The Mythical 50/50 Split
I've been a little grumpy lately. I think part of the reason is that I'm sleep-deprived. It's really my own fault. Starting the three-hour Aviator after 7:30, interrupting it several times to do chores, and setting the alarm clock for 4:45 is not a recipe for getting a lot of sleep. Once a week is fine, but I've been doing it too much this week. But when it is really too hot to do anything other than retreat with the family to The Air-Conditioned Room in the house, what do you do?
When you are in a marriage, you shouldn't divide everything 50/50. But subconsciously I think a lot of people do it (a lot of people get divorced too, but that's neither here nor there). You know what you are doing and want to make sure that the other person is doing their fair share to keep things afloat. The other part of why I'm grouchy is that I keep focussing on my half of the mythical 50/50 split.
In my case I know what it is that I'm doing - shopping for groceries, making dinner, doing dishes, taking out the trash, mowing the grass, doing laundry, picking up Oliver from day care after work and parenting him during the afternoon. I see it an I obsess over it to some degree. It all seems to big and immediate to me.
What I don't see and I need to see is all of the things that my wife does. My wife has morning duty with Oliver, fed, dressed, and ready for daycare while preparing the day care bag and managing to get to work on time. She uses her lunch hour to visit with Oliver and feed him. She heads home through rush hour traffic and is usually met at the curb by her two boys. In general from the time she gets home, she is in charge of the baby while I get other things done. She gets Oliver to sleep and takes care of nightly feedings and changings.
On Mondays she has to fend for herself as I take the night to go to my gaming session. The occasional Wednesday I'll take another night to go hashing leaving her to fend for herself again. She doesn't have any nights off like that except for when we go visit friends and then parenting is at best a split task. I've offered to parent while she goes out, but she hasn't taken me up on it. Yet.
Evaluated like that I might not be holding up my end of the mythical 50/50 split, but it doesn't seem like it when I'm trying to make dinner while parenting a fussy baby.
When you are in a marriage, you shouldn't divide everything 50/50. But subconsciously I think a lot of people do it (a lot of people get divorced too, but that's neither here nor there). You know what you are doing and want to make sure that the other person is doing their fair share to keep things afloat. The other part of why I'm grouchy is that I keep focussing on my half of the mythical 50/50 split.
In my case I know what it is that I'm doing - shopping for groceries, making dinner, doing dishes, taking out the trash, mowing the grass, doing laundry, picking up Oliver from day care after work and parenting him during the afternoon. I see it an I obsess over it to some degree. It all seems to big and immediate to me.
What I don't see and I need to see is all of the things that my wife does. My wife has morning duty with Oliver, fed, dressed, and ready for daycare while preparing the day care bag and managing to get to work on time. She uses her lunch hour to visit with Oliver and feed him. She heads home through rush hour traffic and is usually met at the curb by her two boys. In general from the time she gets home, she is in charge of the baby while I get other things done. She gets Oliver to sleep and takes care of nightly feedings and changings.
On Mondays she has to fend for herself as I take the night to go to my gaming session. The occasional Wednesday I'll take another night to go hashing leaving her to fend for herself again. She doesn't have any nights off like that except for when we go visit friends and then parenting is at best a split task. I've offered to parent while she goes out, but she hasn't taken me up on it. Yet.
Evaluated like that I might not be holding up my end of the mythical 50/50 split, but it doesn't seem like it when I'm trying to make dinner while parenting a fussy baby.
posted by mypetrock at 7:52 AM
1 Comments:
Seriously insightful. I can't say that I haven't felt the same way before (note the double negative to obfuscate my guilt), and tried very hard to remind myself of the same things.
It does remind me of something that I was told once about marriage: You shouldn't try to keep score. It only leads to resentment. Resentment leads to fear; fear is the path to the Dark Side; fear leads to anger; anger leads to... Or maybe that was a different quote.
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