Woman Refuses to Move in With Boyfriend Until He Learns to Do Basic Chores

Ladies, if your partner refuses to learn household chores and claims he will after you move in together, you should maybe think twice about moving in with him at all. That's the lesson of this new post from Reddit's "Am I the A-hole?"

OP is a strong, self-assured 20-year-old woman who's in a relationship with a 24-year-old man who still lives at home with his mom. They're thinking of moving in together, but OP is having serious reservations due to the fact that he doesn't know how to do any household chores for himself.

She didn't realize this was the case until he said, "I'd wear a nice shirt out, but I don't know if my mom has done laundry yet." OP was surprised and asked him about it, and he admitted that his mom does everything for him.

"And I do mean everything," she writes. "He can't cook anything, doesn't know how to clean anything, never had to budget his money." This stood out to OP as a huge red flag, and she told him she didn't want to move in with him until he could do some basic things for himself.

She doesn't need him to be a total expert, just not completely helpless. Very wisely, she writes, "I'm scared of taking on the teacher/mom role in the relationship, and not being able to escape it, if that makes sense." Oh girl, it does.

She told him she'd love to help him learn how to cook but that he needs to learn the basics of cleaning on his own. She also said they should wait to find an apartment together until he has done so. Sounds reasonable to me! 

But her boyfriend did not like that stipulation at all. She writes, "He's annoyed that I don't trust him to learn these things and that I don't want to teach him, so I must not care about him that much."

Yikes. That is so not what this is about. Plus, OP writes, she's busy. She has a life. She doesn't exist to make sure her boyfriend can function as a human being. He should be more than capable of asking his mom to teach him, searching for tutorials online, or just...doing it until he gets it right. 

OP even suggested he talk to his mom, but he just doesn't want to. "He wants to move in together 'and then we'll figure it out,'" she writes. "That scares me." I don't blame her one bit. What's the big deal about finally learning what he should have known how to do for ages? I promise, he's not so important and in-demand that he can't learn to wash his own clothes. 

Sure, it kind of sucks that his mom has just done everything for him up until now, but this is his responsibility, and if he really wants to move in with his girlfriend, he should see that it's way past time to be able to contribute equally to a household.

The fact that he's really resistant to learning until they get there makes me, and many commenters, believe that he doesn't really have the intention of learning at all, that he expects his life not to change that much when he moves in with OP. But newsflash: Keeping a household clean and neat is actual work and if you contribute equally it will feel like work...because it is. Nothing magically gets done, and this dude is in for a rude awakening.

Commenters complimented OP on her steadfast position. "NTA. Girl, I love your spine," wrote one person. "Laundry is not exactly brain surgery," another person wrote. "If he can't read the instructions on the machine, he could always google it. Vacuums aren't complex either. These are not things an adult needs coaching with, I kind of suspect he wants you to get frustrated and decide it'd be easier to do the cleaning yourself."

"Stand your ground," wrote someone else. "First you'll be his teacher, then you'll be his mom because 'You're just better at laundry/vacuuming/dishes' or, 'I would've done it if you told me.'"

While some (probably other dudes) thought OP should be gentle and more open to teaching her boyfriend some basic chores, so many others (probably women) who had clearly been burned before stepped to OP's defense. "Do not under any circumstances teach your bf how to clean," someone wrote. "You will 100 percent hear him say, 'Oh well, you just do it better, why don't you just do it?'

"Life is too short for that boring a-- conversation. Tell him to ask his mom or watch some videos and figure it out and that you are done talking about this, because it is SO BORING. Demand proof of competency before moving in together. If he thinks that is too embarrassing, GOOD. He should be embarrassed to be that old and so helpless."