Most everyone’s been told, “I’m not your mother” when someone doesn’t want to baby you. We all know it to mean, “I’m not going to hold your hand, and you need to get your mess together.”
So why do we still baby our boyfriends?
We take care of men in our relationships to the extent that they end up unwilling or unable to do many basic things for themselves. It seems like such a common trend among not only the college girls I know, but among married women too. Women are naturally nurturing, and most people want to take care of the people they love. But I think we’re not expecting them to do enough.
My friend relayed what was to me a horror story- she’s a full-time student and part time worker, and her unemployed boyfriend didn’t know how to start a dishwasher. Not only did he not know how to work the dials and hit “start”, he was unwilling to learn when she offered to show him. He’d rather wait around all day for her to come home and do it for him. When talking to his mother on the phone, his mother told her it was up to her to teach him those things. (As if it wasn’t her job as his REAL mother).
Personally, in my last relationship, I had begged him to go to therapy for seven months. Therapy at my school was free. All you had to do was make an appointment. He’d agree, tell me he’d do it, and then never did. He’d rather I kept acting as his therapist- we talked about his issues more than anything else and he got my constant attention out of it.
My own father had to be taught by his two teenage daughters how to make scrambled eggs, as well as grilled cheese, two simple things to cook. He’s nearly 50 years old. However, my mom had been the one who cooked and loved to cook since their marriage began. So why would he bother to learn, if she’d always done it for him?
In another friend’s relationship, her boyfriend would actually bring his dirty clothes to her dorm for her to wash them for him. His dorm had a washer and dryer. There was no reason to cart all his clothing over to her dorm and back- except that she’d wash and fold everything for him. She said later that she thought she was helping him so that he’d have time to do homework, when really, he’d be playing video games on his laptop instead.
Even recently, on Twitter, a video of a woman angrily taking things out of kitchen cabinets that were wildly misplaced went viral when a man added, “I do this on purpose so she never asks me to do the dishes.” A whole conversation ensued about how men purposely frustrate their wives and girlfriends in order to get out of basic household work. At some point, frustration takes over and you just do it yourself so that it gets done. And apparently, they know that.
Relationships should always be striving for 50/50. Some days you might struggle and it’ll be 20 on your part and 80 on theirs, some days your partner will struggle and it’ll be 80 on your part and 20 on theirs. But you should never be pulling 90% to 100% of the weight all the time. Your partner is not your child, and you shouldn’t have to take care of them like one. It’s exhausting for you, and it doesn’t do them any favors in the long run to not know how to do their own dishes, laundry, or cooking. Men need to be able to do basic things to take care of themselves without relying on a woman to do it for them.