I’m a messy wife. It hasn’t destroyed our marriage. Between compromise and communication about the household roles, we make it work.
I’m annoying. I’m the sort of person that doesn’t put lids on things properly.
I’m the one that balances a fresh roll of toilet paper on top of the empty tube. I hate folding washing and my bedroom looks a troop of wild monkeys have had a costume party in my wardrobe.
Clothes spew out of draws and dresses are flung over the end of the bed. I will do anything to avoid hanging things up and will go to great lengths to steer clear of the washing line.
I/m not one of those women that drives home at speed when a black cloud threatens rain. I love it when the washings out and it gets rained on. It means I don’t have to put it away.
It can stay there all I care, clumped together with dye dripping on to the ground, covered in bird shit and getting a faded line across the chest. I would rather my clothes were ruined than spend the time running around in the back garden in a panic, dropping broken pegs on my babies head.
Instead my ‘poor’ husband does the pegging out of grey underwear, he take out the bins and he does the washing up. My ‘poor’ husband does a lot of the jobs (I guess that because I am a woman) I am supposed to do.
When we met, I warned him. I said,
‘If you marry me, don’t ever expect me to iron your shirts. I’m not that sort of wife.’
He laughed. We both did.
I think he thought I was joking. But when the time came, not long onto our marriage when he got a job that demanded a crisp shirt, he left it out on the hanger before he went to bed.
The only time he had ever seen me touch an iron before was at university. I was ironing out some crumbled rizla papers that had got damp in my back pocket. I was stood behind the ironing board with steam filling the kitchen smiling, holding up a bag of weed.
I remember looking at the shirt and wondering,
‘Does he want me to iron that?’
I felt a rumble in the pit of my stomach as centuries of repression hit the back of my throat.
My husband walked into the room, looked up at me and then started to retreat backwards as the look of scorn impaled his soul.
‘HAVE YOU HUNG THIS HERE BECAUSE YOU EXPECT ME TO IRON IT?’
‘No darling’ he said trying to placate me.
‘I was just putting it there so I could do it’
‘Ah, that’s ok then.’
I’m not sure if he had cleverly avoided an argument or if he really had been planning on doing it himself, let’s just say that from then on, any implications that I would get up early to iron his shirts so he could go to his job, departed.
There have been a few moment slike this in our marriage where expectations, have had to be addressed, it works both ways,
I cook, He does the washing up.
I organise our social lives, he mows the lawns.
I need chocolate, he drives to the supermarket.
I roll my eyes when the baby does a shit and pretend, ‘he’s already done two poo’s’ and he changes the nappy.
He does the bathroom, I do the floors, he pushes the trolley on the beach and I do the sun cream. He cuts bits of poo off the dogs bum and I hoover up glitter.
We have equal roles with in the household
But our roles took time to ‘iron out.’ Time and a few door slams.
I think when (of if) you meet the person you want to spend your life with, there need to be more practical conversations, systems in place before you move in together.
I would have liked to have known, aside from love honour and obey, what was expected from me during our everyday life. I would have appreciated a visit to a high rise building where a smartly dressed therapist guided me through a list of the daily chores of adulthood:
- Dishes – Wife
- Dustbins – Husband
- Bedtime story – Alternate days
- Hair in plug holes – Husband
- Band-Aids – Wife
- Electronic devices – Husband
- Splinters – Wife
I could have skipped out of the door with my list in hand knowing that equality and women’s rights were going to be upheld within my home.
But instead we’re left to battle it out. Decipher what role suits who and if the workload is properly shared, because if it’s not, that’s when resentment kicks in and fucks everything up.
Bitterness can destroy a marriage. If one person feels they are doing more than the other… animosity will fill up the space between two people.
It’s hard because when you did get married, or have a long-term partner, the daily grind, the chores and the small things become bigger than the love, they take over.
The things you fell in love with someone for fall away to the wayside, disappear into the past and all that’s left is a pile of washing and an argument over whose turn it is to do the dishwasher. Forever love is more about scrubbing the toilet than holding hands along the promenade.
I will admit, I didn’t realise how much work and compromise has to go into running a family. By the end of each day I’m lying on the couch wondering when I will have enough money to employ a nanny or If I could pay someone to hang up my clothes, and then I get up every morning and do it all again,
He does the breakfast, I make lunches, he does the drop off and I pick up.
The jobs don’t go away, so we all have to work out a way where everyone is satisfied. It’s not easy.
And somehow…. we make it. – Click To Keep Reading This Article
Author Bio
Victoria Vanstone
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Hello – I’m Vic. I’m from the UK originally and have been writing about motherhood and my zig zaggy journey to sobriety for two years. I started writing on the exact day I quit drinking alcohol, it became my outlet and my distraction from peering in the fridge at cold bottles of wine.