The Dishwasher Is Not a Personality Test

Q: My husband says I’m “keeping score” because I get angry about chores. We both work full-time, but I do the grocery shopping, meal planning, laundry, school forms, birthday gifts, dentist appointments, and approximately 900 tiny things nobody notices until they don’t happen. He does dishes “when he sees them,” which apparently means after I’ve already done them. When I bring it up, he says I should just ask for help instead of expecting him to read my mind. I hate that this makes me sound like a furious office manager, but I’m exhausted and starting to resent him. —Running the Household Like a Tiny Dictatorship

You are not asking him to read your mind. You are asking him to notice the life you both live. There’s a difference between refusing to communicate and refusing to serve as the household’s project manager.

That said, yeah, if you’ve been silently doing everything for years and then exploding whenever he misses something, there is a piece of this that’s on you. Not because your anger is wrong, but because resentment is a terrible scheduling system. Stop arguing about whether he “helps.” He is not helping you; he is parenting and maintaining his own home.

Make a complete list of recurring work, including the invisible stuff: tracking school deadlines, replacing outgrown shoes, noticing the toilet paper is low, remembering his mother’s birthday. Divide ownership, not individual tasks. If he owns school forms, he owns the calendar, the emails, and the panic when permission slips vanish. No reminders from you. If he does it badly, you can discuss standards—but you cannot assign him a job and then secretly remain the supervisor.

Q: I’m dating a divorced man who says his ex is “crazy,” but somehow she still controls his weekends. They have two kids, so I understand that she’s in his life. But she changes pickup times, calls him late at night, and sends long angry texts. He complains about her constantly, then answers every message in thirty seconds. Last week he canceled our dinner because she “needed to talk,” and afterward he spent an hour telling me what a nightmare she is. I’m embarrassed to admit I’m jealous of someone he claims not to love. Am I being unreasonable?

No. You are being asked to date a man who has not built a workable boundary system with his former spouse. The children require cooperation; they do not require him to be emotionally available on demand or to make you the audience for an endless rerun of his divorce.

Also, be careful with the word “crazy.” Sometimes an ex is genuinely difficult. Sometimes “crazy” means “she objects when I disappoint her.” You don’t need to investigate the villain’s backstory. Watch his behavior. Can he use a shared calendar? Keep communication child-focused? Say, “I can discuss this tomorrow,” instead of dropping your plans every time she rattles the fence?

Your actionable step: have one calm conversation this week and ask him to create a written parenting schedule and communication boundary; then judge the relationship by whether he follows it for the next month, not by how convincingly he complains about his ex.