10 Reasons Men Shouldn’t Be Helping Their Wives With The Housework

Periodically, lists of reasons men should generously consider pitching in to help their wives with housework make the rounds on the Intertubes, and periodically, I find myself dry heaving while reading them. Here’s the latest one making a splash on Tumblr (to Tumblr’s general scorn). It’s full of helpful ideas, such as the proposition that helping out around the house will help you unleash your stifled creativity, or that your wife will be so overcome with gratitude that she will probably sex you up immediately. Sure, pal!

Of course, nobody makes lists of reasons explaining that women should do housework because it’s creativity-stimulating or a good team-building exercise. Women just do housework–and there’s no reason the same shouldn’t be true of men. So to save time for men who are trying to find a reason they should feel compelled to chip in with laundry, dusting, and dishes, I’ve compiled a list of the only ten reasons a man shouldn’t have to help with the housework.

1. Because he invented and lives inside of a magical bodily-fluid- and skin-cell-repelling force field.

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Otherwise, by your mere existence in the house, you are contributing to the foot-stank in the carpet, the yellow splotches in and/or around the toilet, and the veritable treasure trove of human skin cells congealing into dust behind the TV. You made your bed, now lie in it. You and all your eyebrow mites.

2. Because he is married to an actual chore-dispensing robot.

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Robosexual marriage is still tragically illegal in most places, but if you happen to have gotten yourself hitched to the latest model of Dishwash-O-Tron 9000, you’re one of the lucky ones.

3. Because he’s just a head in a jar.

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If you are the pickled-and-jarred creation of a mad scientist, you are totally and 100% excused from housework. If you have three or four functional limbs and a torso of your very own, however, pick up that scrub-brush and get down to business, buddy.

4. Because he is the Crown Prince of Nolaundrysylvania.

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If you’re reading this, Your Highness, I mean no disrespect, and I fully intend to continue to visit your lovely kingdom every Thursday and on my birthday. I just want to make sure the plebes who don’t have the royal dye-and-fragrance-free blood running in their veins understand what’s what.

5. Because he is the Crown Prince of, well, anywhere.

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Crown Princes probably tend to have this sort of thing farmed out to the hired help.

6. Because his wife is training for the world record toilet-scrubbing time.

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Are you going to rob her of her place in the Guinness World Book, you monster?

7. Because he has a violent anaphylactic reaction to dirty dishwater.

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You could always wear dishwashing gloves, but it’s still risky. Your life isn’t worth that sparkling-clean blender and stainless-steel saute pan.

8. Because a bottle of Windex murdered his parents.

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If you have become a greasy-fingerprint-themed version of Batman after swearing vengeance against the blue squirt bottle that stole your childhood from you, you cannot possibly be held responsible for the smudgy windows in your house. Keep on fighting the good fight, my friend.

9. Because he suffered a debilitating injury in the Great Vacuum Wars of ’94.

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That electrical cord chafe-mark on your ankle has faded with the years, but the memories will always remain.

10. Because he and his wife talked about it like grown-ass adults.

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Maybe he works a lot more hours at an outside-the-home job, maybe he does a lot more of the childcare, maybe he is paying his wife for her housework with weird sex stuff she’s into and he’s not. There are perfect reasonable arrangements for two married people to tip the housework scale in one particular direction–there just isn’t a reason (other than the nine above) that that should always default to the wife.

(Feature image: gpointstudio / Getty)