The Case of the Feminist Wife

Today Carolyn Hax provides us with a portrait of a marriage circling the drain. Unfortunately, the unhappy husband has written to Hax. Apparently, Hax is a staunch and unthinking feminist. Thus, she berates the letter writer for imagining that his wife, who does not work, should be doing housework. Hax is appalled by his presumption. Why should he, a sole breadwinner, dare to assume that his wife, consumed as she is by her hobbies, should make a home? As best as I can tell, this marriage is childless… if it keeps on this way, it is likely to remain so.

Anyway, the letter writer, poor sod that he is, calls himself “Used.” He's right; he is being used.

Here is the letter:

My wife has been a freelance consultant whose work has dried up. I have a good-paying job and I figured with her work having dried up, she’d take care of the house, bills, paperwork, etc. with her time. Instead, I don’t know what she does, but things are not put away, and if she spent as much time taking care of our house — for which I just paid for a hefty remodel, by the way — as she does defending herself and how busy she is, then there would be no problem. (She is busy with her hobby, when she does it, or seeing friends during the day.)

She cooks, and on weekends I do the wash. But it’s becoming an issue for me and she knows it but nothing changes. I feel used.

So, wife has been liberated from the degrading duties involved in keeping a home. She is effectively making an ideological point. Her husband is right to feel used. And he would be right to find another wife… which is surely going to happen. A lot of women would be thrilled to be married to a man who can provide for them and their children.

Anyway, Hax berates him… for assuming that his wife should be a housewife or homemaker. You will note in her opening lines, the strict gender neuterdom. She is so “woke” and so liberated that she contorts the language to disguise the fact that, traditionally, women have cared for homes. Not only that, women have wanted to care for homes. Women who do not have authority over their homes often feel seriously distressed by it.

Be that as it may, Hax writes:

I’d be angry, too. Seething. A household involves a lot of work and I could not trust a partner who was comfortable leaving most of that work to me.

But that’s not all I find irksome. I also don’t like it when someone “figures” I’ll assume this or that responsibility without checking with me first.

And I don’t like it when the person then gets angry at me for not doing it.

And I don’t like it when I’ve always been X, am liked or accepted for X, embraced as X, and then because someone’s needs have changed I’m expected to be Y.

In short, Hax is taking the woman’s side. She is saying that this failed professional consultant finds it beneath her dignity to do housework. To be more precise, she believes that the limit of her responsibility begins and end with cooking. The wife is making a political point and asserting her power as a professional woman… even though she does not work as a professional woman and brings in zero income.

Hax is disturbed that the man maintains such reactionary expectations… and that he did not sit down with his wife to negotiate the division of housework chores and responsibilities. Really? Yes, really:

So. Did your wife “know this” because you discussed divisions of labor upfront? Or did she find it out only after you 1. just assumed she’d parlay underemployment into more housework, and 2. got annoyed when she didn’t?

Has she ever put things away?

Did you marry her just for the pleasure of her company? Or also to share the load a bit, to have her there for you and likewise be there for her when the uphills start to feel steep? Or was it more transactional than even you’d like to think?

On this last question I don’t judge, since there isn’t one right answer (besides mutuality, perhaps). But it helps to know your answer — wants vs. needs — before deciding how to respond to not getting either of these.

He comes home from work. His wife has been doing nothing all day. He is unhappy that the house is a mess. And the fault, Hax explains, is his. Because he does not love the pleasure of her company sufficiently to ignore the mess that she has left lying around. One needs to mention that quaint but absurd phrase: the pleasure of her company. How many couples marry for the pleasure of each other's company. Today is Valentine's Day. How many women will fly into a rapture for receiving a gift card that says he totally enjoys the pleasure of her company?

Naturally, Hax suggests that the man do more housework. And, yet he does do the laundry… that should win him a place in the feminist pantheon of woke men. He has managed to hold on to a shred of his dignity... after being beat down... and Hax wants him to sacrifice that too.

Hax wants them to have a conversation. Because all feminists believe that more conversation will resolve the problem. Oh yes, and this husband must start acting more like a woman by expressing his feelings. You would think that Hax is channeling Polly, but alas, the ideological contamination is pervasive.

She advises:

So: Swap out the topic of conversation from what you expect to what you feel, and ask her to suggest what household contribution she thinks is fair; switch up the chores so you each get more less of what you’re good bad at; reframe her presence in your life as companionship first and gauge whether it helps.

Yes, indeed. This man should tell his wife how much he values her companionship. And then we will see whether she changes her aberrant ways. And, by the way, what about the baby issue. How old are they? Do they want children? Is his wife too busy to care for children? Will she expect that her breadwinning husband share the childcare duties equally?

And, dare we ask, what does the man’s mother think of this arrangement?

Questions, questions. The answer is simple. He needs a new wife. Period. End of story. Why debate and argue? Why negotiate when there is nothing to negotiate? Some things in life do not need negotiation. Some things in life are so obvious that only an individual wearing ideological blinders would miss them. If his wife believes that being a good feminist is more important than being a good wife, she should get what she wants.

Unfortunately, for him, he wrote to Carolyn Hax, who has been so thoroughly contaminated with feminist ideology that she wants him to be weaker and more accommodating, to spend less time earning a living and more time sweeping the kitchen floors.