Reply #51: I can easily afford a stay at home partner

[sui generis]

but my partner wants his own thing and housekeeping isn't his identity. And I love the dude but he doesn't have even the tiniest shred of talent for the kitchen. The menfolk of his entire genetic line were cursed from birth to always cause mega disaster in any kitchen they enter, and in spite of all sense and sensibility to the contrary I have had to practically ban him from ours. He's supernatural.

That work acquaintance was absolutely undeniably rude. Her generation didn't fight to eliminate traditions, they fought to give people choices. She's an intrusive aggrandizing self important twit.

Anyway, I can tell you that leaving the house at 5:30 every morning and not seeing the house again until 6:00 or 7:00 at night is not a lot of fun for working couples, when all you do is get ready to do it all over again the next day.

Our lives are so nano-scripted with social obligations, personal obligations, family obligations, pet obligations, not to mention the administrivia of bills, phone calls, letters & cards and being good neighbors that we're like robots Monday through Saturday, and god forbid we miss something or forget something because it just deepens the queue for the next day. There's not a lot of room for "us" some days, and even adding a regular date night for a while added to the pile. We have quality time over breakfast at 4:30 a.m. for an hour, so that's where we dug in.

Just the same I think it would be really nice to have someone taking care of the moving parts and being a happy homemaker, and I don't really care which one of us does it, but truth is neither of us would be happy doing it for long.

I lived in a trio for 10 years before this one, and we had the regimented rotating cooking and cleaning schedule, which actually got done a lot faster, but also had much less complicated lives.

If you support what makes your partner happy without giving up the things that define you, and vice versa for your partner, then you can't fail, whatever paths you choose.