What’s your cadence for maintenance? Is there anything you think you should be doing more frequently? Is there anything you do extra proactively because you don’t like seeing it left undone?
I’m also curious about how much time you spend taking care of your home and how that balances with the rest of your personal life, and how you share the load with other people you live with.
Wait, I don’t get it. The alternative that the guy propose sounds like a win-win though? What if one of them likes vacuuming twice a week and the other once every month? What’s the right way to divide it fairly?
(I’m a woman who vacuum as needed.)
It’s a win-win, if they view the relationship as just individuals with benefits.
The opposite end of the relationship spectrum is where you work together to advance both of your goals, happiness etc., like an amorphous blob.
In that case, the proposal of the girlfriend makes sense, because she presumably needs the once-a-week cleaning for her happiness and so they would work together on that, just as much as they would work together on something that primarily advances the guy’s happiness.
People will often call the former a “transactional” relationship, and the latter “true love” or whatever, but ultimately, each relationship has to figure out what works best for them and where along the spectrum they want to be.
Biggest problem with this particular relationship is that the girlfriend seems to have a very different expectation than the guy.
The goal wasnt to cause the least discomfort to both parties, the goal was to get the house vacuumed appropriately. What he was doing before isn’t relevant, because it wasn’t sufficient. What she was doing before isn’t relevant because she did more than necessary to reach a level of acceptable cleanliness.
So given the new amount, she wanted to split duties 50/50, he was focused on what he was doing before.
Yeah if you take sides on what the proper amount is initially its much easier to solve.
Sides?
I don’t think sides is the right word. Starting with an assumption of what the right amount of vacuuming is makes it easier.
The right amount depends on how fast they get dirty. She might have been right if her experience was with pets. His might have been if he was rarely at home. It depends on what their current combined situation is, and weekly or monthly could be reasonable amounts too.
exactly. that assumption cannot be made it is part of the topic of discussion. I made the assumption the assumption could only be made if a person were bias. But yes a household with several kids and cats and a golden retriever will be different than two single folks with no pets.