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• Thursday, August 23, 2007 09:37 AM

  my boyfriend does that too

  when my boyfriend was growing up, his mommy did all his laundry. he must somewhere, in some corner of his mind know that mommy is no longer going to do that for him, but he sure doesn't act like it.

  his laundry ends up in a gigantic pile on the floor of the closet. the pile grows until it is so big that i have to wade through knee-deep dirty clothes to get to the clean clothes that hang in the closet. one time, he went four months--FOUR--without doing his laundry. he bought socks and underwear as needed, and then did the smell test on everything else. i was secretly horrified but said nothing.

  then, i caught him trying to perform the smell test on UNDERWEAR, and lost it and freaked out. i offered to do his laundry; he refused. i offered again; he refused. i told him it grossed me out that he was wearing dirty clothes; he nodded thoughtfully and the laundry still didn't get done.

  i finally secretly did his laundry, and then threw it back on the floor so he wouldn't know. three weeks later, after god knows how many fights and arguments about this, he caved and did his laundry. of course, this involved re-washing the clothes i'd secretly been washing, but he didn't know that.

  the saga does not end there; the clean clothes came back from the laundromat and stayed in this huge bag. he'd dig through it to find things, and then all the clothes eventually ended up on the floor again. so now there was a huge pile of clean clothes and a growing pile of dirty clothes. the piles eventually came to merge, with him insisting that he knew which was dirty and which was clean, and wholeheartedly resenting my repeated offers to do his laundry, go shopping for organizational tools with him, or help him do his own laundry.

  we solved the problem by agreeing to look for a new apartment with a washer/dryer, and a large closet. until the lease expires and we get this new apartment, i just secretly do his laundry and throw it back on the floor. he has no idea.

  —Kristinab Read Kristinab's other letters
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