A Perfect House Husband Madness

Yesterday my wife suggested that as a house husband I might suffer from what Judith Warner described as modern motherhood's "perfect madness", and I realized that although I have always thought mothers generally felt the weight of gendered social standards far too heavily, it never occurred to me I might suffer from that same weight as a (female led) house husband and father. The more I think about it the more I think she is more right than she realizes: I intently desire to meet my wife's standards (because I want to make her happy), but I have some unrealistic ideas about her standards because I have been unconsciously using and incorporating the readily available ideas of society's gendered and stereotyped 'perfect mother' as a template for being a 'perfect house husband and father'. And that even she possibly has some unrealistic standards for me for the same reason only underscores the need to actively avoid reliance on stereotypes in (female led) relationship communication. 

AND it is particularly disturbing because I do not like to kink on gender stereotypes, and now must suddenly wonder if I, even though unwittingly, have been.  And more: I have lived an interior other than my own before because of my mental framework and symbols, and though I have no desire to ever to so again, I must suddenly wonder if I already have been.

(It seems far too simple to have overlooked this. I have even held this book in my hands and contemplated its central ideas in the vein on contemporary feminism, but never once thought about it in terms of my personal experience.)

Experiencing Teaching Meaning

My wife wants me to get certain jobs and chores done around the house and maintain the house to her standard, but she expects me to get these things done to her satisfaction on my own. Not being a mind reader (yet), I need some consistent feedback to do this, feedback she finds hard to give because if I didn't do it her way the first time she'd rather do it herself and get it over with than stand around talking about it.

So I explained, and hope this helps her understand, how necessary the process of learning these things is, how without the experiential learning process, I won't be able to attach the right meaning and significance to getting it done. If she won't make me go back and do these things again, make me go get her standard right the second time as it were, I will never learn the appropriate prioritization and organization needed to satisfy her standard.