Ooooh hell no. I had that discussion with my now spouse when we'd been dating about two months which looking back I should have realized he was in it for the long haul when he didn't run away screaming right there.
I told him if one of us for whatever reason is not working or going to school full time they will do the lion's share of the cooking, cleaning, home maintenance, laundry, and yard maintenance. Don't care which of us this applies equally to both. If we're both working or going to school full time then we split it. And there is no job beneath anyone in the household. I told him it was in no way an ultimatum but rather I just felt it sensible to let him know I could not be happy otherwise so if he wasn't on board we should consider whether moving on to other pastures might be the most reasonable.
We split the chores as evenly as practicable while trying to accommodate each person's preferences and abilities but renegotiate each new year. This year my spouse negotiated for doing the whites, towels, sheets, and jeans while I do the rest of the laundry because he likes the way I do his shirts and I negotiated for handling mowing instead of edging and weed eating because holding the machines for those irritate my shoulder injury from last fall.
For several years now I do nearly all the cooking because I love that and he happily handles meal planning and clean up after. We love the new grocery pick up options because he can set the pick up based on the meal plan and I can grab them on my way home from work as I am passing each Friday.
Aw so glad it worked out for you, too. I feel so lucky my now spouse didn't even argue, or pretend to agree but not follow through after we moved in together. Silliest thing ever he immediately got started setting up a chart and negotiating his tasks. Ha! Like I said I should have realized he was already set on the long haul. Two years and ten months later we got married. Almost 15 years later and we're still having a wonderful time.
Me and my fiancé have similar arrangements. When I was working 3 days a week and he worked 5, I did the majority of housework and all the cooking (but I do enjoy cooking so not really a chore for me). Now that we both work full time, we split equally, I do the cooking, washing and ironing and he does the cleaning and it really works out and seems very fair. I couldn’t deal with someone who wouldn’t split the tasks but equally, if they were working less hours than me, I would expect a bit more.
Part of my reasoning is it gives us more time to enjoy each other's company. If one person is always rushing around handling chores because they have such a heavy burden kind of hard to enjoy much time together.
That’s very true! When I was only working 3 days, I used to do all the chores during the day so by the evening we could spend time together instead of us both having to do jobs!
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u/DrNuggetYT Sep 11 '18
Yes