Oh, Weaponized Incompetence

Few things piss me off like weaponized incompetence. You hand me a guy who pretends he doesn’t know how to properly load a dishwasher; I assure you I’m going to lose my shit. Quickly.

We all know them, though. The guy who won’t even lift his feet as his wife is running the vacuum with a baby literally breastfeeding at the same time. The guy who changed a diaper. Once. When his wife had the flu and threatened him with divorce when he tried to call his mother to come do it.

For many years, I was so lucky and never appreciated it. My first husband, OCD about cleanliness, just like myself. He wouldn’t do dishes, though. That was his hill to die on. Which should be okay, right? Wrong.

I was working 60-hour weeks, he was unemployed and home playing Madden with the neighbor all day. I had better not come home to dishes in the sink. And now you understand why I’m no longer married.

Actually, it wasn’t the dishes. It was 5 years later, when he finally got a job, and I came home unexpectedly one day to find he had hidden his truck across the street at his brother’s so he could play hookie from work. He hid his hookie day from me. I knew then we weren’t partners, and we never would be. He viewed me as a warden, not a wife.

Why? Weaponized incompetence. He was perfect capable of working. He just didn’t feel it was necessary. Of course, why would it be? I wasn’t going to let us starve or have the power cut off. As long as he kept it semi-decent with me, he knew he at least had a roof and the basic necessities in life, because I needed them too.

He made me feel like I was a literal meal ticket, even though I knew it wasn’t really like that. Until the hookie day. When it was like that.

My second husband, may he rest in peace, was the most self-sufficient man I’ve ever known. Like a cat. And he was 45, never married, so he had a home he maintained well, he was a mechanic, so he did preventative maintenance on the washing machine and tune ups on our vehicles. He cooked, and well.

There was nothing that he actually needed me for, and asked me to do. It made me feel very much like an outsider in our home. He had his way of doing things, and I was just a guest watching him go on about his daily life. We split for other reasons, and he has since passed away, but I guarantee you when he did, that house was spotless, and the generator had its’ yearly service performed.

My ex of late, Andy. Ran a home, kept it relatively clean, at least the surface cleaning. Did laundry, cooked, handled the bills, was completely on top of shit. I don’t have a habit of keeping company with men who don’t, because I have always worked at least one 40 hour a week job, sometimes 2 or more of them. I won’t come home to a messy house when I know good and damned well I didn’t leave one however many hours prior when I went to work.

I made the mistake one time. And it still makes me seethe with anger when I think about it. The abusive ex, that asshole, apparently thought he was royalty and never had to hang up a towel, wash a dish, wipe his feet on the mat, or anything else that men with even the slimmest level of home training know how to do. He was feral in the nastiest of ways, and it still makes me want to square up with him.

People always say, “well, just don’t do it for them. Make them do it eventually.” Those people don’t seem to understand the level of nasty that these jackasses are willing to live in to avoid actually being grown-ups and picking up after themselves. When I tell you, every dish in the house dirty, not a clean towel or clean stitch of clothing, floor tile you would stick to, stained toilets, the entire nine yards.

And it didn’t even phase him. Not for a second.

If that isn’t the nastiest shit I’ve ever seen in my life, I’ll eat off his floors.

If I asked him to clean anything, pick up anything, wash anything, it was like a petulant child was in the room. An outright tantrum, screaming and acting as though I had told him he had to bathe more than once a week. Yeah. That too.

I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, and I pray I never see it again. But because of him, I understand why these women just give in and run the vacuum while breastfeeding as their husbands play Call of Duty for the 19th consecutive hour. If they don’t, they’ll be sticking to the tile by dinner this evening.

For some of us, that’s not an option for even an hour. I’m one of those women, one of those “I rag mop followed by steam mop” women. Daily. Sometimes twice. I can’t stand the thought of living in filth, because I grew up in sketchy ass places, and some things you just can’t bleach the white trash out of.

Never again.

So, even though I wanted to let that overgrown asshole of a toddler stew in his own filth, that’s never going to be a viable option for me. And with the behavior on top of it, it got to the point that I just refused to even look at him. He disgusted me that much, and for good reason. Why waste my time trying to ask him to act like a grown up or a partner, when there wasn’t a chance in hell he was ever going to be either of those things?

Some things just aren’t worth the fight. I understand the women out there at their wits end with their husband who pretends he can’t scrub a toilet. Or is too stupid to wash a load of laundry. These are complex tasks, after all. Hell, I was all of 9 before I could do them correctly.

I’m of the mindset that you can’t fix these kinds of guys. They’re always going to think that someone owes them something, that they’re too important to do such menial tasks like cleaning up their messes, or acting like they have been taught any level of responsibility. It’s never going to matter to them, because they know they can just continue to be selfish pigs, and someone will get sick of it, and make the mess disappear. Sadly, they’re usually right.

If your husband acts this way, sis, just throw the whole damned man out. He isn’t going to get any better. You’re just going to get more fed up, and too tired to keep asking for help. Toss that Pigpen wanna-be out on his ear and do better next time. I know I did.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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