Does anyone else’s working spouse do this? I swear it’s cognitive dissonance

[ajewelinhiscrown]

Either that or broken cognition. I’m the SAHD and I handle almost every single household task and I am frequently cleaning the kitchen or doing dishes. My wife has often questioned this, asking me point blank: “Why are you always in the kitchen??” I’m not always in the kitchen, but we have a 7, 5, and 2 y/o and no housekeeper and no help. My wife also works from home a ton and I’m often making her meals as well. I’m everybody’s personal chef I swear.

Cut to today when we left the house this morning and spent the entire day out and returned home late evening. Because we really wanted to have a whole day’s outing we left this morning and I didn’t spend time cleaning up the breakfast dishes. My wife went into the kitchen tonight when we got home, saw this, and demanded to know: “Why don’t you ever do the dishes???”

This is beyond frustrating and it’s such broken cognition and clearly not true and so obviously some sort of mental shortcoming on her part, I don’t even react anymore.

But how screwed up is this? She knows I’m constantly cleaning up and recently in a rare moment of calm with zero interruptions, she admitted to me that I do “a ton” and “a lot more than most.” But that’s rare. Usually it’s just this cognitive dissonance shit.

Anyone else’s spouse like this?

Rant over.

 

[siskin]

@ajewelinhiscrown I may be petty but in situations like this I ask for clarifying details. If my spouse asked why I don’t ever do the dishes, I’d immediately ask for feedback in a calm manner. Do you mean today? When we were physically gone all day? Or yesterday? Last week? I’d tell them their general/blanket term is hurtful when I’ve clearly done the dishes or we wouldn’t have had breakfast today, or simply wait for the answer and hope that logic can get us both out of the convo.

I worked an annoying job where I was called out often for the dumbest things, so I try to reframe general/blanket statements and try to get down to details with my spouse. Maybe it’s just a communication issue with your souse and not necessarily malicious? Personally, I have to catch myself from reacting poorly about the house when I’ve had a bad day or something else is bothering me. The cleanliness of the house is usually my target and I’ll say hurtful things about my husbands habits, like candy wrappers left behind or something super dumb.

Idk if any of this helps but hang in there. These demeaning statements can be really hurtful and I hope she can come to understand that you do a lot of work keeping up with the home AND taking care of the kids.

 

[jwesley]

@siskin Dear OP, if you still have hope can I double suggest this approach?

 

[tomorrowtoday]

@siskin Good point about Blanket statements. They are a bad habit that can be corrected. My husband used to make these statements and we had a lot of conversations about them. I would ask him do I really always do that, and he would say no that’s not what I meant. I made it clear statements like that were hurtful and unacceptable, and eventually he broke that habit.

 

[jlee27]

@ajewelinhiscrown I'm a SAHM. I cook, clean, do laundry.

My husband cooks, cleans, does laundry.

If stuff needs doing and he has the time, he does it. Without criticism, he might say "I got the dishes earlier babe" (if I don't notice) then I say "thank you" and hug him.

A house is hard to manage when you have kids and things to do. You both have 2 hands, some "monkey see, monkey do" decreases the load.

I would be losing my mind if I was met with what your wife is commenting.

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@jlee27 It makes me feel like I’m going insane. We have literally had weekend days where we’ve gotten waylaid leaving the house and a part of that has been cooking for the kids and cleaning up and then there are days when I’m like if I don’t just leave the dirty dishes where they are we are not going to make it out for our outing today, so I left the breakfast dishes. I can never win. Her attitude is horrible and for me mentally exhausting. Ugh.

 

[trvadams]

@ajewelinhiscrown If the roles were reversed, if you were a working man who didn't do any housework because you thought it was your wife's job (in this scenario she'd be the sahp) people would be calling you lazy, saying it's your kids too... etc.

So what DOES your wife do? Does she ever help? Or just demand?

I'm not sure if it was you, and this is going back a few years now but there was a guy in the comments saying his wife was WFH during the pandemic and he was the sahd expected to bring her coffee, it started as coffee at least... became more. He was so burned out.

 

[glors70]

@ajewelinhiscrown Really sorry you’re going through this, OP. Have you thought about sitting down and talk about how you feel about all this with her?

 

[josie129]

@jlee27 1000% same at my house, totally agree

 

[glors70]

@jlee27 This is how my wife and I operate. I made dinner this evening, so she said she’d get the dishes and I’d play with the kids until the bath was drawn. She helps get one of the kids out of the bath and dressed for bed with brushed teeth and I the other. My son likes to sleep next to mom until he falls asleep and I rock my one year old daughter to sleep before putting her in the crib. Whoever’s out first folds the laundry. It’s never discussed… it just gets done, and we’re appreciative to one another.

 

[elise490]

@ajewelinhiscrown Some people fall back on learned responses from childhood. Don't discount the influence of parents in the cycle of criticism.

 

[katrina2017]

@ajewelinhiscrown JFC. Either you're in the kitchen too much, or you never keep it clean. Sounds like you can't win with her. I'm so sorry. I've dealt with a lot of this kind of distorted thinking with my partner, who has ADHD. I've learned to ignore it, as calling him out makes absolutely no difference, but it still wears on me immensely knowing that my partner and I are living in different realities.

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@katrina2017 I think my wife might be ADHD and other people have actually mentioned this to me as well. I cannot win with her. I’ve said this to myself so many times. I’ve told myself so many times “you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” She is such an impossible person.

 

[katrina2017]

@ajewelinhiscrown Maybe adhd plays a role but as someone who has adhd it’s no excuse for bad behaviour. Sounds like she could use more self awareness around this.

 

[swordofthespirit7]

@katrina2017 Right..could be a factor, but it's not an excuse. My husband is supet ADHD and has never once said "why don't you do xyz" to me, even if the house is a disaster.

 

[trvadams]

@katrina2017 THANK YOU. I'm so sick of people blaming any diagnosis they can.

 

[roxcy]

@ajewelinhiscrown It's not because she's got ADHD. I do as well and honestly, it's more likely for people to ask ME "why didn't you do xyz?" because I'm scatter-brained. What she's saying is just rude and she's clearly uninformed about the amount of work you do all day (unless she does know and is just being an asshole anyway.) I'm the SAHP in our house and I sat my husband down and told him exactly what I do all day, in detail. Because I also homeschool, we actually realized I was "putting in more hours" in a day at home than he was in his 8 hour days at work. So we created a schedule and divided up tasks to make things more fair.

 

[tabitha1234]

@katrina2017 Can you elaborate on distorted thinking and ADHD? Like what kind of things does your partner say?

 

[katrina2017]

@tabitha1234 Well, there are a few different ways I see this. People with ADHD typically have memory problems. So, my partner will very inaccurately fill in the gaps based on what feels emotionally true to him, even though that's not what actually happened. He also tends to live much more in the present than an NT person (possibly related to time blindness), and how he feels in a given moment can sometimes feel to him like all that was or ever will be, and he will falsely projects that emotion into the past. So, for example, him feeling burned out on childcare at a given moment and proclaiming "I never get any time to myself!" when in reality he went to the movies with a friend the previous evening, took a 3 hour nap the day before, and had a whole half day kid-free over the weekend. He also tends to give himself too much credit for effort and intentions, as if that bears equal weight to what he actually did. And he can perceive criticism and react quite strongly in fairly neutral interactions. He can also be extremely defensive about his mistakes and come up with the most irrational off-the-wall rationalizations you can imagine.

 

[tabitha1234]

@katrina2017 Ok yikes I feel like much of this is me lol. AND my partner. You can imagine we have some pretty interesting conversations .