"My husband has branded me a failure as a wife," announces Susie, 22, who works full time as an executive secretary and is the mother of a 3-year-old son. "He's convinced that Christmas this year will be another disaster since, as he so charmingly puts it, I can barely handle daily life, so how am I ever going to plan a major family function?"
Robert's constant disapproval of her housekeeping and mothering is crushing Susie's self-esteem. She's trying hard to do everything, with no help from him. "Most days, I feel like I'm running a marathon. I'm up at dawn every morning to get David fed, dressed and to the day-care center. Then I race to the office and race out at 5:30 to pick him up. Somehow, I have to squeeze in grocery shopping and cleaning. I'm so worn out that I don't even care anymore what the apartment looks like. I need Robert to help, but he doesn't lift a finger. He's so selfish."
Susie is so furious at Robert for not helping, and for criticizing what she does do, that when the two aren't arguing they coexist in stony silence. "Lately, Robert's taken to going out with the guys almost every night. At first I was hurt, but now it's actually a relief not to see him."
Still, she loves Robert and doesn't want to lose him: "I don't know how my mother managed to do everything for everybody. I'm totally miserable. Is there any hope for us?" she wonders.
Robert, a 22-year-old construction worker, wonders, too. "My wife has the romantic notion that marriage is one long honeymoon. It's time she grew up." Robert is sick of hearing Susie's complaints about being tired: "Don't talk to me about being tired. She sits in an office all day. I'm the one building houses for eight hours, then breaking my back trying to renovate the new house we just bought."
Robert's parents divorced when he was 5 and he rarely, if ever, saw his father. "But my mother worked five days a week in the high school cafeteria, kept our house neat as a pin and was never too tired to take her five kids on a weekend outing or to church every Sunday."
The reason he's stopped coming home at night is because he can't stand the mess. Robert doesn't want the marriage to end either, but, he says, "I don't seem to have a wife anymore. I just don't think she cares."
Dividing the work
"Susie and Robert may sound like they're living in the Dark Ages, but they are far from alone in their battles over the Chore Wars," says Jane Greer, a New York marriage counselor. Despite the fact that 67 percent of mothers are now in the work force full time, they still report that their husbands are not sharing the burden at home. Contributing to this impasse is the fact that, as in many couples, Susie and Robert's mothers considered homemaking their primary job. As a result, Susie, like many women, still feels guilty that she's not doing enough. Robert reinforces this because he sees her homemaking as a symbol of her love for him. When she stopped taking care of the home, Robert feared she had stopped loving him, too.
Every couple fights some version of the Chore Wars. When you try to renegotiate who does what, remember that how you speak to each other is as important as what you say. Telling your partner: "I need you to help around the house," as Susie does, sounds like a command. Your spouse may well resist. Try rephrasing your comments, without sarcasm or criticism: "I need more time for myself," or "I want Christmas to be special for the whole family, too. How can we do that?" Rephrasing your comments this way turns a potential power struggle into a collaborative problem-solving effort.