#relationship tips
Imagine you and your partner have been living together in the same apartment for a reasonably long period of time.
On the whole, your partner seems great. They’re smart, supportive, and totally on board with an even division of chores. But over time, you notice something odd - no matter how long you and your partner live in the same apartment with the same responsibilities, they just never seem to get the hang of any of the chores. Your partner can grasp complicated technical concepts for their job or hobby, but several months into living together, they still claim they don’t know how to properly operate the washing machine or dishwasher. They don’t know where you keep the toilet cleaner or what time they’re supposed to feed the dog. They have no idea what day the garbage gets picked up or how they’re supposed to sort the recycling.
When you do manage to wrangle them into doing chores, everything they manage to do is done poorly or with little effort. They put dishes back in the wrong spots when they unload the dishwasher and crumple up the laundry instead of folding it. They bring the wrong things back from the grocery store, even when you send them with a list, and do such a sloppy job of mopping that you can barely tell the floors have been mopped at all. They require so much assistance to do basic chores and do such a poor job that, eventually, you just stop asking them to do chores at all - since you end up re-doing all of their work, it’s easier for you to just do it right the first time.
But despite how it may appear, you don’t actually have an incompetent partner.
You have a partner who has learned to weaponize incompetence.
“Weaponized incompetence” - also called “strategic incompetence” or “performative incompetence” - is a manipulation tactic, where a person will purposefully feign incompetence to get out of doing tasks that they find unpleasant. The idea is to intentionally do tasks so badly and require so much help that you grind other people down; you convince other people that you simply aren’t capable of pulling your weight, or you make yourself so difficult to deal with that it’s simply less effort for others to just do your chores for you. It doesn’t matter if you work as a literal rocket scientist - you just keep insisting that you can’t figure out what to feed your children or when the electrical bill is due until other people feel they have no choice but to take over for you.
If you’re living with someone or dealing with someone who has mastered the use of weaponized incompetence, here are some quick things you should know:
This behaviour is an act. Let’s get one thing clear: your partner (or whoever else you are sharing chores with) knows how to wash dishes. They know how to vacuum the floors. They are capable of remembering that Thursday is garbage day. These are not complicated tasks. Even if a person is genuinely new to household chores, we live in a golden age of information; all of us have instant access to a wealth of blogs, articles and video tutorials that will teach us any household skill we need to know. If a person is genuinely making an effort, it does not take years to learn how to separate laundry or figure out which cupboard the plates are kept in. It’s true that most people will be better at certain chores, or prefer certain chores. But a partner (or anyone else) who claims to be hopelessly bad at everything they dislike is putting on a show.
This is a learned behaviour. Why would a grown adult pretend to be so incompetent that they can’t figure out how to make a simple dinner? Because it works. It gets them the outcome they desire, which is other people taking over their responsibilities for them. Having other people think you’re clueless is a small price to pay if it means you get to do whatever you want while others scramble to cover your responsibilities.
Weaponized incompetence is different than ADHD. There is a big difference between someone who wants to pull their weight but gets distracted halfway through a chore, and someone who does a bad job on purpose so no one will ever ask them to do chores again. A person with ADHD may need more reminders and take more time to do chores (or any other tasks), but they produce high-quality work. People with ADHD also tend to be aware of their issues with task management, and work on strategies to overcome it. People weaponizing incompetence will simply insist that they are hopeless and see no point in trying. It is possible for a person with ADHD to use weaponized incompetence intentionally, but this is different than their own inherent struggles with executive functioning.
There is a gendered component to weaponized incompetence. Anyone, of any gender, is capable of faking incompetence to wriggle out of chores, but there are some gendered differences in who actually does it - this is a tactic most often observed in men. In a world where women still do the majority of housework and childcare, even in households where both partners work full-time, this is one tactic that women are increasingly observing in male partners who want to get out of domestic work while still touting egalitarian ideas. Our culture has a much greater tolerance for incompetent men than it does incompetent women - the dad who drops his kid off at daycare with two mismatched shoes and three packs of cookies for lunch is an overwhelmed parent doing his best, but the mother who does the same thing is viewed as a shitty mom.
This is not limited to romantic partnerships. Anyone can weaponize their incompetence, not just partners - it could be friends, coworkers, roommates, teenage children, or just about anyone you have to share responsibilities with. That roommate who claims they don’t know how to pay the wi-fi bill or clean the bathroom wasn’t raised by wolves - there’s a good chance they’re simply choosing not to figure these things out because they know you’ll do it for them.
The only way to combat this behaviour is to not tolerate it. People use weaponized incompetence because it works - eventually, you break down and do the thing for them. The key to combatting it, then, is to make sure that it stops working. Don’t jump in to help. Don’t offer to do it for them. Don’t spend hours drawing handmade maps of the grocery store because your husband insists he’s incapable of buying toilet paper on his own. When someone insists they can’t possibly do a household task that they’ve been asked to do dozens of times before, resist the urge to take over and simply say “I’m sorry, I have my own work to do. You are capable of figuring it out.” Remind them that figuring out how to do the chore is, in fact, part of the chore - if they don’t know where the clean bowls go or what needs to be on this week’s grocery list, it is their responsibility to investigate and work it out for themselves.
I spent several years living with a (now-ex) partner who had mastered the use of weaponized incompetence to squirm his way out of everything he didn’t want to do in life. He got himself fired from numerous jobs so his parents would continue paying his rent and bills - eventually, they gave up on the idea of him working at all. Over and over again, he put the wrong soap in the dishwasher, over-loaded the washing machine until it flooded, and scraped non-stick pans with metal spoons. He quickly learned to use complex recording and sound equipment for his hobby, but scraped a Swiffer across the floor with no pad attached, claiming he just wasn’t capable of using one properly. I, inevitably, would get frustrated and take over for him, inadvertently teaching him exactly how to get out of his chores.
The incompetence only stopped when I did. I reached a point where I was tired of hounding a grown man to wipe up his own spilled juice or wash his own underwear. So I stopped picking up after him. And when the apartment finally got disgusting and he reached the absolute limits of how long he could re-use the same underwear, something miraculous happened - all of a sudden, he realized he did know how to do laundry and dishes after all.
Remember, there’s a point where you aren’t helping others by saving them from their responsibilities - you’re only hurting yourself.
If your partner is cranky, feed them then fuck them.
*Instant* mood improvement
A lot of arguments can be saved by making sure your blood sugar levels are level and your oxytocin/endorphins are flowing.
Not to mention great stress relief.
things that are always on my mind.
To make this blog a bit easier to navigate, here is a (somewhat) brief list of my writings, sorted by topic. My full set of writings can be found here, with ask responses here and brilliant writing from others here.
General D/s Mechanics
- D/s Hierarchy — and some updated thoughts
- Lean In — and some updated thoughts
- Ask: What are good “starting out” rules?
- Punishment
- Why I Use Safewords (Even With Trusted Partners)
- Things I Got Wrong about D/s
- Asks: Starting out in D/s (including a D/s 101ask)
- Asks: Why D/s is right for me
Submissive and Dominant Roles
- What Drives Dominance
- Power Exchange is My Orientation
- Submissive Does Not Mean Passive
- Submissives Abhor a Power Vacuum
- Needy
- The Double-Edged Sword of Brattiness
- The Little Girl and the Elephant
- Ask: Why I don’t call myself an alpha submissive
Long-Term D/s Relationships
- Meat-and-Potatoes D/s
- What Makes D/s Real
- D/s in Ordinary Life
- Let Go
- Ownership Without Hesitation
- Good Enough
- How a Submissive Leads
- Self-Care as Service
- Tell Me Why
- Asks: D/s with kids in the picture
D/s Relationships Struggles
- When It’s Hard
- Yours, Mine, Ours
- Benefit of the Doubt
- A Better Way
- Minimum Rule Compliance
- Balancing Act
- Asks: Working through D/s struggles
D/s Breakups
D/s Dating and Single Submissive Life
- The Uncompromising Submissive
- D/s Dating
- Responsibility, Not Privilege
- Red Flags for Dating as a Submissive
- Asks: D/s dating (andmaintaining boundaries)
- Asks: Red flags for dating
Sadism, Masochism and Spankings
- The Slow Unfurling of Sadism
- The Reluctant Masochist
- When I Say I Need a Spanking…
- Impact is Like a Symphony
- Maintenance
- Ask Me How
- The Point of Surrender
- The Fragile Place
- Ask: Pain as a form of connection
Sex and Kink
I’m re-blogging this for two reasons
#1: To give it a signal boost, this is a great resource and anyone who is interested in becoming better at and more knowledgeable about D/s.
#2: I selfishly want to have a copy that I can easily find later.
Not everything needs to be a struggle. It’s not just about the soft feminine energy, it’s also about moving forward into a higher vibration. Higher vibrations means it is easier to manifest your desires, but it also shines a blinding light on everything that is not of the same frequency, forcing you to face everything that needs to be released. Release with grace, release with gratitude for all that was a blessing in your life.
Time Management
- Waking up earlier
- Stop staying up all night
- Wasting too much time on a certain website?
- 29 Time Wasting Activities
- General Time Management Guide
- Creating an effective schedule for your day
- How to stop being late to things
- Easy to prepare healthy recipes
- Make time for your hobbies!!
Making School Suck Less
- Prioritization
- …what if everything is a priority?
- Studying methods
- Strategies for students with ADHD
- Strategies for students with learning disabilities
- AVOIDING BAD PROFESSORS (This too)
- Quick and healthy snacks that are good for focus
- Finding cheap textbooks
Relationships and Sex
- How to tell if someone genuinely likes you
- Why relationships fail
- Putting yourself first when you need to
- Eight differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships
- Know the difference in protective and possessive
- 10 things to know before you start being sexually active
- Maintaining a long lasting HEALTHY sex life
- Considering a friends w/ benefits relationship? read this!
Money Management
- Are you spending too much money on ____?
- 8 Tips on Saving Money
- Steps to take in starting a budget
- Mobile apps for budgeting!
- Buying a car
- Tips for buying a house
- …and apartment
- 25 Wastes of money
- Even savvy savers make these mistakes
Getting / Keeping a Job
- Getting started with LinkedIn (This is important!)
- Interviewing etiquette
- Creating a resume
- Starting your career before you start your career
- Workplace etiquette
- Shitty boss?
- Waking up with a hangover…
- Getting ahead in the workplace
Physical Health (Diet and Exercise)
- Exercise helps with mental health
- General Men’s Health website
- General Women’s Health website
- Gym Etiquette
- Micro changes for macro results at the gym
- 20 foods to help trim belly fat
- How many calories should you be consuming?
- No gym? Try these at home work outs
- Great diets for men
- Great diets for women
Miscellaneous (Better you…)
- Stop forgetting things
- Stop cursing
- Keep your car stocked
- Stop smoking
- Deal with the police responsibly
- Love yourself
- Know when to shut up (This is from a Christian outlook btw but it would probably still help whether you’re religious or not)
- Stop talking shit about people
Let me know if any links stop working, even if this only helps one person in a small way it was worth the effort i put into finding good sources! - Keaton
Becoming less reactive is a big part of growth & decreasing stress. Sometimes this type of avoidance can be looked at as lack of interest or uncaring, but it isn’t. If you let everything get you worked up, you’re damaging your mind, body & soul
Casual cruelty has become so ingrained in a lot of people because we live in a society that is structured in a cruel way. To be quite honest you are obligated to consider the harm of your words and actions no matter your personal hardships.
Relationship Tips.
Always and forever.