Submitted by ThrowRA_jigglychores t3_127s37f in relationship_advice
When I see something that needs to be done, I go ahead and do it because it bothers me having to ask others to do stuff, I'm not their boss and I personally hate when people ask me to do chores. This translates into me doing most of the house work, because we don't have a formal division and I proactively do things that need to get done for my own peace of mind, like vacuuming the house, taking out the trash, doing laundry, etc. When I see him doing something around the house, I find something else that needs to be done and work on it. When I'm doing something around the house, he's usually doing something else on his computer like studying, working or playing games. He usually takes the initiative to do big cleanups once every few weeks, like cleaning and organizing the kitchen cabinets, while I normally focus on daily/weekly tasks. We've been together for 4 years, living together for 3, no kids.
We both work from home and when lunch time comes (we have lunch everyday at the same time) I just get up and go to the kitchen. He doesn't, so it happens often that I prepare and serve lunch and call him to eat, and sometimes he goes to the kitchen for five minutes while I'm cooking and goes back to his desk to work when he sees I got it under control (I mean, it's lunch, of course any functioning adult in normal conditions would have it under control).
Today after I called him for lunch he was surprised that I finished cooking so fast, and I responded (a bit bitterly) that it wasn't fast, it took me 40 minutes. I think my tone triggered him because he proceeded to scold me for not giving him a chance to do things and always doing everything by myself without asking him for help. I told him I'm not happy to do things by myself but am even less happy about having to ask him to do something that needs to be done every day on a clear schedule that is in both our agendas. We got into an argument when I told him I don't want to need to ask him for help because I don't want to always be the one who takes the initiative, and ended with a passive aggressive "sorry for spending time preparing a meal for you". He got annoyed and said that we don't need to be both in the kitchen to prepare lunch and prefers to split the work, so from now on he will take care of lunch every other day.
I'm happy with this arrangement but it's not the first time we get into an argument because (using his words) "I do everything by myself" and "don't give him any chances to do chores around the house", so I'm wondering what we can do to solve this and mitigate future conflicts.
Any outside opinion is appreciated, thanks!
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