The expectation

I am a middle aged single woman and I really don't feel that I'm missing anything. I've dated several men and even lived with some of them briefly, and I learned a lot about what is on offer out there. Young women really need to hear these things, because although you can't weed out all the creeps before you get into a bad situation, you can at least be a little more prepared for the possibility that these things will happen.

So, young women of Rant Rampage, please listen to my story. At one point I got conned into living with a man who pretended to love me. I was in a bad situation with regard to my existing apartment - there was a severe and repeating insect problem, which my landlord was choosing not to fix and which was literally making me ill, so I had to get out of the apartment. At first this man told me I was welcome to stay with him while I looked for another apartment, because he loved me and was glad to have me around anyway, especially if it meant he got to help me in a bad situation. Sounds lovely, does it not?

Well, almost immediately the guilt trips got started every time I started looking for another apartment. I had been very clear that I was not intending to cohabitate with this man since we had not been together for very long and we definitely had not laid the appropriate groundwork for a lasting commitment. Nevertheless, there was a gigantic guilt trip every time I tried to look for an apartment. Ohhhh his place wasn't good enough, and I didn't appreciate it, huh? *whinging mayo noise* It's not even so much that I went for the guilt trip. It was more that it was a huge drain on my time and energy every time he felt a need to go through this.

But also more and more bills were said to be my responsibility. Now, if I'd had a bedroom or I was even sharing his, or if I had asked to be there long term, then having to act like a roommate rather than a guest would have made more sense to me, but I was literally sleeping on the couch in the living room and living out of a duffel bag. The crappiest airbnb I ever used offered me more space than that and an actual bed to sleep in, so if the rules had been reversed, I would not have expected him to pay any bills in my house. I would have been apologetic that despite being very firm that I wanted him to stay, I didn't have any better accommodations for him, and if he had offered me some sort of rent, I would have told him to put his money away. But no, all of a sudden, all the bills were supposedly so very high since I moved in and so I had to pay them in full. Already?At this point I started to get that I was being taken advantage of because I wasn't doing anything for myself that I wasn't also doing for him. He needed heat when it was cold and air conditioning when it was hot just like I did. He needed to eat three times a day just like I did, and i'm sure before I came along he had not been eating everything raw. I never objected to paying my fair share of the grocery bill. But the energy required to make a double portion of what we were eating was simply not that great.
So really, I think the only difference was that he had another person cooking his food and doing his laundry and taking care of all the rest of the chores, but that wasn't enough, I also had to pay his bills.

Before I go on with this story, I want to just lay it out very plainly. Between Disney movies and feminism and the Hallmark Channel, a lot of us have been conditioned to believe as women that we should accept relationships with broken and unlucky men, and we should pay for everything fifty fifty, because we are men's equals. Women, you do not have to go out with losers to prove you are a good person, and you certainly don't have to live with them. You are not meant to be free therapy or stress relief through domestic labor for a man. Moreover, although you are definitely equal to any man, you are not given the same pay or the same opportunities. You don't need a man to support you, but if you're going to be involved with a man, he'd better damn well be supporting you. Men don't have to work anywhere near as hard to get a hell of a lot more money than we will ever see, so if your so called man isn't paying at least 2/3 of the household expenses, you've got an underachieving roommate, not a man who cares about you.

Now, back to the specifics of my historic misery. If it is not yet plain, I am not a wealthy heiress. Every time this guy demanded another five hundred dollars for some bill he pulled out of his ass, that represented the fruits of many hours of labor on my part. So clearly the understanding was that I worked outside the home and the expectation was that I would continue doing so in order to pay his bills. At the time I was working 10 hour days. But for some reason this was nowhere near enough.

Now again, I consider myself a reasonable person. Given that I was staying there, I would not have objected to doing a respectable share of the housework, but considering that it was not my house, and that I worked longer hours than he did, I don't think I needed to be coming home from a ten hour workday to receive complaints about all the house work I hadn't done while I was out making money to hand him. I think if I was the household breadwinner, and I was out there working my ass off, if anything I should have come home to a hot cooked meal and a freshly swept floor. I shouldn't have had to cook the meal while listening to somebody who had been home for hours already complaining about dust in the corner as though he'd had no time to fix it himself.

So again, young women, there's nothing wrong with choosing something other than the traditional gender roles, but you cannot possibly be a full time wage employee and a full time homemaker at the same time. If you are with a guy who expects you to come home from a full work day, having magically cleaned his house while you were out, and instantly slap on a stupid grin and an apron and make him dinner while simultaneously doing 4 other chores and listening to him, complain about all of it, you are with a manchild who wants a Mommy and daddy hybrid to take care of everything for him so that he can sit on his ass and play video games all day like he's fifteen and on eternal summer vacation. This is not a good person to spend any more time with than you absolutely have to. After all, if you are working ten hours and commuting probably another hour, and then you have to put eight hours into making it look like you're a full time housewife, that only leaves you five hours to do anything else...or rather it would if you weren't also having to stroke his dick and his perpetually hurt feelings for hours every day. Don't bother with a manchild who expects you to function in his interests twenty seven hours out of twenty four, being the man, the woman, the prostitute, and the intensive peer counselor for him all at the same time.

Meanwhile, if you have been suckered into attempting all of this and the so called man in question is still unhappy, it's not because there's anything wrong with you. It's because he sees you as an object designed to fulfill his objectives rather than a human being, with your own needs and life. He's wrong and you deserve better.

I know people are telling women nowadays not to have such high standards and expectations, under the threat of waking up one day, discovering that you're 50 in a house full of fifteen cats where a husband and children should supposedly be. But you know what? I can tell you from experience that in my late forties, I feel a hell of a lot better waking up every morning looking at cats I love and do I know love me, rather than looking at somebody who is supposed to love me but acts an awful lot like they don't care whether I live or die. I like rolling over and looking at cats much better than I liked waking up on somebody's couch and instantly going into panic mode because I know in the mind of the master of the house, I had no right to sleep at night - I should have been either doing more chores or fucking his brain out. I like it a lot better than waking up listening to somebody next to me, snoring and realizing i'm probably going to be emotionally abused in the morning because my partner clearly isn't getting restful sleep and is going to wake up angry. There are much worse things than being single and on your own, like being with any of the several men with whom I have seriously involved myself.

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anonymous Dating February 16, 2025 at 4:46 am 1 1