HouseSpouse is the Greatest and Best Job in the World, and I'm Not Sorry

(Tribute)

There are few jobs as great as HouseSpouse, and most aren’t available to the average person.

As a “spouse”¹, my job was to make my partner’s life better. This is one of the most viscerally fulfilling job goals one can have. Most jobs have highly impersonal goals with very little emotional feedback. Do tasks and get paid for them. Bleh. Even the most highly paid and challenging jobs are often Number-Go-Up challenges/puzzles. When my focus is one person and her quality of life, everything is dramatically more rewarding. I can see my efforts make someone’s life better. In real time! I am in the blast radius of her joy and I’m pierced through with happiness shrapnel. Almost daily.

Most of the day-to-day tasks are fulfilling in their own right. I love cleaning, it is a righteous crusade against ever-encroaching Entropy. You start with ugliness and despair. All that time we put into decor and style, aesthetics and vibes… how do you see any of it under clutter barnacling every flat surface? What was all that work and vision for, if it’s hidden? I un-hide it so it can be admired. I methodically execute actions that are known and easy to do, and I’m left with beauty in my wake.² It’s lovely to be able to see the results of your work in the physical world when you’re done.

I feel more like a cohesive whole and less like an isolated soul lost in the screaming void when Spousing. My job is to make it easier for her to be her. Is there a problem she needs help with? Together we can unravel it. Is there something blocking her life? Maybe I can find a way to unblock it, find the right tool or do some task, and give her that part of her life back. Does she just need support taking care of something she finds particularly stressful? I’m at her side, going with her to the doctor or the salesfloor, letting her know she’s not alone. We are a unit. Together we are strong.

The relief of unburdening flows from her and uplifts me. I can be the roots she branches out upon. I thirst for it.

The hours are light. I have a vast array of machines that make every aspect of spousing faster and less strenuous. There is a fair bit of time left over for writing, or podcasting, or blogging, or building new bedrooms. Building new bedrooms, btw, great way to increase the value in your partner’s life. So is taking care of all the little house problems that can normally really ruin someone’s day, like when the water heater dies, or the sink starts leaking, or the dish washer intake line gets blocked with sediment. It’s amazing how much you can do with YouTube, a few tools, and some diligence.

The work is stable. The house will always need upkeep and cleaning, the food will always need cooking, the partner will always need sexing. I don’t need to worry about a downturn in the market or being automated out of a job. I don’t have to stress about making rent or covering basic living expenses.³

She hates shopping. I don’t mind, I’ll get the stuff. I can’t cook much, but there’s a half-dozen dishes I know well, and when she’s working late she won’t have to worry about spending even more time and energy cooking, or paying a ton of money for take-out trash. There will be food ready and waiting. It makes the house smell nice too, another aesthetic joy.

I make her eyes happy as much as I can. I make sure the sex is good, because that happiness is among the best there is. I love to see it so much. And it’s a fantastic de-stresser for her, it fixes so many problems.⁴ When making someone’s life better is your job, sex is an integral part of that.

I’ve heard there’s a fair bit more labor involved when rearing children is introduce into the equation. But also that the rewards are equally heightened, if not moreso. If so, it sounds wonderful.

The major downside to HouseSpousing is it is fragile. When a job sucks you keep doing it for the paycheck. When the the joy goes out of HouseSpousing, there’s only the sadness of realizing that what you loved to do is no longer there. It stops being an endless bounty of happy fruits to harvest, and becomes an endless list of chores to slog through. It is seeing a shattered mirror on the basement floor and knowing it can never be reassembled. It is watching a spear hurtling through the air and knowing it cannot be recalled. Some things only go one way, and when they’re lost, they’re lost forever.

I hope to HouseSpouse again some day. Even temporary Spousing for a friend is joyous, to be honest. But of course the holy grail is finding a House that would be endlessly delightful to Spouse forever. I don’t know if such a thing can even exist IRL, or if it’s just a dream for poets and fools to torture themselves with. But I think it’s worth looking for. You never know what you might find, and the journey itself has a lot to recommend it. :)

1. not literally, we did not marry

2. This is why I could never have a Roomba. The grid of lines mapping out a freshly-vacuumed carpet is aesthetically pleasing at a gut level. It’s not just about the lack of dirt, it’s about the beautiful lines!

3. ok, technically we split many living expenses and I have several big expenses I need to take care of by myself. Fortunately I have a trickle of monthly income that mostly covers that.

4. I hear this is a common complaint for some spouses, but jfc, maybe don’t partner up with someone that you’ll be miserable having frequent sex with?