I think it is about the dishes. Its about him taking care of his mess. His dishes. Can he not carry them into the kitchen, rinse them off and place them in the dishwasher? Does he lack hands and arms? Was it just an oversight, or one of those very, subtle middle finger things? Your point about traditional familial roles was extremely well taken.

In my family as the oldest child, and a girl at that, I took on domestic roles because (a) my mother loathed them and (b) she really hated when my father did them. So I did them, I learned to cook, I had a Saturday ritual of polishing furniture and vacuuming, I also did laundry and ironing , and looked after the little ones. This facilitated my mother’s chronic angry depression symptoms (better that she was angry and asleep because she usually didn’t yell or criticize when she was asleep). Eventually I was assigned the task of grocery shopping. I resented this but…my family and my parents were too well trained to consider, hm, maybe we should be doing some of this…. Nah, she’s the kid, she needs to learn this.

So, let me wrap this up, for reasons I won’t get into, in January I refused to do the dishes in my own live by myself home. Just stopped. Quit. Wouldn’t cook. Ate out, may be just had ice cream. So about a week ago I did the dishes, as in I threw them in the garbage. Felt good.