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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Airing our Dirty Laundry

Passive Aggressive Diaries has been getting a good collection lately of stories about sugarcoated hostility in relationships. So many of them center around household chores...here's a funny one posted by Shelly Schoenberg on 9/30/09:

When I lived with my boyfriend I used to do the laundry. Every Monday and Wednesday I would take a laundry basket to my mom’s house to do the clothes. Since we lived in an apartment, if I did the clothes there I would have to pay about four dollars a load. Our apartment was on the third floor. I am not a big person so I had trouble carrying this big basket down the steps. I would ask my boyfriend to take the basket to my car every Monday and Wednesday before he went to work.

My boyfriend is a slob and a construction worker. He would come home from work, take his clothes off right at the door, and leave them there. Meanwhile as the week progressed so did the mound of clothes behind the door. He also left clothes scattered around the house and never picked up after himself.

One Monday morning I asked him to quickly pick up his clothes from around the house, throw them in the basket, and take the basket out to my car so I could do the clothes. He threw a temper tantrum and said that he “didn’t have time, and why couldnt I just do it”. I told him that instead of wasting time complaining to me he could have had the clothes picked up and in the basket. He said a few nasty choice words and left, leaving the basket for me to carry and his clothes to pick up.

Well at 5am I was not very pleased with his actions. So, I took all of his clothes out of the basket and threw them on the mound of clothes that was already mounting behind the door. I proceeded to take my clothes to my moms and wash them. When I came back to the house, I found him sitting on the couch staring at the pile. He asked me if I washed clothes, I told him yes I did (trying my hardest not to smile). He said “why is there a pile of my clothes behind the door then?” I simply answered “Were your clothes in the basket? Because if they were then I did them, if not then, no, they didn’t get done.” He was furious because he was out of clothes for a week. Now he does his own clothes.

Where have you experienced passive aggression in your relationship? Do chores like laundry, errands and dishwashing bring out the worst in you? Please leave your own stories of sugarcoated hostility here!

11 comments:

  1. Texas woman fried, ate pet goldfish amid dispute with her ex over jewelry, police say

    9:16 a.m. EDT, September 30, 2009

    PASADENA, Texas (AP) — Authorities say a Houston-area woman who was burned up at her former common-law husband fried their pet goldfish and ate some of them.

    Pasadena police say it's a civil matter and no charges will be filed. The seven goldfish were purchased together by the couple during happier times.

    Police spokesman Vance Mitchell says the man reported on Saturday that the woman took the goldfish from his apartment.

    Mitchell says the two argued earlier about some jewelry the man had given her but took back. She wanted the jewelry returned.

    Officers who were dispatched to the woman's home arrived to find four fried goldfish on a plate. The woman said she already ate the other three.

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  2. Group 5-333
    This is a common situation in relationship. One person is usually the push over and gets stuck with doing all the daily/weely task. For example, washing the dishes or doing the laundry. Eventually the pushover becomes passive aggressive. Although it is unhealthy to portray such a behavior, it taught her boyfriend a valuable lesson.

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  3. Group 5-333

    Similar Story
    My best friend's extremely lazy ex-boyfriend would occasionally stay at the apartment my best friend and I shared. During his sleepovers he would eat but not wash the dishes. He would also leave food and empty dishes lying around the apartment. My best friend always had to clean up after him. She eventually got tired of cleaning up after him so she gave him an ultimatum, he either cleans up after himself or he can't come over to our apartment anymore. He agreed to clean up after himself. However, he cleaned up after himself for about a week and went back to his old habits. When my best friend would ask him to clean up he would complain about how annoying she was. One day my best friend decided to hide all the clean dishes and utensils in my bedroom so that ex-boyfriend would be forced to wash the dishes. The plan did not work as well as my best friend hoped. Her ex-boyfriend would wash one or two dishes at a time or how many he needed at that given time. His habits eventually caused her to break up with him.

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  4. This reminds me of something that happened to my friend. We shared an apartment together while we were in college and he was dating a very demanding woman. She would constantly berate him for minor offenses and even took to criticizing our interior decorating skills. One day, she began to demand that he redecorate his bathroom with a more delicate theme that suited a female. He agreed and they went shopping together for new bathroom decor items. The items he came back with were extremely girly and feminine. They decorated the bathroom and went out to dinner. The next day, she made a point of calling her friends in front of my friend and telling them how girly his bathroom was now and she even sent them photos of it. My friend was then labelled as whipped by his friends and her friends made fun of him for it. He was not amused by thier reactions and he began to neglect the bathroom and use the "decorative" towels to dry personal parts of his body. It wasn't long before the feminine bathroom looked a mess and was no longer frilly, but filthy. His girlfriend refused to use the bathroom and eventually stopped coming to the apartment. They broke up a short time later and he literally threw all the bathroom decor items out of the window.

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  5. This is a classic problem in every relationship, new or old. The act of not doing his laundry is classic passive aggressive bahavior, however it is just passive enough that nothing will happen to the woman and the man will get the message.

    I have a similar story. My ex-boyfriend and I were moving in with each other and since I like things done my way I took on the task of laundry. This went well for weeks, however I came home one night to find him angry. He had no clean boxers to wear and he was on his way out the door to a meeting. He looked at me and said "did you wash clothes, I have no boxers" and i told him "yes I did, I did whatever was in the basket, and I told you I was doing darks. You never told me that you needed boxers done." To this he responded "well I told you this afternoon that I had no boxers and you went and did darks anyway, what am I supposed to do" and my respeonse was "I'll do them while your gone." So he came home 2 hours later, went to shower and found that he had clean boxers, however they were still soaking wet in his drawer. Needless to say he did his own laundry for a while.

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  6. I understand that acting out in a passive aggressive manner is not, in any relationship, but I have to say that I loved this response. It is in my opinion that the girlfriend was justified in her actions. She had asked the boyfriend to put his dirty clothes in the basket and he did not. If she would have washed his clothes, especially considering the tantrum that he threw, it would have proved that he could get away with anything. She would have been labeled as passive in the relationship. There are of course better ways to handle these situations, but it was definately reading about the boyfriend's childish temper that convinced me that he diserved the passive aggressive treatment.
    This reminds me of a story that happened a while back. Unfortunately, I do not think the reaction was quite as rewarding. I played college softball and the team would always do defensive and offensive drills before games. It seemes that my partner and I were always the last ones to hit in the offensive stations. For some reason every station that we would go to, all of the balls would be left all over the place for us to clean up. So of course it would always take us longer to finish the station because we had to clean up everything twice. Eventually we both got tired of cleaning up after everyone and we decided to leave our mess like everyone else had done to us. The only difference was that there was no one after us to clean up anything. All of the equipment was left out until the following day at practice when our coach saw them. He was so angry about nobody picking up that he made the whole team run. My partner and I did laugh about it, but the running part was not so gratifying.

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  7. I think that all couples have their passive aggressive moments. In fact, I know some people who are great normally, but sometimes they feel like they are pushed into a corner by their significant other. I think this is especially true with house chores and "common courtesies". Why? Because everyone was raised different, and has different beliefs about who does what and why and so on. I think that's part of the beauty of a new relationship - discovering those little quirks. However, this is also where people are most commonly feel passive aggression is acceptable, especially if they feel it is a "little thing" and their partner will eventually catch on.
    I know I can be quite passive aggressive, especially when coming to house chores.
    An ex of mine and I used to live together in my parents home. We had been really serious and were trying to get a firm foundation under us to start our own lives together. He had just gotten a new job, and I graciously offered to do a majority of the house work as long as he took into account my school schedule and did his part as well. For whatever reason, he stopped doing his part. I'd come home from school to find him asleep (he worked nights) which was fine. What wasn't fine was the not-quite cleaned out lunch box, the uniform sprawled across two rooms, as well as tiny bits and pieces (like his name tag, badge, etc) and work notebooks sprawled over MY desk which I did my school work on. I let it go for a few weeks, and I would pick up after him, wash his clothes, make his lunch, and so on. However, one week I had back to back tests it seemed every day. I was tired, and I told him I needed him to try and keep his mess in one space.
    He didn't.
    It was also around this time that I found out about his infidelity.
    Fed up, and completely stressed, I wanted to confront him. But he always avoided it and me, so I never got to. Instead, I simply "lost" all but one pair of underwear while doing the dishes, "forgot" to pack him something he wanted in his lunch, "misplaced" his work shirts, "dismissed" important calls from work, and to top it all off, I kept pretending to wash that one pair of underwear he had left for two weeks. By the end of two weeks, he smelled rancid. The clothes I had washed, I had done so in a way I knew they would shrink, and tighten around his gut (which he was self conscious about). The calls he missed from work lost him contracts, and according to him, his lunches "sucked". Soon after he finally started to get it. We didn't last much longer, and I do admit to being immature, but I have to say, it was quite worth it.

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  8. correction:
    I said I lost his underwear while doing the dishes. I meant while doing the laundry

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  9. Group 6 psy 393

    This was a great story, even though Shelly handled the situation in a classic passive aggressive manner. I believe that in most situations, the strain of being in a relationship with another human being is very
    stressful. Because of this stress, the worst aspects of our personalities are brought to the forefront. I think behaving a little passive-aggressive in a relationship is perfectly okay, if it is not taken to the extreme.

    I have a story that is very similar to Shelly’s experience, I think we all do. My boyfriend is the sweetest guy a girl could ask for, so we seldom get into conflicts. When we first started living together, I noticed that for some reason the bathroom floor always seemed to be wet. I asked him what was going on and he explained that he used the sink to perform his
    “cleansing” before he prayed during the day. I explained to him that it was frustrating to go into the bathroom and have the rugs and floor wet
    all the time; so I asked if there was any way he could perform is cleansing shower in the bath tub. He said he would try to, but that he
    didn’t really want to because he would have to take his socks and clothes off. In the following weeks he still used the sink and the floor was still wet; so I decided to soak up the water on the bathroom floor with his clean clothes. To get the point across, I would leave his clothes on the floor so he would know what I was doing. Overall he thought my childish display was hilarious, but he did start to take his cleansing showers in the tub even though he had to take the extra time to take his socks and
    clothes off!

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  10. One person's passive-aggression is another person's behaviour modification. I think this tactic was entirely justified.

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  11. When I lived with my boyfriend I used to do the laundry. Every Monday and Wednesday I would take a laundry basket to my mom’s house to do the clothes. Since we lived in an apartment, if I did the clothes there I would have to pay about four dollars a load. Our apartment was on the third floor. I am not a big person, so I had trouble carrying this big basket down the steps. I would ask my boyfriend to take the basket to my car every Monday and Wednesday before he went to work. My boyfriend is a slob and construction worker. He would come home from work, take his clothes off right at the door and leave them there. Meanwhile, as the week progressed, so did the mound of clothes behind the door. He also left clothes scattered around the house and never picked up after himself. One Monday morning, I asked him to quickly pick up his clothes from around the house, throw them in the basket and take the basket and take the basket out to my car so I could do the clothes. He threw a temper tantrum and said that he “didn’t have time, and why couldn’t I just do it?” I immediately held my tongue for a moment while I counted to 15. During this time, I assembled and discarded several remarks that would have exacerbated the situation. In the end, I told him that I feel used and unappreciated when he treats me like a slave that is required to do his laundry. I continued on by saying that I understand that he is busy and works hard all day, but I need help getting the laundry out to the car. I told him if he could just put his clothes in the basket when he takes them off and then carry the basket downstairs on Monday and Wednesday, it would be a great help. I also told him it hurts me deeply when he treats me like a maid rather than his girlfriend. I told him I don’t mind doing his laundry, but if he doesn’t help out a little, I will stop doing his laundry and he will have to do it on his own. After that conversation, my boyfriend understood a little more clearly how he was taking advantage of my ability to get the laundry done and that he was sorry about how he treated me. Now I don’t have to remind my boyfriend that the laundry needs to be taken down to my car. It is there every Monday and Wednesday. If it were not for the assertive response techniques, it would have turned into an enormous fight that might have ended our relationship.

    ReplyDelete