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Old Dec 29, 2009, 11:53 AM
perpetuallysad's Avatar
perpetuallysad perpetuallysad is offline
Grand Poohbah
 
Member Since: Sep 2007
Location: Mississippi
Posts: 1,728
I can understand your frustration, but I can guess that she may be feeling a little weird too. You say you've moved to another country? That's got to be incredibly stressful. You've only been married a few months, you've just graduated, you don't have a job, there's an age difference (this is a minimal deal to me, my husband and I are seven years apart and other than the songs we listened to in high school, this causes no great discrepancy in either of our maturity levels). It seems like maybe she's more of a laid back type person and you are more of a go getter. There's nothing wrong with either type of person, and they can actually compliment each other. If you are more about doing the household stuff, you cannot really get mad at her because she doesn't like that sort of thing. ANd you say you are living with her relatives, so she may be uncomfortable about messing with their things. It could be that you've created a situation where she knows you will clean and cook, so she doesn't feel she has to. Somehow along the line that situation has fallen out with me and my husband, I do most of the domestic stuff and he's the one who works outside of the home. He's never said I have to do the domestic stuff, but I just do. If I don't do things, they may sit around for a day or so, then he'll realize its something I'm not going to do, forgot to do, whatever and he'll do it himself. Maybe she doesn't see an area of slack where she feels she needs to pick up. If you already take care of everything, she may not feel like she's needed to do anything, especially if you are super on the ball about getting things done. If you clean up everyday when you get up in the morning, then she never even has the chance to see the things maybe need to be done by her. I don't know, I'm just talking off the top of my head here, but I do think that maybe you have some expectations that aren't being met, not because she's intentionally not doing the things, but because you haven't expressed a real desire to share the chores.

As far as the work thing goes, maybe she doesn't want to do the spreadsheet for you? That's very reasonable. Unless my husband specifically asked me and laid out how he wanted things done, I wouldn't do the spreadsheet either. It would also matter to me the way he asked, if it was something he just expected me to do and sort of demanded it, it would NEVER happen. (He's not like that though.) But if he was genuinely overwhelmed and needed help, I would help the best I could. She may see that it seems you are taking care of everything yourself, so she really isn't needed to help. Maybe she doesn't even know how to do whatever it is you are expecting? Maybe she doesn't feel like she should be the one doing your job search stuff?
Thanks for this!
shezbut