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Dear Prudence, Please consider hiring a replacement. Soon.

Jill

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Slate’s new Dear Prudence sucks. From this week’s advice:

Dear Prudie,
I’ve been having an ongoing argument (13 years) with my husband. I do all the everyday house cleaning (dishes, laundry, bathroom, picking up). When I tell him to help with his share, he brings up the fact that I don’t do any outside house maintenance (mowing the lawn, picking up leaves, fixing the washer). Our grass doesn’t grow well, so I can count on one hand how many times he mows in a year. It has gotten to the point that when I get home, I feel like the dirt is taking over my body. Instead of being glad I’m home and seeing my family, I am upset and I grab the cleaning tools. I feel the only way to fix this problem is to not care about the dishes, clean clothes, or the bread that has its own fur coat. But I can’t do that. I need a way to get it through my husband’s thick skull that his help is needed! The reason I am finally writing is I just asked for his help, and the next words out of his mouth were, “Let’s have sex.” He fell asleep not getting any, and I was awake, angry.

—Cinderella

A reasonable enough problem, and one that notoriously affects many, many marriages. Prudie’s response? “Quit complaining and put out”:

Dear Cinderella,
I will address the male readers of the column: OK, gentlemen, it’s hard to believe, but let’s put aside hormonal shifts, depression, or your lousy technique as the reason your wives are not giving you more sex. If you want to get some conjugal action, how about turning to your wife and saying, “I think I’ll do a load of laundry.” As for you, Cinderella, this fight has been going on for 13 years. I’m not going to defend your husband, but you have to find a way to ratchet down your anger—it’s your rage, not the dirt, that’s taking over your body. The reality is that you’re always going to do the bulk of the inside work. As Dave Barry explains, men are essentially incapable of doing housework because they suffer from Male Genetic Dirt Blindness. So, what to do? Try a radical change of perception and consider that the housework is probably helping you live longer. There is scientific evidence that engaging in day-to-day physical activities like housework can burn a significant amount of calories. While your husband is beached on the couch, you’re running the vacuum and giving yourself a longevity edge. Can you afford to have the house professionally cleaned once or twice a month? If you can’t, find something else to cut back on so you can. Drop your expectations that your husband will spontaneously clean up, but have a discussion (pleasant, if possible) about specific inside tasks he will agree to do on a regular basis. (Then be prepared to remind him for the rest of your married life.) Sex does not cure dirt blindness, but having more of it will make you look better to each other.

—Prudie

A newsflash to human beings everywhere: Having a penis does not make you blind to dirt. Nor does it make you incapable of cleaning. Now, I also say this as a very messy woman who spends quite a bit of time with some neat-freak men. They can do it! Really! There is nothing inherent in that Y chromosome which makes the human male completely unable to recognize when his home is dirty, and which further disables him from cleaning up after himself. And it’s a pretty dim view of men to take, isn’t it? “Poor stupid dears, they just aren’t able to recognize a messy house. We can’t hold it against them.”

As for the tricks used to urge women to clean and be happy about it, Prudie can stuff those you-know-where. Cleaning burns calories? Sure it does. So does having time to go for a long walk with your girlfriends instead of running the vacuum cleaner because your partner did his share of the cleaning.

Sitting your husband down and giving him a list of chores, and then expecting to remind him to do his chores for the rest of your married life, is infantilizing and condescending. He’s a grown man. Surely he can have a look around and see what needs to be done. And surely Prudie can let this woman know that she isn’t in the wrong for expecting her husband to do something.

But that’s not all. From the same edition of Dear Prudie:

Dear Prudie,
I am having casual sex with this guy. I really like him. He says he isn’t ready for a relationship. How will I know when he is?

—Wondering

Dear Wondering,
When he stops having casual sex with you, you check out why, and you learn he’s in a relationship with someone else.

—Prudie

Because casual sexual relationships never turn into committed relationships. There are the girls you sleep with and the girls you marry, dontchaknow. And suggesting that Wondering, say, talk to the person she’s sleeping with about this would just be too easy.

Please, Slate: Fire Prudie already.

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47 thoughts on Dear Prudence, Please consider hiring a replacement. Soon.

  2. The reality is that you’re always going to do the bulk of the inside work. As Dave Barry explains, men are essentially incapable of doing housework because they suffer from Male Genetic Dirt Blindness.

    Uh, Prudie? Dave Barry is a humor columnist. That’s not an actual genetic disorder.

    I’m the messy one in my marriage, and while I don’t blow off housework completely, my husband does the majority of it. My tolerance for mess is just a little higher than his, but lately I’ve been making an effort to be neater because, although he doesn’t say so, I know he doesn’t want to do all the work. I think that doing chores you don’t give priority to just so your spouse doesn’t have carry the whole load is part of what marriage is about.

    And I bet Prudie would agree with me if I told her this, or even scold me for making my husband do any of the housework.

    The second piece of advice, re: casual sex? That was just bitchy. She sucks.

  3. RE: Household chores, I don’t know, I think this is more if an interpersonal thing as far as I am concerned, not so much a gender war thing. In the past I have lived with women whose “slob index” was quite a bit higher then mine and one whose index was lower then mine. The fact is whichever partner is the one who has the lower tolerance for “mess” does the most housework.

    Now I have been told that typically speaking women as a group typically have a lower tolerance for “mess” then do men. Anecdotally this seems to be the case but I have no hard data to back up this claim. But if it is that case then it is easy to understand why this often get’s framed as a “gender” issue.

    The point is that this is about the value of time, not some kind of gender issue. I don’t value a “Home and Garden” photo shoot ready living space as much as I value time spent practicing music or other hobbies. The woman who I lived with who did, spent the lion’s share of her spare time cleaning. This caused huge fights because I was simply not interested in maintaining the standard of “cleanliness” that she absolutely insisted on and I was not going to follow some arbitrary schedule to make it happen.

    The apartment was clean from a “grime and muck” standpoint but I tend to let things get cluttered and this drove her nuts. The problem was by the time I was at a place where I was willing to pitch in, the work was done; I never got a chance to do anything, she got home before me and was well into her cleaning when I got home, also she could not relax until everything was done, that was just her personality. I on the other hand wouldn’t do anything for about a half hour to 45 minutes after I got home. So she would always accuse me of being lazy.

    The other women I lived with was more then content to let shit grow in the refrigerator. There I did most of the housework, she did very little, the difference is I didn’t care and didn’t get all “psycho” on here if dishes were left in the sink. Now the kicker is that I have had the same stand-off with other male roommates. The person who has the highest personal standard of “clean” does most of the housework. I have never seen it any other way.

    Now having said all of that I agree that the response of this “advice columnist” is horrible and doesn’t address the fundamental issue, mainly that these to people are simply not communicating, they don’t understand each other and they don’t care to. She doesn’t understand why he is a slob, and he doesn’t understand why she can’t just chill about the house. I hate to gat all “Dr. Phil” here but that is the bottom line here.

  5. I know a lot of guys who claim this, then complain the house is a mess and ask their wives when they’re going to clean it up.

    And Jesus. Would it kill these guys to put the dishes away or wipe down a fucking counter? Why is it that the wife has to accept this, and the guys can just laugh it off, and it’s just the way it is?

  6. Well the second is good advice if phrased differently, which would be that if he liked her enough to be her boyfriend, he’d have realized it already and she should cut bait and move on rather than moon around and wait for him.

  9. I’m a little uncomfortable, particularly in the wake of last month’s Nice Guy discussion, with telling men “if you clean the house, your partner will fuck you.” I usually have sex when my girlfriend and I are both in the mood. I have noticed a correlation between her being in the mood and my meeting my household responsibilities, but I certainly don’t think I could say “ok, I’ve done half the housework, now lie down and spread your legs.”

  11. The old Prudie was extremely anti-fat, although I can’t remember the exact examples. The new one at least told a woman complaining about her husband’s child support payments to stop whining; that’s worth something.

  12. The old Prudie (Margo) is now giving advice on Yahoo. And I agree that Slate needs to get rid of THIS Prudie and try another one.

  13. Household chores are a problem all around. I have ADD really bad so I have to be reminded to do things more than once. I used to blow up (also an ADD trait) but now bite my tounge. My S.O. as with many couples instuted a procedure that works. She tells me to do what she wants and walks away (fast) by the time I start forming a nasty reply she is gone and I can’t reply to start a fight. By the time I catch up to her I realize she is right and I have cooled off and just go do it. Sounds strange but it works.

  15. I hate her. And it’s not even the sort of thing where I want to keep reading to see what she says next, so I can laugh at it. After this morning (and the issue where she advised women to get pregnant even if they don’t yet “realize” that they want to have kids), I’m not reading any more.

    Is the other Prudie on Yahoo? Then that’s where I’ll be.

    There and the Vine at Tomato Nation…

  17. Hershele:
    I know it sounds funny but anything is better than the trail of over before they have begun realtionships interspersed with screaming matches or worse being with someone who lets you abuse them. Not all of us fit the generic qualifier of perfectly adjusted human. For those who have a perfect 50/50 relationship I salute them, for me it took a long time to realize that 50/50 will not work with me. I was in a relationship I thought was perfect until I realized my girlfriend was killing herself to please me without complaint. I had to leave because it was too easy to take advantage. Also people with my level of ADD have real anger issues, that run counter to the traditrional understanding of anger. I can get angry enough to do violence in less than a minute and cool down just as fast. If I hold my anger it is quickly gone. There is no arguing with this short term anger the best is to not be there. SO in short it works. Do I sometimes suspect I am being taken advantage of….Yes. But in the long run I will take a little of that rather than constantly trying to rip chunks out of my partners psychological stability and then feeling terrible for it.

  18. What a crock. My boyfriend and I started out as casually as possible, and guess what? We’ve been together for almost 3 years now.

  20. steve: she’s referring to the original post.

    Now, if her point is that the writer shouldn’t expect that it will become a relationship, she put it in a terribly worded way, but it’s good advice. Sometimes casual sex turns into a relationship, of course. But I suspect it isn’t typical. There are a lot of guys who live by the “why buy the cow if you can have the milk for free?” principle. There are a lot of guys who don’t, but I suspect not as many.

    My point: while causal sex often does turn into a relationship, _expecting_ a given casual sex situation to turn into one is a recipe for hurt. Note the question asked “when”, not “if”. The implication is that it _will_ become relationship in a matter of time. Prudie did a shit job of articulating such, but in that case “don’t hold your breath” is probably the best advice.

  21. Always, always, someone pops up with the “men and women just have different standards of cleanliness” line. Oh, those crazy perfectionist women.

    Bollocks. Unless “male standards of cleanliness” embraces the state the house gets in if she does as little housework as him, i.e. stinking garbage cans, overflowing cat litter trays, laundry mouldering in the machine, heaps of paper in which plane tickets / telephone bills / medical appointment cards infallibly get lost, three weeks of undone washing-up, sticky floors, and a fridgeful of rotten food furry with mould.

    This does happen. I have tried it. A few screaming matches later, things are improving, but you will not find a compromise by lowering your cleanliness standards: you will just get food poisoning.

  22. There are also a lot of girls who live by the “‘why buy the cow” rule. Of course, we’re not as visible. And if you have to ask the obvious question, “why won’t he commit?” – Then there’s trouble brewing already. Of course, “Prudie” is insintuating that the writer is second-best, that there is someone else in that relatioship, someone worthy of a commitment. Which is total bollocks because there is no evidence for this in the letter, and a guy is just as likely to simply have NO NEED for a commitment whatsoever, as opposed to wanting to juggle a “real relationship” and some casual sex on the side (though how can a relationship be “real” when you’re cheating is beyond me).

    Let’s face it, the bitch wanted to shame her for having casual sex and wanting something more out of it. If ‘Prudie’ had an ounce of integrity, she would ask the writer to be honest with herself. That’s what you really need to do if you want sex to blossom into a commitment. Sometimes it’s possible and sometimes it’s not, but at least you know what you’re up against.

  23. If ‘Prudie’ had an ounce of integrity, she would ask the writer to be honest with herself. That’s what you really need to do if you want sex to blossom into a commitment. Sometimes it’s possible and sometimes it’s not, but at least you know what you’re up against.

    Precisely. I get the impression that she thinks that’s what she was doing. She, of course, failed catastrophically. Where her advice isn’t clearly dead-wrong, it’s terribly put (and still mostly-wrong).

  24. Always, always, someone pops up with the “men and women just have different standards of cleanliness” line. Oh, those crazy perfectionist women.

    Only to counter the equally two-dimensional outlook that men are all slobs who seem to have an innate ability to mind control women into doing all the housework. Again, as I stated I have had just as much issues with out male roommates as with the women with whom I have shared living space. If your guy is OK with health endangering standards of cleanliness and won’t lift a finger, dump him and move on instead of insipidly whining about you’re being oppressed. I can tell you there are there are men out there who will drive you insane with outrageous standards of “cleanliness”, I have lived with them.

    “People” have different standards of cleanliness, how it breaks down across gender lines I can’t say In my personal experience it’s about 50/50, but my experience may be atypical.

    What I don’t get is why anyone, man or woman would put up with a partner that drives them up a wall. I wouldn’t, I didn’t.

    Now if you want to argue that men are hard-wired biologically for slovenly and manipulative behavior, please be my guest.

  25. “A few screaming matches later, things are improving” might have indicated to you that I did do something in addition to “whining”. That is, if you had actually wanted to read what I wrote rather than attack me.

    I’m not saying all men are slobs. But, statistically speaking, women do far, far more than their share of housework. Why do you think that is?

  26. instead of insipidly whining about you’re being oppressed

    Except the woman who wrote the letter wasn’t, and no one on this comment thread has. And “dump him and move on” isn’t anymore helpful than “put up with it and put out.” No one here is claiming that men are inherently messier than women. Like Norah, I’m the messy one in my relationship. But guess what? As two grown adults in an equal partnership, we negotiate to find a compromise we can both live with. Hopefully, my intelligence, wit, and values are worth enough so that he can somehow find a way to “put up” with me instead of tossing me out on my ear over the dirty laundry. As long as keep the insipid whining to a minimum, anyway.

  27. Is she realy supposed to be taken seriously? And do people still consider Slate even remotely progressive these days?

  28. In general, when you’re at the point where you’re having casual sex, one person “isn’t ready for a relationship,” and the other person wants to know when “ready” will happen, the relationship is going nowhere good. So, I’m with KnifeGhost that she’s giving advice that’s in some sense right (move on, cut your losses), but very badly phrased. The problem is that you really want to say “cut your losses, this guy probably isn’t going to give you what you want” in a way that doesn’t sound like “because you’re not as worthwhile as other women.” Whether he’ll be “ready for a relationship” soon with some entirely different woman doesn’t even matter; what matters is that she’s best off not holding her breath that he’ll change his mind about her.

    The housework advice to the first letter writer totally sucks. Having the person who does the housework make a list of what she actually does and how often might be fine for discussion, and if the husband prefers picking from that list and setting himself a regular schedule of tasks to trying to spontaneously clean (I know I did, when I was the less naturally neat roommate), that’s fine, too. But men being genetically unable to see dirt? The wife needing to resign herself to doing most of the housework and always needing to nag him to do what little regular work he can be gotten to do?

  29. I think Bryan may have hit the nail on the head: perhaps Dear Prudence is deliberately sidling into satire, and seeing how long it takes for people to notice.

  30. laundry mouldering in the machine

    I cannot offer much in the way of advice about not having to do most of the housework, and I do think my boyfriend and I have about equal standards of cleanliness and do about the same amount of housework (partially, perhaps, because I am not a neat-freak). However, I will say this: it always surprises me to hear about women doing all the laundry. That’s an extremely easy problem to fix: don’t do it. Why should you? While it’s true that your partner (male or female) may not care about the sticky floors or dirty dishes — things that affect both of you — you really don’t have to do his/her laundry. I suppose it still affects you in the sense that s/he might stink, but then you can just say, “My friend, you stink. You might want to wash those socks.” Most people don’t really like to stink. I have never, ever done laundry for anyone but myself unless I was feeling extremely generous, which has probably been about, I don’t know, 3 times in my very happy 7 year-long relationship. Sheets, yes, ok — but if he’s got a dirty shirt, that’s his problem, just like my dirty shirts are mine. And if we were going to have kids — which we aren’t — one of the things I’d teach them as soon as they were old enough (10?) is that their dirty shirts are their problem, too.

  31. Wallflower, he would get as far as putting his washing in the machine, and then leave it there wet. But, like I said, the share is much closer to equal now, equal enough that I can (touch wood) stop counting. It wasn’t natural slobbishness, which I doubt exists anyway, as he was perfectly tidy when he lived with a male roommate – it was just an unthinking conflation of the roles of ‘girlfriend’ and ‘mum’.

    After trying the unsuccessful I-wonder-how-dirty-it-will-get-if-I-don’t-clean-it tactic, I followed Bitch Phd’s advice and got bitchy about it, which I should have done much sooner.

  32. Rune:

    Sars is definitely the best! Tomato Nation rocks!

    Who, me… fangirl?

    That’s totally what I thought! If y’all want good advice (that’s also not trying to be “cutesy” this one seems to be doing), head on over to The Vine and be awed by the coolness that is Sars.

  33. I wish Emily Yoffe would go back to doing weird shit in the street, entering pageants, etc. again. She was good at THAT.

    Though I do kind of think that if one partner is REALLY concerned with dirt, and the other one is REALLY UNconcerned about it, training the unconcerned one to be vitally concerned wtih dirt just isn’t going to work. My mom tried on me for 19 years, and it didn’t work. I still don’t give a damn until there’s a major mess. And nagging someone incessantly (for 19 years!) really doesn’t work, and annoys the pig. The wife would be better off just paying for someone else to clean.

    That said, making that answer into a gender thing annoys me. Uterus does not equal neat and tidy. Or mommy.

  34. Another vote for the second advice being badly-expressed but on the right track. Except that he won’t be in a relationship with someone else, he’ll be having casual sex with them, because “not ready for a relationship” is well-established code for “why buy the cow” etc.

  36. I dunno about other people, but the reason I do the laundry for the both of us is a) in my family, we did each other’s laundry all the time (and with six people in the family, that is a shit ton of laundry) and b) I never, ever, ever, ever, ever have to cook. I hate cooking. I hate it more than any other household chore. So it’s worked out that he cooks (and washes the dishes, another thing I hate) and I do alllllll that laundry.

    Our split isn’t perfectly equal, but it’s pretty close. It helps that we both get lonely cleaning by ourselves and end up whining each other into helping.

  37. In my household, my mother was all about having us do our own laundry when we were old enough to reach the controls. Otherwise, with six children, she’d be like Tess Durbeyfield’s mother, always washing and never getting done. She did our father’s laundry, but he took care of his own drycleaning.

    But what usually happened was that the clothes from the dryer would get kicked out by the person whose wash was waiting to dry, and as a result, we had a giant pile of clean but unfolded laundry all over the laundry room. I, personally, used to just retrieve my clothes from the pile as needed.

    I remember when my sister Kat’s friend came over for the first time; she lived with her divorced mother and sister, and her mother ran a tight ship, standing outside the shower with a stopwatch and shutting off the water after three minutes. The poor girl was just flummoxed by our laundry room; she’d never seen such chaos in a home before.

    And looking back, we really didn’t have much of a mess at all. It was pretty well confined to our bedrooms and the laundry room. Certainly nothing like my apartment is now (though I am inordinately proud of myself for having acutally cleaned recently).

  38. We both do laundry for each other, actually, because: a) it’s easier to get a full load of whites or colored when you want to wash a particular thing if you’re throwing in both people’s stuff, and b) sometimes he’s sick or I’m tied up with work.

    And that’s fine, as long as there’s give and take over all. But I’m definitely with Bitch Ph.D. about not silently doing both people’s share of housework. If I’m going through a patch when I’m doing more than my share, I let Joel know what stuff I’m doing, and trust to his basic sense of justice that he’ll feel obliged to pitch in more later.

  39. I was in a relationship I thought was perfect until I realized my girlfriend was killing herself to please me without complaint. I had to leave because it was too easy to take advantage.

    Funny. I have ADD myself and never, ever, ever get any housework done although I feel minor tinges of guilt on occasion about having a cluttered house.

    My last boyfriend was always willing to pitch in and help me out, which was much appreciated — but at some point I did begin to take advantage of his generosity and never did my own laundry and never did my own dishes. I knew if I waited long enough he would do them, partly out of laziness (I blog. What?), partly out of business (single mom/college student/working, etc.), and partly out of ADD (never getting a job done in one sitting). Eventually, it occurred to me what I was doing and realized it was completely unfair and I had to break up with him. It wasn’t the only reason I did, but it was a big one.

    And honestly, I think I did us both a favor. Mostly in that I am now responsible for my own filth and I’m actually learning how to take care of it even if it isn’t always done right or perfect each time.

    Yeah, mix ADD with perfectionism and it’s no wonder I’m so goddamned weird.

  40. The problem is that you really want to say “cut your losses, this guy probably isn’t going to give you what you want” in a way that doesn’t sound like “because you’re not as worthwhile as other women.” Whether he’ll be “ready for a relationship” soon with some entirely different woman doesn’t even matter; what matters is that she’s best off not holding her breath that he’ll change his mind about her.

    Yep. It’s actually not that hard to tell a person, especially if they’re a stranger and you’re doing it via the Internet, that hey, they need to be realistic, this partnership is obviously on the rocks. Heck, the much-maligned “Cosmo” usually does it better.

    The bitchiness expressed by Prudie is indicative of the “you deserve your misery, skank.” Except, of course, most of us have suffered through a relationship, whether sexual or otherwise, in which the other person just didn’t care as much. It’s a universal experience, and I don’t see why someone should be punished for it. Argh.

  41. Lauren, ADD (not diagnosed until I was 35) is the reason for my slobbishness as well. I get mercilessly mocked by my siblings (though Kat is much more forgiving now that having kids means she’s not up to prior standards of cleanliness) for my slobbishness. Well, only a bit since I don’t speak to three of my brothers lately.

    But man, they got offended by my housekeeping, and I’m not even all that bad (I reach a certain level of clutter and have to, HAVE TO, deal with it or obsess). The one brother I still talk to is great for getting stoned and needing to clean without criticizing.

  42. Pingback: Feministe » I *Heart* Dear Margo

  43. There are also a lot of girls who live by the “‘why buy the cow” rule. Of course, we’re not as visible.

    Yep. As I said to an uncle who was riding me about staying single one Thanksgiving (after a couple of glasses of wine): “Why buy the bull when you can get the rodeo ride for free?”

    Followed by: “Crap. Did I say that out loud?”

    My arch-conservative mother shocked me though, when she said, “Well, she’s got a point.”

  45. Ugh.

    Dear Prudie,
    Please consult the commanding officer of any military installation whatsoever, and ask said CO if men are congenitally incapable of keeping their living space and their personal belongings clean, neat and tidy. I suspect the uproarious laughter …er, answer… will surprise you.

    Heo Cwaeth

  46. HeoCwaeth makes a strong point. Sadly, the crappy new Prudence will probably just interpret that to mean that wives would need to become drill sergeants in order to make their husbands clean, and that would just kill their sex appeal, so it’s probably not worth it.

  47. Yeah, mix ADD with perfectionism and it’s no wonder I’m so goddamned weird.

    That describes me to a tee! I’m not alone! Seriously, I have ADD but then I get incredibly frustrated for not finishing my tasks perfectly. It’s a recipe for disaster.

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