Hil, my partner and I eat very different diets, as she's pre-diabetic and eats a lot of meat and vegetables, whereas I live on pasta and other crap. We manage just fine. I'm sure today's men can not only fend for themselves, but also won't be basing their decision to marry you on whether your diets are similar or not.

OMG, people, I'm having such attendant drama right now.

Attendants as in personal care attendants? Their drama always sucks. I hope yours get their drama resolved. I currently hate all three of mine (it comes and goes - sometimes I love them - mostly they're just annoying). They do marvellously clever things like failing to inform me that I'm running out of something essential in the kitchen, or using my housemates' laundry powder (when they know better), and so on. Little things, but highly irritating. I like being in total control of everything (and it's not like they weren't warned of this before taking the job with me). They do not help with that. OK, rant done.

We trade off on the cooking and often we cook together. If neither one of us feels like cooking, we'll get takeout or eat cereal.

I would not do well in a relationship that was based on me working full time and being the primary cooking entity.

You are a fucking adult. Either you learn to fend for yourself or you find a way to get what you want by yourself.

So much this. My husband may play videogames and wear weird Woot T-shirts every day, but he is one of the most adult-minded people I know. (I know this isn't a contradiction here, but it can be in other situations, especially family ones.) Also refreshingly free of gender role bullshit.

I would actually have no problem with doing most of the cooking, as long as I was not the person doing most of the cleaning. I like cooking, and I'm pretty good at it. I hate cleaning, and I'm horrible at it.

Doing the majority of the cooking and not having to clean up the mess is definitely a good deal imho.

I like cooking, and I'm pretty good at it. I hate cleaning, and I'm horrible at it.

That was the situation when I first met my partner - she'd cook and I'd clean. I still do a more cleaning than she does (although I get outside help with it these days), so we feel like we split the work pretty well.

We are far too lazy for deals or assignments, we've actually been lucky that we tend to trade off fairly evenly. Sometimes one cooks and the other cleans, sometimes one cooks and cleans, sometimes we both cook and someone cleans, sometimes we both cook and both clean.

Sometimes we let the dishes sit there for a while. It's all good.

It just depends on our energy levels.

Joe and I make deals. Mostly because something needs to be done and one of us (to be honest, usually me) doesn't want to do it. So we barter. Which can sometimes be fun.

It's interesting right now because with Joe in school, I'm taking over a lot of "his" chores and stuff that he did while I was in school. Laundry, cooking, Em. And it's kind of nice. I like doing the house stuff, I just never had the time or energy to do it. But quite often, we have catch as catch can night or take out.

I would actually have no problem with doing most of the cooking, as long as I was not the person doing most of the cleaning. I like cooking, and I'm pretty good at it. I hate cleaning, and I'm horrible at it.

This is how it works in our house. The rule is if you cook you don't do dishes, and 90% of the time that means I cook and DH does the dishes.

Awwww. Congrats on the graduate school! We have an actuary friend who went back and got his MSF--he seemed to enjoy the program.

I rather like the look of it. I mean, given world enough and time, I'd be doing biology or history or Chinese Studies, but this works well enough.

The rule is if you cook you don't do dishes

I seriously think this was the main reason I learned to cook. (The secondary reason was that I was a really picky eater as a kid, and I could only know for sure what was in stuff that I made. Not exactly passion and vocation as motivations go, but it worked out pretty well.)