Habits can be tricky to establish sometimes. Who among us hasn’t struggled with maintaining a good sleep schedule? Or exercising every day? Or keeping a steady “chore schedule”? (*Raises hand thrice.*) But some habits are easy to fall into… particularly when we’re not paying attention.
Take, for example, unhealthy relationship habits. The kind that creeps up even in happy, otherwise healthy partnerships. That’s right, folks, we’re talking about invisible labor, specifically how TikTok creator Courtney (@cd._.ve) is looking out for her future and maybe we should all be taking notes.
Courtney explains that she’s recently moved in with her fiancé, and she’s really happy about what the future has in store for them. But, she continues:
“It’s really important to me that I don’t become the default for everything in this house, or with the children in the future, or just make him a lazier version of himself because I do things for him all the time and then it turns out that he won’t do basic things like take care of children and clean the house in the next five years.”
So, an issue arose when Courtney’s fiancé asked her to wrap his mother’s birthday present for him. In and of itself, this isn’t an extraordinary request, certainly. Couples do things for one another all the time! But at this moment, Courtney was wary of the idea of default tasks and she said no.
She could tell he was upset by her refusal, but ultimately felt it was more important and beneficial to the relationship to set a precedent now, starting as a cohabitating couple “so I’m not taken advantage of to then buy his mom’s present, think of what to get her for Christmas, then to wrap it. Then for the kids, too, for the dog… it just turns into a spiraling situation that I don’t want to be a part of.”
It worked out in the end but ultimately was still a bit bumpy. Courtney directed her fiancé to her gift-wrapping materials, but he was not pleased and “huffed and puffed while he did it,” grousing that it would have looked better if she’d done it for him.
“I just feel like I gentle parented him to say ‘No! It looks great! You did amazing!’”
She says that this red line comes from years of listening to women in marriages with men, including her own grandparents.
“If I start doing things like that for him now it’ll never end,” she predicts.
Plenty of women in the comments, as Courtney predicted, cheered her on, with many letting her know, from experience “That’s how it starts.”
“I always say ‘I’m good at this task because I’ve done it,’” the most liked comment reads. “‘You can learn to be good by experience.’”
“Just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean I enjoy doing it,” another points out.
“My mom made us make a trade of labor,” chimed in a third. “‘You want me to wrap the present? OK, you go fold the laundry and empty the dishwasher while I do this task for you, because that’s what I was about to do.’”
Not everyone was keen on Courtney’s approach.
“Why bother going that deep… this is why men and women are not equal.. men are good at some things so are we, and then we come together,” said one.
And in the most replied to comment in the thread,
“Why even have a wife at this point?” (You’ll be happy to know this person was “ratioed to filth” as the kids say…)
In a follow-up video, she concludes succinctly, “The point is: women are tired. We are tired of being the default for everything, and it’s time for men to step up.”
