DAE get depressed and jealous when you see everyone around you having a fun, relaxed time, when you have to bust your butt to make it so those around you can sit on their butt and do very little to contribute?

I am currently living with my girlfriend and her parents. I have noticed that her mom feels this way about all of us, but I think she's also partially to blame.

The thing is, no one is averse to doing chores in the house and we do them often, we just don't do them on the exact schedule she wants the exact way she wants.

A perfect example of this happened yesterday. My girlfriend made cookies and left a few dishes in the sink from it. Her mom gets home from work and really passive aggressively says "wow, I really wish someone would do dishes around here."

My GF is frosting the cookies at the moment and can't get her hands dirty so I get up, start to do the dishes, but the dishwasher is new. I ask my GF what dishes are OK to put on the bottom rack (since the top is full). She says "you know what, you rinse them and I'll just sort it out, it's my mess anyway."

5 minutes later she is still frosting cookies. Her mom goes back to the kitchen and without saying anything makes a huge racket throwing dishes around in the sink, re-rinsing the dishes I already rinsed, sighing and huffing exxageratedly so the entire house can hear her. My girlfriend says "no, mom, it's fine, I'll do them after I finish frosting these cookies."

Her mom responds "no, it's okay these just really have to get done." In a voice dripping with passive aggressive malice.

GF tries one more time "no mom. It's okay I'm frosting cookies but please just let me do the dishes. I'll be done in 10 minutes." Her mom ignores her and does them. But I guarantee what was running through her mind was the fact that she's always the one doing the chores around here etc, and she'll add it to an invisible time bomb counter that will have a little mini explosion later this month.

This is how she is about all the chores. We keep trying to explain to her that she doesn't need to do everything. That things will either get done on our time (which contrary to her beliefs doesn't mean never), or she can directly ask us for help when she feels they need doing.

Instead she refuses all help, redoes all the work we do because she has to have it done her way, and then complains that she can never get any help and everyone else in the house is so lazy.

If she just directly asked for help more often, or if she simply said "fuck it" and took some me-time regardless, she'd be incredibly surprised to see that chores do get done without her needing to initiate.

Unfortunately she had some childhood trauma related to a mean stepmother so I feel like this perfectionism and incessant need to play provider have a lot to do with her being forced to do so many household chores as a kid and punished when they weren't perfect.

Seeiously, she goes to all the rooms and collects laundry like 3 times a day. Instead of doing a few big loads at the end of the week, she does a few tiny loads every single day and complains how everyone creates so much laundry and so much work for her.

I sincerely think therapy would help her a lot. She's even mentioned it offhand a few times but has never made the full commitment and just gone for it.

The other thing that would help her is if she did just drop the neuroses for a little bit and see how the house runs without her constantly putting pressure on herself to do shit no one is asking her to do. However I don't think that she'll be able to do this without therapy.

/r/DoesAnybodyElse Thread