I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time. It’s why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is “I got this,” and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.
I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”
But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.
She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.
I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time.
It’s not just about equal division of labor. It’s also about, “this thing is important to her. If he ignores it, he’s saying that what she wants is irrelevant to him.”
And that’s a guy saying, “I’m only spending time with you because it’s pleasant for me.” He’s already decided what’s “really” important, and her input is not welcome.
If he won’t do the dishes and laundry, he’s looking for fun, not a partnership. And his “leftist” ideals will be the same–something he studies because it’s interesting to him; a form of activism that he thinks will bring him a better life. If he can’t do household tasks that matter to a person he loves, he sure as hell can’t support policies that help people whose struggles he doesn’t even acknowledge are real.
The phrase for this is ‘mental load’. Where you have to be the one planning, all the time; when we need to buy food, clean the house, pack/unpack the dishwasher, start making dinner, do the chores, etc. It’s exhausting.
Just so you know there was a scene during my test screening of into the spiderverse where Peter Porker says fuck and I just went and watched the final film tonight and they cut it out. It appeared in a speech bubble with a bunch of symbols like “f$&@!”. He also had a horrifying line about one of his family members dying and it smelling like singed bacon that legit got gasps during the test screening but they cut that as well. I just want you to know they made John Mulaney say so much weird shit that did not make it into the final cut of the film and y’all better pray they put it in the extended features because I was DEVASTATED at some of the jokes they removed.
Fun fact, they didnt make John say any of that stuff. in an interview he said that, since he was a comedian he was told to “have fun with it” during his recording sessions; which apparently lead to a lot of swearing and morbid jokes for at least 2 hours before he stopped and asked what the movie was rated. “PG.”
“Oh, so you can’t use anything that I’ve said at all”
Last night i had a dream Lady Gaga and Beyonce both simultaneously tweeted out a telephone emoji and every single gay in America immediately began rioting in the streets
