I was talking to my best friend on the phone last week. She was fuming at her husband. She was knee-deep with a tantruming child at the doctor’s office and when he didn’t do a single thing to help her, his excuse was (yes, it’s an excuse), “You are so much better at that stuff so I just thought I’d stay out of the way.”
And when my sister decided to go back to school after staying home with her three kids, she began rage cleaning at night after studying. Instead of helping out with the household chores because she was in school eight hours a day working on her master’s degree, her husband said that she was just going to have to accept that the house was going to be messy because she did a better job, and he was better off staying out of the way.
I’ve seen it time and time again
Husbands sitting on the sofa not doing their part because they claim they won’t do it right, and it’s just better if they stay out of the way and let their wives do it. It seems to me that’s a gateway to get out of doing anything and the culprit is pure laziness.
Husbands claim their wives are better at everything — the cooking, the cleaning, the taking care of the kids, the moving the sofa when it needs to be vacuumed under, putting away the groceries.
I’m not talking about when their wife or partner clearly says to them, “I’ve got it honey, I can take care of it.” I’m talking about when she’s depleted. When she has nothing left. When she’s so tired she can’t think straight because she does all the things all the time and they know it.
I’m talking about when they could swoop in and make her life easier and take some of the physical and mental load off her shoulders and not "help" her, but simply do their damn part, and they don’t because you claim it’s better if they stay out of the way.
It’s funny how men are all in when it comes to mansplaining something to someone but they say they don’t know how to clean the toilet good enough, or they can’t seem to find the butter. It’s an act because they don’t want their lives interrupted that much, or because they are tired, or they feel they’ve already met their quota for the day.
Well guess what?
Moms don’t have excuses like that. I mean, we do, but we push past them because if we didn't not even half the crap that we do all day would get done.
So to all the partners of the world: stop thinking that just because you aren’t sure how to handle something, you’re off the hook. Stop thinking it’s your wife’s job to manage the family. And stop saying things will be better if you stay out of the way.
Moms are drowning
They want their significant other to help and they want to feel like their partners want to lighten the load for them whether they know how to do something right or not.
Get up and do what needs to be done — whether you do it on your own or with your partner. And if you don't know how to do something, figure it out. Moms do it many times over on any given day, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you.