#i'm just. uptight and annoying about cooking terms.

[kiefbowl]

DA if you make more than your boyfriend, does that mean you're subsidizing his existence so he can live beyond his means? I'm trapped in the usual patriarchal arrangement, where I make more than 25k less than my boyfriend and I do household chores while he pays the majority of the rent. If this isn't too invasive (and I totally apologize if I'm asking too much of your personal life), when the roles are reversed and the woman is the breadwinner, what are his responsibilities? How do you make everything fair?

He’s not living beyond his means, he got a new job before we moved in and we were suddenly making equal (before then I was still making more). Then a few months into living together, I got a new job and got a big bump. Our apartment is nicer than what we could afford separately, but we were both living on our own before. We consider what we owned separately before moving in as belonging to that person still, and a couple big purchases we’ve made we’ve split them. We each pay in full an equal amount of bills, so the amount is probably the same but we don’t penny pinch about that. We split rent evenly. We try to split groceries evenly but sometimes I forget to ask/he forgets to pay, since I do the shopping (I have a car so I’ve been doing the shopping during covid). If it really made that big of a dent in my account, I’d probably be a little more uptight than that, but because I’m making a nice amount of money it’s fine. Sometimes he realizes we haven’t split it in awhile and just pays me in full for the trip. When it comes to eating out/ordering in/buying stuff for house ad hoc., we just switch it up or buy what we need. We’re not really keeping that much track of it. It’s not worth it splitting hairs, but it’s probably even in number of times rather than total price. Everything about my car, I pay for. Obviously I drive him places sometimes, but I don’t care. It’s MY car, and he doesn’t drive it. I bought the car to be convenient for me and my friends. We do NOT have any joint accounts, and have never talked about it.

I gave him one rule when we moved in: I would NOT be doing his laundry ever. And I haven’t. And I never will. We’ve had a bit of spat when I pointed out I will remember to change and wash the sheets of our bed (he told me I could “remind him” - he did not win that fight let me tell you lol), but otherwise he has his towels, and I have mine. I also don’t manage anything about his life. He keeps his health appointments, his work appointments, his friend appointments. We just tell each other what’s going on in our lives.  He’s definitely better at some chores than me, and he does them. He has a bit of a ritual of getting the dishes in/out of the dishwasher before his shift. Dishwasher helps tremendously to split that chore of course. He will wash dishes too, and he usually takes out the trash since we live on the third floor and I don’t want to do it lol. I’m usually the one doing the bathroom cleaning stuff, I do get annoyed by it sometimes because I know it’s because he doesn’t really know what to do, but I also don’t want to teach him and I’ve always enjoyed cleaning the bathroom. We keep a fairly tidy place, but we’ll usually have big “spring cleaning” Saturdays together, and I don’t have to tell him much what to do. I would say, our chores are probably not even, I probably do more and do more better and see more than he does, but he definitely does chores. I think he knows well enough what my reaction would be if I felt I was doing more than my share (and I guess that’s the rub, even though I’m aware I “probably” do more, I can’t quantify it and I’m mostly okay that it’s “my share”). He didn’t know his ass from his head about cooking, but we’ve been doing blue apron together and I’ve been teaching him stuff, so that’s more like a couples “activity” we do together, and I’ve taught him how I like my eggs so he’ll make me eggs in the morning when we have them.  I guess all that is to explain that even as a breadwinner, I do not “punish” him for making less. I have an expectation that we are companions, and I think he for the most part rises to the occasion. I feel painfully aware when I feel he doesn’t in ways I probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate if I hadn’t really discovered feminism, but on the other hand that has also made it easier for me to talk to him about it. It also helps that we’re not enmeshed (see: I don’t keep his calendar). I also don’t want to imagine what would happen if we had a kid, he’s never really been around a baby before in his life.  Because he’s a man, I don’t have to make life fair for him, even though I make more. I worked hard to make sure I didn’t have to depend financially on a man. The move in was beneficial for both of us. I didn’t make the decision flippantly, I thought about it long and hard and really reflected on what things I know I could “expect” and what my tolerance for that was and how I personally would react. I wouldn’t do that for just any man. And he and I have our issues atm, but it’s mostly about sex and the future, and not about money. I’m keenly aware that money has helped me gain independence from all sorts of compromises, because I was pretty poor for a long time. 

I think if your boyfriend is pricing out your labor as rent relief, that tells you a lot about how much he values a clean home and how much he doesn’t want to do it. I think there are ways to live with a clear breadwinner where most things are still equal rather than fair, it just depends on who wants to be in the relationship more and on what terms.