Husband admits he refused to help his wife do her chores

‘When one partner is working and the other is not, it’s fair that the unemployed partner take care of a supermajority of household upkeep,’ one reader argues

One husband had his reasons for telling his wife to do her chores.

Taking to Reddit’s popular confession forum, Am I The A**hole, the 24-year-old man sought out the opinions of anonymous internet users on whether his actions were justified. For background, the original poster explained that he and his wife, 26, have been married for four years. They don’t have any kids. He works in consulting, while his wife is unemployed. Sometimes there will be months when the Redditor’s job requires him to work 70 hours a week for a month straight.

“Currently I’m in one of these periods,” he noted. “Me and my wife usually do a 70/40 split in terms of housework but in weeks like this I do next to none because 10 hours a day (no weekends) of mostly standing/moving about means that when I get home I usually collapse on the couch and then do some prep for tomorrow.”

Unfortunately, the Reddit user’s wife hasn’t been fulfilling many of the responsibilities she is supposed to take on. The Redditor understands some weeks are better than others for his wife, and he’s never had an issue with the house being messy before.

The writer is usually out of the house, working 12-hour days, which means he doesn’t care how his home looks.

He admitted: “My wife recently brought up to me that she was feeling overwhelmed with all the mess in the house and asked me to help out.”

His response: “I told her if she wanted the house to be clean she could just do her chores.”

After the Redditor said that his wife shut down. Then, she said she’d let that comment go because she recognised he was stressed. They went to bed, and he left before she woke up the next morning.

“I got a text a few hours ago that she was disappointed in how I’d reacted to her expressing her needs. I get that she’s stressed, I do. But I’m doing my job. Is it so unfair to expect her to do hers?” the Reddit user questioned.

To clarify, the Redditor’s wife doesn’t stay home all day. “My wife is not locked up in our house, she can go where she wants,” he said.

Most readers thought that the Reddit user had a valid response to his wife’s request. Based on his gruelling hours, they thought she shouldn’t have asked for him to help out.

“When one partner is working and the other is not, it’s fair that the unemployed partner take care of a supermajority of household upkeep,” one supporter wrote. “I’m assuming that your wife is not going to school or starting a business, because you would have mentioned it.”

Another added: “Yea, I would have understood if there were kids in the mix.”

“Adding kids would completely change the situation,” a third agreed.

One helpful person: “NTA. But I’d talk about why she’s struggling to clean and I’d ask if the word “chores” is what upset her.”