My T, when I complained to her about my husband (when he was just my boyfriend) not doing chores he had agreed to do replied, "How long did his mother have him? And how long have you known him?" I use that to remember that he was raised a male in a wholly different sort of family from mine; his life experiences are really different from mine and he doesn't know how to be helpful in the same way as I do because he didn't have my stepmother to teach him :-)

I love my husband and if he did nothing at all around the house, the only difference in my life from being single would be that I had this man I loved around as a companion? What do your pets do for you? Do you feel disrespected by them? (Don't answer that if you have cats! :-)

I get my husband to help on the "big"/joint jobs by being at the job with intent and asking him to help me. I don't tell him to help me or tell him what needs doing, I say, "Would you help me change the bed now, please?" as I'm going up to our bedroom.

I try to make sure he's not in the middle of doing something else and he tells me if he is and, if he is, I don't judge what it is that he is doing as being less important than what I want to do! Just because he's in the middle of a video game, that's what he has chosen to do and my scheduling of changing the bed does not preempt that if he says "not this minute".

I persist too; it's something I want so I am responsible for getting it done. I ask more than once or I ask, "When will you be free to help me?" and don't take "later" as an answer or inform him, "I'll ask you again in ten minutes."

It's not a crime not to want to do a chore. There are a whole lot of chores I don't want to do (anyone for cleaning the bathroom?) so why shouldn't there be chores, especially chores someone else wants done at a particular time, that another person would try to get out of? It's about individual choice and I find it an opportunity to learn and practice good communication skills and better understand myself and my husband and how to live and love well together. We're a good team.

Think about what your husband asks you to do? Not what you assume he wants you to do, but what he literally asks of you? A lot of what I use to think are his/her or joint chores I've come to understand are things I've only arranged that way in my head. There is no supposed to, when it comes to living together with someone anymore than there is a correct way to put toilet paper on the roll! Just because I was taught the "correct" way to load a dishwasher in seventh grade home economics class does not make it literally, correct. One can load the dishwasher anyway one chooses, it's my dishwasher, my dishes! But it is hard to give up how my stepmother decreed was the correct way to be a wife, mother, and run a household? But, now that I'm grown, I can do it any way I wish and, how I do it is literally how I wish, no matter how I do it. Other people aren't in charge of making me happy!

I can want my husband to read my mind and jump up to help me do something I want done without my asking, or, better yet, to think of it, himself, first, but, I kind of don't think that's going to happen anytime soon? I think in terms of "I want" and who is responsible for getting that want. I. That I am so "advanced" in my thinking and take care of myself and my poor husband is not so enlightened about his own choices, that's his problem. I'm glad I was born a girl and have to unlearn bad thought habits instead of being a guy and have to learn good action (helping) habits. Not as easy/fun to learn to do things you don't naturally want to do as it is to learn to think from a different perspective.