Dealbreakers. Everyone has them, just not the same ones or even at the same point. Most of the time Dealbreakers are in terms of romantic relationships, but they're also there in our friendships as well. I hit one of my major Dealbreakers in a friendship earlier this fall and that friendship has come to an end because of it. Now I'm hitting my limits with one of my most valued relationships, my engagement.

For years I allowed myself to be used by the people I was involved with. Hell, from the very moment I started dating I would allow it. Over the past few years I realized just how self-destructive those allowances were to both my relationships and me. So I started to work on myself to create a limit there. Specific ones. One of the biggest is the "maid" role.

I've frequently ended up being this caretaker of the men in my life. I'd wash their laundry, clean their homes, cook their meals, and manage all the sucky-ass minutiae that fill an adult life. I fucking hate it. I'm awesome at it. I fucking hate it. I am very talented in making sucky-ass work flow and go quickly. In main part because I've been doing it my entire life. I cannot remember a time that I wasn't washing dishes, cooking, grocery shopping, taking care of some child, doing all that unpaid, thankless work that has to be done.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the responsibilities falling on my shoulders. I'm tired of meeting the challenges tossed at me and it being taken for granted. I'm tired of washing clothes. I'm tired of cooking every night. I'm tired of making the grocery lists and doing the shopping. I'm tired of being the one on a bus running all over to get the needed things to make a home run smoothly. I'm tired of being the one to say that clean is good and can someone please help me clean. I'm tired of being the nagging bitch.

So this is my major dealbreaker. I'm ok with being utilized for the majority of the chores because I am good at them. Where the talents lie, use them, I figure. But my dealbreaker is when somehow, for any reason it's all me. When the responsibility is mine to maintain a home. I've never wanted to be the little housewifey, and frankly if I'm placed in that position I will leave. I'd rather starve than be nothing more than the highly maligned and ignored homemaker. (Which I am doing here, I know.)

So this morning when I get sighed at and told "I guess" in a highly put upon tone when I ask for help getting the heavy laundry basket downstairs; when I put away the laptop I asked Mike to put away before he left for work; when I start my day with tidying up after the other 2 people that live here with me -- I realize that I'm getting damn close to my breaking point. I feel like the hours a day I put in, and have put into making this home a clean, safe, comfortable place to be aren't noticed. It's all taken for granted and by extension I am taken for granted.

Maybe I'm wrong; maybe this is how it works. That one person takes the weight of the home and does the work. That I'm idealizing this concept of a family working together to create and maintain a clean, comfortable home. But if that's the way it works, it doesn't make me feel any less used.

I've done a lot of bending over the past year. It's hard to imagine now the kind of mess we lived in for the first couple years we were here. I wasn't willing to be the only person doing the chores, so I didn't and we lived in a mess. It took us a full day with 2 adults to clean up for the first apartment inspection. Dishes were piled all over the kitchen; there was barely room to sit on the couch. It was fucking nasty.

Then for some reason things got cleaned up and maintained. A lot of it has been me. I've been working my ass off to make sure that I do floors once a week, that I cook good, solid meals most nights, that I do laundry as it's needed, that I do a quick walk-through and tidy every couple days. I've just done it. I've turned it into a routine and just something that I do because it has to be done. Along with that we started a suggestion of Mike's that we do the evening routine of his family home -- Mom cooks dinner, kids and Dad wash dishes and clean up.

Lovely compromise. And honestly now that I think about it, it was the main reason I haven't resented the chores I have been doing daily. Except the dishes were only getting done consistently maybe twice a week and that pissed me off. I made sure I made dinner, but I'd also have to wash the tools I needed daily. So I finally said something clearly about it, last weekend. And Mike said he can't be consistent, that it would change who he is.

At the time of the discussion/fight about the dishes I suggested that I would take primary responsibility of all the chores but I expected help without snarkiness. (Well shit. That's why I'm pissed this morning. I got snarked at when I asked for help. Hrm.) Anyway, I think that was a mistake on my part. I basically volunteered myself up to be both maid and nagging bitch. Two roles that are Dealbreakers for me. Stupid.

I just don't know what else to offer or compromise here. All I really know for sure is if this continues I will lose my patience and that will be the end of it. I've been in too many relationships where I've ended up as caretaker of family and home to be blind to the end consequence of that responsibility. I get tired, I get angry, and I get hurt. And I walk away.

I'm no saint; I know this. I'm quite sure there are things I do or don't do that drive Mike batshit crazy. But Dealbreakers aren't about what we do, really -- they're about what we will accept in our lives and in our relationships.