piece of advice from an old tumblr person: if you are a woman and you are dating a man, do not settle down with, cohabitate with, or marry a man who needs you to do basic things to take care of him. like, if he can’t cook food for himself, go shopping, do laundry, clean a house, keep his own calendar, make his own doctors’ appointments, fill out his own forms, do his own taxes, etc. you are setting yourself up for a relationship full of you caring for another adult like a child.
partners help EACH OTHER. sometimes people have very valid reasons they can’t do those things, but they should also help YOU with things that are hard for you and easy for them, whether it’s basic emotional support, chores, paperwork, making phone calls, etc. if they say they ‘don’t know how’ to do something and expect you to do it instead of learning how to do it, they are not worth your time.
if your male partner’s parents did not prepare him to take care of himself, do not become his second mother. find a partner who can take care of you as much as you take care of him, and can take care of himself as well as you take care of yourself.
and if that means being single forever, get yourself a cat and lean in, because being a grown-ass man’s second momma is a bitch and a half. I’m married to a fairly fucking aware feminist-identified man and he still can’t take care of himself for shit and it is the one major source of tension in our marriage and it has led to so much tension now that I’m in med school that I have repeatedly seriously contemplated divorce. It’s not a small issue, it’s not trivial. You are a PERSON, not an endlessly nurturing selfless machine. You deserve to have your own story, not be picking up socks in someone else’s.
I’ve been in a relationship where I “mothered” my boyfriend and it was the most frustrating thing in the world. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t cute. It was annoying and it drove me crazy. I still cannot believe how incapable an almost grown ass man can be. Do NOT settle for immaturity and laziness.
CAN WE NOT GENDER THIS. cause i often felt like a mother to a past girlfriend, it can happen with same-sex relationships too.
That’s called co-dependency and agreeing with the non-gendered crap; Anyone can be guilty of this.
this post is about men taking advantage of women’s emotional and domestic labor, so sorry, it has to be ‘gendered’
Listen this not a rare phenomenon and it’s highly normalized in American society. Commercials for cleaning products or ready meals often make jokes of the fact that men don’t know how to perform basic adult tasks like doing their own laundry, making their own food, or cleaning up after themselves. As women we’re “supposed” to laugh and elbow them in the ribs while we fix their mistakes and do the work for them. But that is not healthy nor is it fair.
This issue is kinda gendered and while it can go all ways it is frequently skewed in favor of men. So, if you want to discuss how all genders should know how to take care of themselves and balance household tasks with their partners for the sake of their well being and relationship, make your own post.
While we’re worried about over-gendering could we also stop being massively ableist with the assertion that disabled people, but in this case specifically disabled men, are undeserving of romance?
I understand the actual problem to be able-bodied, neurotypical men who pass responsibilities onto their wives with a flimsy justification of gender roles.
When you describe a person as unable to “keep his own calendar, make his own doctors’ appointments, fill out his own forms” you are describing a disabled person, not toxic masculinity.
nope. I, the OP, am a mentally ill and physically disabled person, and I assure you I’m not describing people like me. as I said in the post, there are very valid reasons some people can’t do those things, but if your partner has you do those things and doesn’t support you in the ways they CAN, they aren’t a partner. and its insulting to disabled people to imply that we can’t provide anything to our partners even if they do have to help us with many basic things.
SO MUCH THIS. even abled people who are bad at / don’t like Chore X can arrange with their partner to do none of the X… so long as they’re doing ALL of the Y. that’s part of the joy of having a partner in the first place – you both get help where you need it. all that’s important is a fair division of labor. if your partner expects you to do all the work, there’s a good chance they don’t respect you, and you’d be better off on your own.
So okay, personal sharing time! I have not nor ever will get married, precisely because every relationship I had with a guy in my younger years—every single one, and I was with some good guys—devolved into them fobbing work off onto me because they ‘didn’t know how’ or I was ‘so much better at it’ (one guy said this about the way I did LAUNDRY). And I was determined never to live with anyone who forced me to take care of them because they felt like being taken care of.
However, because life is like that some time, I’ve ended up in a position where I am a full-time caretaker for my father, since my mother died years ago and I’m an only child. He has early-onset dementia and literally can’t do most of the things that one would expect a “partner,” or indeed a roommate, to do. He can’t unload the dishwasher anymore because he doesn’t remember where things should go. He can’t do laundry because he gets confused as to what clothes are clean and what are dirty, and even what he should do with clothes that are wet. He can’t take the dogs for walks unsupervised because even in the neighborhood we’ve lived in for years, he will get lost. He can’t do paperwork, or make appointments, or make dinner. Even answering the phone is hard for him.
But he tries. My god, it breaks my heart how he tries. He’ll offer to go with me to walk the dogs every time; he’ll hover in the kitchen while I’m cooking and I try to find him something to do, and he’s always thrilled to do it. When we go grocery shopping, he’s in charge of carrying the cloth bags we bring in and he’s so proud that he gets to help. We go to the swimming pool and even though he doesn’t swim, he sits quietly with his magazine and every time I finish a few laps and rest he shouts encouragement. He’s supportive of everything I do and listens to all my complaints, and he does what he can and is incredibly grateful—and tells me so—for the things I do that he can’t. So as tiring as it is—and yeah, living with someone you have to take care of is tiring, even if their dependence on you is not their fault in the slightest—I am so happy to be spending this time with my dad, because we get to walk together and grocery shop together and even though he can’t understand a lot of decisions we have to make as a family, we still talk about them, and I still feel better afterwards.
And that’s the difference between a partner with disability and a partner who uses you because they can’t be assed take care of themselves. So stop conflating critiques of the latter with oppression of the former, because I will visit you and explain my passions.
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