Boyfriend works full time, doesn’t do ANY housework at all
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For the record, trafficking happens into the US as well, I wasn’t excluding us– in fact I’d put us as one of those countries where poor foreign women are likely to be disbelieved and let down by the system.
Anyways, its hard to tell what is going on. He could be a regular male chauvanist. He could have brought a woman from another country specifically to hold the power. If it doesn’t apply she can move on, but this feels like that season of 90 day fiance with the old white dude and the 20 year old filipino girl… I wanted to shake her and be like “no, go home, save yourself!”
Who says this chick moved TO the US—instead of, say, FROM the US? There is zero evidence this is human trafficking. Zero.
I don’t even see any evidence of male chauvinism. Her big issue is that her boyfriend won’t walk her dog before going to work in the morning. (And yeah, it’s HER dog. She’s “paying off vet bills.”)
I think she said it’s a girl dog, and girls can take forever to pee. If I’m hurrying to get ready for work and someone asks me to take the dog out, I’m going to be aggravated, especially if they don’t have anywhere to be. I can’t fault him for that. Also, I think even good guys can get pissy sometimes when you disrupt their routine with some curve ball they didn’t expect.
That said, there’s clearly an overall bigger problem here with the living arrangement, expectations, communication, etc.
LW, sorry not sorry. I work 40plus hours a week, my husband works 60plus hours a week, I deep clean my home every Saturday, get laundry done, we alternate dinners, we take our trash to the dump, and have two dogs that need potty breaks as well. Its called adulting. You were saying??
All this doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s been a mont of living together and you BOTH already have huge issues and resentment towards each other. This ain’t gonna work out.
Howdywiley is right.
Those of you going on about how you work AND clean are being assholes just like LWs boyfriend. So what if YOU work harder than everyone else? Good for you. Would you like a medal? Your work load is not the issue here.
The LW CANNOT work because of visa issues. So she’s taken on the role of doing the housework which is fair. She even says she’s fine with it!
And by the way, cleaning up after two people is not nothing. I do it too, and every single day I have a list of chores I need to complete to keep the house in order. Just because I’m not leaving the house to go to an office doesn’t mean I’m sitting on my ass doing nothing. I’m contributing the way I can right now and my contribution is still valuable.
But that does NOT mean I don’t have the right to ask my partner for help, which is what you’re all implying when you mock the LW. Seriously, do you honestly believe that I have no right to ever ask my partner to take out the garbage? That I have no right to ask him to fill up the cat’s water bowl if he’s standing next to it? I’m not his maid, we are partners and partners do what they can to help each other get the job done.
If she’s never allowed to ask for anything because he works a day job, that’s just score keeping. The problem here is that LWs partner is looking down on her, is resenting her and is keeping a score sheet. He basically feels that his contribution is the only one that’s valuable, and no matter how much she does around the house it’ll never add up to what he does, therefore she has zero right to ever ask anything of him.
THAT is the problem. They’ve been living together a month and they’re already angry at each other. That is a serious compatibility problem.
They need to have a serious talk about expectations around the house, he needs a serious fucking attitude adjustment. Even if he is frustrated that she’s asked him to take the dog out while he’s in a rush to leave the house, he shouldn’t be getting angry at her and refusing to do anything to get back at her. If talking this out doesn’t fix things, they should break up.
P.S. @NorthernStar it cost me over $4,000 to bring my cats with me to the UK, so I can absolutely understand that she’s paying off vet bills. Bringing your animal into another country is complicated and expensive. I am fortunate enough that I had the money to cover those costs and I am lucky enough to have a partner who understands what it cost me to move here.
Giving up everything to move to a new country is not easy. That in itself is a HUGE contribution and sacrifice, one that I made for my partner because he wanted to stay in the UK. We both knew going into this that I wouldn’t be able to work here, we both talked about how we would work things out and my partner is grateful everyday for my contributions.
The fact that this LW moved to a new country, likely gave up a job and friends and family and paid a lot of money to bring her pet, and after only month her boyfriend is angry at her and resenting her? That’s not ok.
I’ll agree that there is a lot of resentment and bean counting. I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around the OPs complaints. Asking for help is always OK, but you have to think of the timing. As several people noted, she asked him to take out the dog while he was getting ready for work so that she could sleep in.
I’m sorry – what? You have all freaking day to nap, because it doesn’t take you all day to do that work you’re complaining about, and you want me to potentially be late to work? No. I’m sorry, no.
The garbage… was it sitting there all day? Was it full before he left for work? If that’s the case, I’d probably respond the same. If it was filled during dinner, then yes, he’s being a jerk.
So she needs to decide if this is something they can talk out and resolve or not. And she needs to take a look at her own actions and decide if there’s anything she can do to ease this situation they’ve both created.
Agree with Leslie.
And a big thing here is that she willingly chose to exchange her financial independence and ability to work, for a live-in situation in another country without the necessary stability or legal protection. She doesn’t seem to even know this guy very well. That looks like a huge mistake to me. At 21 I did move to another country with a guy, where I couldn’t legally work, but we were married and I had all the resources of the USAF to tap into if there was any trouble. Being a legal spouse gave me rights and protections. His money was my money. We had also dated for 4 years at home. This LW took a huge risk that doesn’t seem to be paying off, and i personally would leave my cards on the table and go home.
And you guys know that I have NO patience for couples that both work and the woman takes on the brunt of cleaning. If she were working, even part time, my response would be so different. Or if she had the flu.
I think one of the big issues is that he appears to have the expectation that he shouldn’t have to do ANY home chores because he works. I would assume that most couples who have a big discrepancy in how much each person works will divide the chores based on that because obviously one person has more time than the other and it creates some balance. But when it turns into one person saying they essentially don’t have to do anything at home, it’s not OK. It starts to sound like one person saying they have more value than the other person.
The other thing that I haven’t seen as much mentioned about is that household chores aren’t just about the time it takes to do them. Cleaning up after another person is a totally different feeling than going out and doing a job. I shared chores with housemates once where we rotated jobs. When I was shoveling snow/taking out trash/cutting grass, it was a very different feeling than when I was cleaning the kitchen. With the former, it was simply a chore that had to be done. With the latter, the amount of work directly related to whether the other housemates chose to pick up after themselves or not. It’s a lot easier to resent someone when you’re cleaning up after them and they forgot to clean up their coffee that dripped on the counter or when they didn’t toss out their old leftovers. I don’t think any romantic relationship is going to handle it very well when one person is doing all the household chores because you feel like either their maid or their parent.
@Dinoceros, right, this dynamic doesn’t make sense. It can work when raising kids, but it’s still tricky. That’s why I’m saying, don’t move to another country to become essentially someone’s housekeeper. Be able to work and balance your contributions. Don’t put yourself completely in a position of dependence on someone and set up a dynamic where they look down on you because you don’t “work” and they do. Cleaning an apartment and caring for a pet truly is not anything close to a full time job. I’ve done it. You have time to work part time as well. It would be extremely difficult to feel like equals with this kind of dynamic, and it can go badly real quick as we see here.
