I have a questions about boundaries, wants, and the manual with my fiance. We’ve lived together to a little over a year and a half. I have found myself struggling more recently with thoughts about household work, especially since he’s currently in his off season of work right now (every year he’s off from about January through to the beginning of March). I now work from home as well, so we are both home most of the time.

The thought/story is that I’m struggling with is that he spends most of his days playing video games or watching TV. Yet since we are both home he wants to split 50/50 of the household work, but only wants to do the cleaning for things that bother him. He wants us to split the dishes 50/50 and I have to do the rest. Like the shower needs to be cleaned and I’ve asked him if he would and he responds with “it’s a shower it’s supposed to be like that”.

I go back and forth on this topic because I know that if it’s important to me to clean I should do it because I shouldn’t expect him to care about it and do it if he doesn’t because that it becomes a rule of a manual I’m creating. But I also want someone I’m living with to share in the cleaning and household responsibilities with me. I’m having issues navigating whether it’s a manual or boundary issue.

The other part of this I struggle with he tells me just to tell him what needs to be done around the house and we can do them together. The thing is when I ask him to help, he doesn’t do it, is sassy about it or passive aggressive about doing any of the parts he doesn’t want to do. Also, I wish some of it would just get done without me having to ask about it or with having to deal with what I perceive as sassy remarks when he says “maybe I will” or so forth.

I need help navigating my own thoughts around this area!