Speculation about whether your husband is being honest about his values or in fact secretly values (for example) waxed floors and is just free-riding on your floor-waxing efforts is usually unnecessary. Just ask yourself: When my husband was single and could do whatever he wanted with his free time, did he wax the floors? Did he pay someone else to wax the floors? If not, waxed floors probably are not very important to him.
Along these lines, I had to laugh at the Christmas example because her “belligerent Scrooge-ass behavior” is literally the opposite end of the spectrum for me as a single dude. A 3 foot tree *is* me being festive, most years I don’t even do that.
To be honest I got a Christmas tree for the first time ever this year and it was 3 feet tall and I thought it was super festive. But I don’t have kids yet and still come home to Christmas so am pretty sure I’ll be motivated to do more when I do.
Same here, and that’s different imo. If you have kids it might be Scrooge-ass behavior (assuming you have the money and space for a full size tree). But if you live in an apartment and don’t have kids, criticizing the 3’ tree is teenage drama queen “I’m so scared what our friends will think” behavior.
Standards in an adult-only household and a household with children are wildly different for Christmas. Before I had kids, I didn't bother getting a tree, but once I had one, I felt the need to get a tree, hang stockings, put out outdoor decorations, etc etc. CHH was specifically writing an article about parents.
Talking about waxing floors as a way of achieving status within your group is a bit like talking about pet dogs where there's a whole zoo-ful of elephants in the room. Waxing floors is an easy one because what the women in this pro-floor-waxing group want is to see waxed floors, and not to somehow know it was your husband who waxed the floor instead of you. Bigger problems await when it is your actual behavior that will earn your partner status in their group. Surely women have the experience of taking their husbands to a gathering of their peers and wishing they would behave differently. Saying different things, or perhaps talking about nothing but the weather and people's health if indeed their values are different. Or wishing they were clean-shaven and wearing nicer clothes. And surely men have exactly the same experience with wives. A reasonable starting point in a relationship is to figure you will try to blend in and be uncontroversial when in a group that is primarily your partner's group.
But some things are much harder. I have two brothers. We all married, but I had kids and they did not. I was heavily involved with their care. Once, when getting together with my two brothers, one remarked that my wife "keeps me on a short leash". I didn't see it that way, and didn't very much value having status among my brothers, but it still stung to hear it. But when we talk about sharing overall work somewhat equally, and the way a man gains status with his buddies is to take off and have fun whenever he wants, that's going to be a huge problem. Ideally before a couple has kids together they should get clear on which groups they aspire to achieve status with and what it will take to do that. But how they will divide their time among paid work, childcare, and housework may not be something where they even know what their values are until tested by the huge workload increase that comes with parenthood.
But maybe that's expanding the topic too much and we should stick with things like who waxes the floors. Those questions are important in the real lives of real people, for sure. It surely is a happier relationship if you feel secure enough that you can consider things you do for your partner as a favor you choose to grant them rather than an unpleasant obligation.
Oh I love this comment. I've been wanting to write more about signaling in relationships and how it relates to a woman's status in the eyes of her friends, but obviously this is relevant for men too. I think you make good points about the need to blend in to the norms of your partners friends group, at least a little bit, in order for them to like you.
As for your brother's comment, that sounds like someone playing a totally different game than you and then scoring you on the terms of the game he's playing (one which doesn't involve kids) and projecting his preferences and values onto you. It's true that having freedom is something I'm sure men want to demonstrate to one another, but obviously having kids also gives you status within communities that value kids. I definitely think it's worth trying to understand yourself and your relationship to career driven status, social status etc. and how becoming a parent might affect those things - but also everyone says your values change a lot after having kids so while you can get good signals it seems like at some point you have to just jump in and negotiate with your partner as you go.
But another related topic I'm interested in is the status your partner brings you in the eyes of your friends, not just from how they behave in front of them but also how well they signal their love in ways that can be *explained* to friends. Like I remember feeling so bad in my early 20s because my boyfriend at the time hadn't gotten me anything for valentines and I felt embarrassed when my friends with boyfriends who did get them gifts asked what he got me and then looked upon me with pity when I said nothing. I was like 15% sad that my boyfriend didn't give me a gift but like 85% sad that I had to tell my friends that lol. Now I am a lot less concerned about how my friends view my status on the basis of such things but I also think this is a relatively common experience.
Glad you liked it. A couple comments I've made here have been well-received. What makes me a bit confused is I really have no idea what sort of group this is. Who reads the comments? Seven accounts of which two are bots? A hundred real people? The actual social structure eludes me. Being 70 years old surely doesn't help. I was one of those "early computer people" from "Because Internet". Maybe there are things people could point to for how to participate productively in this sort of social ecology.
I would guess that it’s more like 100 real people who actually read it. And you’re already engaging productively :) Comments are great and you can also use notes and restacks to make your comment into a more public discussion
When I argue a version of this article’s thesis, I run into the following wall: Most people seem to attach *moral* weight to cleanliness. The more liberal ones will fall back on health-based justifications. That’s obviously BS - your house needs to get unfathomably dirty before it becomes a true health risk - but it seems to be enough to allow most people to avoid seeing cleanliness preferences as subjective.
I think this is a huge barrier to people accepting this article’s advice. If a cleanliness is next to godliness, then failing to clean isn’t just failing to do a favor for your spouse - you are, in fact, failing to uphold an obligation.
Yes, this is why the cleaner partner, typically the woman, will often frame being extremely clean and orderly as “acting like a well adjusted and responsible adult”. But it’s not even just cleanliness, it’s also all the other stuff around the house, aesthetics etc.
You can see this in the clip linked below, where her husband actually meets all of her expectations for cleanliness and Christmas cheer, but it’s framed not as it being lucky that she and him on the same page on these things but as him, unlike most men, being a caring a responsible adult. As if any man who didn’t do that stuff doesn’t care about his family which I find unfair. Like, this ladies husband seems lovely but the judgement of anyone who isn’t like this is imo undeserved…
The strangest thing about that video to me is that the content is congratulatory to her husband while the tone seems really angry. Doesn’t it seem incongruous? I wonder if this is an example of the phenomenon where content that makes people angry is more engaging, so all the videos of people congratulating their husbands without the angry tone never get seen
So I think the anger is necessary to the video working. Most of the women watching do not have husbands who would ever do all that stuff without being asked. So if she just genuinely thanked him it would come off as braggy. Instead she acts annoyed on behalf of all the other women watching so that she’s a sister in arms with them. If she genuinely thanked him it would get eye rolls and “must be nice” reactions from the viewers
The angry tone made me wonder if he is scared of his wife. She certainly seemed a bit scary, with her attitude of 'female cleanliness standards' = 'acting like an adult'.
She seemed genuinely angry about the existence of men who don't conform to female cleanliness standards.
Yes!! Posts like those are so frustrating - arguing in the comments that she was being unfair to less-clean men would sound ridiculous, but I do in fact think that’s true.
I wonder if there’s a pop-feminist angle that could help push our norms away from this (“Your desire for a super clean house is rooted in the patriarchy…”).
Now we just need some high profile women to advocate for less put-together houses (imagine Charli XCX saying “I couldn’t make the music I do if I was always worrying about my house”). Trouble is, all these people have probably have staff devoted to maintaining their mansions.
Very good points here. But I also have to ask, does anyone actually WAX their floors?! That would be stunning information to me. I don't even know what this means or what type of floors are waxable.
Yes. I think a lot of the bizarre paranoia about scratching hardwood comes from the fact that I'm the only millennial who waxes them annually (or every 6 months if you're more like my father and invite giant groups of people over all the time). It protects the finish.
It also caused my childhood dog to crash into the door when he started scampering down the hallway to defend us from the mailman as usual and found the hall floor more slippery than expected. He was pretty embarrassed.
Same here. Maybe I’m a barbarian, but this is the first time I’ve heard of it. It would never have occurred to me. Now that I think back, some floors do look waxed. But like damn, that’s COMMITMENT!
> Either convince them that you’re right OR ask for a favor, otherwise… do it yourself
I’ve convinced my husband on some things. One of the ways I do it is actually show him how I do it. If it’s something he (even unbeknownst to himself) values but finds onerous, and I show him how I do it, he often finds that once you have the method down it’s actually not SO hard. After I lower the cost of the chore, suddenly, a sparkly clean countertop seems a lot more appealing. I’ve converted him on a number of issues that way. If it’s REALLY important to me and he just doesn’t agree, I ask for a favor. If I care that much he’ll usually humor me. And as for the rest, I do myself. Our values are not SO different, that any of this ever feels like a huge issue. So I suppose we chose each other well. 🤷♀️
And as for what men tolerate and what men prefer, you know, to toot my own horn a little bit, my husband can tolerate a lot but he says he’d rather live in a house run by me. He confesses to have lived in a trash heap as a young bachelor. He doesn’t know how I do it, and I’m a little fuzzy on how I do it myself. But I do know what the house would look like if I stopped running it. You can acknowledge you wouldn't personally put in the effort to do it, yet you’d rather live in a world where it was done. Just like my husband keeping my bike tires pumped. I hate pumping my tires and would probably go until it’s intolerable to ride. Then I’d take it into the shop and pay someone to pump it for me. It should probably be kept relatively pumped full of air, at all times. But I don’t want to do it! Aren’t I lucky to have him? Haha.
Can I DM this to my mother, or would this be too passive aggressive? My parents are still together, but she grew up as the daughter of a navy man, which meant that “clean” took on two entirely different definitions between my two parents, and it felt like “clean” definitely wasn’t about my mothers peace of mind, but about how she was perceived by my friend’s moms.
This is also ridiculously timely (maybe on purpose?) but I think Christmas REALLY draws this out for some couples. I know of at least two couples that got married recently and both husbands quietly bemoaned Christmas with their new wives. Obviously it was manageable, but there was a sense that “we’re decorating for Christmas” is “she’s decorating for Christmas and I’m her assistant/hostage”.
Haha please do. Damn - if your style of making Christmas cheer makes your husband scared of the holidays… I’ll venture to conclude you’re overdoing it!
Thank you for that, but also, no worries about the link--I'm just happy to see an author I respect tackling the same topic. I think these small gaps in male-female communication are greatly under-discussed, which is sad, because talking about them more would help sort tout some problems.
Have you ever read anything by Deborah Tannen? She was one of the first to really dig into the male/female communication gap, that I'm aware of. If I recall, she was also the one who popularized the meme that men have trouble asking for directions.
In an egalitarian marriage, the man neglecting this stuff is long term poison for the relationship because the woman then has a choice of doing everything herself or being constantly uncomfortable.
This is just a subset of a bigger problem — the people you love care about stuff you don’t care about, like at all. This is an unfixable problem.
A quality essay as usual, but while so much human behavior is really driven by signaling/status-seeking, I wouldn't be surprised if this case were (mostly) an exception. It's plausible to me that women are just more orderly, have a more sensitive disgust reflex, or are more eagerly conforming to social expectations regardless of the status payout. They plainly have a stronger preference for household cleanliness, but it's nonobvious how much that asymmetry is really from cleanliness being a rare opportunity for status accrual among women without careers: SAHMs aren't the only women who keep their places cleaner than most bachelors, and probably women would keep their dwellings substantially cleaner than men even if it were guaranteed that no one would ever see the inside.
Once a wife starts negotiating workload with her husband from a place of demand or obligation, she has already lost.
Regan is correct to observe that she wants him to want to engage as evidence of his investment in her. But “you need to do more” is transactional language. Moreover, “you have a moral obligation to do what I say” is the language a parent uses with a child; there’s no way you can think of your husband that way and maintain the respect and admiration required to keep attraction alive
Some husbands are a pain in the ass to live with. But nagging will only work if you’re happy to become his mother
Regan’s advice to frame it as a favour is good. Equally important is to appreciate it as an act of giving. “Why should I show appreciation when I had to ask nicely just to have him do what he ought?” And we’re back to transactional thinking
“If he has a problem, why doesn’t he say something?” Agreeable men have a very high tolerance for competent but annoying co-workers; as long as they can be relied on to deliver he just filters out the annoying stuff. The analogy to the nagging wife should be obvious
Tbh I think women have the easier time replacing partners, and are using that to demand cushier times in relationships. It doesn’t matter if it would result in her working 50 total hours and him working 60 total hours: there is some man out there willing to put up with that, and alimony to replace the money from him if she divorces, so why *not* demand something even if it’s unfair?
This is why one of the most important things needed to minimize friction in a relationship and thus avoid misery or breakup/divorce is to be aligned in terms of values, including not only work/religion/morality/kids etc. but also stuff like waxing the floor. But this is very tricky because:
1. People bullshit about their values to their partners to make it seem that they're aligned in order to have sex or secure a long term relationship with them.
2. People bullshit about their values to friends and family as part of virtue signalling.
3. People bullshit about their values to themselves as part of various copes needed to deal with the harsh reality of life.
4. A relationship is a long term commitment, but people's values change over time. It's hard to predict how your values will change, and it's even harder to predict how your partner's values will change.
5. Differences in values become more pressing when life circumstances become harder due to work/kids/old age/sickness/Black Swan event etc.
All this is true. Another factor is that the more restrictions you place on a potential partner, the less likely you will find someone who fits all those restrictions. There are fewer redheaded women who like anime than there are redheads or women who like anime, and there are fewer six-foot guys making six figures than there are six-foot guys or guys making six figures.
And a lot of people have to take whatever they can get. This is something I think most of the professional-class types on Substack miss, but... you're poor, you're short, you're ugly, you're fat, you've got kids from a prior marriage, you don't have a job...you take what you can get. (Tried to balance out the genders' dislikes here, maybe I screwed up.) A lot of people just don't have enough to offer a potential partner to go being picky about values. It could be that increased pickiness is a reason the marriage rate and birthrate is falling... too many people just can't find anyone that fits their standards and give up.
Speculation about whether your husband is being honest about his values or in fact secretly values (for example) waxed floors and is just free-riding on your floor-waxing efforts is usually unnecessary. Just ask yourself: When my husband was single and could do whatever he wanted with his free time, did he wax the floors? Did he pay someone else to wax the floors? If not, waxed floors probably are not very important to him.
Along these lines, I had to laugh at the Christmas example because her “belligerent Scrooge-ass behavior” is literally the opposite end of the spectrum for me as a single dude. A 3 foot tree *is* me being festive, most years I don’t even do that.
To be honest I got a Christmas tree for the first time ever this year and it was 3 feet tall and I thought it was super festive. But I don’t have kids yet and still come home to Christmas so am pretty sure I’ll be motivated to do more when I do.
Same here, and that’s different imo. If you have kids it might be Scrooge-ass behavior (assuming you have the money and space for a full size tree). But if you live in an apartment and don’t have kids, criticizing the 3’ tree is teenage drama queen “I’m so scared what our friends will think” behavior.
I was also very surprised about how expensive a little 3 foot tree was btw!
Yeah but don’t you live in New York? I bet that’s like a whole house in the Midwest
Standards in an adult-only household and a household with children are wildly different for Christmas. Before I had kids, I didn't bother getting a tree, but once I had one, I felt the need to get a tree, hang stockings, put out outdoor decorations, etc etc. CHH was specifically writing an article about parents.
Yes, exactly - once I have kids myself I expect I’ll be much more inspired to be festive :)
Talking about waxing floors as a way of achieving status within your group is a bit like talking about pet dogs where there's a whole zoo-ful of elephants in the room. Waxing floors is an easy one because what the women in this pro-floor-waxing group want is to see waxed floors, and not to somehow know it was your husband who waxed the floor instead of you. Bigger problems await when it is your actual behavior that will earn your partner status in their group. Surely women have the experience of taking their husbands to a gathering of their peers and wishing they would behave differently. Saying different things, or perhaps talking about nothing but the weather and people's health if indeed their values are different. Or wishing they were clean-shaven and wearing nicer clothes. And surely men have exactly the same experience with wives. A reasonable starting point in a relationship is to figure you will try to blend in and be uncontroversial when in a group that is primarily your partner's group.
But some things are much harder. I have two brothers. We all married, but I had kids and they did not. I was heavily involved with their care. Once, when getting together with my two brothers, one remarked that my wife "keeps me on a short leash". I didn't see it that way, and didn't very much value having status among my brothers, but it still stung to hear it. But when we talk about sharing overall work somewhat equally, and the way a man gains status with his buddies is to take off and have fun whenever he wants, that's going to be a huge problem. Ideally before a couple has kids together they should get clear on which groups they aspire to achieve status with and what it will take to do that. But how they will divide their time among paid work, childcare, and housework may not be something where they even know what their values are until tested by the huge workload increase that comes with parenthood.
But maybe that's expanding the topic too much and we should stick with things like who waxes the floors. Those questions are important in the real lives of real people, for sure. It surely is a happier relationship if you feel secure enough that you can consider things you do for your partner as a favor you choose to grant them rather than an unpleasant obligation.
Oh I love this comment. I've been wanting to write more about signaling in relationships and how it relates to a woman's status in the eyes of her friends, but obviously this is relevant for men too. I think you make good points about the need to blend in to the norms of your partners friends group, at least a little bit, in order for them to like you.
As for your brother's comment, that sounds like someone playing a totally different game than you and then scoring you on the terms of the game he's playing (one which doesn't involve kids) and projecting his preferences and values onto you. It's true that having freedom is something I'm sure men want to demonstrate to one another, but obviously having kids also gives you status within communities that value kids. I definitely think it's worth trying to understand yourself and your relationship to career driven status, social status etc. and how becoming a parent might affect those things - but also everyone says your values change a lot after having kids so while you can get good signals it seems like at some point you have to just jump in and negotiate with your partner as you go.
But another related topic I'm interested in is the status your partner brings you in the eyes of your friends, not just from how they behave in front of them but also how well they signal their love in ways that can be *explained* to friends. Like I remember feeling so bad in my early 20s because my boyfriend at the time hadn't gotten me anything for valentines and I felt embarrassed when my friends with boyfriends who did get them gifts asked what he got me and then looked upon me with pity when I said nothing. I was like 15% sad that my boyfriend didn't give me a gift but like 85% sad that I had to tell my friends that lol. Now I am a lot less concerned about how my friends view my status on the basis of such things but I also think this is a relatively common experience.
Anyways, thanks for the thoughtful comment!
Glad you liked it. A couple comments I've made here have been well-received. What makes me a bit confused is I really have no idea what sort of group this is. Who reads the comments? Seven accounts of which two are bots? A hundred real people? The actual social structure eludes me. Being 70 years old surely doesn't help. I was one of those "early computer people" from "Because Internet". Maybe there are things people could point to for how to participate productively in this sort of social ecology.
I would guess that it’s more like 100 real people who actually read it. And you’re already engaging productively :) Comments are great and you can also use notes and restacks to make your comment into a more public discussion
When I argue a version of this article’s thesis, I run into the following wall: Most people seem to attach *moral* weight to cleanliness. The more liberal ones will fall back on health-based justifications. That’s obviously BS - your house needs to get unfathomably dirty before it becomes a true health risk - but it seems to be enough to allow most people to avoid seeing cleanliness preferences as subjective.
I think this is a huge barrier to people accepting this article’s advice. If a cleanliness is next to godliness, then failing to clean isn’t just failing to do a favor for your spouse - you are, in fact, failing to uphold an obligation.
Yes, this is why the cleaner partner, typically the woman, will often frame being extremely clean and orderly as “acting like a well adjusted and responsible adult”. But it’s not even just cleanliness, it’s also all the other stuff around the house, aesthetics etc.
You can see this in the clip linked below, where her husband actually meets all of her expectations for cleanliness and Christmas cheer, but it’s framed not as it being lucky that she and him on the same page on these things but as him, unlike most men, being a caring a responsible adult. As if any man who didn’t do that stuff doesn’t care about his family which I find unfair. Like, this ladies husband seems lovely but the judgement of anyone who isn’t like this is imo undeserved…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDHvdZzO4Fh/?igsh=ZG52N3Z5eXNteGxw
The strangest thing about that video to me is that the content is congratulatory to her husband while the tone seems really angry. Doesn’t it seem incongruous? I wonder if this is an example of the phenomenon where content that makes people angry is more engaging, so all the videos of people congratulating their husbands without the angry tone never get seen
So I think the anger is necessary to the video working. Most of the women watching do not have husbands who would ever do all that stuff without being asked. So if she just genuinely thanked him it would come off as braggy. Instead she acts annoyed on behalf of all the other women watching so that she’s a sister in arms with them. If she genuinely thanked him it would get eye rolls and “must be nice” reactions from the viewers
The angry tone made me wonder if he is scared of his wife. She certainly seemed a bit scary, with her attitude of 'female cleanliness standards' = 'acting like an adult'.
She seemed genuinely angry about the existence of men who don't conform to female cleanliness standards.
Yes!! Posts like those are so frustrating - arguing in the comments that she was being unfair to less-clean men would sound ridiculous, but I do in fact think that’s true.
I wonder if there’s a pop-feminist angle that could help push our norms away from this (“Your desire for a super clean house is rooted in the patriarchy…”).
And unfair to less together women! The Cut basically just did that idea lol: https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/embracing-mess-vs-cleanliness.html
Now we just need some high profile women to advocate for less put-together houses (imagine Charli XCX saying “I couldn’t make the music I do if I was always worrying about my house”). Trouble is, all these people have probably have staff devoted to maintaining their mansions.
Very good points here. But I also have to ask, does anyone actually WAX their floors?! That would be stunning information to me. I don't even know what this means or what type of floors are waxable.
I feel like it was from a time now gone with the wind - I’ve never seen it done - maybe we also just got better floor tech?
Yes. I think a lot of the bizarre paranoia about scratching hardwood comes from the fact that I'm the only millennial who waxes them annually (or every 6 months if you're more like my father and invite giant groups of people over all the time). It protects the finish.
It also caused my childhood dog to crash into the door when he started scampering down the hallway to defend us from the mailman as usual and found the hall floor more slippery than expected. He was pretty embarrassed.
Same here. Maybe I’m a barbarian, but this is the first time I’ve heard of it. It would never have occurred to me. Now that I think back, some floors do look waxed. But like damn, that’s COMMITMENT!
> Either convince them that you’re right OR ask for a favor, otherwise… do it yourself
I’ve convinced my husband on some things. One of the ways I do it is actually show him how I do it. If it’s something he (even unbeknownst to himself) values but finds onerous, and I show him how I do it, he often finds that once you have the method down it’s actually not SO hard. After I lower the cost of the chore, suddenly, a sparkly clean countertop seems a lot more appealing. I’ve converted him on a number of issues that way. If it’s REALLY important to me and he just doesn’t agree, I ask for a favor. If I care that much he’ll usually humor me. And as for the rest, I do myself. Our values are not SO different, that any of this ever feels like a huge issue. So I suppose we chose each other well. 🤷♀️
And as for what men tolerate and what men prefer, you know, to toot my own horn a little bit, my husband can tolerate a lot but he says he’d rather live in a house run by me. He confesses to have lived in a trash heap as a young bachelor. He doesn’t know how I do it, and I’m a little fuzzy on how I do it myself. But I do know what the house would look like if I stopped running it. You can acknowledge you wouldn't personally put in the effort to do it, yet you’d rather live in a world where it was done. Just like my husband keeping my bike tires pumped. I hate pumping my tires and would probably go until it’s intolerable to ride. Then I’d take it into the shop and pay someone to pump it for me. It should probably be kept relatively pumped full of air, at all times. But I don’t want to do it! Aren’t I lucky to have him? Haha.
Totally agree with everything here and love how you approach these minor mismatches - you and your husband sound like a good match!
I also HATE pumping bike tires… I don’t know why but I’m so bad at it lol
Cat, please. If men really ran the world, humans would still be living in caves.
And the men would be perfectly content that way.
Can I DM this to my mother, or would this be too passive aggressive? My parents are still together, but she grew up as the daughter of a navy man, which meant that “clean” took on two entirely different definitions between my two parents, and it felt like “clean” definitely wasn’t about my mothers peace of mind, but about how she was perceived by my friend’s moms.
This is also ridiculously timely (maybe on purpose?) but I think Christmas REALLY draws this out for some couples. I know of at least two couples that got married recently and both husbands quietly bemoaned Christmas with their new wives. Obviously it was manageable, but there was a sense that “we’re decorating for Christmas” is “she’s decorating for Christmas and I’m her assistant/hostage”.
Haha please do. Damn - if your style of making Christmas cheer makes your husband scared of the holidays… I’ll venture to conclude you’re overdoing it!
I love that you covered this topic.
Thanks! I had actually meant to link to your very good note on this as well but I forgot - just added it in now :)
Thank you for that, but also, no worries about the link--I'm just happy to see an author I respect tackling the same topic. I think these small gaps in male-female communication are greatly under-discussed, which is sad, because talking about them more would help sort tout some problems.
Have you ever read anything by Deborah Tannen? She was one of the first to really dig into the male/female communication gap, that I'm aware of. If I recall, she was also the one who popularized the meme that men have trouble asking for directions.
In an egalitarian marriage, the man neglecting this stuff is long term poison for the relationship because the woman then has a choice of doing everything herself or being constantly uncomfortable.
This is just a subset of a bigger problem — the people you love care about stuff you don’t care about, like at all. This is an unfixable problem.
Bryan is never going to wax that floor and everyone knows it...🤣
GOOD article.
Thank you, Graham!
The Breakup is an underrated movie. As I was reading your quote of the Aniston/Vaughn scene, I could picture it in my mind.
So good! A classic. It’s so sad that they don’t make good rom coms anymore
It really is. I just watched a bunch of other clips from it on yt.
A quality essay as usual, but while so much human behavior is really driven by signaling/status-seeking, I wouldn't be surprised if this case were (mostly) an exception. It's plausible to me that women are just more orderly, have a more sensitive disgust reflex, or are more eagerly conforming to social expectations regardless of the status payout. They plainly have a stronger preference for household cleanliness, but it's nonobvious how much that asymmetry is really from cleanliness being a rare opportunity for status accrual among women without careers: SAHMs aren't the only women who keep their places cleaner than most bachelors, and probably women would keep their dwellings substantially cleaner than men even if it were guaranteed that no one would ever see the inside.
Once a wife starts negotiating workload with her husband from a place of demand or obligation, she has already lost.
Regan is correct to observe that she wants him to want to engage as evidence of his investment in her. But “you need to do more” is transactional language. Moreover, “you have a moral obligation to do what I say” is the language a parent uses with a child; there’s no way you can think of your husband that way and maintain the respect and admiration required to keep attraction alive
Some husbands are a pain in the ass to live with. But nagging will only work if you’re happy to become his mother
Regan’s advice to frame it as a favour is good. Equally important is to appreciate it as an act of giving. “Why should I show appreciation when I had to ask nicely just to have him do what he ought?” And we’re back to transactional thinking
“If he has a problem, why doesn’t he say something?” Agreeable men have a very high tolerance for competent but annoying co-workers; as long as they can be relied on to deliver he just filters out the annoying stuff. The analogy to the nagging wife should be obvious
Tbh I think women have the easier time replacing partners, and are using that to demand cushier times in relationships. It doesn’t matter if it would result in her working 50 total hours and him working 60 total hours: there is some man out there willing to put up with that, and alimony to replace the money from him if she divorces, so why *not* demand something even if it’s unfair?
This is why one of the most important things needed to minimize friction in a relationship and thus avoid misery or breakup/divorce is to be aligned in terms of values, including not only work/religion/morality/kids etc. but also stuff like waxing the floor. But this is very tricky because:
1. People bullshit about their values to their partners to make it seem that they're aligned in order to have sex or secure a long term relationship with them.
2. People bullshit about their values to friends and family as part of virtue signalling.
3. People bullshit about their values to themselves as part of various copes needed to deal with the harsh reality of life.
4. A relationship is a long term commitment, but people's values change over time. It's hard to predict how your values will change, and it's even harder to predict how your partner's values will change.
5. Differences in values become more pressing when life circumstances become harder due to work/kids/old age/sickness/Black Swan event etc.
All this is true. Another factor is that the more restrictions you place on a potential partner, the less likely you will find someone who fits all those restrictions. There are fewer redheaded women who like anime than there are redheads or women who like anime, and there are fewer six-foot guys making six figures than there are six-foot guys or guys making six figures.
And a lot of people have to take whatever they can get. This is something I think most of the professional-class types on Substack miss, but... you're poor, you're short, you're ugly, you're fat, you've got kids from a prior marriage, you don't have a job...you take what you can get. (Tried to balance out the genders' dislikes here, maybe I screwed up.) A lot of people just don't have enough to offer a potential partner to go being picky about values. It could be that increased pickiness is a reason the marriage rate and birthrate is falling... too many people just can't find anyone that fits their standards and give up.