Woman Demands Fiancé Take One Of Her Chores After He Buys A Roomba To Do The Vacuuming For Him

Most people who have shared a living space with someone know the absolute agony of dividing up the responsibilities of the living space so that it's fair.

But there are some people in the world who don't take into consideration the toll that these responsibilities can have on other people, as long as they are happy, side-eyed the users of the "Am I the A**hole?" (AITA) subReddit.

Redditor SalamanderMountain81 was responsible for vacuuming his home while his future wife handled most of the rest of the chores.

Sick of doing it, he bought a roomba, but instead of picking up another chore to help his wife out, the Original Poster (OP) decided he had done his part.

He asked the sub:

"AITA for buying a roomba?"

The OP never liked vacuuming and decided to do something about it.

"My fiancée (25 Female) and I (27 Male ) are engaged and recently started living together. We both work full-time, and when we moved in, we split chores pretty evenly. Like we each do dishes, laundry, trash, vacuuming, etc."

"One of the ones I was in charge of was vacuuming. I honestly got tired of doing it every couple of days, so I saved up and bought a $250 roomba."

"It works great. The floors have never looked better. It runs every other day on a timer, and I empty the bin, clean the brushes, the whole thing."

"The point is: the vacuuming still gets done, and honestly, it's better than when I was doing it manually."

I also work a more stressful job (middle management, God help me) and contribute more to bills. Despite that, I still wanted to contribute more evenly around the house and lighten her load, so I thought this was a good investment.

The OP's future wife did not feel cared for the way he expected.

"Now she's upset because I'm 'not actually doing' the chore anymore. She says since I don't personally vacuum anymore, I should take on one of her chores."

"I told her that's not fair. The chore is still getting done. I'm not just ignoring it. I just found a smarter way to do it."

"She said it's about the effort and how she's still doing all her chores by hand, and I'm not putting in the same amount of work."

"I get that, I guess, but to me, it feels like I'm being punished for solving a problem. Like if I hired a cleaner or made her do it, I'd get it. But I didn't. I just bought a robot vacuum."

The couple continued to bicker about the Roomba.

"Now we're in this weird argument where she thinks I should return it and actually vacuum or do something else, and I think that makes no sense, and now I'm kind of refusing to do more than what we agreed on, which is starting to make me feel bad."

"Is this actually unfair? Do I owe her a chore because I made one of mine easier?"

"AITA?"

Fellow Redditors weighed in:

• NTA: Not the A**hole
• YTA: You're the A**hole
• ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
• NAH: No A**holes Here

Some pointed out that by buying the Roomba, the OP should have taken on another task.

"YTA." 

"You said, 'to me, it feels like I'm being punished for solving a problem.' But, no. You solved a problem, so you relieved your HOUSEHOLD of one of its chore obligations. That doesn't just let you off the HOOK."

"Now it only makes sense to rebalance the distribution since there's now a new set of chores available." - StAlvis

"YTA. He didn't efficiently reduce his chores; he efficiently reduced a household chore. Perhaps OP could apply this skill to reduce the load of other chores."

"Every time that will create a new list of what needs to be done that should be rebalanced in terms of time and dislike (or at least that's how we do it in our house. A hated task is 'worth' more, but mostly we try to keep the actual minutes spent getting things done for the household roughly the same)." - Illustrious-Shirt569

"While I absolutely love having a Roomba and recently got a vacuum/mop combo, I don't count that as doing a chore. Aside from cleaning brushes, cleaning the unit, and refilling stuff, it is far less work than vacuuming and mopping the floors. Chores should be redistributed for sure." - SeorniaGrim

"YTA. You're not being 'punished' for automating one of your chores. You're thinking about this all wrong if you want to have a good relationship. It's not 'you have three chores and I have three.'"

"Just because you empty the bin doesn't mean you're vacuuming. These are household chores, not 'yours and mine.' That's a selfish and childish perspective. You need to grow up. YTA." - Jun1p3rsm0m

"YTA. My guy, you are building a life with this woman. They are not your chores and my chores, they are our chores, and have been split between the two of you because it gets them done faster. You both do them because you both benefit from having a clean, organized home."

"It amazes me that you have found a way to quickly complete a chore, and instead of thinking, 'one less chore that we have to do, I will take a different chore, and now we have more time to spend together,' you have thought, 'Hooray, more time for me, myself, and I, f**k that old nag.'"

"Asking you to manually vacuum again is silly, but it represents the frustration of somebody who recognizes unfairness and is not able to properly articulate it. You're going to marry her. Just take a different d**n chore. Enjoy the extra time you now have together." - kitcat_kittyccat

After receiving feedback, the OP updated the post with a reflection.

"I've come to realize that our approach to chores was probably just all wrong. Both of our childhoods were similar in that we both had parents who assigned chores in this way. As such, that's just how we looked at chores, and it was how we approached this problem as well."

"The realization of, 'Hey, that's not really the best way to do this as two functioning adults,' has hit me, and I'm going to talk about restructuring our perspective in general. Maybe a bit immature of me, sure (I've been called that plenty of times here, lol), but I've just never lived with a woman, so... live and learn."

"I think the issue so far for me has been that the idea was for us to have an even split of the chores. Our chores that we have to do. As such, the way we decided to do that was by assigning each of us to specific chores."

"I had vacuuming, and I still have vacuuming. My thought has been, 'Why am I punished for changing the method?'"

"However, I think we probably should just sit down and reassess how we're viewing the whole 'chores' thing."

"I've seen some really good ideas for making the chores a true even split for both of us in this comment section, which makes way more sense than what we're currently doing. Probably going to have a conversation with her tomorrow about it all."

"Thank you for all of those who provided genuine feedback and not just bashed me. I tried to be open and honest here, and that has helped me understand how we should be viewing this."

"Also, last point, this isn't like a huge argument that we're having or anything lol. Some of y'all need to chilllllll. I saw multiple people calling for my fiancée to dump me over this, lol."

"But I think it'll be fine. Honestly, it's not like a giant issue we're going to blow up over or anything. I think I just struggle to understand her side on it a bit."

Some Redditors were glad to see that the OP was trying to be open-minded.

"Good realizations. Remember, the two of you are meant to be a team, tackling life together, so you both 'have' everything together. Keep reminding yourself to rephrase issues as 'not me vs her, but us vs the problems.'" - YardageSardage

"Sounds like you've already reached the realization you need, but I've seen you mention a couple times how it's different now that you're living with a woman vs with brothers, and that's not quite what's going on."

"You're living independently with a partner now … whereas with your brothers, you were living in somebody else's house (i.e., your parents). You're in charge of doing household chores, whereas before, your parents were." - NearbyCow6885

"OP, if it hasn't already been recommended, I highly suggest checking out the 'Fair Play' book. My husband and I don't do the full method, but just having better terminology to discuss household responsibilities has made a huge difference." - vasinvixen

"My wife and I come from very different backgrounds. I was used to basically running the household, she was used to doing nothing. It took us a while to get into the groove, and the split is not 50/50, but we naturally gravitated towards the things we prefer."

"Things neither of us liked, we automated (like vacuuming, we also have an automatic cat feeder for mornings). The oven with pyrolysis is next on the list once this one gives out."

"Fewer chores is better for both." - KatzoCorp

"I was gonna vote you NTA because you PAID for the Roomba - that's gotta give you some grace! Every relationship figures out what works them. I have more time and like to cook, so I do almost all of the shopping, stocking, and cooking. (He has no problem fending for himself, though.) My SO has floor OCD, so he gets to them long before I ever would."

"I do almost all of the rest of the cleaning and all of the pet care. Dishes are whoever gets there first but its usually me. I make sure all the bills are paid and carry the majority of the mental load for the household. I'm cool with it so much being on me because of our schedules. He drives crazy night hours up to 50 a week while I have a basic 9-5 only up to 30 hours a week."

"As of two months ago, my SO and I now do our laundry separately and I love him SO much more now. It's amazing how those 'little' things in relationships turn into real big bitter things over time. I'm still salty about seeing that he actually makes "less" laundry now that it isn't almost entirely being done for him... But whatever! I went from doing a dozen loads a month to rarely more than four, and I do all of the household laundry too."

"Another thing that changed is I am no longer stocking his drinks of choice because he drinks GALLONS of tea and pop a week. I injured my wrist and just flat out refused to haul all that liquid for him, and now he always just gets it himself. Again, it's amazing how much this improved my day-to-day life and made me like my SO more. It really is about the little things." - tarahlynn

The subReddit understand not necessarily liking every chore that a home requires, but they were ready to advocate for fair and equal distributions of labor in the home.

By purchasing the Roomba, the OP had helped the household by solving a task for both people, but that meant it was time to redistribute the load, not kick up his feet and watch while his future wife handled the rest of the chores.

This is about building a future and a strong relationship, not winning a comparison contest.