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

[wren84]

@ajewelinhiscrown No. That would have me flip my fucking lid honestly. My husband works from home and he cleans up after himself, doesn’t dare say a thing when it’s messy. That’s insane. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that.

 

[trulytheone]

@wren84 Right?! The way reading this post made a switch in my brain go off, oof.

 

[hassahm]

@ajewelinhiscrown

But how screwed up is this?

Pretty screwed up. Potentially a sign of serious deterioration. Some resources for you:

https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-fo...cism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

 

[joshua371]

@ajewelinhiscrown I’d be hurt by that comment. I would probably keep score for a week but that’s never suggested as the helpful response. Some people you can sit down and say “that hurt me I do dishes all the time, of course I can’t when we are gone all day”. Others you have to say “I’ve done dishes exactly 20 times this week, please don’t make comments like that. It’s disrespectful to the work I contribute to this home and ruins a nice family day”. I’m sorry she said that and you don’t feel valued. I often feel stuck in the kitchen some days. Then I think about people who had to bake bread from scratch and pluck the chickens and didn’t own sponges or dishwashers and feel thankful for our modern conveniences because truly they never left the kitchen. But still. My husband does the dishes every other night, but I still do the day time load and sometimes if there’s a lot of cooking 2 daytime loads. My whole day revolves around the dishwasher and laundry machine schedule. Whatever way you think would get through to her that she should be more appreciative then go for that. I’m guessing she had some internalized guilt for coming home and seeing those and realizing she may have to do them so she preemptively criticized you so you would feel inadequate and do them? That’s a guess. Could be her lizard brain working off something from childhood. Either way not cool and I would have a hard time not calling it out. “That’s simply not true. Please don’t make comments like that”

 

[katrina2017]

@ajewelinhiscrown Nah. My husband has never EVER criticized me for chores. And he helps me often as well. We are a team.

 

[jesuslover666]

@ajewelinhiscrown With that comment I would truly stop cleaning the kitchen out of spite. And everyone can eat out of paper plates and shit.

 

[letsoara]

@jesuslover666 Yeah honestly I think the division of labor might be off in OPs household. My advice would be to suggest wife manage the dishes from now on, especially if OP does all the cooking. If she doesn't like it, then suggest how they can manage things together better because raising kids/parenting is supposed to be a team effort unless you're separated/divorced. Fwiw, I'm speaking from experience here as a sahm. At some point if things are off and you're feeling miserable, something's gotta give. I hope things get better for OP.

 

[paulk6454]

@ajewelinhiscrown Mmm id have dost my shit. I tend to get petty when met with hard criticism like that so my go to would be “you’ve never seen me do a dish? Ever? I never do dishes? That’s news to me, we must have lil magical dish fairies that come morning moon and night. Or was it that I’m in the kitchen too much? Which is it because it surely can’t be both”

 

[allbutnone]

@ajewelinhiscrown My guy, I’ve read through so many of your posts and you seem so, so profoundly unhappy and downright miserable with your SAHD life. And with your wife. At all times. No one on Reddit can truly know your situation, but maybe taking steps to improve your happiness quotient (in whatever way that could possibly look like — separating from your suspected-BP wife, finding part-time work, hiring part-time help, getting out of Manhattan to somewhere easier to raise three little kids…hell, I don’t know… anything than coming to reddit to constantly complain about how much your hate your life and how miserable your wife treats you.) It just doesn’t seem to be helping you and I promise, SAHP life is not this miserable — in fact, it can be super enjoyable! You just need to start to make some changes to make it more manageable for you and your family. You can do it — you’re not stuck.

 

[udliam]

@ajewelinhiscrown Im sorry that would piss me off too! No advice as I need my own on how to not take stuff like this personally.

 

[merekas]

@ajewelinhiscrown I do almost 100% of household work but my husband would never say something like that. Cause he KNOWS I always do the dishes. Also I only do 100% of household work bc he works a job that requires hard physical labor. If he worked from home I would probably want him to do more at home. Just a thought.

That is truly an annoying and fucked up thing for her to say

 

[neilgram]

@ajewelinhiscrown My husband knows better than to question how often I clean lol. In moments like that I would ask her point blank "How can you ask this when the other day you were asking why I'm always in the kitchen? And please let me know when I would have had a chance to get them done today when I haven't even been home"

 

[scribbler546]

@ajewelinhiscrown My husband will often tell me "not to worry" about cleaning up which I just think is funny because he doesn't realize how bad things would get if I did that. There is some disconnect there for sure. I think that comment your wife made is unacceptable, hopefully it doesn't keep happening.

 

[rhoda8931]

@ajewelinhiscrown My exwife was like this. Sparkling clean house and she acted like all my daughter and I did was sustain ourselves on air and light, touching nothing in the house. In reality, we went shopping, to the park, to play and learn, on a walked, listened to music/danced, made lunch, cleaned after lunch, made dinner, ran errands, did gardening, and so on.

It's like if she didn't see it happen, then I wasn't the one to do it.

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@rhoda8931 I’m so sorry. The curse of invisible work and those who don’t recognize it. When Covid first hit and everyone was suddenly at home all the time, my wife commented what a mess the place was and why wasn’t it clean and I said: “Cleaning up is what I do all day when you’re at work and I’m home with the kids.”

 

[babrowngyal]

@ajewelinhiscrown What a hurtful thing to say. My husband has never said something like this to me. He offers to help when he sees me getting behind on something. Yesterday the trash was overflowing and he took it out himself. Yes I put it off longer than I probably should have but he didn’t shame me for it, he just did it! It’s that simple. It sounds like you need to have a talk with your wife.

 

[shotmike]

@ajewelinhiscrown If my husband made these kinds of comments then I would tell him to keep his comments to himself unless he wants me to come down and comment on his work too (he also works from home). It absolutely would not fly.

 

[grahamvanhellsing]

@ajewelinhiscrown It’s time to communicate in a really blunt and clear way.

But let me tell you. Drop the cognitive aspect from it. There’s no good way to start a discussion by questioning someone’s mental acuity

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@grahamvanhellsing Right, it’s just there is some sort of high conflict personality at play here or inner conflict or something within her. She told me last week it would be great if I could have brought home a bag of stuff from our old apartment (we’re trying to get it entirely cleaned out). I hadn’t, but she hadn’t asked me to do so, only mentioned it at the end of the day.

Today she asked me to go clean out my old closet a bit and bring a bunch of old clothes to charity, so it did. She was with me in the old apartment briefly and we selected some things to bring home. While I was alone there cleaning out my closet, I found a bunch of other relevant stuff that I brought home with me in an effort to also clean out the old apartment.

When I arrived home and she saw the two bags of stuff I had brought she asked me: “Why did you bring all this stuff back with you???”

 

[trvadams]

@ajewelinhiscrown Oh yeah, didn't you know when you became a SAHD you're supposed to be a mind-reader, also?!

How often does she flip out on you? It sounds like she's just constantly belittling you in front of the kids. Have you ever considered that she might be abusive to you? I know that gets thrown around on reddit a lot, but it really seems like she uses you as her emotional punching bag to just let all her frustrations out on.