In Amy Dickinson’s advice columns of 5/29, 6/14 and 6/18/17, and in Carolyn
Hax’s column of 6/23/17, the Agony aunts published letters
which serve as a good, simple and straightforward illustrations of something that
family therapists have called the game without end, described in several previous posts.
Whenever
one member of a couple or a family makes a good case for changing the rules by
which people in the family operate, other members of the family (or the other
member of the couple) get suspicious. The person making the request has always
followed the old rules. I mean, they say they
want things to be different, but do they really?
So
the person making the request gets “tested” to see how sincere their request
really is. The others make the requested changes, but do so in an obnoxious or
annoying manner. My favorite
illustration of this is a situation widely created by rapidly evolving changes
in gender role functioning, which the letters that are the subject of the
current post clearly illustrate.
Both
members of a couple work, but somehow everyone - including the females - has always expected the female
to do all or most of the housework due to the rules followed by earlier generations
of men and women. The woman often has treated the kitchen, for
example, as her own personal fiefdom in which she is the undisputed boss of
how things are supposed to be done.
If
she suddenly asks her husband or boyfriend to help clean up and do his share of
the cooking, he wonders if she really
wants that - because of her prior attitude and the accompanying behavior, which had been readily and repeatedly observable
up to this point.
So,
when it’s his turn to clean the kitchen, he does a half-baked job and puts the
dishes and pots and pans in all new places, so that his partner cannot find
them when it’s her turn to do, say the cooking. Or he does any of numerous other
passive-aggressive things that annoy the heck out of her. So she criticizes him
unmercifully for his poor performance.
In a sense, she starts criticizing him for doing the very thing she had asked him to do in the first place.
His
conclusion: "See, she really didn’t want me to help out after all." I can never
understand why he discounts his own behavior in drawing this conclusion, but
that is highly typical.
An
effective way to handle a game without end so that the rules really can change
is described here.
So
for those readers to are skeptical, here are some abbreviated letters from the
advice columnists:
5/29/17.
Dear Amy: I am really tired of my husband asking: “How can I help you?”
“What can I do for you?” or “What do you need?”Here’s why this upsets me: If I
am cooking dinner for the both of us and he asks, “What can I do for you?” I
think, well, you are eating this dinner too, so why not just ask, “What can I
do?” Why is he offering to do something “for me”? I get so frustrated that my
response is: “…nothing.” When I suggest that he just pitch in, he tells me that
I do these household things so much better than he does.
He seems to want me to
need him. I don’t need him. I just want him to initiate the household work on
his own. He watches TV while I run around picking up the house or making
dinner, and his only response is, “Am I in your way?”...When he finally
does something like putting a load in the washer, he needs to announce it like
it’s the second coming. What can I do? - — Frustrated!
A
response from a man to the above letter: 6/14/17. Dear
Amy: I am a man who has been in the same position as “Frustrated’s”
husband, who would ask, “What can I do for you?” instead of just taking
responsibility for his half of the household chores. I used to be like this. I
just didn’t know how to be helpful and I didn’t want to get in the way.
Honestly, my wife basically trained me how to take on more responsibility and
now we work together. — Reformed (This guy is still letting her be the boss!)
Dear Reformed: I have received a huge response to this
letter, and many men echo your statement — they needed some guidance and when
they got it, they stepped up.
6/18/17.
Above letter, continued. Dear Amy: I
understand a lot of men are responding to the letter from “Frustrated!” about
her husband’s lack of initiative regarding household chores. In my case, I jump
in and do my best, but my efforts are criticized and belittled. It is hardly
inspiring me to do more. — Also Frustrated
6/23/17. Dear Carolyn: I love my partner. He recently moved in... I’m so tired of people who
won’t clean up after themselves and leave it until I do it. I made it very
clear to my partner before he moved in that it was important to me...But I’m already tired of asking and I’ve been
reading about “the mental load.” Like last night: I was stressed and headed to
my second job and he asked what he could do to make me feel better (sweet!) so
I said, get wrapping paper and a card and wrap your sister’s wedding present.
And when I got home later, he had! But. The box was left out instead of
recycled, the couple of dishes I used to feed us before I went to work weren’t
done, the living room was a mess . . . he just doesn’t
see it…— I’m Already Tired
The act of asking "What can I do?" is already a signal that the asker doesn't want to do anything. It's a kind of virtue signaling. How hard is it to just start doing something? One could say, "I'll get the dishes after we've eaten," or during the course of the day, could simply start cleaning. People who ask are really asking for a pass--and they'll get it, because this is how the relationship is set up.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, this is why I'm trying to train my son to do things automatically. He only has to do one chore to help everybody, every day. I have posted a helpful list of suggestions with some guidelines such as the floor needs vacuuming every other day, at most.
ReplyDeleteBut I won't tell him what chore to do, he has to look around and see what needs to be done. If he has to ask - I give him the nastiest or most back-breaking thing in the house to clean. I let him know that's my strategy; he knows he will be assigned a terrible chore if he asks "what can I do?"
Spontaneous help is also rewarded spontaneously (and randomly so it's not expected everytime) - as in, your help made it so I had time to do this nice thing for you.