Here’s a long-winded reply to a comment on yesterday’s blog. I thought about it a lot.

Keef’s right, resentment is a cancer in a relationship. And while the tone of my blog was harsh, that’s how I speak in real life. I swear like a longshoreman, and my language is often harsh – generally for comic effect. But sometimes bitching is just venting, and sometimes men are full of shit. The work of a marriage is never fair or balanced in snapshot! Nevertheless, balance is there, from one moment to the next.

Keef said:
>or find some other way of managing this work,
> because the resentment building in you will
> turn to resentment of him

That’s why I now spend two days a week not working at LISCO. During those Mondays and Fridays, I run the house and do all those things I never used to have time to do.

And now I have weekends to myself. Instead of fuming through all the domestic chores while he sits on the couch in front of the telly, I can rest, relax, even go out and see people.

And there is balance: Brett has a very short, sweet Honey-Do list that’s all his: Earn the money I don’t, remodel, manage burn barrels, obtain firewood, handle vehicles, and deal with emergencies. That’s his domain. I only have the right to bitch about THOSE things. The rest of it I agreed to manage myself.

I *LOVE* not working full-time; it’s made me so much happier. I have friends now, and time to do things! The man loves me enough to let me work part-time! What a wonder! I’ve always worked, I’ve always supported myself, I’ve always gone dutch. I couldn’t fathom those girls who’d just require men to support them; they shocked me.

This arrangement is so worth it, but occasionally I wanna bitch about how something I dedicate much of my life to can be so insignificant to the man I do it for(*). How can he NOT NOTICE that he’s got five dirty glasses at his elbow, when he has to move them to pick up a magazine?

How? Simple. He chooses not to translate that into what it actually is: extra work for the woman he loves. Just as he can’t be bothered to care that every article of clothing he doesn’t put away is something else for me to pick up. Just as he can’t be bothered to care that every mess he makes is something else for me to do.

It was making me bitter: how could it not? His choice to leave the burden to me pissed me right the hell off. All of our fights, ever, were on that topic. I’d ask, I’d demand, I’d nag, and then I’d cry. When I got upset enough to cry he’d rouse himself and be helpful for a few weeks (proving he knows the difference), but then it went back to the way it was.

Sure, he notices if I’m in pain, or being stampeded by buffalo, but the little stuff is below his radar. I live most of my working life below his radar: my work is running a home he’s ill disposed to perceive. At least, that’s what he says.

Yet strangely, if I stop doing my work – if I just sit around all day Mondays and Fridays doing nothing – mysteriously, he can tell. Now that the state of our home is wholly my domain, he bothers to be almost embarassed when people come over and it looks like shit. Before, when it was half his responsibility, and one he didn’t want to execute, he didn’t feel that way.

See? This men-can’t-tell-and-don’t-care argument is bullshit. I used to believe it, but I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary. A man likes an orderly home just as much as a woman does. He just won’t rouse himself to CREATE one, even if it causes pain to his wife. Men like to be waited on. Which is fine if they’re willing to pay for it. Which is what Brett does now. The money I used to earn those eight days a month used to be his play money; now he pays bills with it. We both make a sacrifice; I have to do dumb chores (giggle) and he has less free cash. To us, it’s worth it – happiness is better than money any day.

Now, I realize he won’t change, that’s why I work less. Hear the and know the truest of adages: “She marries expecting him to change, but he never does. He marries expecting her never to change, and that’s all she does.”

I’m certainly not who he married, and while I can’t stop it I do feel sorry sometimes. I’m not perfect, and I fuck up too. I hurt him sometimes too.

The mechanics of anger, resentment, and ruin are quite clear to me. It’s a wicked cycle and I fear it. That’s why I went to Brett and said, “I’m quitting my job,” rather than waiting a few more years and going to Brett and saying, “I’m moving out because you won’t clean the toilet.” The first sentence is so much better to say. The second one is really silly, especially coming from someone in MY marriage.

Brett & I have a relationship that people openly admire. We love each other to death but aren’t clingy, we’re a unit yet independent, we laugh all the time, and we listen to each other.

Couples ask us to be godparents to their children. Men and women alike sit me down and tell me seriously that they think of our relationship as what a good relationship should be. I’ve had people explain that knowing us gives them hope that two people can be together for years and still like each other and be fun to be around.

It ain’t worth it to lose THAT over some dirty dishes, misplaced socks, and laziness. It’s just fucking housework, isn’t it? Is a clean house worth hating someone that wonderful over?

Fuck no!

The solution’s been found: I work part-time and the house is my domain.

But the truth remains the same: men ARE pigs, and sometimes I just wanna complain a little! Yah!

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(*) Yes, I do it for him… or at least BECAUSE of him. When I live by myself, things just don’t get that dirty. Ever. No woman ever did to a toilet what Brett does! It’s shocking, really!

He’s really, really dirty. Period.

In order to be a happy, fun wife, I need to have a certain amount of order. I create that order for him as well as for myself. And though he claims, like other men do, that he “doesn’t notice” the state of his own home, we all know that’s just bullshit.

Men are capable of rebuilding carbeurators, which means they’re capable of learning to do the fucking laundry. It’s not rocket science. A man intelligent enough to do his own taxes is intelligent enough to grok that dishes, once dirtied, need to be washed. Duh.

They just don’t want to do it. So they do chores badly. It sounds harsh, but it MUST be on purpose. It’s not an issue of intelligence, it’s an issue of willingness. A man apparently thinks it’s a better bargain to do the dishes/laundry/whatever half-assed and suffer the ire of his wife in hopes that he’ll never have to do it again, than it is to think for a minute and do the job properly. If a woman in an auto shop did a valve lash adjustment the same way my husband does dishes, she’d never be allowed back. The mechanics would say, “It’s easier and faster just to do it myself.”

It’s easier and faster for me to manage the household. It’s easier and faster for him to do the things he does. I have NO DESIRE to split firewood. But I don’t go out there and mess his tools up and make his chores harder, either. I don’t get in his way, or judge how he does stuff, or make more work for him. If I borrow one of his tools, I put it back so he doesn’t waste 45 minutes looking for it. When he borrows one of my tools, say my favorite eyebrow tweezers, the sharp ones I’ve been taking great care of since I found them eleven years ago, I usually never see it again.

Which is why I feel I can bitch about him sometimes. I choose to think ahead and he doesn’t.

I love my husband and I think of him as a super hero. He’s adorable, and kind, and strong, and funny. He loves me, which makes him more precious than anything in the world.

But he is a pig, and he can be waaay lazy. If he kept a blog, I’m sure you’d all hear about how I don’t put out enough, how I’m weirdly moody, how feed him gross things like lentil stew and salad for dinner instead of steak and potatoes. He’d write about how I wake up grumpy 9 mornings out of 10, how some times every word that comes out of my mouth is nagging… You get the picture. I ain’t no perfect Domestic Android, neither!
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