Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/06/dishwashing-causes-more-relati.html
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Wow am I that much of an oddity being a male who likes to do the dishes by hand?
I grew up in a house with out a dishwasher appliance and did them by hand for years growing up and now it is a kind of meditation for me. Some simple thing I can do that lets me decompress my brain.
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It’s not that I won’t do the dishes, it’s that we always argue about the right way of stacking them on the rack.
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Alternately - we can always order & eat out. I’m just trying to help you out here.
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God, this is never an issue for me. If they’re stacked it means they’re done and I couldn’t be happier (not having done them myself). Although I will often go through and re-stack certain items to ensure they dry properly… 
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I joke with the Enk-wife that I like doing the dishes and laundry as a sort of aphrodisiac. Hasn’t worked so far, but I’ll keep trying! I’m here all week unfortunately. Don’t try the veal, meat is murder etc etc.
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When I lived in a co-op, coming home to every freakin’ dish in the house sitting dirty in the sink was enough to make me go nuclear.
Living with only one or two people, it’s a much less incendiary issue.
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It’s not the dishes it’s the small galley kitchen.
We’re working on it. 
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Whoever didn’t cook the dinner has to clean up afterwards is my rule, though I will rearrange the contents of the dishwasher if someone fills it the wrong way.
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We have that loose rule, but really, I don’t mind doing both the cooking and the cleanup most of the time. She likes to re-stack the dishes in the dishwasher, since I tend to put them in willy-nilly, and I really don’t care that she does. Go ahead, honey, you do a better job at that than I do anyways. Big stuff gets washed by hand and put in the drying rack.
Now we USED to argue over dishes, years past. But we don’t anymore. I think we both realized arguing about that was pretty lame.
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That’s what I say! You’d think i was the one stacking them wrong.
/mini_rant
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He who washes the dishes, always has a job.
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My issue is that if my partner does them, they don’t get CLEAN to my standards.
When I’m out of town he uses paper plates/bowls because I don’t want to come home to a cabinet full of greasy “clean” dishes with crud stuck to them.
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Might just be a control issue, my friend said to say that.
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“Even worse sex”? Are we starting with the presumption that bad sex is the norm for heterosexual women?
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I feel exactly the same way about it. (Although I learned to treat it as a meditative practice in a commercial kitchen as a 16-year-old, not in my family home.)
Also, this! Again from early experience in the restaurant trade.
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In my youth, I was at a friend’s family’s house for dinner. After dinner, I stood up and offered to take the dishes into the kitchen. The mom quickly said, “But don’t stack them when you carry them in.” I was like ???
A few minutes later, when my friend was washing the dishes (by hand) he was washing them with soap, just like you’re normally supposed to do… BUT… he wasn’t washing the backs of the dishes. They thought they’d save time or effort or soap or something by never washing the backs of the dishes.
Errh. WTF?
EEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!
What do you think the dishes are doing to each other when they are stacked in the cupboard?
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My husband does all the dishes (unless he’s away or something like that). I do all the cooking. It seems to work. I’d be happy doing the dishes if he cooked – but he’s a terrible cook, and I don’t want to eat what he makes (nor does he really).
I’ve known men who were very good cooks, however, and I’d be very surprised if their partners resented doing the washing up afterwards. As far as I can glean, having one person cook and the other wash up, is generally held as a fair division of labour.
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