“I Should Not Have to Clean Up” — Woman Shocked by Boyfriend’s Reaction to Dusty Ceiling Fan

Sixy-nine percent of divorced women ended up splitting from their partners because they wouldn't share in household chores or childcare, according to one study.

There's something folks find particularly grimy when their significant other won't take it upon themselves to help tidy up or contribute to the daily tasks that keep a home going.

And a TikToker named Madeleine (@mother_madeleine) found herself in a bit of a shared-chore conundrum recently. She shared an interaction she had with her boyfriend over a dusty ceiling fan and took to TikTok to ask if she was over-reacting in being upset over her beau's expectations when it came to how the fan was going to get clean.

"OK, someone with a partner who they live with, please side with me on this 'cause I'm about to lose my mind," she said in her video. "So about a week ago my boyfriend, who I live with, pointed out to me that our fan in our room, our ceiling fan in our room, was pretty dusty. To the point that dust was falling off of the fan on to the floor, onto our bed, etcetera."

She continued, "Today we're laying in bed, post work, and some dust starts falling down from the fan. And he brings it up again, like, oh my god it's really dusty. And I was like, wait a minute, you didn't clean the fan last week after you pointed out to me specifically it was pretty dusty?"

The TikToker went on with her story, "And he was like no, you noticed it too, why didn't you clean the fan? And I was like whoa hold on a second. If you live with someone, and you share spaces, and you share responsibilities for cleaning, and you notice something is dirty and you still didn't clean it, that's on you," she continued.

"That's not on me, I should not have had to clean up. Right? Am I right? Someone tell me, I'm feeling —" she continued to say in her video before it ultimately closed out.

There were a number of folks who sympathized with the woman's TikTok, like this one person who said that the man she was living with was attempting to use "weaponized incompetence" as a means of getting out of doing any work.

It's a term that's used to define a mindset someone adopts when they want to offload responsibilities onto others so they hide behind an excuse wall that's built upon either demonstrations or protestations or both that they are incapable of performing said task.

The task, such as dusting the top of a ceiling fan, still needs to get done, so the person the partner lives with either continually calls their partner out on their weaponized incompetence and forces them to learn how to perform said action, or they ultimately just do it themselves and add it to their list of recurring chores they must accomplish.

Unfortunately, there seemed to be a lot of women in the comments section who entered into relationships with men who don't like to take initiative or find things out of their own.

One woman says that she enjoys talking down to her husband in what seems like an attempt at shaming him into performing chores: "I start talking like I am to a toddler: 'If we notice things that need to be done let’s do them without announcing it, big boys can do things on their own.'"

"I told my husband, 'Before you bring something to my attention, ask yourself if this is something that you can take care of.'"

There were a lot of people who chimed in in the comments section in order to let Madeleine know that she wasn't wrong to be peeved about the dust on the fan situation.

"You are 100 percent right. My husband does this and says 'we need to clean this.' He never cleans anything. He means me," one person said.

And someone else replied: "I got taught to always ask two questions … 'How long have you known about it?' and 'What have you done about it?' … you are right. He is wrong."

Brief personal anecdotes in the comments section of the video told stories of people's relationships. For this person, it appears that things between them and their former partner broke off because of their disputes over household chores: "I use to tell my ex 'When you think SOMEONE should clean something? YOU. YOU ARE THE SOMEONE. NOT ME.'"

Another said that there was a stark difference between their former and current partners: "First Husband: We need to = YOU need to. Second Husband: I bought a cool new fan duster and look at how clean the fans are!"

However, there was a TikTok user who said that if you stick with reinforcing positive behaviors long enough, and the person you're with cares about you, there is a chance that things can change for the better: "I have begun calling out my husband for his use of weaponized incompetence, and things are actually changing. He filled the dog water without my asking!"