Newcomer With Hope

[Little]

My temporary living situation is with a very dear, old, close friend, her mother, and her 13 year old son. The four of us are sharing the responsibilities for cleaning the house and it's working out very well.

For ten years, I was responsible for everything in the home I shared with BF. I don't think he cleaned the bathroom once since we moved in. I would try to keep on the dishes, but then I got fed up and the dishes would pile up until I either got sick of waiting for him to notice and did them myself, or I nagged for some help.

It got to the point where I was bound and determined I would not be the only one in the house doing any chores, and paid a friend who needed extra income to do it for me. Including mowing the lawn, which I paid for because BF would come home from a crappy work situation and pass out on the couch by 7pm (which he later claims was because he was depressed about our R, who knows).

Once he told me that he contributes to the chores because he gets up early to snow blow the driveway when it snows and if I wanted, we could switch. I asked if that meant I could come home and watch TV after working 8 hours, while someone else cooked and then served me dinner for the rest of the year -- because, if yes, where did I sign up? He didn't get it.

Then, in one of the conversations BF and I had after BD and before I moved out, he claimed he felt like I was his mother. I cooked, I cleaned, but there wasn't much sex going on (to which I declare between us DBers that he exaggerated...we had sex in minimum of once a week, if not more than that -- I really felt under appreciated which contributed to my hesitancy to be intimate often). I asked him if he thought I LIKED doing all that and nagging him. I asked if he thought I truly enjoyed having to get on him about helping me and doing it all on my own. He stared at me like I had two heads, but I don't think it penetrated.

My point: I just cleaned the bathroom here, because the bathroom is my chore. But someone else does the dishes and someone else vacuums the carpets and someone else takes out the trash. It doesn't feel like soul-breaking work when the load is split and shared.

Many hands make light work. And how.