He works at a prominent company and is paid well. He earns more than his girlfriend who he shares an apartment with. They both moved to a new state together after he received this current job offer. He is reaching out to an online community because they are in a situation where he believes he is right and acting reasonably, but his girlfriend disagrees.
When she moved in with him, she had a decent job. However, she found her boss to be sexist and homophobic. Ultimately the work environment was toxic for her, so she left for another job that pays significantly less. As a result, his girlfriend asked him to pay more than half of the rent he had previously paid.
He admits that his girlfriend has done most of the cleaning since moving. He says he contributes by doing the dishes sometimes and washing the laundry, which she folds. She cleans the bathroom and the kitchen, sweeps, mops, vacuums, and does other chores. So far, this has been their dynamic for the last 8 months, and his girlfriend didn’t complain until recently. She asked him to vacuum the living room, and he responded that he didn’t know where the vacuum was. Since then, he says she keeps mentioning that he needs to do more housework. But he feels that she should be responsible for keeping the apartment clean because he contributes to more of the rent.
He claims he does the dishes more often now, once a week instead of once every other week. But now his girlfriend leaves cleaning tasks for him to do without telling him about them and then gets upset when they aren’t done. He says if she asked him to clean certain parts of the apartment, he would do it. She says he knows what needs to be done and should do it himself without making her bring it up first. He says she eventually gets frustrated and cleans up by herself.
He says he isn’t motivated because he is tired after work and just wants to go home and relax. He says she works the same hours as him but believes her job is much less demanding. Because of this, he thinks she has more energy to do the housework than he does. He also admits that she pays for the groceries, even his gas sometimes, and other little things.
He believes she should do all the housework since he pays more of the rent, 60%, while she pays 40%. He is asking if he is correct in thinking this way.
Many readers didn’t take kindly to how he approaches their relationship.
“She works the same amount of hours as you AND does basically ALL of the cleaning? Does she do the cooking too? She is looking for help. Literally, that’s it. Maybe the amount of cleaning she has done over the past 8 months has her BURNT OUT. Did you ever think of that?”
Many mentioned that his 60% proportion of rent payment doesn’t warrant her doing 100% of the housework. Especially when she pays for groceries, his gas, and other things on top of that.
“What is funny is that, in this case, it doesn’t make sense even if you just look at the money. He pays 60% of the rent, barely over half, but expects her to do basically all the chores. He does so little in the house that he thought washing dishes once every two weeks was actually relevant.”
“When I saw that split, I thought that’s barely more than her, and it sounds like he makes a lot more. Not to mention she pays for groceries and all that other stuff, so I guarantee it’ll be closer to 50/50. If not, she might even be paying more than him.”
Some women chimed in that boyfriend’s like him are the reason why they decided to stay single.
“I’m 31 and pretty perpetually single, and while I wouldn’t say no to a relationship if I met someone really great, I’m just fine with being single, knowing that if I “settled” or whatever, I would likely be less happy and have a lower standard of living. I don’t know, sometimes I wonder if my standards are too high, but I see what some of my friends put up with with their partners, and I just don’t want to think about that.”
Just because a partner makes more money, does that give them an out for completing other household responsibilities?
“Her making less salary does not make her your indentured servant.”
Not only that, but she’s now at a lower-paying job because she had to leave a sexist, toxic work environment. So leaving the sexist work environment has resulted in her living in the sexist environment. Awesome.”
What do you think? Is he right to think his girlfriend should take responsibility for all the chores since he earns more and pays more rent?
This post came from this thread.
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