I’ll be honest, this should be every day in my house. It isn’t. I come up short.

The hubs is a long-suffering control freak married to another control freak. Fortunately, we got pretty good early on at divvying up what we would freak out about. For a long time, I got the yard and he got the laundry. I got the cleaning and he got the kitchen. I got day-to-day spending and he got investing. I got holidays and he got vacations. I got the kid’s academics and he got the kid’s athletics—and the kid showed us both who had the real control as far as he was concerned.

Since the hubs retired, he has expanded his fiefdom. He cleans up after the dog, mows the yard, and does the laundry. He does all the dishes and all the cooking. I work 3 days a week, so I make the money and he spends it (with a LOT of help). Sometimes I pitch in on extra yard work, but sometimes I just run off and find extracurricular activities to occupy my time. We hired a cleaning woman. We shipped the kid off to college and watch his progress with our hands over our faces, peeking through our fingers.

There was a period a few years back where it seemed like every time I turned around I bumped into another article about “cognitive load” or “worry work” or “emotional labor.” I was never one of those women going, “ah ha! I feel seen!” At most, I was the woman going, “OK, yeah, I have felt that way on occasion. Then I opened my mouth and told the other control freak in the house to deal with the thing making me pissy, and whatever he did about it was what got done.”

The hubs would doubtless argue with this. He has given me That Look in the past and said, “but you don’t just hand it off. You hand it off and then you decide it wasn’t done right and do it over.” He likes to point out that I regularly refolded my laundry (and he steadfastly refuses to fold fitted sheets to this day for this reason). But he’s got the same disease—he will reload the dishwasher if I put in so much as one dirty cup.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t, either. My dad used to say that perfect marriages involved finding someone whose neuroses and idiosyncrasies complemented your own. Mission accomplished!

I appreciate you, husband!