In reply to Ellen Dudley’s post:
How to remove the doormat/nagging conflict from a relationship

Calling oneself a doormat is an interesting analogy to me. What is usually on the face of a doormat? WELCOME. To me it is not a coincidence that the term “doormat” is usually associated to women. So why is it that women are more likely to welcome being a doormat and allow themselves to get into this situation in the first place. The situation of giving “freely” and then complaining irresponsibly or more commonly called nagging? I think that it is because they use their house work (or anything else) as an investment where they give to make a deposit and know that they can call on that investment whenever they choose and can expect and even demand a return. Termed the law of reciprocity, any man/person worth his/her metal should be aware of it and not accept such, so called, gifts. As the saying goes there is no such thing as a free lunch not even from a Welcome Doormat.

So it is 2014 and for me it could be the Year of the Expectation, that is; finally getting my head around them. For me and my brother Steve, we have thrown out the idea of expectations and agreed to replace them with explanations. We can do that by simply agreeing, it is that simple. We agree that we have no right to expect anything from anyone else, not even if we offer to do the dishes and clean up after our partners. Anything we give can only be seen as a true, free gift without any expectations and if we do expect anything in return then we simply agree to put up our hand and acknowledge and apologise for it.

Now if we could find a woman that was willing to agree to such a simple principle then I think that it could be a match made in heaven. Of course there would be a lot more explaining going on and we would need to learn to explain very well if we wanted to achieve all the previous stuff that we had expectations of others to give us.
This could take a lifetime to master but should be fun.