Housework is a life skill, not a wife skill. Such a simple statement, with so many complicated emotions attached, especially when it comes to married couples.
Marriages are meant to be the lifelong union of two souls that stay together to live, prosper, and face hardships as one. Like every other aspect of our lives, marriages also encounter difficult times and have the potential to end up unhappily. Unhappy marriages are one of the growing problems among society globally. People who reach out to marriage counselors to seek help with their marriage rifts, and some issues were brought up repeatedly.
Over the years, experts and marriage counselors have dealt with millions of people who face unhappy marriages. One of the most common issues that cause it is a partner’s lack of responsibility for household duties. You might feel this couldn’t possibly be a common occurrence to be such a major issue, but this is the unfortunate reality. Corrin Voeller, a marriage counselor, reveals that improper division of household responsibilities can cause severe problems in marriages and may lead to a rather unhappy one.
How Can The Unequal Division Of Household Duties Cause Unhappy Marriages?
Corrin Voeller explains that there are two types of household duties: active and passive responsibilities. Active responsibilities are about seeking things you can do and taking responsibility for these things in the house. There is no need to tell any partner to do that. They take responsibility for themselves. For example, they picked up kids from school or showed up at the Parent Teacher Meeting.
Passive responsibilities are about being available to help with obligations that aren’t exactly strictly necessary. This is where problems usually arise because this is where help has to be asked for. For example, the house needs to be picked up, and one partner asks the other to assist in some way, so they do.
The division of these responsibilities can sometimes become unequal and cause a rift in the marriage. To explain how this happens, let me share the story of my friend who faced this issue and ended up with an unhappy marriage.
A True Story
One of my friends got married three years ago after dating this man for about one year. She had a fantastic dating experience, but things started getting rocky once she married. She became frustrated by the way her husband began to behave. She found that she always had to tell him to do basic chores because he never did them from his own initiative.
For example, he may see a bowl upside down on the floor and not put it up because she had yet to tell him to do so. He never takes an interest in doing things and always ignores them. After a year of her marriage, they had a baby, and things got worse. She needs to tell him about everything.
Whenever we meet up, she talks about her marriage frustrations. She is clearly unhappy with it because of household activities and how her husband refuses to take responsibility for them.
A Word Of Advice
What I have shared with you is just a glimpse of what is happening around all of us and how simple acts majorly affect the relationships we keep. We have discussed a common cause of unhappy marriages here that can be fixed by sitting down and discussing an even split of chores and responsibilities that work for both partners’ schedules and lives.
Why should you have to instruct your partner to do every little thing that needs to be done around the house or vice versa? A happy marriage is a relationship built on togetherness and equality, splitting responsibilities until death does your part. This includes taking care of the household with whatever duties that entails for your lives.
Take the time required to care for your family. A currently rocky marriage does not mean that you have to stop loving each other. Do the things required of you and help each other in your respective duties.
The bottom line is there are various other causes of unhappy marriages, but we have focused precisely on this particular instance. Many other marriage counselors and experts have commented on this issue and discussed how a seemingly simple thing could cause such a massive rift. I hope this was enlightening to some degree.
