Dear Luv Doc,
This year me and my husband of two years hosted our in-laws for the holidays for the first time. I say “we,” but that’s incorrect. My husband’s family was here Christmas Eve through January 4 and it was a lot. They are a traditional Midwestern family with a stay-at-home mom and working dad. They are sweet, generous, hardworking people but somehow they raised a son who can barely wipe his own ass. For 13 days I cooked, cleaned, mopped, dusted, did laundry, grocery shopping, and received no help whatsoever from my husband. I would ask him to help with the dishes, he would say, “We can do them later.” I would get up early to make everybody breakfast. He would sleep in. I cleaned the house in anticipation of their arrival while he went biking “while the weather was still good.” At least his father was nice enough to take the trash to the curb and his mom always offered to help with the dishes. Once they were on the plane and we came back to a table full of breakfast dishes and a wrecked kitchen, my husband decided he wanted to take a nap. I completely lost it. I said, “How are you even tired? You have done literally nothing to help me host your family for two weeks.” Then I told him I was going to the Domain to exchange some gifts and that since I had been doing it for the last two weeks, he could clean the kitchen and do the dishes. When I got back that afternoon, the kitchen was still a mess. He was in the bedroom napping. I was furious. He claimed he was going to do them later but was feeling sleepy. He finally did clean up the kitchen, but he did a terrible job of it. Too little too late. The main problem is that he just doesn’t see the dishes in the sink or the clothes on the floor or the disgusting toilet. He is useless with helping out around the house. Is there anything I can do? Did I marry the wrong guy?
– The Mad Maid
Sounds to me like your husband might have a textbook case of weaponized incompetence. Ideally those last two words should be accompanied by a film noir scare chord for dramatic effect, but if they didn’t make your hair stand on end, maybe it might help if I mansplained them to the folks in the peanut gallery still trying to find their seats.
Weaponized incompetence is a manipulative tactic in which someone feigns incompetence in order to avoid having to do some task they don’t want to do. Sometimes they will employ flattery to get someone else to do that task. Like, for instance, here at the Chronicle people are always saying (imagine a Jayne Mansfield-style pouty voice): “But Luv Doc, you really are the best at killing rats out back by the dumpster! My hands are just too small!” I mean, come on. Even people with tiny hands can kill rats given the proper training and tools. That’s like saying you can’t do Excel because you have press-on nails. Ain’t nobody falling for that bullshit.
Similarly, when your husband steps over a pile of dirty clothes on his way to pee around the filthy toilet, he is either manipulating you or … perhaps more disturbingly … he has lived that way his entire life. Y’all know what I’m talking about. Sometime in your early childhood you surely ended up at someone’s house where upon entering, you shuddered and thought, “How do people live like this?” Well, believe it or not, those people grow up and become husbands, wives, roommates, and they bring those unimaginably low standards of tidiness and cleanliness with them. There are literally countless tales of people who get married to someone based on their spouse’s roommate’s standards of cleanliness. Whoopsy! Ideally that revelation happens when living in sin and not actual matrimony, but sometimes clean freaks are also overly impatient.
So … can he change? Well of course he can, but will he change? That’s the question, isn’t it? First you need to let him know that doing household chores is a non-negotiable condition of your relationship. Second, let him know that you will help him rise to an appropriate level of competence, but that effort is more important than perfection. And lastly, you will need to sit down and negotiate what level of cleanliness and tidiness is acceptable to both of you. That way, if he doesn’t live up to the agreement, you won’t feel guilty about the divorce.
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This article appears in January 16 • 2026.