After many arguments regarding household chores, a couple decided to sign a legally-binding contract defining who’s responsible for what around the house — and they even included a clause for what would happen if they break up.
Dylan, who works for a solicitors firm, asked a co-worker to draw up an agreement between him and his girlfriend, Emily, after they “kept having arguments” about cleaning their home.
“…Tensions were rising, so I just thought this would help put a lot of things to bed and it really has. Now that I know what I have to do, I’m much happier than being asked to do it all the time. We’d argue about if I left a lot of bowls upstairs. I’m an avid gamer so I play my computer quite a lot and spend a lot of my spare time doing that,” Dylan told The Mirror.
Dylan explained he would often leave his dishes around the house. Since his girlfriend is the type of person who “if she’s not busy she drives herself crazy,” he assumed she’d be happy cleaning the house. “I thought it would drive her nuts if I took too much off her,” he said.
As for the cohabitation contract, the document includes “clauses about if we break up, about who gets what, and two months afterwards the person who moved out would be liable for bills, and making sure that everything that has been a permanent addition, like washing machines, have been taken into account.”
Dylan works Monday through Friday, while Emily works and attends school four days a week.
“We’ve agreed that I’ll cook two times a week, and on the weekend I’ll do the mopping and hoovering, and I’ll do the lawn and take out the bins. She does pretty much everything else. With her working four days a week, it makes sense for her to take on more,” Dylan said, adding Emily “didn’t feel brilliant about it, that’s why we made the agreement in the first place.”
“She used some harsh words, like called me lazy and things like that,” he told the tabloid.
However, the new agreement has given Dylan “more structure in what I’m doing around the house,” since he comes “from a family where I’m a momma’s boy.”
“I went home during the pandemic and my mom went back to doing everything for me. I had to relearn how to do life on my own. I had to relearn general housework, the laundry, cooking, she did all the washing up. It was like learning to take care of myself again,” he said.
Dylan and Emily have been living together since June, and are planning on getting married and starting a family eventually. Since signing the agreement, Dylan says the pair haven’t gotten into any arguments regarding chores.
“I didn’t like being nagged to do things and she didn’t like me to do nothing,” he said. “Now we’ve got that sorted out, it’s been brilliant.”