Earlier this morning, while this 40-year-old man was making coffee, his 31-year-old wife remarked that she was upset about how much of a mess their kitchen was in.
He replied that it’s not a big deal and he will make sure to clean it up, since he’s normally the one who picks up this chore in their marriage.
Normally, he cleans the kitchen in the morning while he’s getting ready for the day, and then he cleans again before he goes to bed each night.
“I suppose I didn’t do a great job of cleaning the night before, just put the food away, but I’d had a long week at work and wanted to spend time with her before she left for a work trip the next day,” he explained.
“I like cleaning, I’m happy to do it, and I want my wife to live in a home where she feels comfortable and cared for.”
“I wipe off the stove, put the pan that was there in the sink and start washing. Suddenly she starts unloading all her frustration: Don’t do the dishes, you haven’t wiped all the surfaces. You don’t listen. All I do is clean, and you never clean/don’t clean well enough. You’re a child, and you treat me like your mother.”
He did his best to remain calm amid the insults without reading too much into things. He just asked his wife to clarify what she meant, and if she was serious about him never cleaning the kitchen to her standards in the past.
Then, he tried to be empathetic, saying he knows she’s irritated and that must be difficult. But instead of trying to deescalate things, his wife took things up a notch and insisted he was trying to invalidate her feelings and that he was not listening to her at all.
This bothered him a lot, and he asked his wife to leave the kitchen please so he could get back to cleaning it.
“More accusations, she storms off,” he said. “I continue cleaning angrily. She storms back in and tells me she wants a divorce and to pack up my [stuff] and get out by the time she comes back from her trip.”
“Storms out again. I’m sad and hurt, but I keep doing what I’m doing. After a few minutes, she comes back, apologizes, tells me she won’t leave me, I’ve done nothing wrong, it’s all her processing her feelings.”
“She is extremely nice to me until she leaves, all her texts and calls are about how I’m perfect and she loves me. I don’t even know what to think. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or not. I can’t tell if i’m being insensitive or being abused. I don’t know if I need to hold my boundaries or change my behavior. This is all just so intense and so confusing.”
What advice do you have for him?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
