"Man Quiz"

If you're a man who's been together with your partner for more than two years, you know that the days of trying to impress to “get some” are long gone.  Relationships change as time goes on, and domestic roles evolve with each stage of family life.  But every relationship requires active effort to keep alive, let alone healthy.  When a relationship matures past the bedroom, how do we measure up in the other rooms of the house?  The role we play in every room demonstrates the respect we hold for our mates.  

Fellas, here’s a short quiz for you to take stock of your standing:

1)  If the laundry basket is full, I:

a)  throw more laundry on top of it
b)  bring it to the washing machine and separate lights from darks
c)  what’s a laundry basket?

2)  If the dishwasher needs to be emptied, I:
a)  leave my dirty dishes on the counter
b)  empty it
c)  why would my wife need to be emptied?

3)  If the bed needs to be made, I:
a)  sleep in it anyway
b)  straighted up the sheets and comforter
c)  throw dirty clothes on it because the laundry basket is still full

4)  If the toilet bowl or seat is dirty, I:
a)  go in the yard
b)  grab the cleaning supplies and give it a quick wipe
c)  make it dirtier

5)  If I am hungry and it’s dinner time, I:
a)  order out from my favorite takeout place
b)  cook something edible

c)stand at the refrigerator door and look back and forth between it and my wife, hoping she will take the hint.

If you answered A or C more than twice, question 6 is a follow up:
6)  How’s living with your mother these days?
a)  awesome, I love doing nothing around the house
b)  pretty good, but she looks shorter than I remember her as a kid
c)  not good, she still yells at me for playing video games all day

At 94 years old, it’s unfathomable to my Grandma that a man would (or could) cook dinner.  It was acceptable for a man to construct a room, but certainly not maintain it afterwards--this was the infamous "women's work," and surely no willing man would serve his family by preparing a meal or giving his kids a bath.  The expectations upon a modern man include not only professional competency, as was expected in Grandma's day, but domestic competency.  


Simply put, a man today should not be dependent upon his partner to feed, clothe, and dress him along with the children.

In the midst of full and part-time work schedules, regularly examining our domestic roles can avoid fostering the unspoken resentment seen in many families between partners.  Life is simply too busy to place the onerous of maintaining a house on the shoulders of one partner. Men, we didn't marry our mothers, we didn’t marry a cleaning service, and we didn’t marry a drive through window.  At one point, we found a woman who was worth the effort, and it’s really not that hard to show her we still care.