the wife gene

washing dishes late at night always seems to bring out the worst in me. it happened again last night as i was scrubbing the pots and pans from dinner and putting away the leftovers and loading the dishwasher. i had put morgan to bed and she was asleep, and Dork was in his usual position -- on the couch, with the laptop glued to his legs and south park blaring in the background.

don't get me wrong, he works a 40-hour week just like i do, but i always get infuriated when i'm at the sink or folding my daughter's clothes or clearing off the table after dinner and he's nowhere to be found. last night, while mindlessly scraping the remains of the stir-fried tofu out of the bottom of the skillet (which, by the way, was a pretty tasty addition to my newfound diet....and morgan loved, it too! hmmm, maybe because i told her it was potatoes?!), my thoughts went back to the same ramblings they always do when i'm standing at the sink and he's in the livng room on the computer. for some reason, i get infuriated that i'm cleaning up his dishes while he's enjoying himself -- and it hit me especially hard last night because he had the day off, so it wasn't like he had either a physically or mentally taxing day!

bad part is, i don't know if i'm the only gal that feels this way -- other women seem perfectly content to do their husband's laundry, pick up their husband's clothes off of the floor, clear their dishes, and clean up after them. i end up feeling resentful when i do those things, yet society makes you feel like those are your wifely duties. maybe i didn't get a full helping of the wife gene when it was being doled out?!?

i thought for awhile that my resentfulness was a generational thing -- after all, my mom and mother-in-law are both from the generation in which men's and women's roles in the home were more clearly defined. i don't necessarily believe that anymore; there are women i know that don't seem bothered by cooking and cleaning while their husbands don't contribute to the household. a good friend who's my age makes dinner for her husband every night and even gets a meal ready for him when she's not going to be there, so that he's taken care of -- am i wrong for not even giving a second thought to what my husband is going to have for dinner when i go out of town for work? after all, he's an adult that survived on his own for four years away from home in college -- if he can't survive on mac and cheese and pizza, that's not my fault!

it's not like i acquired those thoughts from growing up at home, either. my mom cooked the majority of the meals, she did the laundry, she did the cleaning, and she primarily took care of me. my dad, however, did clean up after himself, helped my mom around the house with odd jobs and with some cleaning, and was definitely a hands-on dad. he was also a 'neat' person -- he's not the type of man that would have left his dirty boxers lying on the floor for someone to either step over or pick up. and if he did, he wouldn't have expected my mom to pick them up. maybe Dork doesn't actually *expect* me to do that, but if i don't do it, it doesn't get done.

i guess with me, it comes down to the notion that you always hear about the difference between men and women is that women don't keep score until the score is really uneven. sometimes i feel like the score is off in our relationship and that's what makes me upset. i don't want to have to *ask* him to help, i want him to *want* to help. i'm a full believer in equality -- we're both responsible for household duties and for taking care of morgan, or at least that's what we agreed on when we started kicking around the idea of getting married almost six years ago. however, Dork grew up in a traditionally male-dominated household where his mom did most of the work and took care of the kids, while his dad made a living for them and had a career. maybe that's why he acts like he does, since that's what he grew up with -- but it still doesn't help me feel any better about the issue at hand, where i'm damned if i do the dishes and pick up after him (because then i feel resentful) and i'm damned if i don't (because then they pile up and we have a mess!). until i figure out a solution, i'll see you at 11PM at my kitchen sink, and i'll bring the snark.