I see myself as a feminist. I try to be aware of the ways in which being a woman affects my experience of the world. I try to fight discrimination where I see it. I am grateful to those women before me who fought for the rights that I now enjoy. I believe that the personal is political; that the distinction between public and private needs to be broken down.
And yet somehow I have found myself in a position where I do all of the cooking and almost all of the cleaning for my family. I take responsibility for the majority of childcare. I take responsibility for the running of our household, for all health, food and financial matters.
I think it's happened because my partner isn't capable of doing these things a lot of the time. His depression is debilitating so I have to do it. And then somehow it just became my job.
I think the fact that I am a woman and he is a man adds another dimension to the way I feel about the imbalance in the performance of domestic chores at our place.
On the one hand he is frequently not well and he can't do a lot of stuff and I understand and accept that (kind of, quite a lot of the time). It's really hard to work through the imbalance and not feel anger and resentment about it, or guilt for feeling those things. It's one of the big things about living with someone with depression.
On the other hand it really rankles to be thrust into this traditional role of wife (domestic slave). I feel like I'm rebelling against having to do the work, which is hard and boring a lot of the time, and also feeling like I've lost my rights; like I've given in to the traditional duties expected of a woman in a not-so-bygone era, like I've betrayed myself and the things I believe in.
I think this is an issue specific to being a woman whose male partner is depressed and I'd be really interested to hear what other women feel about it.
I imagine there would also be other matters that are particular to people in different configurations of relationships.
Flo
I don't think this is confined to women with depressed partners, I think that many men just don't see all the things that need to be done.However his depression definitely makes things worse becasue he is in his own head so much of the time that he really doesn't see what is going on around him. ( I have had to learn that his absent mindedness and forgetfulness is not an affectation).When depressed, he can't appreciate having a nice home or nice food and he works to the point of exhaustion. This time last year I was frantic but I am lucky in that I can afford to work out of the home only part time and pay for a cleaner and child care to get some other domestic stuff done and I just decided to work if not I think I would have murdered him by now. I hate the way that domestic stuff( thinking,planning and doing) so often ends up being done as by the woman and goes unnoticed and unappreciated. And it was one reason why I did not live with my partner for a long time. It is totally unfair.
ReplyDeleteMy partner is not so much a collector (except for DVDS) as a hoarder he hardly ever throws things out and is willing to pay for expensive strorage for a load of old junk.
Hi Flo, my husband is depressed and on mild anti-depressants that seem to be working for him quite well. We have been married for nine months and I believe the housework issues we have are related to his personality (and perhaps that mysterious maleness) more than his depression. It has been nine months of tough negotiation to get a compromise on housework that I am happy with, and I'm not yet sure that it won't all fall apart when things change. My husband took care of his house and kids for two years without me and as far as he was concerned he coped quite well, so when we got married he would do the same and I would add my work and we'd both be happy. Of course when we started living together not only did I discover that there was more than I could cope with to bring the standard of cleanliness up to my level, but he also stopped contributing. We disagreed about things as basic as whether the dishes should get washed each day or once a week, and whether the kitchen surfaces should be wiped down and the floor vacuumed more than once a month. It was not pretty - either the mess, or our fights. There have been two things going on with us - number one, I was brought up to do work first and then play, and despite his mothers best efforts he grew up with a 'play first for as long and hard as possible' ethic that meant whatever task he was supposed to do got done shabily or was not completed (or on occasion got pulled off with aplomb). I think my husband is blind to the cost of the times when the job is done badly r not completed, and chooses to remember and assimilate only the good times. I also think this is related to his depression and the overwhelming sense if failure and inadequacy he struggles with when depressed.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand both of us are fully comitted to making a happy like together and to his great credit my husband has made consistent big efforts to share my goal for a clean ordered house (which is not to diminish all of the tearful arguments we went through to get this far). I have been using the Flylady system for household management www.flylady.net, and because this stuff clicks with him, he is willing to take on board some of the practices. Over nine months we have implemented routines for the kids whereby they keep their rooms clean and not forget their school work and lunches etc, swish and swipes for us to keep the bathrooms clean daily, Weekly home blessings where we skim clean the house together - five people, five tasks, ten minutes. Most recently he has agreed on our three point daily flight plan - a daily swish and swipe in the bathroom, and progress daily on washing dishes and laundry. I have been driving these things, and he has lent his support.
I do worry that the second problem I think we have - that I view housework as satisfying and he shows an aversion to it (by bluntly refusing to do it) (is this a separate problem? I get confused) - will lead to reversion. He is currently not working and has therefore in his head accepted that he should be doing more at home. I on the other hand have always worked full time and the only thing I ask, both now and when he was working part time, is 50/50 split in household responsibilities. I worry that when he goes back to work he will impose on me his insistence that he doesn't have to do the things I need I order to be content - like clean benches and floors. Or that he will simply stop doing them.
As far as his deprssion goes, when he is deprssed he sleeps all day and accomplishes less than half of his usual contribution. Right now his medication is working so I guess I deal with the next bout as it comes. My plan is to make evrryhting as easy and routine as posible so it is as hard to escape as possible!