“WTF Is Up With My Love Life?” blogger Alison Steedman shares the hilarious domestic disparity between she and her boyfriend.
The Good Feed Blog editors are excited to share an essay from our friends at WTF Is Up With My Love Life?, a hip, sassy site devoted to navigating a “post-dating world” in which the old rules of romance do not apply.
Nobody is perfect, even that beloved someone. How to reconcile with the things they do that drives you nuts.
The Situation
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to my adulthood. I co-habitate with a man I expect to marry. I have multiple friends who have babies, multiple friends who own houses, multiple friends whose weddings I attend, am in. I am thirty. Only, like most women of my generation, I grew up thinking marriage was an option, not an absolute. And in the same way marriage or even partnership is an option, the terms of what it entails and the paths to it are also open.
For me, I determined this to loosely include:
1) Moving in with the person I think I want to marry first.
2) Waiting till I knew myself pretty well to make that decision.
3) Finding a man who knew himself equally well.
4) Finding a partner who loves the things I love.
5) Finding a partner who compliments my personality and I his.
6) Finding a partner who would share our responsibilities as partners equally, financially, emotionally…domestically. Oh, wait.
Because, ladies and gentleman, the above image shows how my boyfriend folds things. That is, if he folds things, because that picture was taken while we were doing our laundry together and I said “Here, Babe, fold this,” when he started to stuff all our hot, freshly laundered clothing and sheets back into the laundry bag to die wrinkled deaths in a compacted ball.Now, you guys, it’s not like my boyfriend, Brad Pitt, doesn’t know how to fold things. Ask him about his stint in retail at Abercrombie and Fitch in 2001. And, if any of you have ever worked retail, or hell, been inside a Gap, you know that retail stores are folding Nazis. I worked at Benetton in high school and they had a special board you had to fold the sweaters around so that they were all exactly the same size.
Other domestic events that have also happened in our first month together.
Brad made our bed. He couldn’t figure out the fitted sheet and put it on so that the narrow part of the sheet elasticked to the wide part of our queen bed and visa versa. The sheet puffed over the top of our mattress like the top of a chef’s hat and came off the first night we slept on it with a loud “SNAP.” In Brad’s old apartment, his sheets weren’t the right size for his mattress, so he had no frame of reference. He also washed said sheets about every six weeks.
When Brad does the dishes, he’ll puts pots still caked with food in the dishwasher. And as a dishwasher is not actually a fleet of tiny dish elves who scrub pots and pans, those pots come out still not clean. He will also sometimes stack those dirty pans on top of the expensive and pretty platesthat I have been collecting piecemeal in discount stores for several years.
Sometimes, when I watch him try to do something in our house, I feel like I’ve walked into a romantic comedy. Except, I thought those gender generalizations were just jokes. And condescending ones at that. I mean, the idea of a clueless, wrinkled bachelor with pink eye à la Knocked Up isn’t exactly complementary. But, when Brad and I moved in together, I found that I either did or took the lead on almost everything having to do with setting up our house and running our life together.
Now, I suppose we could all just dump our stuff in the closets and go about our day. There is no rule that you have to wash your sheets once a week, do the dishes and keep your taxes in files. And, truth-be-told for a lot of the last decade I, too, lived in a sometimes-vacuumed 100 square-foot section of a medium-shitty Brooklyn apartment. Everything remotely important I kept in a plastic accordion folder shoved somewhere in the back of my closet.
Except, now that I’ve done this “growing up and settling down” thing, all the lessons my mother and grandmother ever taught me about how to make a home and a family have become relevant and are starting to kick in.
And Then We Clash
Now, Brad is as kind and sweet and devoted as they come, and – this is important – he would never actively neglect to help me. That said, I don’t think anything like “a vision for a home” has ever crossed his mind. Is it genetic? Probably a bit. Is it cultural? Definitely. Brad’s mother is the sweetest, but very traditional. She cooked for, cleaned for and spoiled her only son and only child. That said, while genetics and culture are all well and good, I do not intend to shoulder the burden of administrating our life and home alone.
Therefore, Brad’s gap in experience regarding has caused some sparks between the two of us.
1) My vision is not his vision. Just because I want something done a certain way because it has value to me, doesn’t mean it has value to him. It would appear that compromise applies here. Also, a bit of understanding. Brad tries hard to be a good guy. It’s a top priority for him, so I can understand how he might feel beleaguered or overwhelmed when I get annoyed at him for not doing things “my way.”
2) At the same time, there are real and functional reasons keeping things nice is well, nice. But because Brad’s lived as a poor writer for a decade, I feel like he doesn’t completely understand those upsides. (Like having friends over for dinner in our clean, airy kitchen with flowers on the table, to eat that tomato eggplant bisque I made from scratch). This make me seem like a taskmaster. Things he’s said, “I don’t want to walk around my house with some kind of list of things you want me to do floating above my head, when I don’t even know what that list is.” Whereas I’m thinking, “There’s crap on the rug. Vacuum. Isn’t it obvious!?”
3) Brad’s gap in housekeeping experience puts me in the position of having to teach my partner things like, why a pants hanger is good, or how to use the vacuum cleaner attachments to suck up the cat hair under the couch every week or so. This is a weird, unequal place, that frustrates both of us even when Brad is cool with learning, and my children, regardless of gender, will know what the fuck dryer sheets are.
4) The disparity between our experiences freaks me out. It feels – in my most panicked state – like an uphill battle and an injustice. I start having visions of those headlines about how modern women still do most of the housework in addition to having a career. And I also have flashbacks to my mother’s short-lived marriage to my father, where her job was to clean things up and his to drop them. Those worries cause me to get a little ahead of myself. Example: “We can’t have two children running around in diapers and you just sitting there playing video games for three hours in the morning!!!” God help me, I said this.
5) I also get annoyed because the things that I’m doing aren’t for my own benefit, but rather for the two of us, and yet they end up being a source of conflict. I want us to have a nice life where we eat good dinners, pay our bills on time, and walk through our house without getting cat litter stuck to our feet, together.
And Then We Make Up
Ultimately, I realize this is all just part of the learning curve of living together. And this problem would be a very different one if Brad expected me to cook and clean and set up a house, rather than just not always understanding the particulars. But two generations away from my grandparents, this experience is not one that I expected.
However, there’s another factor at play here. Which is that, while I’m really good at things like making our plane reservations and watching the mail for coupons. Brad’s really good at things like relaxing, taking things in stride, and not yelling at our nuts downstairs neighbor. In fact, I could make an argument that Brad is actually the sweeter and more sensitive of the two of us, which certainly defies gender. And given my tendency toward Type-A obsession, his warmth is invaluable.
Brad and I love each other. Both of us bring things to our relationship. And in the end, because of course Brad isn’t a bonehead romcom slob, he has started to Swiffer. On my end, I’ve remembered that hardly anything can be what you expect or plan it to be entirely, and that’s okay. Because, whether it’s my grandparents in 1950 or Brad and I in 2012, what’s most important is that couple’s respect each other equally. What is equally? It’s a long life. It’s hard to say. These are little things.
A former New Yorker, Alison Steedman lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and their histrionic cat Charles Dickens, where she writes all day, everyday. She warmly accepts praise and monetary gifts. You can follow her @yosteedman.
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Is this a person she wants to marry or a house pet? Presuming he is a functional adult – woman up, take responsibility for doing your part to change a situation that is not to your liking. Talk adult to adult with respect and courtesy and state your position and what changes you would like to see made to make a more satisfactory living environment for both of you. Then listen and hear him out and negotiate until all parties are equally happy or unhappy as the case maybe.
I enjoyed the essay and the good humor it was written in, but I picked up on a familiar attitude that I don’t agree with, which is that in a situation where one person has higher housekeeping/hygiene standards than the other, the higher standards are for the benefit of everybody, while the lower standards person is just a lazy slob. This essay conforms with the stereotypical scenario where it’s the woman who’s more demanding and the man who’s the slob, but I don’t think the mismatch or the attitude is always gendered that way, so my comments are really about that situation, not the genders involved.
Imagine that your standards of cleanliness and personal hygiene were the same as they are now, but instead of being a slob, Brad’s standards were so high as to be almost surgically sterile. Every dish and piece of silverware had to be individually soaped and rinsed with hot water before going into the dishwasher, so the process was more like sterilizing than cleaning. Bed linens had to be changed every day (or two at the most) because he couldn’t stand sleeping in the same sweat and sloughed skin night after night. Floors should be vacuumed and mopped every day because even though he didn’t allow shoes in the house, stepping in the least bit of grit or dirt makes him feel filthy, and it would be shameful to consider having guests over.
If Brad shouldered most of the load of maintaining those standards, above and beyond what you found acceptable and comfortable, how great would the benefit be to you? How easily could you relax knowing that the smallest of messes or clutter would aggravate him, even if by your standards, it was something you’d tidy up in a few hours or days? Would his superior housekeeping feel like a benefit you shared in equally, if you did way more housekeeping than you otherwise would just to keep him from being resentful? Maybe you’d help out because he’s a great guy in lots of other ways and you want to make him happy like he does for you, but would it be fair of him to decide his way was better for both of you, just because he had the higher standards?
Back to Actual Brad. I think if he’s content to live with sloppily folded laundry and wrinkles don’t bother him or make him self-conscious, then if you fold the laundry your way, you’re doing it for you, not for both of you. Same goes for washing dishes more thoroughly, changing sheets more often, or whatever else. If he changes those habits, it’s still *for you*, either because it pleases you and he wants to please you, or because it keeps the peace. I’m only guessing, but I imagine some of the conflict comes from treating something *you* care about more as something that’s equally important or valuable to both of you. I don’t know about Brad, but most days, I’d rather be on the couch playing a video game than under it vacuuming cat hair I can’t see and don’t care about. If you eased up on housekeeping and put that extra leisure time into playing video games with Brad, that quality time would be for both your benefit, right?
I hate folding and putting away clothes, and I do not soak dishes. But I also hate clutter. Couples need to be as explicit with their domestic issues as with sexual needs. Cause this is what happens in terms of annoyance and resentment.
run brad run!
Imagine that your standards of cleanliness and personal hygiene were the same as they are now, but instead of being a slob, Brad’s standards were so high as to be almost surgically sterile. Every dish and piece of silverware had to be individually soaped and rinsed with hot water before going into the dishwasher, so the process was more like sterilizing than cleaning. Bed linens had to be changed every day (or two at the most) because he couldn’t stand sleeping in the same sweat and sloughed skin night after night. Floors should be vacuumed and mopped every day because even though he didn’t allow shoes in the house, stepping in the least bit of grit or dirt makes him feel filthy, and it would be shameful to consider having guests over.
In this case Brad would be considered to a controlling abusive man.
Entertaining article. Reminds me a LOT of “The Breakup” with Vince Vaugn and Jennifer Aniston. Ultimately, as much as the loved each other in many ways, they couldn’t get past these same issues.
They obviously didn’t really know each other all that well. Moving in and THEN getting to know the other person seems kind of backwards to me. Seems like it oughta be the other way round.
When my wife and I moved in together (after we were married) there were no surprise frustrations. We spend the time upfront to know exactly what we were getting into. We had discussed everything we could think of and knew each other long enough to really know who we were moving in with.
Before moving in we decided who would do what, and we knew basically what the standards were going to be. I was to clean, she would cook and do laundry. I would work more, especially after children came along. She might not want to work at all then, if the money coming in could support us.
All these years later, it’s pretty much the same as when we discussed it before we got married. I clean, she cooks and does laundry. And, now the kids are cleaning and helping with laundry too.
Frankly, if you communicate in advance, it’s not that complicated. The key is to find someone with whom one is compatible.
My family has a simple solution to this problem….get a maid to clean once every two weeks. Problem solved.
Well I think this article is a bit too gender essentialist for my liking. More then that though, this bit here:
“At the same time, there are real and functional reasons keeping things nice is well, nice. But because Brad’s lived as a poor writer for a decade, I feel like he doesn’t completely understand those upsides.”
is really classist as well. Poor people don’t care about keeping things tidy less than rich people do. They just don’t always have the money or time to do so.
I agree that its classist. And the title is misandristic in likening men to dogs.
Funny that she says she intends to marry him but not that THEY intend to get married.
I hope, for his sake, he says no when she pops the question.
“I hope, for his sake, he says no when she pops the question.”
That is insulting and uncalled for.
. . . In your opinion.
I wouldn’t recommend that anyone marry a person who considered them like a dog who must be housebroken, male or female. A dog.
That’s far more insulting than hoping someone says no to a proposal could EVER be. Incredible and sad that you’re cool with the former but object to the latter.
Oh for fuck’s sake…I am not okay with the former. This article is a pile of pants. Housebreaking a human being? What the hell…that’s messed up. Where in me saying this article is too gender essentialist do you get that I’m okay with it? For crying out loud, Eric.
But just because this article is so bad doesn’t mean the comments about the author need to stoop to it’s level. That’s no need to be mean about it.
You didn’t object to it at all. No mention. Until now.
Instead you objected to my recommendation that this poor chap not agree to marry someone (anyone) who would refer to him as a dog and who looks down on him (as you pointed out). That’s not being mean; that’s common sense.
I made no comments about her personally whatsoever.
“But just because this article is so bad doesn’t mean the comments about the author need to stoop to it’s level. That’s no need to be mean about it.”
So here’s the question then and I ask because it seems to be a pattern; how can the article itself escape moderation and be posted for public consumption but a reply to it get slammed?
Well couple of things. I’m not an editor…so I’ve absolutely no say in what articles get published or not. I am a moderator…but you’ll notice my reply to Eric’s comment was just as me. That was me, personally, saying that there’s no need to be mean about it. Eric’s comment wasn’t moderated.
First, I don’t think it’s fair to go from “I don’t think that’s funny” to “I will interpret every joke that failed to make me laugh as though it was meant in all seriousness.” Writers exaggerate and/or use metaphors for effect, especially when they’re trying to be funny. To go from “I think that joke isn’t funny” to “I hope the guy doesn’t marry her” seems like a pretty disproportionate and personally insulting escalation.
Second, the author did not characterize the man as a dog in need of housebreaking. Have you learned nothing about misleading headlines yet? A lot of headlines here (or anywhere) are not written by the authors, and in their quest to be provocative and attract eyeballs, headline writers sometimes taint the piece by setting an expectation or tone that was never intended by the author. It’s easier to check up on a piece like this because there’s a link at the top to where it was originally published. If you followed it, you would discover the title there was “Relationship Rants: How My Boyfriend (Doesn’t) Fold Things”. That may not float your boat, either, but the words “housebreaking”, “domesticating”, and “dog” don’t appear at all, so that particular beef you have is with whoever wrote the headline, not the author. Even if you don’t like it, though, can you see why an editor might think the newer title would attract more attention on a men’s site (and was probably right)?
“Writers exaggerate and/or use metaphors for effect, especially when they’re trying to be funny. To go from “I think that joke isn’t funny” to “I hope the guy doesn’t marry her” seems like a pretty disproportionate and personally insulting escalation.”
What specifically is the personal insult? What was said about her as a person? And, She is the one that made demeaning personal comments about him. I made no personal comments about either of them.
First, I DO hope the chap doesn’t marry her (at least at this time), based on her own description of the relationship.
Second, likening anyone to a dog needing housebreaking isn’t funny. I guess unless the person being spoken about is male. THEN it’s funny, right?
Third, the term “housebreaking” is used ONLY with respect to dogs.
Fourth, if the article was titled, “Relationship Rants: How My Boyfriend (Doesn’t) Fold Things” this would not be an issue here. However, the writer apparently either selected or permitted it. I would never have allowed my wife to be referred to as needing housebreaking, as it’s insulting, demeaning, and not funny.
Fifth, we both know that that headline would never (in a million years) have been used regarding a woman. It would have been considered misogynistic and the writer castigated to no end in far, far, far harsher terms than someone hoping the victim didn’t marry him.
“Even if you don’t like it, though, can you see why an editor might think the newer title would attract more attention on a men’s site (and was probably right)?”
Of course, I am from NY; the NY Post creates sensational headlines every day, but implying that men are dogs is just as misandristic as implying that women are dogs is misogynistic; however, our society finds misarndry comical but misogyny criminal. This is yet more evidence of that.
Though there are occasionally points you make, Eric M., that I agree with, I expect based on experience we’re unlikely to persuade each other on the points we don’t, so I’ll just respond to one point where I think you’re being disingenuous, and another where I think you flatly misunderstand the editorial process, only because you haven’t been in it enough (at GMP, at least) to know:
Imagine a hypothetical commenter sees one or more of your comments and finds you to be…poor husband material. Instead of calling you a jerk, they say, “I hope your wife divorces you, based on your description of how you think marriage should be.” That wouldn’t feel personal? I think you could reasonably expect to read between the lines and perceive some insults in such a comment, even if it was phrased passive aggressively enough to avoid direct name-calling or frontal assaults on your character. It’s the comment equivalent of holding a finger two inches away from someone’s nose and saying, “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”
Not at all. Writers at GMP can submit with headlines, but most don’t, and editors get final say anyway. Headlines (and subheads) often get added as the final touch before publishing, but even when there’s enough lead time to consult the author about the title, it’s as a courtesy (with feedback or alternate suggestions welcome), not to get permission. It is not a routine step in the process. The same goes for final copy editing, which is mostly corrections to spelling and grammar, but occasionally entails changes to wording or phrasing that the editor thinks improves the clarity and quality (else they wouldn’t touch it) but can inadvertently tweak the tone or meaning in ways the author didn’t intend or approve. Authors are welcome to speak up and sometimes changes will even be made if they request a change (with good reasons) in a timely manner, but most authors don’t. If you know a way to get more authors to submit with good headlines and subheads included, without slowing the publishing schedule to a crawl, I’m sure many editors would love to hear it.
“Though there are occasionally points you make, Eric M., that I agree with”
Occasionally!?!?!? Get your head in the game, Marcus. You should know by now that I am ALWAYS right.
Now, regarding the horribly egregious “personal insult”:
1) If it’s necessary to “read between the lines and perceive” an insult, how much of a “personal insult” could it be? Is it as bad as saying they are obsessed with violence?
2) Telling someone that you hope his wife divorces them is not an insult; it’s wishing him ill will.
3) Most reasonable people can see a clear distinction between hoping someone gets divorced and hoping two people who seem ill suited for each other never get married – so that they avoid getting divorced, which his obviously far more disruptive than never marrying that person to start with.
The headline is misandristic, whoever chose it. Obviously, such would never be said about a woman here.
I hate that you are right about that Marcus. It ruins pieces for me, really. It’s a pageviews game, I guess and you can’t get page views from good solid writing and honest titles?
Thank you, Marcus!
You’re welcome. I didn’t write this headline, but I’ve written many others, and it’s not easy combining catchy with accurate. Sometimes editors whiff, including me. (If you notice it right away, though, feel free to contact an editor – you might get it changed before too much inertia has set in.)
Regarding the clothes-folding, it may cheer you up that a couple days before your article appeared, I made an impulse buy of a folding gadget for neatly folding shirts the same way every time. There’s hope! On the other hand, I’ve folded a grand total of three shirts with it so far, right after I took it out of the box and unfolded three shirts to try it out. All hope is lost.
Here is how the ” women still do most of the housework in addition to having a career. breaks down; women decide how THEIR house should be and look and when men don’t do the work to make it look the way their wife/girlfriend wants, the woman is suddenly doing ‘more then her share’. I grew up in a house like this (as most of us did); my mother wanted the dishes done at a certain time (Immediatfuckingly) and certain way (if it wasn’t it ended up on your bed), the same with the floors, closets, kitchen, bathroom you name it. My father didn’t care and didn’t force her to clean a thing. However we all marched to her drum and lived in fear of a spoon in the sink .My most endurnig memory of my childhood is my father saying ‘make sure you do the dishes before your mother gets home’ because he was terrified of her saying ‘before I yell at your kids i want to make sure this fork isn’t yours’, not a lot of fun when you’ve just worked an eight hour week. In fact we have a cartoon my father drew of himself on the refrigerator to this day of him naked to the waste, hair askew, looking terrified, hand on Bible saying “I swear I washed them I swear I washed them”.
This article therefore is not in the slightest way funny to me. I have lived with two women and set the ground rules from the start; here are the basics for ‘cleanliness’ we can agree on; anything about that YOU can be responsible for or not. If a few dishes in the sink for an hour freak you out deal with your OCD on your own and clean them happily and don’t resent me for it. This isn’t *your* house it is ours. I will never be one of those men who bring in my own furniture and have the woman ixnay it because it doesn’t fit into her idea of her home. We just live with that as another axiom; there is a commercial for something or other on the air now where that happens in several scenes; the woman is arranging the living room or dining room ‘with’ the guy she just moved in with and each time he brings in something of his she shakes her head and says ‘no way get rid of it’. What has happened to men in America???
I lived a man like the female in this article and had some difficulty finding humor as well. Each dish had to be hand washed and hand dried immediately. Folding was necessary all the time and heaven forbid the fitted sheets were not folded correctly. In all honesty living with him reminded me of the movie Sleeping with the Enemy where everything had to be right because of his OCD. I was surrounded by his stuff because my stuff didn’t fit his aesthetic.
Honest to goodness, male or female if someone was getting on me about folding clothes or how I should hang my clothes correctly… they would get a good healthy eye roll at best. And as someone who has never actually used a dishwasher (as I do my dishes by hand when the mood hits) I would probably think there were elves in the dishwasher as well that came out to clean stuff.
If that ever happened again I would think the person I moved in with would have spent some time at my house prior to moving in and noticed I don’t sweep every day (another thing my ex was a fan of), my dishes get done when I have time, I certainly don’t fold my clothes and it’s lucky if they get hung up in general, and dusting happens when the mood hits. They would be familiar with my lack of domesticity.
I wonder if the writer of this article and her boyfriend spent any substantial time at each other’s living spaces and discussed how they were going to handle what were probably obvious differences?
But I had trouble seeing the humor too because of my own bias.
“I wonder if the writer of this article and her boyfriend spent any substantial time at each other’s living spaces and discussed how they were going to handle what were probably obvious differences?”
Apparently not.
Relationships whose success is predicated on one person changing the other into who they really want to be with seldom work out for either party.
Okay guys, hi there, I wrote this.
1) I did not select that title, nor was I given approval on it. When I read it, I thought it was demeaning. Also, the editors took out a large portion of the piece in which I give backstory as to where my model for my home and family life would be. Feel free to read that portion in the original post. All of this comes from a really happy experience I had growing up that I wanted to emulate. I understand that the original piece was long, but the edit was far more polarizing. Sadly. But, given the fact that I’m an internet writer, I get the pageviews battle.
2) I feel like the majority of you are missing the self-awareness evident in this piece. The last line is “These are little things.” In the end, Brad and I met in the middle. He got a little more proactive & I relaxed.
3) Funny, you guys picked up on this, but Brad and I lived on different sides of the country before we lived together. We love each other tremendously, but a total learning curve. But that’s the way it goes sometimes.
4) Classist? Sister, Brad and I are equally poor. But now that we’re both working writers & sharing expenses, we both have a bit more time and resources. It’s wonderful and I’m so grateful.
5) To all of you haters…my-oh-my.
6) And most importantly, I thought this was a feminist website? Do none of you have any sympathy for the work that women and men too have to do establish themselves on equal footing? Are there any strong, successful women out there who deeply fear this: http://www.xojane.com/relationships/woman-wheres-my-waffle? I would like to think so.
7) Ah gender wars, but sometimes, just like a romcom, those jokes are funny. JOKES GUY. JOKES.
Hiya Alison,
So yeah this isn’t a feminist website, firstly. As to the classist bit…well it looked to me like you were implying poor people don’t appreciate nice things. Or that poor people somehow don’t understand the need to keep things nice. So I’ll ask, since you’re here….what exactly did you mean by that line?
I just mean that when you’re young and poor you don’t keep stuff as nice because you’re transient. I did the same thing, and loved it. See 100 sq feet of medium shitty apt line.
Yeah but wouldn’t that be more of a youth thing, than a poor thing? I know a bunch of pretty wealthy students who also don’t keep things nice because they’re transient.
Sure, who knows? But in our case we were all three. Young, poor and transient, the triumvirate of street furniture.