Weaponized Incompetence

How and Why Women Take On the Bulk of It All

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

First, let me note that not every man is incompetent, not every man is baby-fied, and not every man is unable to care for and feed himself.

That said, I was in a more than twenty year relationship with just such a man, and wow — I learned a lot once I stopped catering to his whims.

I thought it was a 1970s meme, the picture of a family dinner after which the wife/mother cleared the table and washed the dishes dutifully. I thought it was an outdated trope that men don’t iron their own shirts. I thought that in modern times, there was an equal sense of purpose and shared responsibility.

Nope.

Women’s labor remains largely invisible, and that super-sucks.

But girls, we did it to ourselves.

The dating persona in many of us is nurturer and caregiver. Maybe we are hard-wired that way and maybe our culture told us to do this, but when we care for people we tend to take care of them. By this I mean we work to make their lives a little easier, a little more comfortable.

That’s really quite nice.

Everyone enjoys it when they feel their needs are being met, without agenda. I ask you, though, how often have you attended to the needs of your (typically male) partner…