Dear For Love and Money,
While both my husband and I work, he is not interested in doing anything with our money, like paying bills or purchasing gifts, unless it comes to a larger purchase. I ask for his help because I would love assistance figuring things out from time to time, but he remains disengaged. Because of this, I find it completely acceptable to pay myself for my services by buying whatever I want.
He seems OK with this right up until I move to change something in the house, and then he suddenly has an opinion. I do not ask for his opinions, nor do I want his opinions on home planning. He does none of the cooking and cleaning unless I beg, so I don’t think that he gets to design my “office.”
If you’re not interested, don’t be interested, and let me do me. Is this wrong?
Sincerely,
Don’t Need His Unsolicited Opinions
Dear Don’t Need,
Your letter reminds me of the fable of the little red hen, who harvests the wheat, takes it to the mill, makes it into a loaf of bread, and asks her farmyard friends for help every step of the way.
It isn’t until she asks for their help eating the bread, though, that they show any interest. At that point, she says something along the lines of “Sike! She who makes the bread eats the bread, suckers!” and gobbles down the entire loaf without sharing a single crumb.
In the version of this story I read growing up, the little red hen’s friends were depicted as a trio made up of a pig, a cat, and a goose. Their devastation at the end of the book was so well rendered that while I knew the little red hen had the moral high ground, I never once took her side. Because who eats a steaming slice of buttered bread right in their friends’ faces? But then again, who flatly refuses to help a friend who has asked them for help no less than three times?
You get where I am going with this, right? In a dynamic fraught with resentment and retaliation, who’s right or wrong no longer matters, because no one is winning.
Having been on both sides of this argument at different times in my marriage, I have a theory about why your husband isn’t helping. You said you don’t want his opinion on household decisions. While I understand your perspective that you’ve earned this authority by doing the work and he hasn’t, he’s likely coming at it from the other side: Why take care of something that he has no say in?
There’s a point where you have to break this cycle and build on a foundation stronger than a scoreboard. That foundation can be as simple as having a productive conversation.
You mentioned you “ask for his help”, which indicates you’ve broached the topic before, but he remained disengaged. I suggest that, instead of addressing your needs as they arise, you get ahead by having a conversation with him about the dynamic as a whole.
A constructive sit-down will look different for everyone, but they will always share these features:
You approach the conversation as equals. This means you must both commit to not letting it devolve into a score-keeping session. You share finances, which means no matter who brings in the higher income, who has the better credit score, or who does the most around the house, you make your financial decisions together.
You are honest about your feelings and ask him to be as well. For emotionally charged conversations like “Who do you think you are, telling me we don’t need new kitchen counters?” being honest and calm may feel like an impossible task, but remember that anger is a secondary emotion; under your anger lies something more vulnerable. Maybe it’s fear that it will never happen, or maybe it’s sadness that you’ve been waiting so long. Whatever it is, your first task is to uncover that feeling and be honest about it.
You also need to create space for him to be honest about his feelings as well. Get curious about why he doesn’t help, rather than focusing exclusively on how frustrating it is. Be honest about your feelings and the inequities you feel led to those feelings, but don’t treat either of those things as your husband’s failure; instead, treat them like problems you can tackle together because that’s what they are. Approach his feelings with the same regard.
You are solution-oriented. I’m a big believer that a productive conversation isn’t possible unless it includes both feelings and solutions. Teamwork might look like a division of labor that you come up with together. Chore charts aren’t just for kids — decide what seems fair, and adjust it together as needed going forward.
Often, we fall into cycles based on what our parents did, traditional gender roles, routines formed early in the marriage, or even our individual strengths and weaknesses. None of these are wrong on their own, but they rarely work out because they aren’t chosen; they just happen. Living your best life with a partner means proactively choosing what your shared life looks like as a couple.
I won’t pretend that one conversation will automatically fix your entire dynamic. Letting go of control when you’ve had to hold everything together by yourself for years can be very difficult. At the same time, your husband may find it challenging to do more around the house when he’s used to treating it like your domain and leaving it to you.
There’s a good chance you’ll face some resistance at first, as both of you cling to a familiar and predictable status quo. Remember, you can’t make him do anything, but you can make yourself stick to your new division of labor, even if it means the dishes aren’t done immediately, or you acquire fees on payments he makes late. Remember, you’ll both have a learning curve that will require patience.
But patience isn’t martyrdom, and as long as you have a partner, you aren’t in this alone. Make space for him to do his part, and then trust him to do it, even if it isn’t exactly how you would do it. Don’t settle for the life of the little red hen, who was so resentful of her lazy friends that she wouldn’t share a meal with them. The conversation shouldn’t start when the bread comes out of the oven; it starts when it’s time to harvest the wheat.
Rooting for you both,
For Love & Money
An earlier version of this article was originally published in February 2022.
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