50 Men Who Were So Helpless, Their Partners Felt More Like Caretakers Than Girlfriends

I have two boys and I am doing everything I can to teach them to be self-sufficient in the home in terms of cooking, cleaning, pet responsibility, laundry, organizing etc etc etc. Outside of the home; teaching them how to be respectful to others and carry one self in public (ex. manners). My husband would prefer they stay home watching TV and play video games and he thinks I'm being too harsh. He never knew how to do laundry. He doesn't know how to cook. However, our role as a parent is to help them grow into becoming an independent adult who can function and contribute to society.

It’s literally engrained in our society, don’t feel bad. it’s what’s expected of us by everyone.

i’ve literally had to tell men that wanted to be with me, im not your mom! it was usually the cause of our breakups bc i can’t handle mothering a grown man and being attracted to him.

eta: they don’t understand it either and ive been called broken. like sorry, no, im not broken, i just don’t want to wipe your a*s??? god. hire a maid and an assistant. and a nurse and a therapist.

one last edit: i will forever hate the term “i wonder” from a partner. i wonder what time it is, i wonder where the remote is, i wonder if chicken is on sale. expecting me to answer. find out yourself! sorry, this post really resonated.

I was devastated when my husband left, but man did my work load decrease despite having 2 young kids.

Most women try everything they can to get their partner to step up and start pulling his weight before they call it quits: calm discussions, frustrated arguing, begging and pleading, rage crying, the works! Men don't listen; they nod and apologize, but what they're really doing is tuning her out. They even laugh and joke about it with their buddies, comparing stories about how much of a 'nag' their SO is. By the time she's reached the stage where she's stopped talking, it's too f*****g late! She's mentally checked out and planning her escape! He's cooked!

I didn't notice either. I do recall telling him several times that I was his partner, not his personal assistant. But even then, I didn't know the full spectrum of all I was doing for him. My ex was a master at weaponized incompetence. Even before I was done grieving the loss of the relationship, I realized how peaceful and easy my life had become living alone.

Mine would break out in hives anytime there was an appointment at the bank to do anything. He would get very grumpy and annoyed as (I later discovered) it was interrupting his m**********n time and chatting with his many sidepieces. I managed All Things Financial for 20+ years and got an STD to show for it. Happy and free for years now. Never again!

It creeps up on you. Any one of those tasks isn't a big deal, but managing an entire household and the lives of everyone in it is exhausting. And so many people (mostly men) undervalue how much work it really is because completing one of those many tasks is easy.

It’s so easy to fall into this. I only realized it was happening to me in a situation where I was considering dating a guy I really liked when a therapist pointed out that I used the word “tired” a few times. I hadn’t even noticed because I was enjoying the relationship and in many ways it felt fresh and energizing, but it was already quietly draining me.

As women we’re deeply programmed to downplay and make excuses and find workarounds when we’re being overworked or things are unfair. You’ll see it all the time on this sub. Women looking for ways to power through actual issues and getting tons of advice on medical interventions and more….anything but questioning the fact that we’re doing too much and getting too little support.

It’s really common. I didn’t realize how much my ex was sucking up my time and energy until he left. I just assumed everyone was as busy and exhausted. But when I’m single, I have plenty of time and energy for the things I want to do! It really hit me when my ex mentioned how hard it was for him to manage everything after he left. Life was harder for him single, and harder for me in a relationship. It’s a big reason why I chose to never marry or cohabitate.

I know there’s good guys out there who won’t do this but it’s so common I’m not risking it myself.

Three reasons

1. It can be a boiling frog situation. For many of us, life gets more complicated as we age in terms of what we have to deal with and organise. Something that is manageable when you are younger can slowly, almost imperceptibly, become unmanageable as you gradually take on more and more.

2. Dealing with the problem often makes it worse. Asking someone to do something repeatedly, watching them s***w it up, having to step in, having to have pointless arguments about whether something "needs doing" or not - all these things sap you so much and it just becomes easier to do everything yourself.

3. I can remember when my relationship broke down a very old lady who lived over the road said to me "Oh love, you did too much for him". And I thought- how on earth could she see it, as a distant neighbour, and I couldn't? But the reality is that you are so busy and so tired that you just keep going until you don't any more.

My life is so much better now. My husband is absolutely great. I don't have to do any man keeping. At all. And in the space that it took up, I have a whole creative life.

It's exhausting. Add to that managing your life and home so they experience the minimum amount of frustration (because when they are frustrated they are unpleasant).

I am 70 and my brother was raised to cook, sew, do laundry and clean. So was my husband.

I did it for 20 years and didn’t notice. I think we are taught from an early age it is our job to “take care of things”. I wore it as badge of honor 😬.

I think this is just the expectation of women in society.

It even happens to me at work. I swear that the men I work with think the women are their secretaries. Like I’ve had a few call me and ask me stupid questions they can look up. I usually just reply “why would I know that if you don’t?” I usually do know but I’m not their assistant.

My brother sometimes texts me to ask where mom is like I’m supposed to know her whereabouts 24/7

It’s not just romantic relationships.

Once I left my husband I realized I didn’t even know what I liked or who I was because my entire life has been in service to a man and children. I’m just figuring it out now, and it’s tough.

I raised two kids to become wonderful adults. Then I realized that even though they were grown, their dad still acted like a child, expecting me to do all kinds of small things adults do for themselves. Little things like looking at the weather app and explaining the forecast for several days, while he watched videos on his phone and I had to repeat myself, because he wanted to know the weather but couldn't be bothered to look it up. Or filling out paperwork for his doctor visits because he acted like he didn't have the patience for it. He also thought I should care about the current condition of his bowels, and plan meals around that, after getting the poop report.

I started pulling back from doing all of these things so that, at half a century old, my husband could become a real adult. Then I had a stroke and I'm not good at meal planning or filling out forms anymore. I don't have the focus to cook anymore, I'll get bored halfway through and wander off to do something I just thought of. I pretty much survive on beef jerky when no one in the house cooks. He's not expecting me to mother him to the extent I did before. He's had three surgeries within the past year, and I've cared for him while he recovered, but the stuff I used to think was my job because I was married, isn't my job. I wish I could have reached that point without having a stroke, but that's life.

Don’t beat yourself up. Women are socially conditioned from birth to make concessions for guys. It can take some time to see the truth when we grow up surrounded by women who do so much to simply keep men functional. Many of us had positive female role models, but this oftentimes isn’t enough when up against the societal norm of the world.

We are trained to do all of that from the time we can walk. Little boys are trained to expect that behavior.

The scene is set for us to fall in to long before we ever even think about partnering.

Most couples don’t even discuss how running the family will work.

It's so easy not to notice as we just do the things that need to be done without anyone holding our hand. I had been married for over 10 years when I got a short-notice deployment to Iraq (eons ago when it was at its worst). As the one who paid the bills, I tried to walk my husband how to do it so he could take over while I was gone and keeping busy trying not to, you know, die. I showed him how easy it was after you log into our bank's app (it was all set up, and he already knew how to log in). All he had to do was click 'pay bills' and put in the amounts to pay. That's. It. He started whining that it was too hard, and he couldn't do it, and why couldn't I just do it. In Iraq. It was a huge eye-opener, and the beginning of the end. Happily remarried now to a man who actually pulls his weight without being hand-held. It's amazing.

Oh man that last sentence about being afraid to pick up the phone reminded me of my ex. I gotta share One of my biggest “I cannot spend my life with this man” moments:

I had an accident that resulted in a a huge gash on my inner thigh that required 7 stitches and 4 staples. That part of the thigh moves a LOT when you walk, so I was trying to walk as little as possible to let the stitches heal.  

I had a prescription for an antibiotic ready, and I asked if he could go retrieve it for me and return some extra gauze that I didn’t need anymore. 

I drove him to the store (I didn’t mind that part), and I handed him the bag with the stuff that needed to be returned. He got this panicked look on this face, and it went like this:

>“what am I supposed to do with that?” 

>”…….return it?” 

>”yeah, but *how*?!” 

>”you… walk up to the register, and say ‘I want to return this’…?”

He starts freaking out and telling me I’m putting too much pressure on him, and why can’t I just return the stuff myself. 

Finally I cut him off and said, “okay Nevermind!! I’ll figure something else out! Just get the prescription, please”. Which he did, begrudgingly. 

That was a very minor taste of our relationship dynamic. Finally ended the 3 year relationship about a month after that incident.