An unfortunate part of many relationships is managing the cold war between your partner and your parents. What side to take, when to fight, when to make peace are all questions that do not really have simple answers.

So a man turned to the internet for advice when he sided with his mother over his GF when she commented that their home was dirty. He decided to agree with her that it was his GF’s fault and seemed somewhat confused as to why she would be offended by this idea. Netizens did not hold back about who was actually at fault.

The question of who cleans what is a common pitfall in many relationships

Image credits: Prostock-studio (not the actual photo)

But one man ended up in hot water with his GF when he blamed her for the home being dirty

Image credits: YuriArcursPeopleimages (not the actual photo)

Image source: Blueberry_Knoll_6340

Navigating family and relationship drama can be hard

In the young couple’s defense, some mothers are overly critical of cleanliness just for the sake of causing drama. Others have a massively inflated sense of how clean something should be. Many of us have gone through the experience of having houseguests and needing to clean our rooms for some reason as if they would all be having dinner next to our childhood beds.

This isn’t to say that OP’s place should have been dirty and that being a slob is actually normal and acceptable, but without real evidence of just how dirty the home was, it’s hard to judge. However, what is easier to judge is OP just siding against his GF without a moment of hesitation.

Let’s face it, calling out your parents may not be the easiest thing to do in the world, but OP is a grown, adult man. Not only does he not take any responsibility for the state of the apartment, where he does seem to spend more of his time, but he also does not even attempt to take a shred of the blame for himself.

People have very wide standards of what is and isn’t considered clean

Regardless of how actually made a larger part of the mess (a completely academic exercise, as we will never know,) OP’s parents are OP’s guests, so he should have done his part to clean up in advance. The fact that he didn’t even notice that something was dirty does create an interesting argument for who is to blame.

Because, at this point, OP could have perhaps argued that his parents were overreacting. As one comment noted, they were the ones getting free lodgings and taking the time to criticize their hosts. Instead of standing his ground, OP simply agreed that his parents were right and that he was living in filth.

While we do not know just how dirty the home was, the words OP’s mother used were “not fit for guests,” which likely means a bit more than some dusty surfaces. At the same time, OP states that he basically didn’t notice. So we have two possible answers, that OP has very low standards of cleanliness or that his parents are simply too demanding. In both cases, throwing the GF under the bus is the wrong move.

OP needs to treat this as a learning experience

As one can probably guess, readers were not particularly sympathetic to OP. While it is entirely possible that his parents were being demanding, ungrateful, and annoying (in a worst-case scenario reading of the situation) this still doesn’t justify him eating it up and passing the blame. He says his mother was just trying to help, which seems like a very generous spin on her actions.

For example, why didn’t she actually help and perhaps clean? She is the one getting free lodging, after all. Let us hope that this was a wake-up call for OP and it should allow him to better understand his relationship with his family, his girlfriend, and, hopefully, a vacuum and a mop.

Most people thought he was absolutely in the wrong

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