'AITA for asking my boyfriend to skip his afternoon nap so he has time for chores?'
Dividing household labor is one of the trickiest aspect of living with a partner. It often requires a lot of follow-up conversations and compromise.
In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a woman asked if she was wrong for telling her boyfriend to skip his afternoon nap in order to do chorses. She wrote:
"AITA for asking my boyfriend to skip his afternoon nap?"
I'm (26F), he's (30M). We've been dating for 3 years but just moved in together 6 months ago. I have felt crazy busy since moving in together. I work outside of the house, commute for an hour a day, and I'm going to school part time to try and get a better job, so my schedule is already packed, but since moving in together it feels like my time spent doing chores has almost doubled.
I talked with my boyfriend about this hoping that we could come up with a reasonable chore schedule, but he's adamant that he's doing as much as he has the capacity to do. Something else I've noticed since moving in together is that he takes a nap from 4pm-8pm daily. He otherwise sleeps through the night usually 1am-10am, but that afternoon nap is like clockwork.
Long story short, I told him that he is getting 14-15 hours of sleep every day, and that he can start making more time to help around the house by even shortening that nap. I dont even think that amount of sleep it healthy. But he insists its a necessary part of his day and that im crossing a boundary by suggested that he not nap. AITA?
Redditors had a lot to say.
Doktor_Seagull wrote:
NTA. He is getting nearly double the recommended amount of sleep needed by the average adult on a daily basis. If he literally cannot function without that much sleep (he's asleep more hours than he's awake) it's time he visited a sleep clinic. Does he even have a job that works around that sleeping schedule? He is TA for being selfish with his time and not taking equal share of the household chores.
silv1377 wrote:
I was sleeping 15-18 hrs a day when i got diagnosed with hypothyroidism. I just felt tired, that was it. I would come from uni around 3-4 pm, sleep until 6-7 pm, go out and meet friends sometimes 1-2 hrs and back to sleep latest at 11pm. Would wake up 7am and repeat.
My mom was asking me if i'm pregnant at that point. I went to talk to a gynecologist at the hospital because I was having PCOS symptoms and she looked at my thyroid with the Eco machine and was like I know you have problems with it, go to your primary doctor and tell him to make you take this tests.
Turns out I was having a flare-up and the results were so bad that the machine came back with an error because the measurements were too high for the machine to measure. Nobody is TA here until your partner gets checked.
haleorshine wrote:
If he can nap for 4 hours and then sleep through the night, he definitely needs to see a doctor. Recommended sleep time for adults is 7-9 hours, and needing 14 or 15 hours every day is a sign of something being wrong. Also, does he have a job? He gets up at 10am, and goes for a nap at 4pm, so he's definitely not working full-time, so I'm wondering about finances and what's happening here.
awkward_lionturtle wrote:
I just want to chime in as someone who has similar sleeping habits to OPs boyfriend...I've been to the doctor, had blood work done multiple times, had a test for sleep apnea. Nothing was found and nothing has changed. It's not as easy as go to the doctor and get your answers solved. I've given up finding the answer to my sleep problems.
haleorshine wrote:
That's fair, and that totally may happen, but if he hasn't gone to the doctor at all, simply living with sleeping more than half the day away and expecting OP to clean up after him is just not the answer. Hell, even if he has gone to the doctor and gotten no answers, the fact that OP's household workload has doubled since moving in with him means that he's making much more mess than he needs to.
Cooking for 2 takes about the same time as cooking for 1, and cleaning up after 2 adults takes only a little bit more time than cleaning up after 1 - moving in with a partner should mean that the amount of work you do around the house is lowered, rather than doubling.
Unfortunately often when men and women move in together, men's household work goes down and women's goes up, which means he's not pulling his weight.
If he has a medical condition that means that OP was always going to have to clean up after him and he knew about it, he should have told her that before they moved in together, instead of letting her do all the work and pretending it's a boundary of his that forces her to always be cleaning up after him. She should had a choice over whether she becomes his unpaid maid.
Head-Jump-167 wrote:
This. NTA. Also, not sure if OP was considering having kids with this guy, but if so she should seriously reconsider unless the boyfriend immediately seeks medical attention and starts doing his fair share. This sounds like a nightmare for OP already and it would be way worse with a kid or two in the picture.
Standard-Pain-5246 wrote:
That was my first thought - DO NOT have kids with this guy. If you think it’s bad now, you can’t imagine the work that goes into raising kids.
OP is NTA here, but it sounds like something medical might be going on with her OP, so he's not necessarily one either. This is a situation that merits some updates.