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I’ll Do the Dishes
I received a piece of advice from my aunt when my ex and I moved in together.
“If it’s your thing and not his, keep it your thing. It will never be his thing.”
When she said this to me, she was talking about my incessant need for cleanliness. She knows me. She knows what I like and don’t like, what makes me tick.
I had never lived with a partner before. So this was new to me. Unlike my aunt who had been married longer than I’d been alive. Clearly, I didn’t take her advice. And not taking her advice led to 5 years of nagging, begging and pleading, for him to simply do the dishes.
At the end of the 5 years, I realized that part of the relationships demise was the resentment I had built up from his lack of home effort which would eventually turn into a deeper lack of effort that I couldn’t explain.
Now that I’m navigating this new relationship, one thing is for certain, but two things are for sure; cleanliness is still my thing.
Although it hasn’t been terribly long — we have nearly started cohabitating, but in the way of sleepovers and extended stays. never more than 3 days at a time, but this means there are certain lifestyle issues that come to light. One of those lifestyle issues is the topic of cooking and cleaning. We have already shelled out the who buys the groceries and who…
