Here’s How To Tell If Someone Is Using Weaponized Incompetence

Weaponized incompetence is sort of a household term at this point, as it should be — it’s time that all partners step up and pull their weight when it comes to domestic labor. You’d think that the more well-known it becomes, the less likely it’d be for men (the demo usually found guilty of weaponizing incompetence, sorry) to attempt it anymore. It’s also true that boys and girls are socialized and raised differently, even in the same families. It’s possible your partner truly wasn’t taught how to manage a household well. So, here’s how to tell if someone is using weaponized incompetence, or if they truly just need help understanding how you want them to tackle the task at hand.

For starters, I think it’s fair to say that many men who grow up and appear hapless around the house might just be victims of how our society treats boys and girls. Teenage girls and young women do more unpaid work in their childhood homes than their male counterparts, and how parents divide housework entrenches those gender roles in their kids, especially between fathers and sons, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality. The New York Times references an analysis suggesting that in the U.S., boys aged 15 to 19 do about half an hour of housework a day, while girls do about 45 minutes. While it’s not a startling day-to-day difference, it certainly adds up over time, particularly if boys are doing more typically-assigned-to-men chores (like mowing or taking out the trash) but are never taught the correct way to load a dishwasher (and there is one).

How To Tell If Someone Is Using Weaponized Incompetence

While it’s not fair to girls to place more housework on them even in childhood, we definitely get a better idea of how to run a household at an early age. Cleaning, organizing, and scheduling are skills. Your partner might have been deprived of the opportunity to practice them. If he genuinely doesn’t know how to do something but is eager to learn, he has good intentions.

“Everyone has gaps in skills, but a genuine lack of knowledge comes with a willingness to learn. If your partner asks questions, makes an effort, and gets better over time, that’s real. If they ‘mess up’ in the same way repeatedly without improvement, that’s avoidance,” says couples therapist Thomas Westenholz.

But if they appear capable of, say, packing the kids’ lunches and keeping up with laundry while you’re out of town, it could be weaponized incompetence. “One sign that your partner is pretending to be incompetent is if they will do the necessary tasks if you are not available. If you see that happening, they may have just decided that it is easier for you to do them, but they are capable of doing it themselves,” says Dr. Patrice Le Goy, a psychologist and licensed marriage and family therapist.

Here are some other red flags that your partner is weaponizing incompetence, according to Rachel Goldberg, LMFT, PMH-C, a perinatal and parenting licensed therapist in Los Angeles:

• They say things like “I don’t know how to do it the way you like it,” “I don’t know where you put it,” or “You don’t like how I do it.” “This puts you in a position where you think, ‘They’re right, I don’t like how they do it, so I’ll just do it myself.’ They’re essentially training you to take over the task,” Goldberg says.
• There is no attempt to learn, research, or figure it out independently.
• When they are competent at speaking to their employees at work, but suddenly can’t manage to ask the teacher how their child can make up some of the work they missed, you know something is amiss.
• They seem to purposely make mistakes, doing a task in a way they know will upset you or create more work.

How To Deal With Weaponized Incompetence In A Relationship

Ultimately, if you’ve given your partner opportunities to learn how to fold clothes, cook meals, or mop floors, you’ve done your part. You may have to give up a little control on how things get done, Goldberg says — maybe your shirts aren’t folded in your favorite way — but the effort is there. If it’s not, it’s time to call it what it is.

“In the end, the real difference comes down to willingness and effort versus logistics,” she says. “Genuine incompetence is about logistics, where they need information or practice. Weaponized incompetence is about whether they are willing to engage or not, knowing you’ll step in if they don’t.”

So, how do you talk to someone who’s not willing to step up about, well, stepping the hell up?

“That really depends on the relationship and the person. Of course, you can try talking to them about it. You might say something like, ‘I’ve noticed that when I ask you to do something, I’m given a reason you can’t or it just doesn’t happen,’” Goldberg says. “Then you can offer to meet them halfway: ‘I can understand that I am particular sometimes and maybe even critical. I’m going to work on that, and maybe I can show you some of these tasks.’”

For example, here’s Goldberg’s script for discussing laundry: “‘Let me show you how I like it folded. You can even video me doing it so you can refer back to it and get the hang of it. Maybe we can find a happy medium where you’re not going to do it to my exact standards, but I can accept the way you do it as long as it fits nicely in the drawer.’”

Take a beat to explain the way the behavior impacts you as well, Westenholz says. “Instead of blaming, name the impact: ‘When you act like you can’t do this, I feel alone with all the responsibility.’ If they care about the relationship, they’ll step up. If not, that avoidance says more about their commitment than their skill level.”