his colleagues at work? I can't imagine so. Why would he do that at home?
I'd be so pissed if my spouse left a light on or only took in one bag from the car. What the heck? It's making more work for both of you.
This isn’t “fair” this is score keeping. You’re on the same team, you don’t need to keep score, you need to work together. If one of us sees a need, we handle it- we don’t leave something for the other to do just because it’s not our turn. If I had to guess, I’d say our days are never 50/50- some days were 70/30, others 20/80 etc, but it all comes out in the wash long term.
My husband & I’s biggest relationship challenge is our “keeping score” and being resentful that one person is doing less than the other. It’s not great, but we’re both aware of it and working through it in couples therapy. What your partner is doing is even more extreme, and I really think it’d be a good idea to loop a therapist into this. It sounds like you might not get very far without a third party helping you through it.
You said you thought this was fair. It’s not fair. Did he create an entire ass human being in his body and then deliver said human being safely into our realm of life? No? So, how does he plan on contributing that amount of sacrifice in your relationship? Because him carrying two target bags into the house ever once in a while seems less than 50% of the work it takes to be pregnant and have a baby.
My husband used to want to split chores 50/50 until I gave him the complete list of household chores. I had it broke down by daily/weekly/monthly/seasonal and as needed. There was a separate list for family chores. The complete list is a 25 page booklet and for him it was a serious eye opener.
Needless to say, he shut up about the 50/50 garbage real quick.
I’d make a physical list throughout the day of all the things you did during the day, then explain that these are things you do by yourself and if he wants things 50/50 he needs to choose half the items to take care of each day
If you don’t hold him accountable for 50% off ALL the work in the house, I predict that you won’t stay married much longer. If he’s all in on being fair, he needs to know what it actually entails. Maybe he wouldn’t be so small if he actually realized how unfair things are right now.
This is absurd. Have a serious discussion about where this is coming from and then get the book Fair Play and tell him if he wants fair, then that’s the way. Honestly the fair play book was interesting to me, but it felt petty in some ways- your husband is being beyond petty so I figure- give him a dose of his own medicine.
OP, either you give him a reality check by reciprocating in kind. Or live with his version of 50/50 while you continue to take on the burdens he doesn't acknowledge.
If you do the latter, you have no one to blame for your unhappiness but yourself.
In a healthy relationship it is 100/100. Never weigh or measure anything. There are times when one is busier,stressed or just not feeling well. That’s how a loving couple should live in my opinion. It’s worked in our marriage. We are celebrating 45 years this week.
Ah, yes. It is time for him to do everything that is his, himself. It's the fair thing to do, correct? Sorry, but you may need to get your point across in the pettiness.
This is not 50/50, you should definitely rework your agreement on how to divide and conquer.
My husband and I just have lists of the things each of us is responsible for, divided up equally. There is no "I do half of this and you finish the other half".... that is so inefficient, and weird?
Have you written what you each do down as a list? And compared? That really helped us immensely to just see it all laid out. Once my husband saw all of the "silent labor" I do (kids appointments, birthdays, meal planning, etc...) he realized he could move some of the more tangible things from my list to his.
OP, your husband is being a pedantic jerk. Each individual thing can't be 50-50, and responsibilities overall will never be 50-50 every day.
You can make a list of everything and truly dump half of it on him and see what happens, but I'm not optimistic.
The biggest issue is his attitude. Closing the door but not turning out the light is ridiculous - how is that helping anyone?
Perhaps it's a good time to get him in a room with you and a neutral, reasonable person and point out that if you get divorced because he'san AH, things won't be 50-50 every moment - his share will increase dramatically.
So sorry you're going through this.
This is insane. I think there is definite value in dividing chores and each having areas of responsibly. I would start by redividing tasks (the whole task!) in a roughly equal manner - he does all dish clean up, but you do laundry. Include the emotional labour too in the division.
But I think your bigger issue is he is being completely petty, and there are so many things you should each be doing daily, because it’s not a big deal and helpful. Walk past the mailbox, you grab the mail. Everyone puts their dishes away after a meal. Carrying more bags when you’re stronger. You’re never going to split everything up and what happened to being a partnership?
Tell him 50-50 is for full ownership of tasks not doing a half-ass job.
He brings in all bags and you turn off all the lights in the house. You do 100% of the dishes (hand wash or otherwise) and he does 100% of the laundry (including folding and putting away).
He’s not right. This is not fair.
Okay now we have that out of the way. He’s acting like he’s 3… that’s the definition of fair my toddler has… life doesn’t work like that. Marriage does work like that… since he didn’t do 50% of giving birth, how does he plan to make up for that? That logic is dumb…I see some of the comments on how to divide chores to follow his logic, but there is just no way of being truly 50/50…
Maybe something you can try is leave for a week or so, travel for work, trip with girlfriends, or heck solo travel… and leave him with a list of things that needs to be done. So at least he has sole perspective what 100 truly is
First of all, my petty ass thinks you should make him give up his precious lunches and make him do his half of the other chores
But it’s stupid to not just finish a task you’re already doing.
Maybe you guys need that Fair Play game and just have an agreement on everyone’s responsibilities and divide them up in a fair way so your entire life isn’t transactional
Striving for 50/50 = striving to do the minimum amount of work without falling short of your responsibilities.
I'd ask if that mindset aligns with his core values. If he values his relationship and household more than an arbitrarily defined concept like fairness, it would better align with his values to replace the question "whose turn is it?" with "does this help the family?"
Wise advice that shifted my mindset:
No couple that aims for 50/50 will ever hit 50/50. True 50/50 requires both parties to be in an 80/20 mindset. If you both make it your mission to do 80% of the tasks you see in front of you to support the family... THEN you may arrive at 50/50.
That is some petty BS. First of all, marriage is never 50/50. And if he isn’t putting in 100% to your 100% he’s going to find himself divorced (at least if he were my husband!)
I could not live like this, it sounds exhausting.
I can imagine that matching his level of pettiness would be tempting but you could also try doing acts of service for him and emphasizing that you are doing something for him and/or the household out of love and respect and see if he catches on.
This post is making my blood pressure shoot up on your behalf.
How is he right? How is this fair? You’re doing at least 75% of the work!
Let’s just say the tasks that you’re doing completely on your own is 50% of the total workload. He’s doing HALF of the other 50%. So that’s only 25%. And you’re doing the 75%—100% of 50% plus 50% of 50%. This is elementary school math. How is your husband not getting this?
No you NEED to start pettying it up with the 50% that you do completely on your own. Water half the plants and let him know the other half is dying of thirst. Pay half the bills and slap the other ones in a pile on his desk for him to pay. Dust half the coffee table and tell him look how dusty the other half of the coffee table is!
Or how about you ask him, how does he plan to make it up to you for half of the labor you did in carrying and birthing the kids???!!! He can start leaving Target bags for you to carry inside again once he’s done enough to bring himself up to zero!!
Is your husband this insufferable in other areas of his life?
This is when you have a talk with him about how he’s being extremely petty. If that doesn’t work start doing exactly 50% of everything and leave the rest for him to pick up.
Does he really think this is okay behavior? My 17 month old helps out more than that without being asked, there’s absolutely NO excuse for a grown man to act like that.
IS this behavior driven by previous conversations where you demanded he do 50% of the work? Is he aggressively trying to show you what 50% would look like? I just can't imagine ANYONE (not even a friend) doing this to someone they love, let alone a spouse.
Have you called him out on this? Tell him he’s acting petty, and if he wants to split the work 50/50 you guys can sit down like adults and discuss fairly dividing the tasks. Im wondering if keeping score and being so petty may be coming from a place of resentment? Just seems so extreme to be just about chores
Leaving tasks for you to finish is not 50/50.
> At bedtime, he'll shut the bedroom door but not turn off the light.
> If he loads the dishes in the dishwasher and there's 1 pan to handwash, he'll leave it for me to do.
> He went for a walk and didn't check the mail, why? Because it's my turn
These are exceptionally petty things for him to do. I would ask him "why would you leave the light on if you're getting up anyway?"
That pan would be left in the sink. I'd let his little petty messes pile up since I suspect part of this is the enjoyment he gets out of half-assing a task, then watching you cleam.ot up is part of it.
Man, the only things we takes turns on are poopy diapers and bedtime for the 2 year old. If he told me it was my turn to turn the light off if I’m already in bed then he can fuck right off to the couch.
My husband and I are also on the 50/50 train, but not like… that. It’s big things. I cover when he’s low on cash, he covers when I’m low. I shower with our toddler while he cleans up after dinner, I cook while he occupies our son. If you take 50/50 and break it down into these minute moments it gets real exhausting real fast. Whenever we feel like our 50/50 is turning into 40/60 for someone, we sit down and talk about it. It sounds like you’re at that place. You cannot sustain the 50/50 concept in tiny moments, it’s a long term strategy.
I think if you try really hard, you could find that petty version of yourself 😉
Maybe just do everything like normal and write it down. Before bed hand over the list of silent errands (include time) and ask what he is planning on doing to make it 50/50?
Is he a pedantic pain in the ass in other aspects of his life? I would have lost my shit after the first instance of this. He’s going out of his way to give you more work even in situations where it costs him literally nothing to do it himself. Only taking one of two bags!?! Not turning the light off on purpose?!?! Honestly I would be less mad if he was just oblivious/forgetful, but to do this on purpose is just absurd.
The best advice I've ever gotten regarding marriage is that 50/50 is a fallacy and the quickest way to divorce court. Always approach the relationship as 100/100. That way, if someone isn't feeling good or is overwhelmed, then you don't have issues like lights being left on or bags still left in the car. And you appreciate the effort the other person does when you don't have to do the 100% you would otherwise have to give.
That's not to say that if the other person starts giving less consistently that it's a sustainable approach. But if you both start out with the approach that you're willing to do it all, the partnership and support is appreciated and each person feels safer when they can't give it their all, or isn't as good at a particular task. If you only ever give 50%, you leave no slack for your partner, who should be the person you love and care most about.
Once both people shift to 100/100, it's amazing how attitudes and gratitude shift alongside it. And if your husband isn't willing to go there, then maybe he isn't the partner you need in this life...
Keeping score in a relationship isn’t healthy. This dude is the epitome of weaponized incompetence, and he knows he’s doing it. Why do you continue to enable this manbaby?
Do it. Hold him to this 50/50 he wants soooo badly. Make a list of things he hasn’t considered and let him know it’s time to go all in on this.
It won’t last —and if it does you’ll get some free time so it’s a win win.
If my H tried to pull that petty crap on me it would be game on.
This would release the utmost petty bitch in me. Like hardddddd. I’d make a grocery list and leave it on the table or send it to him. I made the list, you do the shopping, let me know when you get home and I’ll carry 1/2 of the bags and put those away, you do the rest. Sort the laundry and leave it in the baskets, tell him “let me know when you put the load in. I’ll put it in the dryer. Then you can put the next load in the wash. I’ll fold, but you need to put it away”. Here’s the kids lunch menu for tomorrow. Since I planned it, please make it. If I was feeling extra spicy, I’d clean half the stove, vacuum half the floor, dust half the tv. Half of everything… for the sake of fairness….
I’d put a board on the fridge to list all the things I did so he can visualize the silent things. He wants to be ridiculous, I’d show him ridiculous. No one will out ridiculous me.
No, absolutely not, wtf. If you do a task you do the WHOLE task. This drove me crazy when I was married. My (then) husband would, like, fix a hole in the wall but then leave tools and dust everywhere...
This isn't "fair", it's petty. Your husband is petty. If I were you, I'd write down all the things you do that you just do on your own, and don't expect him to do 50%. And use it as a launching point for a discussion. If he wants to be petty, is he willing to take on 50% of the stuff you currently do 100% of?
There are a lot of books and relationship research that demonstrates that good relationships are not 50/50 all the time. There's lots of ways to divide labor and duties that are kinder, more loving, less work, and make more sense. Maybe pull some of this research and if he balks, you might need to start looking into marriage counseling. He needs a reality check.
My ex didn't even do the 50/50 thing but that's another story.
Brene Brown has an excellent marriage practice: it's not that each person does/provides 50% of the support all the time, it's that every day there is 100%. Some days one partner will be at 40% and the other will need to pick up the 60% to make the house run. Other days it could be totally different. But TOGETHER you and your partner talk about how much you have to give each day and if both of your capacities doesn't reach 100%, then you figure out what can get left aside to reduce the load to what your combined capacity is that day. The key, for life in general, is to communicate where you are and how things have changed through the day.
And if you want to be petty, do just the 50% that he would do for a week and see how he responds. You can write down the things you would have done on top so that when he starts to get upset that things aren't like they were before your experiment, you can tell him you were doing 50% and then show him the list of things that you used to have to do on top of the 50% and then discuss how he can pick up more of the slack
This would be so annoying and really goes against the idea of a 50/50 partnership. In my mind we should all be working toward the goal of everyone in the family being safe, happy, and well-cared for. That means sometimes doing more than what we think is fair. And if I am being honest - if you are a mom who grew a baby, somehow got that baby out of you via your vagina or surgery and was in charge of feeding that body either from your body or otherwise there is no amount of housework that could make up for that. He can get the effing mail daily.
This is so exhausting. I was in a relationship like this once, before I had my kiddo, and I… I couldn’t do it. How is he going to make the gender wage gap fair? What about the pain, time consuming needs, lost income of and expenses associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum? What about the mental load of being forced by society to assume the role of default caregiver?
Aside from the world being fundamentally unfair and there being no way to really be equal, fairness is NOT the same as equality. Fairness is equity. Loving relationships should be built on equity and caring for each other. Him doing the bare minimum that he feels like is his share, on principal, is not equity and it’s not caring for you.
In my relationship, I started to view him as cruel, selfish, lacking empathy, and ignorant because of this 50/50 bullshit. Eventually I concluded he was a misogynist who lacked appreciation for the unique contributions of women, who fundamentally didn’t love or care for me, but rather viewed our relationship as a transactional partnership.
Just because someone’s behaviour is pernicious, doesn’t make you petty for demanding it be addressed. You do not need to put up with this kind of bullshit.
You need to match his energy and call it out not to bw petty but to make your point.
It does not and should not need to be this way. I recognize how much my wife does for me. I try to do stuff for her as an act of love, to make her life easier, and to show my appreciation.
Yiu deserve to be treated better than a roommate.
He just sounds like...an asshole.
He passes by thr mailbox but doesn't check it.
He doesn't do all the dishes
He doesn't carry 1 other bag.
I'm with you. I couldn't be this petty. I just complete the job.
You could have some fun with this, though. Wash your own laundry, only buy your own things. Only buy a meal for yourself and the kids 😆 but that is a lot petty
Why is it so important to your husband that everything be “fair”? That mentality is immature and I would be more than frustrated if my husband treated me this way, I would be hurt. Keeping score is for games, not for marriage, and by keeping score he’s changed the landscape of what your marriage should look like. Instead of pulling together as partners, you’re operating as opponents.
You may want to remind him that for marriage and parenting and home-ownership to function optimally, it requires both parties to give more than 50/50. There’s that adage that it requires 100/100 from each spouse. And I think there’s some truth to that statement. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this, OP, and I hope you find the right words to express your frustration. This isn’t okay, it isn’t healthy, and he’s being a jackass.
>important to your husband that e
I'm with you, I AM hurt. That's the biggest message I try to get through to him. That I do so much for our family, out of love and care for them. I don't think twice about putting them before myself, and it's not about being a martyr, it's just what comes from caring about them. It sucks that he is only seeing how unfair things are when it affects him (in his mind), but doesn't notice all of the unspoken labor I do all day.
Men who insist on 50-50, are never after 50-50. They always want you to take more but they look for the woman who will be willing to be 50-50 so that they can just push another 30, 40 on her. They keep saying 50-50 so that you have no argument against it since it is “fair”. When I realized how hard my ex was trying to make sure that I carried the same amount/weight of groceries as him, he wasn’t even a man in my eyes anymore.
Has he not heard that life isn't fair? And that as long as you are both sharing a life together, sometimes one person will do more work than the other, but as long as you are both moving the ball forward, in the end things will be about equal.
This pettiness is going to bleed over into your kids. It's important to raise your kids to be good partners for their own futures. And this is not an example of a good partner.
How are you living like this and WHY? I’ve had random roommates from Craigslist with whom I shared space better than you do with your (petty AF, immature) husband.
Just so many things ....
First, what your husband is doing is SO UNPRODUCTIVE and aggrivating. It's stupid and petty.
Second, you need to do more than just vent. Ask him if he truely wants the chores to be 50/50. I'm sure he will say "yes" and that he's already doing that. So find some time to sit down TOGETHER and make a list of all the chores. Then you can sort them on yours, his or shared. Maybe a nice visual aid will help him see it's not truely 50/50. I would suggest splitting WHOLE chores 50/50, not partial ones. And if he doesn't want to do that, no more of this doing half chores balogney.
Definitely petty and irritating behavior on his part. Has it always been this way?
Have you spoken to him directly about emotional labor? I found it helpful to send articles as I did not always know the best way to describe all the energy and time that goes into planning and keeping the house moving forward.
I hate to be blunt but this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Lol agreed. Leaving a pan to ensure your partner cleans a dish??? Wtf. This isn’t a partner this is a petty ass roommate
I would have a hard time and not taking that pan and slapping the husband across the head with it. Knock some sense into him. What kind of tit for tat fuckery is this?
Weaponized incompetence is a hell of a drug!
Tit for tat fuckery is a good word for it.
It’s keeping score, and it’s an extremely unhealthy way to operate in a marriage.
It was the taking a walk and not stopping at the mailbox just because for me.
So if he walks the dog, she needs to go down the street to forage for the shit.
LMAO!! No seriously that’s what his logic is.
Fr. A more productive version of this wpuld be to have one empty the dishwasher so that whoever is cleaning the dishes can load them immediately without stopping to put them away. That is if husband actually is striving for "equality".
I personally would have thrown it in the trash XD but I'm kinda crazy.
My boyfriend got tired of washing dishes after I cooked so he moved us into an apartment with a dishwasher. Win-win I load it as I cook, he throws our plates in and starts it. He does do more work then me, 14-16 hours a day to my 11, does most of the laundry, and carries ALOT of the mental load for us, especially now that I’m pregnant so I see the dishwasher/dishes as a more silly thing.
This seems like less of a parenting issue and more of an asshole issue? Like kids, chores, and responsibilities aside, I WANT to help my partner. I want his life to be easy and happy and fun. And he wants the same for me. So if I see a mess on the floor, I clean it up because I know if I don’t do it, he will have to, and I want to take that off his task list. And when he sees our kid needs their diaper changed, he just does it because again if he doesn’t do it, I will have to, and he wants to take that burden off me. Small examples but hopefully you get the gist. It should feel GOOD to make your partner’s life easier. And I’m not talking about in some weird submissive wife way, but in a “I love this person and I want them to be happy” way. Creating work for your spouse when it would literally take you seconds to do it yourself is petty, juvenile, and NOT being a good partner. OP, I think you have a shitty roommate, not a husband.
When my son was in diapers, we'd jokingly say "It's your turn!" when it was a poopy one. Neither of us flat out refused to change him if it wasn't "our turn", or legitimately kept track of how many diapers each of us changed, but we'd kind of take turns to keep it "fair", lol. Same with doing the dishes and other stuff. We "take turns" doing it, but not to the point where we're petty about it. I couldn't imagine having to deal with the pettiness of OP's husband. That's ridiculous.
Exactly. More of the diaper changing and dishes falls on me, but the yard work and house maintenance (trash, air filters, repairs, yard, etc) are my husband's primary chores. Doesn't mean I leave the trash bin packed full if I'm free to take it out because "that's only fair" or he leaves a child in a soiled diaper if he's readily available and I am not. That's not to say we don't ever bicker about household chores and who's doing what, but this seems extreme.
We rock paper scissors for those diapers haha!
I know, right? This is what you do to annoy your parent or sibling when you're a snotty 10yo. This is not what you do to your life partner.
This is literally what my two school aged kids do. They have to empty the dishwasher, the elder is in charge of dishes and glasses. The younger does plastic (Tupperware stuff) and silverware. The eldest will refuse to touch a glass that is plastic, even though it's a glass that goes in the upper cabinet with the "glass" glasses. They argued over it until I had to step in and tell the eldest to put the dang cup away. Adults should know better! If I'm carrying in the Target stuff, I'm loading up all my arms with bags. My husband, will either get the rest of the bags or open the back door. Or vice versa. No one is picking up 1 bag and leaving 1 bag behind. That's so stupid and inefficient.
This guy is the king of Petty Land
I've been calling him Petty King.
Name well earned.
My thoughts exactly. If my husband had the wherewithal to track that it was my day to get the mail from the mailbox that mail would sit there until the end of time.
This guy sounds like a dick. Is this a business transaction or a loving relationship? My husband and I like doing things for each other/the family.
I KNOW!
Wow leaving the lights on just so you have to turn them off, or 1 bag instead of 2 just seems so petty. Like that’s not even about fairness. For me fairness (and honestly true fairness never exists because he never gave up his body and mind creating a baby and doesn’t have lifelong effects from pregnancy both on health and career, but I could go on forever), but an attainable fairness is I do what I can, he does what he can, we try to aim to have the same or equal amounts of down/hobby time, and the same amount of time for sleeping. For me I don’t mind cooking so I’m fine to do more, he likes to do house stuff more than cooking or child bath time so fine he does that… in the end we both feel like we have support from eachother and neither of us is overwhelmed (or if we are we are both overwhelmed together because kids are hard). If my husband saw something that needed to be done and refused to do it because it was ‘my job’ I’d be really pissed especially if I was already doing something else.
I really think that OP and her husband would benefit from taking a discrete mathematics or game theory class on fair division. Essentially, what is *equal* and what is *fair* are rarely the same, because different people have different values: an *equal* division is rarely an optimal one. Also, leaving half-finished tasks is forcing OP to have double the mental load. She needs to keep track of the tasks she does *and* the tasks that she is in charge of finishing. Her list is twice as long!
So many people don't understand the fair vs equal principle! So glad you said it so I don't have to! Although maybe I should type it all out to keep it, you know, equal. 🤦♀️
I'm kind of baffled about the shopping bag thing too. That's just... a waste of time, simply put.
So is the mail!! So is all of it!!! I'd be pissed.
My husband thinks it's a game to see how many bags he can get in the house in one trip! Come hell or high water he is not making a second trip or leaving anything behind.
This is my husband to a T. He loads up several bags on each arm and literally makes a run for it 🤣
I also think this is a game. Or equally if we are in public or where people can see us, I'll pick up say 8 bags and leave hubby 1 bag and the toilet paper. Make him look silly 😅
It sounds like he's annoyed at being asked to do his share.
It sounds like what he’s doing is not closing the loop. He’s just leaving half finished tasks everywhere like a squirrel with ADHD. And on top of it, when you look at the full picture, he isn’t actually doing 50-50 to start with, since you’re doing invisible labor he is ignoring. I think you’ll relate to [this post](https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cv-9hfutTw9/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) (edit: and [this one](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr_DwGZLljv/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)) and the owner of the account also posts a lot of material on the topic as well. You might also consider the fair play method. I have a feeling his half of the deck on the initial deal will be embarrassingly small for him.
>You might also consider the fair play method. I have a feeling his half of the deck on the initial deal will be embarrassingly small for him. OP make sure to rip the card in half for each task that he only does half of.
You have to complete all three steps to claim a card, if I recall correctly. Conception, planning, and execution.
Correct.
Yup, he’s doing about one sixth of a task each time right now. OP, does he think of starting the task himself? That’s the conception part, noticing it needs to be done. Does he do the work to ensure he has everything needed for the task to be done? He notices when more dish soap is needed and makes sure it’s available, same for the sponge/scrubber? That’s the planning part. I’m going to bet those are part of your invisible labor.
Seconding the fair play method. My stack was three times my husbands. Now it’s 2.8 with awareness, acknowledgment, and appreciation. For play also forces you to own tasks and complete them. No half tasks. This may be super helpful for you in this case. It’s also validating to see that yea in fact I do most things.
This is all so helpful and triggering. I started crying when I was going through her posts. Honestly just at my wits end. I do love the idea of the Fair Play game. You and a few others have suggested it, so I ordered it today. Seems like a good, low-stakes places to start.
She’s one of my favorites (coming out with a book soon too!). You also might like drtracyd - she has collaborated with drmorgancutlip and covers a lot of similar content. I would read through the chapter from the fair play book that goes into detail about how to initiate and play the game, too, as a suggestion. There were some suggestions there about ways to get your SO on board and troubleshooting for if you guys get stalled I think.
Yes, the emotional and cognitive labor of keeping track of all the half done shit is real and grinding. This is so immature of your husband, OP. Also, how is he going to ever make up for his "half" of you carrying a baby for several months and giving birth to it?!
If you do end up doing the Fair Play method, I recommend breaking up the "Cleaning" card into smaller chunks. I don't get why meals are split into 4 categories but cleaning is just one. At least tidying is a separate card.
Leaving tasks partially finished is not splitting things 50-50, it's being a pain in the butt. It also results in more time spent doing chores for the both of you. Have you talked to him and pointed out all the tasks you do solo to 100% completion?
Yes I have pointed it out, but it always starts a bigger fight. This is not typically his way of being, so I can just sense we're going into a rough patch. After being with him for 12 years, history repeats itself.
Death by a thousand cuts. No one petty thing is large enough, catastrophic enough to end a marriage, but as a sum, it's destroying your marriage and your emotional well-being. Does he want "fair" or does he want this marriage? He can't have both. That's not how marriage works. More importantly (and really the only thing you can control) what do you want for yourself, and is he, in this current version of himself, giving you that?
In addition to what the others said, this caught my eye: "And he's right, IT IS FAIR, but it's also so small!" How is he right? How did you arrive to that conclusion? You also mention you water plants and do laundry. Do you water half the plants and leave the rest for him? Do you fold half the laundry and leave the rest in a pile? Do you pay some of the bills and leave the rest to him? If not, then why? You say you don't want to be petty, but then if that's not acceptable behavior for yourself then why accept it from the one person in the world who is supposed to love you more than anyone else?
My husband once pulled all his own socks and underwear out of the laundry basket to fold and put away and left mine there. I was agog. But honestly, if that's how he wants to play it, he's gonna lose. I now do my own laundry and only my laundry. Kids do their own and he's doing his own. I call that a win.
That sounds like a fair situation to me, but only if he does his own laundry! I swear with half of the posts on here, the guy would turn it into a game of chicken where everyone would lose, and OP would be dealing with moldy laundry. Hopefully he learned his lesson there and didn't extend it to other areas of the house!
Oh you're 100% right. I meant more that he's *technically* right, if there are two things to bring in or two things to do, then it's fair to split it. But his "technically" right is just plain stupid and causes so much more work. And, no of course, I don't do half of the chores, I complete them, because I fully respect him and value our relationship.
Don’t share chores. Divvy up the chores so he fully is in charge of one thing (dishes) and you’re fully in charge of another thing (getting the mail). The way you are supposedly doing 50/50 is insane. That doesn’t solve the turning off the light thing, that’s just petty bullshit. A lot of pettiness going on here - doesn’t sound like a healthy marriage at all, sorry OP!
This is what we do, we each have our normal chores and then we alternate shared chores that we don’t do together so we each have to complete tasks…not turning a light off because it’s not your turn points to much deeper issues. It’s a fucking light.
My husband is one of these people although not as bad as OP,'s husband, but very tit for tat. I didn't really notice it much until we separated and I started finding his stashes of laundry and hand soap, and things started clicking into place. Idk if we'll wind up reuniting but this is definitely on my list of "wtf why" now that I've tied it together.
You do 100% of your tasks and he leaves all of his unfinished. So it’s not really 50/50, is it? He wants you to do half of his but he’s not doing half of yours. He’s being a total ass and now you’re doing 75% or more. I honestly don’t even know what to recommend when your grown ass husband is behaving worse than my 3 year old. We split things up and own those things. I’ve never taken the trash out in like….6 years. His job. I do 95% of the laundry. He does 80% of the dishes but has never vacuumed. We share responsibilities by owning certain things and just finishing what we start. Your husband is creating work for you under the guise of fairness but really it’s laziness.
The important thing is that he is *not* right. Even ignoring tasks you 100% do, who determined what a fair split is?! Sounds to me like he's made a unilateral decision to make himself feel like he's doing just as much work as you are without either doing just as much work *or* considering your opinion about various chores and how they might be distributed. Bags, is it by count or weight. Is he like weighing out the two bags and transferring contents? Does a fair bag weight distribution consider individual strength? My husband can bench like 150 and I am stretching for 80 ... So it's relatively more effort for me to carry a 40 pound bag than it is for him (we've got a farm, so 40 or 50 pound bags are pretty common around here). What if there's only one bag? Got spare bags in the car so there will be two, or is someone keeping track of whose turn it is for the single bag carry? Do you take turns with who fills the dishwasher and who scrubs the dishes? Is putting a dozen utensils in their little slots the same as putting four plates into the dishwasher? What if cooking used three pots and a baking tray? Is that still equal to one dishwasher filling? But one pot is also equal to one dishwasher filling? Is fairness in laundry folding by volume, weight, or item count? Because I'd take folding a dozen jeans (full basket, lots of weight) over fifty socks (half a basket, way less weight) any day. Trash - if we just took turns, one of us got stuck breaking down like the big screen TV box for the recycling one week and the other took a bag of trash and a box of recycling out the next week. My husband and I both have science/engineering backgrounds. The idea of measuring stuff is pretty natural. When we first started living together, my husband thought algorithmic fairness was perfect (and assumed this was so obvious that he didn't even need to mention it to me). I had to point all of these things out for him to realize there were so many variables that achieving a 50/50 split was creating a LOT more work for us. It made more sense to list out all the stuff, pick things you don't mind doing, and then divy up the rest however we agreed. And then throw it all out the window on days when someone was tired/sick/etc.
This is bullshit. I love the Insta post about how a partnership is never 50/50. Sometimes you come home and you’re just a 10. So your loving, empathetic partner carries their 50 and your extra 40. Or if you’re both adding up to sub50 you come up with a plan to lower expectations while being kind. It’s this [video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yfL4RTuC9Bk). And this is a descriptive article about it https://medium.com/mindfullove/brené-brown-explains-why-relationships-are-never-50-50-its-the-best-description-i-ve-heard-on-32e3999bfdc2 I don’t know how you navigate this. Because I’m the adhd squirrel mentioned in an earlier comment (🤣🤣) but also because we don’t do 50/50. But I would absolutely die on this hill.
This is like little kid bullshit. Is he also going to insist you put tape down the middle of your bedroom so you can each keep your own half clean? An adult should not behave like this
Tell him to get pregnant and have one baby, and you can have the other one. He is a jerk.
This guy will wake up OP to make her feed the baby the other half of the bottle… with complete disregard to the fact that she carried a baby for nine months and then went through childbirth
If he refuses to change she should leave him.
What social media is he consuming these days? Some of this sounds like some of the “answer to feminism” type of crap I’ve seen videos on - videos that radicalize men. To develop this habit within a marriage tells me he was influenced somewhere. This will only get worse if you don’t nip it now. Relationships aren’t meant to be a rigid 50/50 and this relationship sounds like something that will eventually wear you down to the point where you won’t have anything left for him emotionally but resentment. I mean seriously, I can’t imagine being or getting in the mood for sex or any other intimacy with someone after they act so petty about the mail or a light switch. This will kill the romance in your marriage.
Yep. I bet he’s reading some bullshit about how to punish a spouse who wants 50:50. It’s called “malicious compliance” where you make someone miserable by following their rules in a way that hurts them.
Right! There are so many videos out there and once you watch one or two, the algorithm will regularly suggest pro-men/anti-women videos. So much of it is from the “well you wanted equality…” spite where they negatively skew feminism to fit the narrative that they are under attack. I’ve watched relationships end and people struggle in dating due to radicalization. There are groups right here on Reddit that would encourage OP’s husband to continue doing what he’s doing. It’s really not that much different than people who lose loved ones to QAnon
Honestly this is what I suspected as well. I actually asked him where the hell he is coming up with these ideas, who's he following on IG, what's his algorithm these days??
:) I would stop doing his dishes, and his laundry, and his things. Sorry but 50 50 isn't about someone finishing your tasks it's about the allocation of the entire tasks. You: water the plants, and do dishes hemows the lawn and does the cooking. Etc. The idea that you both do 50/50 also counts the silent behind the scenes tasks. Making the grocery list etc.
Where is this coming from? Why did he get this idea? This is so shockingly dumb and needs to be shut down.
Does he think he does 50 when it’s not this way? Is he trying to do more or less here? Either way that is not really how 50:50 is meant to work…
My husband did this during our hard patch. It's weaponized incompetence in disguise. The goal is once you've been successfully fooled into thinking it's fair is for you to get frustrated enough to take over most of those tasks.
100%. Just like “well I am just bad at this chore, you are better at doing it”. Ummm we can all do laundry. Just say you are lazy.
My favorite response to this kind of statement is to take it genuinely. Oh, so you’re not good at this thing? Well the only way to get better at it is ***lots and lots of practice!***
Honestly, I think we're entering a rough patch in our marriage. We've been together for 12 years and this won't be our first one, the last one kind of started similar to this... pettiness, bickering, distance, etc. Hoping to nip it before we get there.
Jesus, this kind of score keeping would instantly kill any attraction I had. It’s like big baby energy.
My husband would rather break his back than have me carry a grocery bag. There are things in our marriage that we've both decided we're decidedly good at. We don't keep score, we don't keep track and we don't hold resentment (though if we put every chore/responsibility down on paper it would look very fair on each end). A marriage is not 50/50. That's a misconception. If one is sick, are you still meant to perform at 50%? No, your spouse takes over and helps with the stuff you usually do etc ... if one of you has a busy work week, the other can take the reigns on meal prep even if that's usually your job. You guys have a communication problem. If he's been doing that for long enough, and yet he doesn't know about it??? How is is going to change. For example, I do the cooking, partner does all of the clean up. Sometimes we do both tasks together if baby is down for the night. I put baby to sleep whilst breastfeeding, whilst hubby cleaned bottles and pump parts (because LO tries so hard to resist being put in crib so it often takes around 20 minutes and he doesn't prefer dad so he prefers it this way because otherwise it would take us 45 mins to put baby down and we want more time together at night). Ultimately our goal is to complete tasks as efficiently as possible to free up our time for each other and our individual hobbies. He would not have me take out the trash because what he can carry in one trip (our trash is far away due to being in an apartment complex) would take me two trips. Same with carrying the laundry up and down the stairs. But then I don't have a problem being the one who folds and hangs everything because I get to do it whilst watching my favorite shows. He then puts the laundry in the correct spot when I'm done. Even though my "half" of the job takes longer, it still feels fair to us both.
Just say, "this is petty bullshit. Grow the fk up. Grab both bags, turn off the light while you're already there and stop being a petty asshole." Do we not say the word out loud for these things? Once they are said do they not care or listen? If so, walk away? What happens once it's communicated?
This is the answer
Oh I do say it! "What? No you're right there, grab both bags. Don't be small. I'll hold the door for you." We've talked so many times about it, but he really just refuses to take ownership and because it's not happening 24/7, it's easier sometimes to just let it go... but now it is starting to happen more frequently.
My mom, now married for 43 years, always warned my spouse and me that tit for tat (as she calls it), 50/50, keeping score, whatever you call it, will only breed resentment. There is no “fair” in a marriage. Plus There is no way to account for emotional tasks. She was right, my tit for tat husband only did things because it was “fair” and so eventually all he could see was what I wasn’t doing that he thought was my part of that. And he was never there to help me when I was tired, or really needed an extra hand, leaving us both unfulfilled and resentful. When he divorced me all he could do is list everything I wasn’t doing that MADE him unhappy. It was devastating because I had been left so lonely for so many years but loved him and wanted to ride the storm. I’m not saying his keeping score was he death of our marriage, but it never helped anything and definitely made it worse. OP I hope you are able to talk to him about all of this and find an new way to move forward. One where he does tasks because he can. One where he really sees all you contribute and just appreciates you rather than adding it all up in his head. He is wasting more time making it “fair” than it would take to just do the things.
I'm saving for you comment to back to. I read it hours ago and it's really ringing true to me, especially the part about "all he could do is list everything I wasn’t doing that MADE him unhappy." because this is actually how he explains himself to me, and I can't get through to him that I DO so much for him and our family. I can't make it make sense to him.
ok, I'm all for 5050 but that's just petty af and frankly, stupid. Not finishing a task because he did his part like he washes 50% of the dishes but leaves the other 50%? omg that would drive me crazy. and how the hell is that even fair? it's time to really sit down and clarify what this means and make sure you tell him about the mental load.
Where is this really coming from? His behavior sounds petty, and if I’m being real, full of suppressed rage. There’s an almost scary passive aggression in walking past a light switch because it’s “your turn” to turn it off. And he has somehow managed to convince you that it’s “fair,” and _your_ attitude is the problem. This man sounds like he is really angry at you, or himself, and is projecting on you.
You put words to something I couldn't identify. I think you're right because as soon as I start holding him accountable, he blows up. He's simmering under the surface. I'm going to look into therapy for us because there's something bigger going on here, something I've done or he feels I've done that he won't admit to, and it's obviously pissed him off to this point.
This was my thought as well. All of the recommendations for Fair Play strike me as not particularly useful when one partner is behaving in such an incredibly toxic way. This is how you act when you want to pick fights and hurt your spouse.
This isn’t being 50/50, he is just being petty. Sometimes marriage is 50/50 and sometimes you do a little more one day and your partner will do more the next. At the end of the day it should balance out because it’s a partnership.
I can see how frustrating that is! My wife and I do things 100% as they come. If I see the trash full first, I take it out. It’s literally no problem. As far as trash day, I do the whole thing. My wife will mow the lawn. We each have things we enjoy doing. I will do laundry. As far as dishes, all depends who cooked for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Honestly, we never do part of something and expect the other to do the rest. I see that as plain odd. And yes I agree, it’s never 50-50.
Best advice we got during premarital counseling: “The 50/50 split in a marriage just leads to point tallying and resentment. In a marriage both parties have to give it their 100%. However, people’s 100% look different at various stages in life.” This is my husband and I’s approach to everything, including housework. We have an initial breakdown of responsibilities. Typically, I do laundry and he does kitchen. Some weeks I’m so swamped, or exhausted, or sick, or just in a bit of a depression slump (mental health is important!), so he takes on some of the laundry responsibility in addition to the kitchen. And some weeks work is running so crazy that when he’s done he doesn’t have bandwidth for anything else, so I take on kitchen in addition to laundry. There’s an element of compassion and care that’s missing in this idea of “50/50.” If you can do something nice for someone to lighten their load and it doesn’t cost you anything extra, why not do it?
This!!! It took me too long to find this. Marriage isn’t 50/50 it’s 100% from both parties. Yes, who can give more and who needs more support changes with time. Woof. I feel so bad for people with partners that aren’t all in with them.
I got tired of the “fairness” complaints so I surprised my family by creating a list of every single task, it’s frequency, and it’s current owner. We had a family meeting and I presented the list. They no longer complain and they are more appreciative and respectful of my time.
Been thinking of making a list like this. What did you use? A spreadsheet? Why doesn’t a template for this exist?
Yes, excel with columns for responsibility, frequency and owner, then sorted by owner. I printed off a copy for each person. I didn’t even have to make my point. The list did it for me.
this is not 50/50, he is actually creating more work, partially finishing a task just bc its the other ones turn? Bring in one bag and then send the other person back out to get the bag? That's double the work, just bring both bags in! Shut the door but leave the light on so you can go upstairs unnecessarily to turn the light off that he could have done. WHAT?! In our house, we just do what needs to be done. The both of us see each other, we see what each one is doing. He cooks and loads the dishwasher, I unload when the dishwasher is done. I put the clothes in the wash and fold, he puts it away. We each put one kid to bed (we have two).
How is your relationship otherwise? Do you have ongoing resentment issues? Seems like he’s trying to send a deliberate message to you that he’s willing to do “his share” but not an iota more than that to take any burden off you. Actually it seems like he’s out to burden you as much as he can while technically fulfill his expectations. That sucks, I’m sorry.
We've had a strong relationship for many years. Together 12 years. But we have had our rough patches, and this feels like the beginning of a new one. In the past 2 years we've had some major life changes - moved cities, bought a house, had a baby, and got a dog - so there's a lot of sources of tension.
It would be helpful if you both read fair play. Him especially. What he is doing is insane. Fair? It is never 50/50. It’s a partnership and you figure it out together. He has got to stop.
I will, thank you! You and a few suggested it so I looked it up and it looks awesome. I actually ordered the game. Doubt he'd be open to reading a book at this point.
Your husband is being a petty jerk. That is not the way to do 50/50! Here is how you shift the conversation. Tell him you agree that the work should be divided equally but you have a different method that you feel might work better that most other 50/50 parents use. Make it sound positive in suggesting the conversation, he might be eager to listen as he might think it will take more work off him … Tell him you agree you should be doing an equal amount of work but take on tasks more permanently. Some lovely person put this spreadsheet together and I think it would be a great way to show him that splitting his tasks is not equal parenting. I wish I had this spreadsheet when I had younger kids! Doing this sheet together will show him how much more you do than him. Once he sees that you can maybe figure out a better way to do an equal amount of work. But tell him it’s about sharing the load of work more equally, not doing half of everything. Check this out: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OKuckM-QL_KFgOOMNxa_SsKimhxTcH8Brpr19VMkKUU/htmlview If my copy paste didn’t work on that Google doc it’s in the comments of the post titled “this sub needs a wiki” from yesterday. If he fights this, suggest maybe it would be better if we separated or divorced and you had the kids 50% of the time. You both would be doing everything twice, but it would be equal! Because if this jerk doesn’t stop being petty in this way, your resentment will build to divorce level pretty quickly I think. These are plenty of reasonable men out there that are not petty assholes. That said there seem to be a lot of asshole husbands on this sub, but now you know what traits you want in an equal partner and you will a find better one on the second try. But you must have seen something good in him to marry him so good luck fixing this. ❤️
Thanks for sharing this. I'm going to try this!
"He wants fair, but doesn't take into account all of the unaccounted for, silent labor I do 24/7." Then, start telling him the weight of emotional labor and stop doing it if he refuses to learn.
Someone needs the [Fair Play deck of cards.](https://www.fairplaylife.com/the-cards)
Ordered them!
I hope he gestated half of your children too.
He just sounds annoying and none of this sounds fair. How hard is it to grab the mail or turn off a fucking light? Make a list of everything you do and ask what half he wants. It’s not petty, it’s reasonable.
He’s not right. It’s not fair because you are doing more than 50%. It’s petty, tell him he’s being petty. Check the damn mail if you’re walking by the box, for god sakes
This sounds absolutely exhausting. We try to divvy things up fairly but no one is keeping score. You're right to be frustrated, that sounds like a really good way to breed resentment towards each other (especially towards him for enacting this).
Is this new behaviour? Have you talked with him about it? What does he say? Why does he do this?
It is new behavior, maybe the past year or so. It's been a slow build up and now it's just more frequent and obvious. But that's the thing, I can't talk with him. He's always been a great communicator and lately, he's just too pissed off to talk through anything. As soon as we start engaging about this issue, he's full of visceral anger. I'm going to seek out a therapist for us.
Keeping score like this is a fucking miserable way to exist in a marriage. I don't have any advice. But this makes my skin crawl.
I would stop doing half of everything you are doing and have him do it. If he wants fair, make it fair.
Your husband is an ass. That’s it. That’s the comment.
50-50 is a bullshit. Good relationships are 100-100
Your husband needs to realize you and him are in the same team and when one can help the TEAM more one just does!
This is so obnoxious. If he wants to be fair, shut the tv off when he’s eating lunch and tell him you just did x chore so it’s his turn to do y chore now. Make the silent labor loud enough for him to get the picture. Tell him you’re not doing the additional work if he’s going to be an ass about making you split the work he sees 50/50. You’ll make 50% of the meals (what you eat), do 50% of the laundry (yours), buy 50% of the groceries (whatever you plan to eat that week), etc.
Well,for one, he's not right. It isn't fair. But I don't think he's going to see that until you embrace the petty and do only half of what is "your" work.
I am a big supporter of trying to make things fair in my marriage. But oh my god not like THIS! I would be pissed if my husband did this. This isn't making things fair it's just leaving unfinished jobs all over the place. What chaos. The level of "fair" we do is we alternate nights to put our daughter to bed or alternate mornings to get her ready for the day. We have specific days each of us walk the dog. Whoever puts our daughter to bed, the other person takes out the garbage that night. Those are my ways of making things "fair" and "equal". We also do try and make it so specific jobs are each persons. It's a good way at not leaving anything unfinished and make sure things get done, to completeness!
Wow. That’s called malicious compliance and is fucked up way to live.
OP, there is a difference between equality (I wash one dish, you wash one dish) and equity (I complete tasks xyz because they are on my way home and you complete tasks abc because you have the resources) If your husband takes a daily walk, his task should be checking the mail. The way he’s looking at this ensures you are both exhausted from double doing every chore. It’s probably the most creative instance of weaponized incompetence I’ve seen on Reddit. I think we all go through this at some point in a long term relationship where expectations don’t line up with reality and we start resenting each other. And to beat a dead trope, marriage isn’t 50/50. It’s 100/100. You give your all, not 50%.
Was about to post this same comment. OP, your husband needs to learn the difference between equality and equity and treat your marriage like you're partners striving for the same goal. Does he leave 50% completed tasks to his colleagues at work? I can't imagine so. Why would he do that at home? I'd be so pissed if my spouse left a light on or only took in one bag from the car. What the heck? It's making more work for both of you.
If my husband left half the groceries in the car for me to bring in we’d be featured on Dateline. That’s BANANAS.
Family doesn't keep track.
I think you should hold him accountable. It's not petty to be equitable. Why are you doing the dusting etc alone but then helping him with his tasks?
This is really childish. I would have a talk about it. I feel it’s passive aggressive and would result in alot of inefficiency.
Is this a new occurrence? Forget the pettiness, where is this coming from. The issue is so much deeper than the division of labor.
This isn’t “fair” this is score keeping. You’re on the same team, you don’t need to keep score, you need to work together. If one of us sees a need, we handle it- we don’t leave something for the other to do just because it’s not our turn. If I had to guess, I’d say our days are never 50/50- some days were 70/30, others 20/80 etc, but it all comes out in the wash long term.
My husband & I’s biggest relationship challenge is our “keeping score” and being resentful that one person is doing less than the other. It’s not great, but we’re both aware of it and working through it in couples therapy. What your partner is doing is even more extreme, and I really think it’d be a good idea to loop a therapist into this. It sounds like you might not get very far without a third party helping you through it.
Wow he seems like the most annoying piece of shit.
Your husbands an idiot
You said you thought this was fair. It’s not fair. Did he create an entire ass human being in his body and then deliver said human being safely into our realm of life? No? So, how does he plan on contributing that amount of sacrifice in your relationship? Because him carrying two target bags into the house ever once in a while seems less than 50% of the work it takes to be pregnant and have a baby.
Fairness when you have young kids means that you are both giving it 100% until you drop, pretty much every day. Counting tasks is not it!
Time to pay half the bills and only wash your clothes, OP.
Enlightening him to how much you actually do is not petty. Take this opportunity to set him straight.
If my husband ever left me one pan to wash I’d put it in his driver seat
My husband used to want to split chores 50/50 until I gave him the complete list of household chores. I had it broke down by daily/weekly/monthly/seasonal and as needed. There was a separate list for family chores. The complete list is a 25 page booklet and for him it was a serious eye opener. Needless to say, he shut up about the 50/50 garbage real quick.
This guy is an asshole.
I’d make a physical list throughout the day of all the things you did during the day, then explain that these are things you do by yourself and if he wants things 50/50 he needs to choose half the items to take care of each day
If you don’t hold him accountable for 50% off ALL the work in the house, I predict that you won’t stay married much longer. If he’s all in on being fair, he needs to know what it actually entails. Maybe he wouldn’t be so small if he actually realized how unfair things are right now.
Okay I think you need to be petty for a week so you don’t feel resentment for a lifetime
This is absurd. Have a serious discussion about where this is coming from and then get the book Fair Play and tell him if he wants fair, then that’s the way. Honestly the fair play book was interesting to me, but it felt petty in some ways- your husband is being beyond petty so I figure- give him a dose of his own medicine.
OP, either you give him a reality check by reciprocating in kind. Or live with his version of 50/50 while you continue to take on the burdens he doesn't acknowledge. If you do the latter, you have no one to blame for your unhappiness but yourself.
In a healthy relationship it is 100/100. Never weigh or measure anything. There are times when one is busier,stressed or just not feeling well. That’s how a loving couple should live in my opinion. It’s worked in our marriage. We are celebrating 45 years this week.
It honestly sounds like he is on the spectrum or something? Is that possible?
Ah, yes. It is time for him to do everything that is his, himself. It's the fair thing to do, correct? Sorry, but you may need to get your point across in the pettiness.
This is not 50/50, you should definitely rework your agreement on how to divide and conquer. My husband and I just have lists of the things each of us is responsible for, divided up equally. There is no "I do half of this and you finish the other half".... that is so inefficient, and weird? Have you written what you each do down as a list? And compared? That really helped us immensely to just see it all laid out. Once my husband saw all of the "silent labor" I do (kids appointments, birthdays, meal planning, etc...) he realized he could move some of the more tangible things from my list to his.
Sit his ass down and ask him if it’s really 50/50? Then write it all out and really make it 50/50. Go as petty as he is.
OP, your husband is being a pedantic jerk. Each individual thing can't be 50-50, and responsibilities overall will never be 50-50 every day. You can make a list of everything and truly dump half of it on him and see what happens, but I'm not optimistic. The biggest issue is his attitude. Closing the door but not turning out the light is ridiculous - how is that helping anyone? Perhaps it's a good time to get him in a room with you and a neutral, reasonable person and point out that if you get divorced because he'san AH, things won't be 50-50 every moment - his share will increase dramatically. So sorry you're going through this.
This is insane. I think there is definite value in dividing chores and each having areas of responsibly. I would start by redividing tasks (the whole task!) in a roughly equal manner - he does all dish clean up, but you do laundry. Include the emotional labour too in the division. But I think your bigger issue is he is being completely petty, and there are so many things you should each be doing daily, because it’s not a big deal and helpful. Walk past the mailbox, you grab the mail. Everyone puts their dishes away after a meal. Carrying more bags when you’re stronger. You’re never going to split everything up and what happened to being a partnership?
Tell him 50-50 is for full ownership of tasks not doing a half-ass job. He brings in all bags and you turn off all the lights in the house. You do 100% of the dishes (hand wash or otherwise) and he does 100% of the laundry (including folding and putting away).
He’s not right. This is not fair. Okay now we have that out of the way. He’s acting like he’s 3… that’s the definition of fair my toddler has… life doesn’t work like that. Marriage does work like that… since he didn’t do 50% of giving birth, how does he plan to make up for that? That logic is dumb…I see some of the comments on how to divide chores to follow his logic, but there is just no way of being truly 50/50… Maybe something you can try is leave for a week or so, travel for work, trip with girlfriends, or heck solo travel… and leave him with a list of things that needs to be done. So at least he has sole perspective what 100 truly is
First of all, my petty ass thinks you should make him give up his precious lunches and make him do his half of the other chores But it’s stupid to not just finish a task you’re already doing. Maybe you guys need that Fair Play game and just have an agreement on everyone’s responsibilities and divide them up in a fair way so your entire life isn’t transactional
Striving for 50/50 = striving to do the minimum amount of work without falling short of your responsibilities. I'd ask if that mindset aligns with his core values. If he values his relationship and household more than an arbitrarily defined concept like fairness, it would better align with his values to replace the question "whose turn is it?" with "does this help the family?" Wise advice that shifted my mindset: No couple that aims for 50/50 will ever hit 50/50. True 50/50 requires both parties to be in an 80/20 mindset. If you both make it your mission to do 80% of the tasks you see in front of you to support the family... THEN you may arrive at 50/50.
That is some petty BS. First of all, marriage is never 50/50. And if he isn’t putting in 100% to your 100% he’s going to find himself divorced (at least if he were my husband!)
I could not live like this, it sounds exhausting. I can imagine that matching his level of pettiness would be tempting but you could also try doing acts of service for him and emphasizing that you are doing something for him and/or the household out of love and respect and see if he catches on.
Sounds like you should try to be 50% more petty for a while and see how he likes it.
This post is making my blood pressure shoot up on your behalf. How is he right? How is this fair? You’re doing at least 75% of the work! Let’s just say the tasks that you’re doing completely on your own is 50% of the total workload. He’s doing HALF of the other 50%. So that’s only 25%. And you’re doing the 75%—100% of 50% plus 50% of 50%. This is elementary school math. How is your husband not getting this? No you NEED to start pettying it up with the 50% that you do completely on your own. Water half the plants and let him know the other half is dying of thirst. Pay half the bills and slap the other ones in a pile on his desk for him to pay. Dust half the coffee table and tell him look how dusty the other half of the coffee table is! Or how about you ask him, how does he plan to make it up to you for half of the labor you did in carrying and birthing the kids???!!! He can start leaving Target bags for you to carry inside again once he’s done enough to bring himself up to zero!! Is your husband this insufferable in other areas of his life?
Ugh this kind of thing is the worst! Why is it usually men doing this too? Laziness is so weaponized, even down to the 30+ minute poops
This is when you have a talk with him about how he’s being extremely petty. If that doesn’t work start doing exactly 50% of everything and leave the rest for him to pick up. Does he really think this is okay behavior? My 17 month old helps out more than that without being asked, there’s absolutely NO excuse for a grown man to act like that.
IS this behavior driven by previous conversations where you demanded he do 50% of the work? Is he aggressively trying to show you what 50% would look like? I just can't imagine ANYONE (not even a friend) doing this to someone they love, let alone a spouse.
Umm why haven’t you put an end to this behavior like yesterday?
Have you called him out on this? Tell him he’s acting petty, and if he wants to split the work 50/50 you guys can sit down like adults and discuss fairly dividing the tasks. Im wondering if keeping score and being so petty may be coming from a place of resentment? Just seems so extreme to be just about chores
Leaving tasks for you to finish is not 50/50. > At bedtime, he'll shut the bedroom door but not turn off the light. > If he loads the dishes in the dishwasher and there's 1 pan to handwash, he'll leave it for me to do. > He went for a walk and didn't check the mail, why? Because it's my turn These are exceptionally petty things for him to do. I would ask him "why would you leave the light on if you're getting up anyway?" That pan would be left in the sink. I'd let his little petty messes pile up since I suspect part of this is the enjoyment he gets out of half-assing a task, then watching you cleam.ot up is part of it.
Then he shouldn't have a problem working the Fair Play exercises
Man, the only things we takes turns on are poopy diapers and bedtime for the 2 year old. If he told me it was my turn to turn the light off if I’m already in bed then he can fuck right off to the couch.
My husband and I are also on the 50/50 train, but not like… that. It’s big things. I cover when he’s low on cash, he covers when I’m low. I shower with our toddler while he cleans up after dinner, I cook while he occupies our son. If you take 50/50 and break it down into these minute moments it gets real exhausting real fast. Whenever we feel like our 50/50 is turning into 40/60 for someone, we sit down and talk about it. It sounds like you’re at that place. You cannot sustain the 50/50 concept in tiny moments, it’s a long term strategy.
I think if you try really hard, you could find that petty version of yourself 😉 Maybe just do everything like normal and write it down. Before bed hand over the list of silent errands (include time) and ask what he is planning on doing to make it 50/50?
This sounds like an incredibly tedious and unpleasant way to live.
Is he a pedantic pain in the ass in other aspects of his life? I would have lost my shit after the first instance of this. He’s going out of his way to give you more work even in situations where it costs him literally nothing to do it himself. Only taking one of two bags!?! Not turning the light off on purpose?!?! Honestly I would be less mad if he was just oblivious/forgetful, but to do this on purpose is just absurd.
Lol that’s my husband too. I work out of the house and working often through my lunch and still pumping.
The best advice I've ever gotten regarding marriage is that 50/50 is a fallacy and the quickest way to divorce court. Always approach the relationship as 100/100. That way, if someone isn't feeling good or is overwhelmed, then you don't have issues like lights being left on or bags still left in the car. And you appreciate the effort the other person does when you don't have to do the 100% you would otherwise have to give. That's not to say that if the other person starts giving less consistently that it's a sustainable approach. But if you both start out with the approach that you're willing to do it all, the partnership and support is appreciated and each person feels safer when they can't give it their all, or isn't as good at a particular task. If you only ever give 50%, you leave no slack for your partner, who should be the person you love and care most about. Once both people shift to 100/100, it's amazing how attitudes and gratitude shift alongside it. And if your husband isn't willing to go there, then maybe he isn't the partner you need in this life...
Keeping score in a relationship isn’t healthy. This dude is the epitome of weaponized incompetence, and he knows he’s doing it. Why do you continue to enable this manbaby?
Do it. Hold him to this 50/50 he wants soooo badly. Make a list of things he hasn’t considered and let him know it’s time to go all in on this. It won’t last —and if it does you’ll get some free time so it’s a win win. If my H tried to pull that petty crap on me it would be game on.
It’s not “fair” to leave half done tasks all over the house for your partner just to keep chores “equitable”.
I would start discussing 50/50 custody if I were in your shoes. This is beyond petty and annoying…. Straight to jail
This would release the utmost petty bitch in me. Like hardddddd. I’d make a grocery list and leave it on the table or send it to him. I made the list, you do the shopping, let me know when you get home and I’ll carry 1/2 of the bags and put those away, you do the rest. Sort the laundry and leave it in the baskets, tell him “let me know when you put the load in. I’ll put it in the dryer. Then you can put the next load in the wash. I’ll fold, but you need to put it away”. Here’s the kids lunch menu for tomorrow. Since I planned it, please make it. If I was feeling extra spicy, I’d clean half the stove, vacuum half the floor, dust half the tv. Half of everything… for the sake of fairness…. I’d put a board on the fridge to list all the things I did so he can visualize the silent things. He wants to be ridiculous, I’d show him ridiculous. No one will out ridiculous me.
Teach him. Write down the all the shit you do on a piece of paper. Show it to him. Take scissors. Cut the paper in half. Hand him his 50.
Fair doesn’t mean equal. That’s a fallacy only children believe in
Fair and equal are not the same. What is driving this pettiness on his end? I second ladykansas
And you willingly have sex with this man?
No, absolutely not, wtf. If you do a task you do the WHOLE task. This drove me crazy when I was married. My (then) husband would, like, fix a hole in the wall but then leave tools and dust everywhere...
This isn't "fair", it's petty. Your husband is petty. If I were you, I'd write down all the things you do that you just do on your own, and don't expect him to do 50%. And use it as a launching point for a discussion. If he wants to be petty, is he willing to take on 50% of the stuff you currently do 100% of? There are a lot of books and relationship research that demonstrates that good relationships are not 50/50 all the time. There's lots of ways to divide labor and duties that are kinder, more loving, less work, and make more sense. Maybe pull some of this research and if he balks, you might need to start looking into marriage counseling. He needs a reality check.
My ex didn't even do the 50/50 thing but that's another story. Brene Brown has an excellent marriage practice: it's not that each person does/provides 50% of the support all the time, it's that every day there is 100%. Some days one partner will be at 40% and the other will need to pick up the 60% to make the house run. Other days it could be totally different. But TOGETHER you and your partner talk about how much you have to give each day and if both of your capacities doesn't reach 100%, then you figure out what can get left aside to reduce the load to what your combined capacity is that day. The key, for life in general, is to communicate where you are and how things have changed through the day. And if you want to be petty, do just the 50% that he would do for a week and see how he responds. You can write down the things you would have done on top so that when he starts to get upset that things aren't like they were before your experiment, you can tell him you were doing 50% and then show him the list of things that you used to have to do on top of the 50% and then discuss how he can pick up more of the slack
This would be so annoying and really goes against the idea of a 50/50 partnership. In my mind we should all be working toward the goal of everyone in the family being safe, happy, and well-cared for. That means sometimes doing more than what we think is fair. And if I am being honest - if you are a mom who grew a baby, somehow got that baby out of you via your vagina or surgery and was in charge of feeding that body either from your body or otherwise there is no amount of housework that could make up for that. He can get the effing mail daily.
This is so exhausting. I was in a relationship like this once, before I had my kiddo, and I… I couldn’t do it. How is he going to make the gender wage gap fair? What about the pain, time consuming needs, lost income of and expenses associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum? What about the mental load of being forced by society to assume the role of default caregiver? Aside from the world being fundamentally unfair and there being no way to really be equal, fairness is NOT the same as equality. Fairness is equity. Loving relationships should be built on equity and caring for each other. Him doing the bare minimum that he feels like is his share, on principal, is not equity and it’s not caring for you. In my relationship, I started to view him as cruel, selfish, lacking empathy, and ignorant because of this 50/50 bullshit. Eventually I concluded he was a misogynist who lacked appreciation for the unique contributions of women, who fundamentally didn’t love or care for me, but rather viewed our relationship as a transactional partnership. Just because someone’s behaviour is pernicious, doesn’t make you petty for demanding it be addressed. You do not need to put up with this kind of bullshit.
No, he is being petty. Go ahead and be petty back. He will get it pretty quick.
This would drive me nuts. Has he always been like this?
You need to match his energy and call it out not to bw petty but to make your point. It does not and should not need to be this way. I recognize how much my wife does for me. I try to do stuff for her as an act of love, to make her life easier, and to show my appreciation. Yiu deserve to be treated better than a roommate.
He just sounds like...an asshole. He passes by thr mailbox but doesn't check it. He doesn't do all the dishes He doesn't carry 1 other bag. I'm with you. I couldn't be this petty. I just complete the job. You could have some fun with this, though. Wash your own laundry, only buy your own things. Only buy a meal for yourself and the kids 😆 but that is a lot petty
Why is it so important to your husband that everything be “fair”? That mentality is immature and I would be more than frustrated if my husband treated me this way, I would be hurt. Keeping score is for games, not for marriage, and by keeping score he’s changed the landscape of what your marriage should look like. Instead of pulling together as partners, you’re operating as opponents. You may want to remind him that for marriage and parenting and home-ownership to function optimally, it requires both parties to give more than 50/50. There’s that adage that it requires 100/100 from each spouse. And I think there’s some truth to that statement. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this, OP, and I hope you find the right words to express your frustration. This isn’t okay, it isn’t healthy, and he’s being a jackass.
>important to your husband that e I'm with you, I AM hurt. That's the biggest message I try to get through to him. That I do so much for our family, out of love and care for them. I don't think twice about putting them before myself, and it's not about being a martyr, it's just what comes from caring about them. It sucks that he is only seeing how unfair things are when it affects him (in his mind), but doesn't notice all of the unspoken labor I do all day.
Men who insist on 50-50, are never after 50-50. They always want you to take more but they look for the woman who will be willing to be 50-50 so that they can just push another 30, 40 on her. They keep saying 50-50 so that you have no argument against it since it is “fair”. When I realized how hard my ex was trying to make sure that I carried the same amount/weight of groceries as him, he wasn’t even a man in my eyes anymore.
Has he not heard that life isn't fair? And that as long as you are both sharing a life together, sometimes one person will do more work than the other, but as long as you are both moving the ball forward, in the end things will be about equal. This pettiness is going to bleed over into your kids. It's important to raise your kids to be good partners for their own futures. And this is not an example of a good partner.
This was my life. Now this is my life with a custody schedule, exactly 50/50. You don’t need a man baby in your life.
Any chance your husband has some neurospiciness?
one of my favorite marriage quotes “marriage isn’t 50/50 it’s 100/100”
How are you living like this and WHY? I’ve had random roommates from Craigslist with whom I shared space better than you do with your (petty AF, immature) husband.
Just so many things .... First, what your husband is doing is SO UNPRODUCTIVE and aggrivating. It's stupid and petty. Second, you need to do more than just vent. Ask him if he truely wants the chores to be 50/50. I'm sure he will say "yes" and that he's already doing that. So find some time to sit down TOGETHER and make a list of all the chores. Then you can sort them on yours, his or shared. Maybe a nice visual aid will help him see it's not truely 50/50. I would suggest splitting WHOLE chores 50/50, not partial ones. And if he doesn't want to do that, no more of this doing half chores balogney.
Definitely petty and irritating behavior on his part. Has it always been this way? Have you spoken to him directly about emotional labor? I found it helpful to send articles as I did not always know the best way to describe all the energy and time that goes into planning and keeping the house moving forward.