Dear Eric: My husband and I are in the middle age of life and have had a very happy marriage of almost 30 years. He adeptly manages the household, and I support our family financially by running my own successful small business. But we have a significantly different view of what constitutes a “clean house.”
We were both raised by immigrant parents from different cultures, and whereas my childhood family’s culture prized cleanliness and orderliness, my husband’s culture put very little value on these principles. Thus, while our current house is by no means a pigsty, it is very often rife with dust, grime, and clutter, and I am often embarrassed when comparing the inside of our house to those of our friends.
We do well financially and could easily afford a weekly visit from a housekeeper, and I have begged my husband to allow us to hire one, but his culture also shuns “strangers” entering the house for security reasons, even if it were a trusted worker.
Is there any hope for our household to ever live up to my standard of cleanliness, or will I just have to grit my teeth and put my best face on when we have guests visit?
—Depressed About Disorder
Dear Depressed About Disorder: I don’t see why his culture should win out in this dirty dustup. It’s your house, too, and your own expectations and your cultural traditions should be honored, too. Moreover, if you’re bringing in the money to pay for it, your husband’s veto should have no power.
Now, maybe that’s not how your marriage works, but you should at least have an equal say. The state of your house is causing you anxiety; this is a shared burden, not one you have to grit your teeth and bear.
A few options: frame the cleanliness issue as one that directly impacts the health of your marriage and ask him how you can work together to address it. Or hire a friend who cleans houses, thereby creating a loophole in the “strangers” embargo. Or tell him to just ignore the cleaning you arrange like he ignores the grime.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
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