Living Together is an adjustment for some couples. Moving in with your girlfriend probably made life seem more grown-up at first. With the fun of sharing space comes the reality of household duties.
Cooking meals, washing dishes, and keeping your home clean are necessary parts of life as a couple. But what if your girlfriend refuses to help with these chores?
It may frustrate and confuse you if she doesn’t cook or clean up. Many couples split up duties so no one feels overburdened. However, a lack of experience, skill, or even anger at you could make her unwilling to cook and clean.
The solution isn’t to criticize her. With care, compromise, and open chat, you can create an arrangement that works for both of you. This way, household duties don’t harm your relationship.
The productive ways to address this issue will be explained in the following.
Why My Girlfriend Doesn’t Cook or Clean
1. She Lacks Cooking and Cleaning Skills
If your girlfriend can’t cook or hates cleaning up, she may not have learned these skills growing up. Her parents likely handled most household chores for her into adulthood. If she moved straight from their home to live with you, she hasn’t built experience.
You may have grown up helping the family prepare meals or tidy up. So, these household tasks come more naturally to you. But picking up cooking and cleaning as an adult with no background would be frustrating.
Imagine following a complex recipe when you barely know how to boil water! Or keeping a tidy house when you’ve never had to clean up after yourself. Missteps like leaving dishes messy or burning food could make your girlfriend avoid the kitchen.
Have compassion that household chores are genuinely new and challenging for your girlfriend. Her lack of knowledge doesn’t make her unwilling to carry her weight. She may feel embarrassed that she isn’t able to cook tasty dishes or keep your home clean yet.
2. She Dislikes Handling Dirt or Fears Burning Herself
Outside of lacking homemaking skills, there are other reasons your girlfriend may refuse to cook or clean. She may strongly dislike getting her hands dirty from tough cleaning jobs. Scouring bathtubs, scrubbing floors, and taking out trash may gross her out.
Or your girlfriend could have an intense fear of burns from cooking—the stove and oven present real injury risks for novice chefs. If a past cooking incident left her with a scar, she may avoid the kitchen to stay safe.
Neither disgust over filth nor anxiety about burns makes your girlfriend a lazy partner. These are understandable hang-ups when facing new domestic responsibilities. Try to have empathy for her distaste or fear around cleaning and cooking.
3. You Criticize Her Efforts
Criticizing your girlfriend’s first attempts at household chores can destroy her motivation. Adverse reactions to her cooking and cleaning show her efforts don’t satisfy you. This criticism damages her confidence in developing domestic skills.
For example, you complain about a slightly overcooked meal or a spot she missed when dusting. These corrections may aim to improve her work. But constant nitpicking only discourages her from trying again.
Think about your first job mopping floors or doing yard work as a kid. You may have avoided future chores if your family criticized errors instead of guiding improvement. Adults also lose motivation when their work meets correction instead of encouragement.
Build up your girlfriend’s domestic role in the future without tearing her down over small mess-ups. All people who work to manage a home deserve gentle guidance as they amend their skills, not embarrassment for the imperfect start.
4. She Feels Too Busy with Work
Today, both men and women work long hours in the workplace while also maintaining households. Your girlfriend may take on far more demanding projects or work longer days than you. Her entire life outside of work may feel drained in highly active seasons.
With her job occupying her focus and energy, she probably lacks time and patience for housework. Working overtime or managing large accounts leaves her too overwhelmed to cook or clean up.
You may not fully grasp the responsibilities she carries in her career from your viewpoint. Before resenting her lack of housework, talk to understand her workload. Letting dishes pile up or eating takeout during crunch times harms no one. Once her schedule calms down, broach rebalancing home duties.
5. She Prefers Other Household Responsibilities
While cooking and cleaning make up basic housework, running a home requires more. Your girlfriend could take on administrative work you don’t prefer or perform tasks that slip your mind.
For example, you may despise making grocery lists or paying monthly bills. She may routinely ensure the fridge stays stocked, bills get paid, and other errands run smoothly without being asked.
Discuss openly what’s expected of each of you to avoid assumptions. You may expect all partners to cook nightly meals plus scrub bathrooms weekly.
However, dividing obligations evenly across strengths suits some couples better. You both contribute if you handle dishes and trash while she manages household finances and logistics.
Don’t underestimate your girlfriend’s efforts because they differ from traditional duties. The goal should be to share the workload, not conforming to rigid roles. Talk through what housework she can try to learn versus where her planning strengths come into play.
6. She’s Angry With You
When conflict happens in a relationship, household duties often slip between partners. Just like you may ignore chores when upset with your girlfriend, her anger toward you results in the same response.
If she abruptly stops cooking, cleaning, or taking on responsibilities she previously handled, she likely feels upset with you. Try to uncover the source of her anger directly through conversation before it spirals.
Let her share openly while you listen earnestly without getting defensive. Once the original issue gets resolved through compromise, she will likely resume her usual housework duties.
But becoming accustomed to you covering all chores while she temporarily refuses may perpetuate negligence. Avoid this scenario by addressing the emotional core issue sooner rather than later.
Maintaining open communication and honesty prevents you from growing resentful of extra burdens during fights.
7. She’s Become Accustomed to You Doing the Work
After you have lived together for some time, established patterns emerge. You may have started out splitting cooking and cleaning tasks fairly between you.
But slowly, you began taking on extra work while your girlfriend did less and less. Over time, her initial willingness to contribute eroded as she relied on you more.
Her situation has shifted from temporary inability to straight-up laziness around the home. Since you handle the majority of chores without complaint, she takes advantage by intentionally doing less. She feels comfortable maintaining the status quo that asks little of her.
The solution lies in disrupting outdated patterns that are poor for your partnership and health. Sit her down to divide domestic duties evenly again.
Explain kindly but firmly what you expect regarding her role. With clear communication and reset expectations, instill responsibility in her once more.
What To Do If Your Girlfriend Refuses To Cook Or Clean
Offer to Teach Her Some Basic Skills
Just because your girlfriend doesn’t know how to cook or clean now doesn’t mean she can’t learn. You take the pressure off by offering to teach her basic homemaking skills, expecting instant mastery. Breaking down cooking and cleaning into simple steps helps her gain confidence.
Teach cooking skills based on her interest level. If she seems excited to cook, start with easy recipes requiring few ingredients and uncomplicated preparation.
Walk her through mental aspects like organizing ingredients and physical skills like proper knife handling. Share little tricks you use to chop neatly or get pots spotless.
She can become a better cook with practice and your guidance. But steer clear of criticism over imperfect early attempts. Instead, help her enjoy the learning process through praise of meals she makes you both.
Have an Open Conversation
Chatting openly and honestly about her lack of housework allows you both to find a compromise. First, focus the talk on understanding each other before moving to problem-solving.
Listen as she explains her perspective on current duties and why she doesn’t cook or clean more. Then, describe your feelings and needs surrounding dividing chores.
Through open conversation, hidden reasons often emerge behind her behavior. Bring up the idea of teaching basic skills compassionately. Express your willingness to take turns performing basic tasks if she wants to learn.
The goal is to create proper understanding between you, not attack her actions. Adjusting attitudes and habits happens over time after candid exchanges. Remember, change starts with listening first.
Divide Up Chores Based on Ability
Splitting up regular housework based on both your strengths works better long-term. Face what chores she genuinely dislikes or isn’t skilled at yet. Be honest about tasks draining for you, too.
Then, rework divisions to play to strengths. Take on cooking if you enjoy it more while she handles dry mopping floors. Or assign her basic laundry while you scrub the bathroom.
Setting reasonable abilities for responsibility ensures duties are consistently met. And sharing the total workload prevents resentment. Revisit this split periodically to allow flexibility as skills improve, or schedules shift.
Give Positive Feedback When She Makes An Effort
Consistently compliment your girlfriend’s budding domestic efforts rather than focusing on imperfections. Thank her for preparing meals, even if they lack seasoning finesse. Express appreciation when she wipes kitchen counters clean after dinner despite missing some crumbs.
Give praise and encouragement every time she tries to cook or clean. Don’t dampen the pride she feels from taking new steps out of her comfort zone.
If the food she cooks makes you ill or a surface feels still dirty after her cleaning, gently reteach the technique later. But at the moment, give positive feedback.
Uplifting her expanding skillset empowers further progress. She moves forward motivated by your notices, not paralyzed by criticism. Support her journey to share housework evenly through compassion, not shame over what she hasn’t mastered yet.
Offer to Hire Outside Help
If your girlfriend remains unwilling to take on more household responsibilities after honest talks, suggest hiring a cleaning service. This compromise lightens your chore load without forcing her to cook meals and clean up herself. While not free, paying someone else preserves your mental well-being around an uneven housework split.
Some couples find value in assigning chores to a weekly or monthly maid. As long as it fits your budget, this option beats burning out. Keep communicating clearly to your girlfriend that you cannot sustain solo cooking, laundry, cleaning, and more on top of your job.
Present hiring temporary help not as an attack but as a practical relief to benefit you both. Paying for cleaning assistance when needed frees up energy you devote to each other during precious shared downtime at home.
Final Thoughts
Refusal to take on cooking and cleaning represents a typical relationship issue for couples living together. Instead of resenting your partner for shirking these duties, approach this dysfunction with empathy and openness.
By expressing your needs clearly while respecting hers, compromise is reached through open dialogue. Whether she doesn’t know how to cook efficiently yet or resents the chore imbalance, solutions exist.
With caring understanding and flexibility regarding her limitations alongside fair rebalancing of labor, household burdens lift for you both. This improves harmony and eases tension so you feel content coming home each night to a welcoming meal and tidy kitchen sink again.
