Do you take care of your spouse?

He works long hard hours, while I’m semi retired. I do most of the housework including his laundry. It’s only fair.

In my current relationship, we respect each other as individual adults. I used to be a horrible nag before him, but I’ve eased up; it is a hard habit to break, though. There has been a recent situation that he has to address but he’s so busy at work that he forgets, so I’ve been frequently asking if he’s made the call yet, but trying not to come across as a nag.

We both dislike housework, so before we even moved in together, we decided that he would do the dishes, since he is the one in the kitchen making the mess; and I would do laundry, since I have delicates and items that need special care. He usually also does the bathrooms, because the fumes from the cleaners kill my sinuses.

Everything else we do as it needs to be done and no one keeps score. He earns more than I, but we put all our funds in together and we don’t keep score there, either. We check with each other before making plans out of respect, not obligation. We both came into the us/we mindset pretty naturally in this relationship, so there’s no power struggle or yours/mine dynamic – it is very different from my earlier relationships.

He takes care of me more than I of him, because I have my autoimmune disease. He is very kind and patient, and I doubt that I could be as sweet as he is if the situation were reversed. He’s deluded and imagines that he’s the luckiest, but I know it’s me. ;-)

Well, I don’t know if ex husbands count, but we were together for nearly three decades. Longer than that, if you count dating.
In the beginning, of course, we doted on each other.
He came home from work, I took care of his comfort. I did my best to make sure he had some time to relax, made sure he ate well, spent time with him. It got more difficult as kids came along, but we were there for each other. When his work began including travel, things got hectic. It caused problems with the flow of other things going on in the family. For a while, he started pampering me more. Eventually, we began to just live life without him. He was someone who visited sporadically, did some repairs, and attended random family events. I started directing all my attention to the needs of my kids, and let him fend for himself, mostly. He finally decided he wanted to live a fast track life in a bustling place. I don’t think he ever felt comfortable with what pampering he did have. He is just a take care of business kind of guy.

I wish I had a spouse I could do all that for…

Nope. Since I’m unemployed I’m in charge of cleaning the house, but I do that for both of us. There are places where he is a pure slob. I just walk away.

The wife is spoiled and knows it, but pretends otherwise. It’s an argument immediately settled upon suspension of benefits.

I like to think we work at taking care of each other.

My husband had a regenerative retinal disease (diagnosed at only 19 and he’s now 25), so I have to do quite a few things for him due to his bad vision that cannot be corrected through glasses/contacts. So he drives himself to work, which is five minutes away, but I drive pretty much everywhere else we go. He can’t cook meat because he’s colorblind and cannot tell when it’s done. If he has to pay with a debit card, I have to do it because he can’t read the machine without getting right up on it. As his vision worsens, I’ll have to do more and more for him.

He makes his own breakfast every morning, but I cook all dinners unless it’s cooked on the grill. I do all of the dishes, but we have a dishwasher so it’s no big deal. I am the one that cleans toilets, the bathtub, and the floors.

I sometimes get frustrated because he gets off work at 4:30 and I don’t get home until 6:15, after which I still have to cook and do dishes. I feel like he could do more around the house or have fewer lazy habits like leaving clothes in the living room or on the stairs instead of taking them upstairs. Or leaving bottles of Gatorade or water lying all over the house. I have to remind myself of the stuff he does do…

He’s the only one that does yard work, takes out the trash, or fixes anything in the house. He also has Fridays off now and will usually clean the house a bit before I get home, including vacuuming up the copious amounts of dog hair that builds up on the furniture. He also supported me financially while I was in college and told me to focus on school instead of working. He often worked 80-hour weeks and never made me feel guilty about it.

I certainly don’t make sure he’s comfortable or treat him like I would treat a child. He has his faults, and so do I, but we’re adults and try to be as independent as we can be. I’d say it probably evens out.

We both have our own faults but we take care of each other for the most part. I spoil her a little more than I probably should sometimes though. We generally cook meals together, split household chores. It’s by no means perfect but she allows me to be myself.

Nope. I’m one of those smart kids who likes to stay single.

We take care of each other. He brings the money in and helps with the garden while I do everything else.

My husband thinks he a “nurturing” type. However, I see it a more of a control thing. On my kid’s 13th birthday I taught them how to run a washer and dryer and never washed their clothes again. They’d try to sneak their clothes into my dirty clothes basket, but I’d find them and put them in theirs.
Then Rick moved in and IDK why, he decided to take over doing everyone’s laundry, in spite of my protest.
And THEN he bitched because he was the only one who did laundry!
Finally the kids moved out and he kept doing laundry and bitching, so I made sure we had separate dirty clothes baskets and now he does his and I do mine.

He’s the only one who cooks, because he has this thing about eating at 9 or 10 at night, which is when I’m going to bed. For a while I went along with it, but it got really annoying because he’d make my plate and bring it to me, even though I told him I wanted to make my own (he always made my plate the way he’d make his, heavy on the meat and light on the veggies.) Then he’d bitch about “waiting on me hand and foot.” The final straw for me was when I was dishing my plate up and he said “NO! That’s not how you do it!” (I’d made a hole in my mashed potatoes to put the gravy in….)
I slammed my plate down and never ate what he cooked again.

I think he has some mommy issues. And I wish to hell he wouldn’t throw all of his clothes on the floor of the bedroom and closet and pile them up on the dresser to the point they all fall on the floor. His dresser is completely empty, too. But…that’s his side of the room, so….

@Dutchess_III My father in law had a bad habit of not picking up his underwear before he took a shower. It was a pet peeve of Mom’s, and regardless of her begging, he couldn’t be bothered. Then one day they had guests over, and Mom gave them the grand tour of their new house. Everything was spotless, except for his dirty underwear right where he had dropped it.

She said that was the last time he left his underwear on the floor!

@Dutchess_III I know a lot of people like that. My husband has a little bit of it regarding cleaning the cars. He tells me he does it for me, but I get annoyed he spends so much time doing it and that it takes away from fun time together. Plus, left to me I would probably wash my car every 4–6 weeks and do a half ass job, and be just fine with it.

Your answer also made me thing of the “five love languages.” Do you rememberbthat Q I had about it? Id have to search for it. I guess people like your husband maybe think it is a way to express his love? It’s not love to you though, because that is not something loving to you.

I think he thinks it’s concern and caring…but it isn’t. No more than it was when his dad did it to him (and he gets it from his dad…that super control freak thing. “You’re using the wrong fork to mix that up with!”)

I’d be interested to see the five love Q. I don’t recall it.

I think it’s more of a chance to be a martyr. “I work so hard to do all this for everybody and don’t even get a word of thanks!” I guess he’d get that from his Mom, whom I never met. I work hard to make sure that most of what he does, he does for himself, not me, cause I don’t want to get bitched at!

Like, when he started washing everyone’s clothes after he moved in….I asked him why he was doing that and he said, “Well somebody has to do it!” Like..if he didn’t, who would?! Sheesh.

Here is the Love Languages Q.

My husband says it’s about being a martyr when I do something similar or his mother. He doesn’t recognize it when he does it.

I don’t think it is always martyrdom. I think people try to please others, they want credit when they believe they did something good, and we all hope the things we like to do will be liked by others. When I have to do something I don’t really enjoy to get praise it’s annoying. My husband would like the house to be cleaner, but I don’t love putting all my papers away, if he was more focused on the things I do very well it would be easier. It’s just a personality difference partly I think, and different people valuing different things and having different experiences in childhood that shape what makes them feel loved and feel they are being nurturing.

—@JLeslie When I have a job I hate, I tell friends, family, etc., “Hey, I’ve got this big job I’m doing that I hate. I need you to cheer me on and give me lots of praise when I finish.” I leave no doubt in their minds what I need. If they don’t remember, I tell them it’s time for that “high five!” It works for me.—

I married well.

However:

“No man works as hard for his money than the one that married for it.”