Does your wife do this?

cmccuist · 01-11-2005, 02:40 PM

If my wife is working around the house, it is a certainty that she will seek me out and make sure that I am working also. Why is that?!? She can't work w/o making sure I'm doing something. Very strange.

If I'm mowing the lawn or working in the garage or cooking (I do all the cooking) I don't find her and tell her to get up and grab broom!

I am perfectly content to have her read the newspaper or watch TV or whatever she wants. She works her ass off during the week teaching school and then teaching aerobics 3 or 4 nights a week, so I don't begrudge her any down time. She's also working on her masters degree right now, but she's always had that quirk of not letting me be idle if she's doing housework.

Maybe she thinks I don't work hard enough at my job.

M.D. Holloway · 01-11-2005, 03:14 PM

Na, she knows you work hard or she wouldn't get on you.

Your wife sounds like a very good and energetic woman. My guess is that she insists, if not demands perfection in certain aspects of her life. She my witness less than stellar efforts in some of her students, but I bet she is the type that wants certain things just so. She saw that in you - not that your perfect but you must have some great qualities that she identifies with. She has some pretty high expectations, chances are you set those expectations years ago by being what she wanted and required from a spouse. She won't let up, infact she may even grow more critical of you as the years wane on. She can becuase she has become exceedingly comfortable with you and can freely open up.

My guess also - she says things to you she would never say to her best friends. She would never think of talking to her girl friends in a "get off your butt old man!" sort of way.

It is rather a paradox - acheiving a true partnership with your spouse also means allowing her to have complete liberty on your feelings. She doen't mean to hurt you or piss you off, she just feels very confortable.

Craig, it doesn't work the other way. Many is the failed man that tries to turn the tables on a woman. They are build different downstairs as well as up.

I'm no one to give advice, but I have/do live what you are experiencing. She comes around a few minutes to a few hours later. One remedy that I use is to plan out a few projects for the weekend - things that she would like you to do and do the same for her. Let her take the leadership role but she may also want you to take the lead as well. Good luck trying to figuer when to do what.

concentric · 01-11-2005, 03:18 PM

Have you talked to her about it?

Decolliber · 06:54 PM

Actually, I think this is a fairly common phenomenon. Whenever my wife is doing housework (especially cleaning bathrooms), I always make sure I am doing something useful (vacuuming, lawn mowing, etc.). Women will tolerate a certain amount of real, temporal or just imaged imbalance in the division of labor, but will also store it up and use it against you if they think it goes on too long. Even if you do as much work as they do around the house, it seems unbalanced to them if you are not working when they are.
I am not sure why they think that way and we do not. Perhaps it is because they have more clearly defined ideas and expectations about "relationships" - sharing, partnership, fairness, empathy etc. You see the same thing with teenagers. A teenage girl will, when there is activity in the kitchen, ask if she can help. A teenage boy will sit and watch TV unless he gets yelled at to help. I guess it just the Mars-Venus thing: men are hardwired to be competitive; women are hardwired to be cooperators (and to expect cooperation from others).

vash · vash's Garage

very interesting thread. single but co-habitating. i seriously do WAY more work. she blames it on me reaching my filth threshold before she does. i wonder if i could live my life like this...maybe this is why i am still single.

richard jennings (comedian) says it best: marriage can be broken down simply. you have to decide if you would rather be lonely or annoyed.

M.D. Holloway · 01-11-2005, 06:46 PM

Vash - annoyed has it's advantages. One can co-miserate. Being alone or on the prowl just plain sucks - might be great for a few months, or even up to a year or two but any more than that and life just seems to lack a certain "fun-ness". When the good times outweigh the bad then it works. Your co-habitating which is just shy of engagement which is a hard stones throw from the "commitment". You may think you have some freedom but the longer you live together, the more complicated it gets. If you guys have been liv'n in sin for more than 6 months, I bet you have some "shared Items" that will require serious arbitration to free-up upon your break-up. (Hope you don't have any animals - thats a custody battle for sure!)

Face it, my-brother-from-another-mother, she's got you and there ain't no gett'n away easy!

ronin · 01-11-2005, 07:39 PM

fortunately I never had to endure this phenomenon, but my ex-wife did have a quirk that was very similar to one of my mother's. no matter how well I would perform a task, if I did not spend as much time on it as she would spend, she would not consider it done right no matter how well it was done. physical proof was irrelevant. time taken was all that mattered, and if it didn't take X amount of time, then it must have surely been done wrong. they were definitely graduates from the school of "work harder, not smarter"

BlueSkyJaunte · 01-11-2005, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Decolliber
Women will tolerate a certain amount of real, temporal or just imaged imbalance in the division of labor, but will also store it up and use it against you if they think it goes on too long.

Preach on Brother Decolliber!

M.D. Holloway · 01-11-2005, 08:50 PM

or "you aren't done yet? What takes you so long?" They are never satisfied.

ronin · 01-11-2005, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LubeMaster77
or "you aren't done yet? What takes you so long?" They are never satisfied.

hehe.. but they only say that when they think you're shammin' and trying to waste as much time as possible so you don't have to do the next job

M.D. Holloway · 01-11-2005, 09:12 PM

sshhhh...

RoninLB · 01-11-2005, 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cmccuist

Why is that?!?

Very strange.

It took living with a few of 'em for me to realize that they all "pre-planned" that they could fix it..

meaning me.

A Quiet Boom · A Quiet Boom's Garage

My wife was like this for a while, then she lost her job and her will to do anything. I of course got upset about this and confronted her. Long story short now that she understands things better I come home to dinner on the table and a clean house. I told her I expected her to work at least half as hard as me. Lubemaster has it right only in my case I'm acting like your wife, I know my wife's abilities and I expect her to live up to them because I care about her.

Victor · 01-12-2005, 02:41 AM

You are married to an aerobics instructor - SHUT THE FARK UP!

Victor · 01-12-2005, 02:43 AM

Oh - and get back in the kitchen.

You don't know what you have got.

All women are like that - the only difference is most of them do pretty much nothing at all. Let alone instruct aerobics.

cmccuist · 01-12-2005, 06:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Victor
You are married to an aerobics instructor - SHUT THE FARK UP!

Yea, she's amazing in the gym. I take her class now and then and can't finish it. She's 47, looks 25 and her vital measurement is 38D. Although she is fighting the lbs as she gets older, she still has great energy.

Lubemaster, it's as if you know her or something, her exact words are "you're sitting on your ass while I'm working!" She is a perfectionist and gets very upset if things aren't done just so. Expecially when it comes to the kids - both her students and our own. I give her all the credit in motivating them to succeed in school. She's the "hard teacher" at her school.

Moses · 01-12-2005, 06:42 AM

My wife is non-stop around the house. She never slows down. She runs around picking things up off the floor with her toes while she dusts and cleans with her hands. Keeping up with her would be impossible.

Last weekend the NFL playoffs started. Thirty minutes into the first game, she whizzed past me on a cleaning spree and said "I don't know how you can just sit there on your ass all day!" I reminded her that "it may look like I'm idle, but as we speak, I'm making 20,000 sperm every hour." Hard work indeed. A man needs his rest. I'm not certain, but I think it was a shoe that hit me in the back of the head. Maybe a newspaper.

Overpaid Slacker · 01-12-2005, 07:09 AM

Craig -
Mention this little "idiosyncracy" to her ... and that it's predominantly ridiculous, but also a bit annoying.

BUT DON'T expect this to have any effect on her the first dozen or so times you mention it. The first few, she won't hear it b/c she thinks you're just grousing. The next few, it'll start to take hold ... but she won't admit you're right about it. After the 8th or 9th time, it'll get some traction. BUT your side of this bargain is, when you notice she's doing something and not chafing your a$$ about your "non-participation", say something nice that lets her know your appreciate that you got through to her.

And it doesn't matter what exactly got through to her -- that you were right in the first place, or that, right or wrong, you don't want to feel like you have to be her cleaning dancing monkey when she plays the cleaning tune.

JP

legion · 01-12-2005, 07:23 AM

My wife occassionaly does this. I'm sure it will get more frequent the longer we are married. Like most of the other men, I don't really care what she is doing at any given moment. She did complain at me for not doing enough cleaning the other day. I reminded her that I do all of the landscaping, lawn mowing, snow shoveling, house maintenance, vehicle maintenance, garbage and recycling. I also frequently single-handedly clean the entire house (usually before we have company). I think we just have competing visions of how to clean. She likes to do room A on Monday, room B on Tuesday. I like to have the whole house cleaned at once, and let it go from there until it needs to be cleaned again.

cmccuist · 01-12-2005, 07:23 AM

I need to do something. How am I supposed to watch a football game or golf tournament for 3-4 hours if she decides to get up and start doing laundry. Another favorite thing is "get your tools, we're going to hang some pictures."

If it's the first quarter or front nine, no problem, but what if Tiger and Vijay are tied up on the back nine at Augusta, or the Colts are driving against the Pats late in the game. I'm screwed at that point. Tivo could end up saving my marriage.

One thing I could try is the next time I get to cooking dinner, I could say "put that paper down, the living room needs vacuuming." Yea, that will work.

Henry Huggins put it best when he said, "women are illogical, that's all there is to that. Their heads are filled with cotton, hay and rags."