Men who have been independent are capable of reverting if given the slightest excuse. When we married, my ex husband was 10 years older than me and had lived on his own for 8ish years. Yet (and I allowed this until I finally got fed up and took us to counseling) I did 80% of the cooking, because I was better at it. Same with the cleaning, shopping, social planning, etc.
After I left, in the first six months I got texts or calls asking me to please tell him:
- The online banking password (dude, I left you, you should really change that)
- Where I ordered his special-wecial organic underwear
- Where the good cutting board was (my dad gave it to us at our wedding, genius, I took it with me along with the rest of the stuff from my family)
- What brand butter we bought
- What brand of local kielbasa we bought
- Who his doctor was
- What RMV office had the shortest lines
- Where the old tax returns were (in the fucking box labeled tax returns)
- The phone number for his best friend
Then he had a heart attack (mild) and none of his family or friends were around to take him to the hospital. But instead of calling 911, he called me, who by then lived 45 minutes away. He lived 5 minutes from an EMS dispatch location. He called me, despite the fact that he didn’t believe me 8 months prior when I was feeling suicidal and I had to call a cab to go alone to check myself into the hospital for a 72-hour hold. I told him to call 911, hung up on him when he whined about “making a fuss”, called 911, called his siblings and then texted them “your brother is having a heart attack, I called 911 for him, come home,” and washed my hands of it.
Emotionally vacant men who won’t do household labor or emotional labor are not Nazis, but they aren’t good people, either, and you don’t have to put up with their shit.
