Husband refuses to take up housework and expects breadwinner wife to do everything, sparking debate

Almost every relationship starts on a good note. Everything is harmonious until the dreaded "chore wars" arise. Unfortunately, society often places the majority of household duties on women, leaving men who don’t even pick up their dirty socks off the bedroom floor. A woman—who goes by @glensof on Mumsnet—faced a similar dilemma. After moving in with her partner, things began to go downhill. She turned to the platform for advice on how to teach him to share household chores with her.

“Living with a partner who is used to SAHM (stay-at-home mother)/homemaker dynamic,” the woman titled the post on Mumsnet. She described that she moved in with her partner six months ago. She didn’t feel any red flags in her relationship until the matter of housework popped up. “Our relationship is brilliant in all respects, apart from one: he does absolutely zero ‘housework’ of any sorts,” she shared. The woman confessed that when it came to household work, her partner was “roughly at the level of a pre-schooler.” She explained that he not only avoided physical chores like laundry or cooking but also didn’t participate in tasks that required just the mental load, such as scheduling doctor’s appointments or managing bills. “All his previous partners/wives have been 100% homemakers and he doesn’t have much experience living on his own or with a woman who has to work for a living,” she added.

She said that although her partner used to be financially successful in the past, “circumstances have changed quite dramatically.” Being the sole breadwinner of their household, the woman said she often felt “annoyed” because, after a long, stressful day of work, she had to “have a second shift picking his socks from the floor and collecting dishes/mugs from the house.” The woman even tried to communicate with her partner, but when that didn’t work out, she resorted to putting all the weight of housework on her shoulders. She let go of the possibility that he could unlearn 40 years of his previous coupled life where he didn’t do any of these chores. “I feel like a nagging shallow b*t*h, so I just do it myself,” she expressed.

“He's used to socks and mugs magically disappearing, the car somehow always being fully charged just when he needs it, fairies delivering a delicious dinner straight to the table each night and dentist appointments in his calendar just popping up when the time comes. He genuinely just doesn't see these tasks and understand how long they take or how frequently they need to be done,” the woman described. The exhausted woman concluded the post by saying that this trait of her partner annoyed her so much because she “loves him to bits” and didn’t like being angry at him. But when the threshold was crossed, she didn’t have a choice. “I am quite a messy creature myself and have a higher than average tolerance to domestic chaos, but it now started getting even to me, and I was a bit snappy several times,” she said.

Her post attracted hundreds of replies from people who argued that the man needed to change. “Will he recover his financial success? Would you want to be a housewife if he does? If either answer is no, he needs to change, you need to accept it or you need to leave,” said @CrestWhite. @Graygoose ranted, “I understand you must love this man, but what is he bringing to the table exactly? Because it sounds like you provide for him financially and domestically while he...?”