How to Heal from Learned Helplessness
And the one question almost ended my marriage
“Is the dishwasher clean?” my husband asked.
My response:
OMG look at it!!!
I am!
Do the dishes look clean?
I can’t tell!
Is it running?
How would I know?
Is the light on???
“What light? There’s a light?”
THERE IS A LIGHT!
Is that new? Did you fix it or something?
THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A LIGHT!
Such a Shame About the Husband
Friends, I almost became a single middle-aged lady mom in that moment. More specifically a widow, because that kind, loving, funny, good father almost bit the goddamn dust by way of a frying pan to the skull AND YES THE PAN WAS CLEAN!
MAN ANGEL: Is he dead?
LADY ANGEL: Is his light on???
MAN ANGEL: There’s a light???
The dishwasher is a big source of contention in our house. Some people might say I’m UPTIGHT or CONTROLLING or UNHINGED and I will graciously own and accept all of those compliments. But there is in fact a right way and wrong way to load a dishwasher and I can teach a masterclass in spatial economics.
Case in point:
(WARNING: This will be hard for some of you rational beings to see!)
The above photo is real. This is what I often see happening inside our beloved appliance.
But what’s the big deal, Shelly? There are dishes in this dishwasher. Shouldn’t you just be glad he’s helping out at all instead of spending your time taking pictures of the things this poor, sweet gentle soul does “wrong?”
Let me ask you this:
If you were playing doubles tennis and you were working your ass off running all over that court, to the net and back and side to side while your partner just gave their racket an gratuitous swat swat every once in a while, would you be like "Fantastic! At least they moved the air around a little! I’ll just do the rest! No! You are a team! You both have jobs to do on top of the jobs you do and you have to do all the jobs to make less work for everyone! You get it?
What Happens When the Dishwasher is Loaded “Wrong?”
Literally just saw this beauty in the cupboard:
I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Is this glass clean? Would you fill this glass with fresh brewed sweet tea and hand it to a guest? Because someone in my household yanked this thing out of a clean dishwasher and loaded it straight back into the cabinet. IS THIS WHY WE HAVE FRUIT FLIES?
Yes, I realize this is just a crusty glass and in the grand scheme of things, who cares? There’s people with much bigger problems and much worse partners. I married a good person who is great at hanging shelves and explaining board games, loves playing ball with his son, and seems to be the only one in this house who can properly reset the router. So what if he doesn’t share my same attention to detail? Two things can be true, right? But when you take a crusty glass and add it to all the other things I’m asked to manage (either with words or inaction), and multiply that by my full-time-work-from-home-job which often makes me the default parent, that adds up to a math problem even I can solve. It’s too much!
Is it any wonder why moms are so filled with rage!?
You know all moms are all filled with rage, right?
But Those Poor Helpless Dudes!
There may be one or two of you reading this thinking, Damn, this chick in bananas…that poor guy! I am indeed bananas and no one feels worse for Bart than I do. But I know I am not alone. On a walk with a friend I mentioned how my very smart, very capable, very accomplished husband has lost the ability to look for things with his EYES and only looks with his MOUTH.
“It’s another version of learned helplessness,” she said. “Men were raised watching women handle the household business. They were probably coddled and never even taught how to do simple tasks like laundry so they grow up, get married, and let their wives take over. It’s ingrained in their thinking even if they don’t outwardly subscribe to those dated gender roles. I don’t even think they’re aware they’re doing it!”
Well some of them are aware because their wives are constantly pointing it out! I’m a monster, remember?
Domestic Learned Helplessness doesn’t stop at an inefficiently loaded dishwasher. It’s asking if we have more paper towels or saline solution or the code to the back gate or how to email the math teacher, or who the math teacher is, or where the vegetable peeler is, or if the blueberries are still good. I like to think I’ve got some brains up in here but I assure you— the answers they seek are readily available. Probably five feet from where they’re standing right now.
To be fair and very clear, Bart wants to help and he does. (Definitely more than some of his counterparts.) He’s taken over the math homework ever since we passed memorizing the times tables in third grade. He’s been making all the lunches now that our growing boy sups on nothing more than a selection of snack sized bags of chips and apple juice. He’s the only one in this house who has ever cut our son’s nails. He almost always makes the coffee. He wants to take things off my invisible labor to-do list but doesn’t know what to do. That is part of the problem, isn’t it? I don’t know what he doesn’t know until he asks. And then he gets punished for asking.
Peak (Poor) Performance
There was one time during Covid when the schools were shut down, but their email delivery system (the internet?) was alive and thriving because we were getting 1,272 emails a day. A new app for collecting assignments, a new schedule, a new process, a new protocol, an update on a new HVAC system, even a new teacher! It was a full-time job just trying to keep up on top of actually ensuring our then 6-year-old was doing the assignments. I asked Bart about one of those emails and he responded with this:
“I don’t read any of the emails from the school.”
“What did you just say,” I asked in that calm, freaky way that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
I could see his internal struggle. His eyes darting side to side and rolling into the back of his head. The beads of sweat gathering along his temple. The hairs at the root of his scalp turning from dark brown to white. I saw the thought bubble appear over his head displaying his internal monologue.
Don’t tell her why, you stupid motherfucker! Just say you accidentally had them filtered into your spam folder and didn’t realize it until today. Just shut your kind, helpless face before she rips it off your skeleton and feeds it to the possum who lives under the deck!
But then his mouth opened and words so shocking shot out that my ears broke the emergency glass and sounded the alarm and shouted into my ear canal THIS IS NOT A DRILL as those words were transformed into electrical impulses, shoved into a manilla envelope, stamped URGENT, stuffed inside a biometric lock briefcase, put into an armored vehicle, driven into a secret underground parking lot, unloaded into a high-speed elevator, and delivered straight to my eighth cranial nerve where my brain interpreted those electrical impulses and responded with: No he did not actually say this! REJECTED! Ask him again!
So I did.
“Sorry, why don’t you read the emails from the school?”
But nope. He did not take this very benevolent gift. He repeated those same words.
“Because I know you will.”
Ladies, you probably need a minute to collect yourselves. Go catch your breath. Maybe punch a throw pillow. I’ll wait.
I promise you, that was the last time Bart didn’t read an email from the school. But definitely not the last time he asked me if the dishes in the dishwasher were clean because here we are!
But What About the Baby???
I often wonder how this dynamic will imprint on my son. Will witnessing my frustration over our grossly imbalanced to-do lists that only I notice make him more inclined to carry his weight in a partnership? Or will my wild-eyed, bursts of rage over being asked if we have any shredded mozzarella cheese when the asker is standing in front of an open refrigerator lead him to avoid relationships all together out of fear of repeating the sins of his father???
How could I teach learned helpfulness and raise a future man who was capable of completing basic household chores if 50% of his primary caregivers couldn’t tell when a glass was dirty?
And then the universe delivered because the universe is a ragey, middle-aged woman who can manifest anything.
We were running late for flag football and our son still wasn’t in his uniform.
“I don’t know where it is!” he shouted.
“It’s in your closet,” I responded. Because of course it was. I washed it right after the last game to make sure it would be clean for this week. I even hung the shorts and jersey on the same hanger so he wouldn’t have to search for either.
“But where?” our son asked while standing right in front of us and no where near his closet.
“Just go look in your closet.”
“But tell me where to look in my closet,” he said.
Friends, his closet is like 3 feet wide. It’s not a walk in. It’s a look in as in look in the damn closet and you’ll see it!
“But where—”
“OH MY GOD,” I heard someone behind me shout. “JUST LOOK FOR IT! YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU WHERE IT WAS! LOOK FIRST AND THEN ASK FOR HELP! LOOK WITH YOUR EYES NOT YOUR—”
Ohhh damn, Bart was livid. The child and I were stunned. I may have also been a little turned on.
What in the Freaky-Ass-Friday was happening here?
The father:
The mother:
The child:
The child, dejected and sad, turned around, walked sixteen feet to his bedroom, and executed a successful flag football uniform search and rescue mission that took all of 1.5 seconds. We were late for the game. But there was still time to heal.
Today I noticed a fresh package of apple juice sitting on the kitchen counter. The excess juice was stored in the garage. That meant someone noticed we were out and instead of asking if we had more, took the initiative to find it himself. Progress!
While Domestic Learned Helplessness is a very common affliction, it does indeed have a cure. The medicine you must take is your own.
Just don’t ask me where it is.
XO!
Shelly
About that hard-to-find uniform. And yes, I have photographic proof of every infraction. Is this why I have no time?
I am literally rolling down a grassy hill and laughing all the way to the bottom after reading this 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Reasons I'm Single #3476. And I raised a boy who knew how to do his own laundry by the age of 11 lol. To be fair, we never had the luxury of a dishwasher when he was growing up so his lectures were only about dishes in the sink.
I had a husband for a minute (literally almost a minute) but the first time he said my pork chops weren't as good as his mother's, I sent him home.
Oh man the RAGE boiling up in my soul as I read this! And the burden of feeling like we need to not raise sons who turn into men who can't handle basic household tasks! My mom used to claim that many men have a faulty CFS gene--CFS standing for "can't find shit."