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by scotty79 2270 days ago
1. There are no chores or obligations only things someone wants to get done.

2. If you want something done that you personally don't want to do at the moment you need to ask. Every time.

3. Person asked has the right to refuse without any consequences or resentment. If person asked refuses to do it, you need to do it yourself or stop wanting it. If the person agrees and does what you wanted it's polite and effortless to thank for it. If person does something that's beneficial for you even though you didn't ask you should thank as well.

Those rules, even never openly stated, just distilled unilaterally by me resulted in happy domestic life of 14 years between two good persons. Those rules require no bookkeeping and promote positive interactions and instill sense of individual freedom. They are extremely flexible. They adapt easily to switching jobs, homes, schedules.

You don't regret how much you do around the house because it was either to satisfy your own wants or a direct result of specific request you freely chose to satisfy. You also don't resent that other people are doing so little because they do that either because you didn't ask them or they refuse many of your requests (in latter case, should you have that relationship?).

I believe it might be beneficial to apply those rules even to business relationships.

1 comments

I think a factor in the success of your approach is that the two partners should have more or less the same idea of tidiness. If one has more tolerance than the other with say, seeing piles of clothes or plates accumulate, they don't feel as concerned.
That or just acceptance that their levels of tidiness differ and awareness that the tidier person will have to keep their environment tidier if he/she keeps wanting it because that's only for his/her benefit.

Trouble pretty much always stems from thinking that your standards and wants are or should be universal and ascribing them to other person.