Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Dudefile #22 - Will My Dude Ever Be Clean?

dearest dude whisperer,

this is a question about my husband. he's perfect and great in many ways, but the fact is that we have very different standards of cleanliness. i'm super clean and he, well, just isn't. i knew this going into the relationship. before we got married and were living together, his bachelor apartment was just straight up dirty. i mean, he didn't own a vacuum cleaner!! or a toilet brush!!

now that we live together, he's gotten much cleaner and i can tell he is trying his hardest to live up to my clean standards. the problem is, i feel like i'm constantly nagging him about cleaning up. he'll do laundry, but only when i ask him. he'll scoop litter and vacuum, but only at my request.

he does all the cooking, which is great, but the kitchen is often a mess afterwards. he does the dishes, but there are always food scraps andcrumbs on the floor. like an onion skin at the base of the sink.

the thing is, when i visited his parents during the holidays, his mom's kitchen wasn't exactly the cleanest. there was even, believe it or not, an onion skin at the base of the sink!

is there anything i can do to make him cleaner? or am i destined to live in a slightly dirty home the rest of my life.

- your wife

ps. yes, that's right. this email is from your wife! it's coming from within the apartment!


Hi Wifey!

Dang! Called out on his own blog! You realize that readers might not think the DW is perfect any more because of this. I hope you can live with breaking all those reader hearts.

Anyway, your question is actually a good chance for the DW to reiterate the difference between wondering if a dude can fundamentally change versus if a dude can change his behavior. In other words, is the DW ever going to share your way of thinking about cleanliness? Uh, no. Can he learn to somewhat accurately predict what you might care about regarding cleanliness and act accordingly? Sure. Will he ever live up to your standards? Er, read on.

It’s like the classic toilet seat thing. A dude needs it up most of the time, but whichever way it sits at the moment is fine- lower it, lift it, whatever, back to the ballgame. A woman needs it down and cares that it’s that way all the time for a multitude of reasons dudes don’t quite get or, frankly, care about. Our viewpoint, to us, seems just as valid and logical and always will no matter how you want to argue the point, but we learn that the toilet seat thing fires you up a lot more than us and so we put it down because it just makes everything easier. We have not fundamentally changed into Toilet Seat Lowerers, we have changed our behavior so that we lower the toilet seat. Big difference.

So, the trick is learning to measure your dude, not against some magical transformation that is never going to happen, but against reasonable effort and respect.

Say there’s a scale of How Clean You Keep Your Apartment. It runs from 0 (Outright Sh*tting On The Floor Like an Urban Wildcat) to 100 (Daily Scrubbing of the Baseboards With a Sterilized Toothbrush). And let’s also say that before you and the DW moved in together his apartment was a 12 (Half a Roll of Paper Towels Is All That Separates You From a Hobo) and yours was an 85 (All That’s Keeping this Place From a 95 Is That the Building Is Old and Sh^tty and I Don’t Own It). Well, our current apartment is running no lower than 65 or 70 (No Shoes Indoors Which Is Good, But Too Dusty and Sprouting Wee Piles of Clothes).

Here’s what that means in terms of sheer proportion. The DW has undoubtedly lowered your standards a good 15-20 points. And for that he has no excuse. At the same time, however, he has raised his own standards a whopping 53-58! Way more change and sacrifice than you, wifey! Seriously, if you don’t think that’s enough of a difference that the DW’s friends are secretly talking about how they don’t even know who he is anymore, you’re nuts. The DW can hear the whispers all the time. He's been tamed! Of all people, him! What else goes on in that place? Does he sing her lullabyes each night and rub her feet with warm coconut oil? Just exactly how far has he driven down Pussywhip Lane? And can we ever bring him back?


Now, the mistake a lot of women would make at this point (and, in fairness, dudes make the same mistake on other issues), in the DW’s opinion, is to say- “Look, do all the math you want. The place is still a sty.” Cleanliness, like a billion other things in a relationship is a compromise. If you refuse to accept a reasonable, and the DW stresses reasonable, compromise you are essentially saying that your view is more valid than the other person’s and you’re not going to get a very understanding attitude in return. Maybe even outright resistance or dismissal. Look, if the DW was still keeping house like a Red-Assed Baboon? Inexcusable. But in reality, he’s changed the sheets more in the last year than he did in the entirety of his life pre-wifey. He spends a hundredfold more times tidying up than he used to and maybe five times more than he still gets the point of. And the kitchen is absolutely not a mess when he's done cooking. Maybe just the floor. A little.

So, how do you ask for your amount of compromise without being a nag? Well, first of all, it’s not nagging to remind a dude to do what he said he would do. And a dude should know the difference and if he doesn't you have the DW's permission to kick in squarely in the nuts because that goes right to basic accountability. The rest is mostly tone and that should really take care of itself if you approach the situation fairly and keeping all of the above in mind.

In other words, if you approach the dude thinking, Why is this place always such a f&cking wreck! He never listens to me when I tell him to do the laundry! you’re going to choose words and posture and tone that suggest he is as daft as the plot of a Rob Schneider movie and he will be defensive and weird whether he’s wrong or right or whatever just on sheer principle. However, if you approach the dude simply thinking He needs to be reminded to do the laundry, you’ll choose better words and come across evenly and he’ll do the laundry and that’s that. Remember, the goal is just that the laundry gets done, that's all. Also remember, the DW and most other dudes are not Stay On Top Of The Laundry people any more than they are Toilet Lowerers and will never be, at their core, altered to such. We can only learn to do the laundry and lower the seat as learned behaviors and, as wacky as it sounds from the other end of the spectrum, those things absolutely take as much effort as living with our mess and always will.

Anyways, to answer your question- Yes, by your standards, my dear, you are destined to live a slightly dirty life from here on out. The DW simply doesn’t perceive cleanliness beyond a certain point, no matter how he tries. You get to about 45 on the scale and it all looks the same after that. Those of you who can tell 67 from 73 seem like Eskimos talking about the different colors of white in the snow. So, sadly, you will have to somehow console yourself that the DW is an award winning pie maker, the best driver ever, a genius, freakishly good looking, and USDA World's Geatest Beefcake Sex Machine Ever. Among other things.

And, you're getting an honest effort about the cleaning, although it may appear sometimes that the DW never made it past the nine month old stage of fingerpainting with his own poo. By the DW’s standards, we’re living in a Pine-Sol commercial. Any cleaner and we could assemble microchips in this joint. This is why the DW always advises women to expect that if the dude starts a certain way, he will remain, fundamentally, a certain way. Cheater, shy, forgetful, whatever. If you truly can’t abide a certain flaw, you should get out while you can because, like a nick in a wooden tabletop, that flaw can be polished up and waxed over, but it’s never going away.

Thank goodness my onion skin ways aren’t a deal breaker for you. Uh, right?

Best of luck with your dude, er, me. Frankly, he sounds incredibly super awesome. See you in about two seconds,

the DW

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

You never know who might be reading this... it might just be someone's mother.

Anonymous said...

Okay, this one touches a familiar nerve.

I am with you most of the way, DW, but here is where I get lost: what about those things that are not a compromise between 2 lifestyles, but are really just basic shared chores. Like scooping said cat litter, or taking out the trash, or changing a baby's diaper, or yes, even occasionally scrubbing the toilet. These are equal responsibilities-- stuff that has to get done in a household, even though no one really wants to be the one stuck holding the kitty litter bag. So, if a dude has a tendency to overlook those chores, while his wifey is totally on top of things-- is it genuinely fair to ask her to keep reminding the dude to do his share?

Working out where your space is gonna fall on the neatness scale may be a different story-- but again, once those kinds of compromises have kinda been settled on, shouldn't the dude be able to keep to his end of the bargain, and not keep acting like the communal upkeep is just something being imposed on him? Is it possible there's a tiny bit of passive aggression at work there...?

Someone else's wifey

showgirl godzilla said...

awww, you guys are so cute.

Anonymous said...

Where is "the base of the sink"? Is that in the stopper thing covering the drain, or on the floor somewhere? Are you guys from Canada?

Anonymous said...

DW - you *really* never had/used a toilet brush until you moved in with wifey?? Geesh...

Anonymous said...

the toilet seat thing is such a stereotype. i've ALWAYS thought that i am just as capable of lowering a raised toilet seat as men are of raising it, and have never demanded, or even thought of demanding, same.

and inuit don't have any more words for snow than we do.

everything else i agree with ;)

Anonymous said...

dear dw,

your rss feed seems to be broken, or at least problematic. it won't feed to my bloglines!

could you please add another one?

Anonymous said...

hey this is the dude's brother. hey dude, hey wifey. miss y'all.

so first off, i shared an apartment with the dude for many years and we were indeed disgusting. he has come a long way. i have not.

and we did own a toilet brush. and i'm pretty sure one of us used it sometime. i think.

anyway, this is why i love you guys and think you are an awesome couple. you can have these discussions with goodwill and humor. the exact same situation, handled badly, can degenerate into a silent, miserable, passive agressive loath fest over an unwashed cutting board in the kitchen sink.

not that i've ever experienced that.

so yeah, the dudettes are generally cleaner than the dudes. and cleaner is probably a nicer way to live. it's hard to argue for dirtier, right?

but just to chime in on explaining the dude view of things...

the dude loses in 3 ways. 1. he now has to clean more often than he likes 2. he gets no enjoyment out of the cleanliness 3. even after all that, the girlfriend is bummed that he is still messier than her.

it's like our old friend Red said, "it' a no win, no lose situtation."

anyway your life was maybe cleaner before life with the DW, but was there a sweet loving dude cooking you dinner almost every night back then? where you, say, heating up 35 cent ramen noodles and eating them out of a pac man cereal bowl?

o.k. rock on DW and Wifey. you are the best. safe travels! Wifey, i want a tattoo of emmy lou harris on my back, get that needle ready!

- the dude brother

Anonymous said...

@anonymous 7:39

I think the Dude Whisperer's thing is not to uphold or defend guy behavior, but simply to explain to us the thought patterns. It may be so that men should share their chores, or clean up after themselves, you may think it's just a handy excuse that they are deficient in perception, and it's especially convenient that this scenario is played out in his own household where he says stuff "because" to his own wife's "why?" to continue not to pick up after himself, but that's just how dudes are. Understanding things is not really a shortcut to changing the household role management, it's just an unsatisfying answer. If you want to change things or gripe idly or rant, etc., there's this other place on the internet called the internet.

At least in this case, it seems he's not been handicapped by his mother in the typical fashion. Also, I've never had a toilet brush, and I don't think my mother ever had a toilet brush.

Anonymous said...

Dude Brother...are you single?

And the wifey...is she a tattoo artist?

Anonymous said...

ha! the dude brother appreciates being asked if he's single... but wonders - geez - if he's being cyber-hit on, what on earth he might have written that sounds attractive.

the dude brother also agrees with the previous comment that the role of the DW is to enlighten, not defend dude behavior. it's like Nietzsche or that album by The Cult. you know. beyond good and evil. anyway, the dude brother's comment was not meant as a rant.

the dude brother also needs to stop talking about himself in the third person,get away from the computer, and get some food.

rock on.

DB

Anonymous said...

dw.....

i am confused....as you described 'polite' or 'non-b*tchy' nagging is acceptable to dudes??? i don't get it.....the chick population is consistently stereotyped as being the 'ball and chain', the 'nag' etc...by dudes....but no chick or dudette that I have come across really wants to nag her dude....(i will leave girlie girls out of the discussion)....and wifey (i'm sure) is no exception....she really probably has better things to take up her time than how to pose verbal, non-dudethreatening nags your way....probably, better things that could make the whisperer a very happy dude, i would guess....she is not asking for her dude to be perfect....just a little better....i really understand that you are just trying to explain dude behavior....but can't a guy still be a dude and not have to be nagged to take out the garbage?

this dude fan wants to 'get it'....please help.

Gal Friday said...

I second that! DB, are you single? It's not what you said...it's that I KNOW who you are! Whahahahahahah!

Anonymous said...

the DB responds... oh snap! intrigue! single except i am sure alicia keys is gonna accept my proposal of marriage any second now. i just need to be patient and understand that she has a busy schedule. she'll get back to me soon i'm sure.

thedudewhisperer@yahoo.com said...

hey, anon 12:04, thanks for the heads up. the dw's gonna see what he can do, but has to admit he's a complete novice with that kind of stuff.

if anybody wants to email with feed expertise, bring it on.