'AITA for handing off all house responsibilities to my fiancé?'

"AITA for handing off all house responsibilities to fiancé?"

My fiancée recently got fired from his job. The reason is unimportant but it was very unexpected for both of us. I’m a teacher at one of the highest paid districts in the country so I do pretty well for myself. My fiancé works in a trade so 50+ hour weeks are common for him during peak seasons.

I’m not the teacher that will work past my contract hours so I don’t bring work home. I fully take my unpaid lunch and leave when the bell rings. This is the only way you will survive the teaching field. I work about 32 hours a week not counting commute and my unpaid lunch.

Therefore, the way we split at home duties was I took care of cooking (I cook all weekdays and we exclusively got takeout on the weekend only), deep cleaning of the home, folding and putting away laundry and picked up slack on other household needs during my fiancé's busy months.

My fiancé takes care of dishes, yard work, trash, quick tidying up of the home and laundry for both of us (by laundry I mean putting clothes to wash in between games and dropping them off for me to fold and put away). When I’m on summer vacation, winter vacation, spring vacation or thanksgiving break, it’s an unspoken rule that I’ll take on all home duties minus trash and yard work. This has worked for us.

However, it’s been a continuous struggle for him to understand that when I’m working more and he is working less, he must take some more responsibility. He has off seasons in his industry when he’ll work less hours than I do. Instead of helping me with my work load (specifically cooking as he will pick up more chores) he takes that time to play video games.

Now that he’s not working I told him I am fine picking up the slack financially (as I currently make more than he does and have since we’ve began living together) but he needs to take over home duties completely until he finds another job. This seemed to upset him and he tried to weaponized incompetence me by saying that he never agreed to this and that I can’t complain about his food even if it’s bad.

This bothered me. Him learning how to cook has been a particular contention between us as he’s virtually refused to learn as I do all of the cooking. His mom basically raised close to useless children (because of some trauma I won’t go into) and I’ve whipped him into shape the best that I could over the 8 years of our relationship.

(I feel like I should make it clear that we’ve been together since we were teens). I’m actually very proud of the growth he’s made. This however continues to be a problem area for him. Well now I feel he has to learn and take this as a lesson to never get too comfortable.

At the end of the day anything can happen just as it did now and things can change rapidly. I honestly plan to let him figure it out and come home Monday from work ready to sit and eat. Am I the ahole?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

Bubbly_Chicken_9358 said:

NTA. He is a grown adult. He needs to learn these skills. He can ask for help, or find a YouTube video (you can find YT videos for pretty much every single chore there is now). Or he can go home and live with mommy and let her take care of him.

His attitude is one I've seen a lot--men who think the entire running of the household and family is "women's work" and therefore anytime they do any of it they are "helping" the person whose job it actually is.

If you are an adult human, then cooking, cleaning, and laundry are your jobs, because you eat, make messes, and wear clothing. Assuming some other adult will take care of all of that is childish.

Just_River_7502 said:

NTA but having to act like a mum teaching their child is deeply unattractive . Maybe you guys need a discussion about it.

BMal_Suj said:

NTA. Generally I don't approve of a stay-at-home-partner being assigned %100 of household chores. But there is no FAIR universe where he shouldn't be doing about as much as you do when you're off work for weeks at a time.

This whole story is a big red flag on your relationship. I only have a little snapshot of your relationship here to judge, and that's not enough for me to tell you to dump him, but do carefully consider if this is an isolated red flag, or one among many.

YouShouldAim said:

ESH. You said in one of your comments that he was fired Friday, just 2 days ago. Your post when I initially read it made it seem like the dudes been jobless and playing video games for months. But now it seems like in two days between being unexpectedly fired you didn't even make it through a full day without arguing about picking up chores and preemptively being upset about his future cooking.

Losing a job in this climate is extremely stressful, and while yes it's fair to expect him to pick up more of the housework, it sounds like you need to give the guy a minute to breathe.

TripMaster478 said:

NTA. When one is off work they should do more chores. That's just fair. A relationship is a partnership, the household needs to be maintained by the partnership.

TangerineCouch18330 said:

NTA, it’s apparently going to take quite a while longer it seems of reminding him constantly of what he’s agreed to and what he has to do.