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A woman lists things she no longer does for her husband and is encouraged to say, “Stop being a mom.”

A woman lists things she no longer does for her husband and is encouraged to say, “Stop being a mom.”

Every couple handles the division of labor differently, and a wife online radically changes things for her and her husband.

A video posted on TikTok by Le’Chelle (@lechellealdridge) has gone viral after she revealed five things she now refuses to do for her husband after seven years of dating. Since being posted, the video has been viewed over 600,000 times and received 45,000 likes.

“Five things I used to do for my husband that I no longer do,” Le’Chelle said at the beginning of the video. “I think talking about these things related to life and relationships helps create a new, less traditional normal,” she wrote in the caption.

A woman throws laundry at her husband
Stock image of a woman throwing laundry at her husband. A video has gone viral after a woman took to TikTok to share the things she refuses to do for her husband.

Andrei Popov/Getty Images

First, Le’Chelle said she no longer buys gifts in her name for her family.

“I don’t do it because I’m like, ‘You know your family, if you want to pamper them … then you will, but it’s not my responsibility,'” she said. “I’m not going to put his name on something if he didn’t necessarily think of it, or contribute to it in some way.”

She also doesn’t do all the shopping anymore. If they both work and eat together, it’s a shared responsibility, she says. And she doesn’t do her own laundry anymore: Too many arguments about how the two of them want things done mean it’s easier to have two separate laundry baskets.

Still on the subject of clothing, Le’Chelle said she no longer gives her husband “style advice”: “Maybe it’s just because of my job, I can’t control my face, so sometimes my face says, ‘I absolutely hate this,'” she said.

She also no longer buys him underwear or clothes, and no longer organizes his wardrobe.

“I’ve done it several times over the last seven years, and it frustrates me so much that I have to clean out his closet, organize it and make it clean, because mine is beautiful too,” she said. “I stopped doing it because he doesn’t do it. I don’t waste my time on it.”

A shift from more traditional gender roles

Le’Chelle said the changes after seven years together were a departure from how the couple did things in the beginning.

“At the beginning of our marriage, we had traditional gender roles. That’s because I think we were just replicating what we had seen before,” Le’Chelle said.

“But now, seven years later, I think that as adults we would be obligated to do these things if we lived alone, so why wouldn’t we do them when we’re married?”

She noted that in more traditional settings, much of the responsibility and “mental load” falls on the wife. Enforcing boundaries like the ones she put in place can put a stop to that.

Some in the comments were skeptical of Le’Chelle’s approach, saying her sharper divisions of labor give off a “roommate vibe” or seem “corporate.” But many also came to her defense, with years of similar experience at hand.

“I love this,” wrote @storm6943. “We are still all individuals, and the woman doesn’t become a secretary or a housekeeper just because of marriage. It’s a team effort.”

“I love this,” wrote @haikehaikehaike. “We need to stop mothering our men. They need to be leaders. I’ve been married for nine years and this year I started setting boundaries too.”

“My husband and I are the same, and it works out well because we just have more mental space and capacity to love each other instead of fighting over who didn’t do the dishes,” wrote @mrs_lel_dyani.

Newsweek reached out to @lechellealdridge for comment via TikTok.