Why do men embark on random tasks moments before guests arrive? | Elspeth Hussey

Cleaning the pool filter? Pruning a fruit tree? Cleaning gutters? Anything but actually helping prepping for incoming guests.

Why do men embark on random tasks moments before guests arrive? writes Elspeth Hussey.

Imagine this: It’s 12.45pm and 50 guests are about to arrive at your house for a fifth birthday party. You’re running around like a mad woman, cooking, cleaning and pleading with the kids to get dressed.

The to-do list feels insurmountable. Blow dry your hair, make the cheese platter, finish the party bags. In 15 minutes. If only there was another set of hands.

You race outside and survey the backyard looking for your husband and find him … cleaning the pool filter. What my friend said to her husband is between them – and the neighbours – but it would appear she’s not alone.

It’s a strange phenomenon. The random tasks men embark on moments before guests arrive. There are hashtags dedicated to it on social media. A man sanding the tops of door frames. Another cleaning out a shed with a forklift. Or the husband who started a backyard burn-off half an hour before a party. His wife – also raging – from the back veranda.

As a kid, I have vivid memories of the chaotic countdown to visitors arriving. Mum slaving over a hot stove, begging me and my brothers to find my dad. I’d venture to the back of the garden where I’d find him kneeling in fertiliser in his best clothes. Thirty years later, I can report nothing has changed. He still finds a garden bed to weed or a tree to prune that no guest will ever lay eyes on.

Elspeth Hussey on the random tasks men like to do at crunch time. Picture: Supplied

Elspeth Hussey and her husband. Picture: Supplied

“Don’t even get me started!” said another friend. Before a lunch at her home recently, her husband decided to vacuum … his car. “He’s not even into the garden, but I’ll find him trimming a tree or tinkering in the garage.”

If you need a laugh, search “Ridiculous projects husbands start before hosting”.

“He always wants to put the books on the bookshelf in alphabetical order. Nobody cares! Go clean a bathroom!” bemoaned one wife.

“We’re throwing a 3rd birthday for 150 people. He decides to … wait for it … paint the basement steps. Where nobody will be going. Our child is now 17 and I’m still mad.”

How has this dynamic formed? Why do husbands embark on ridiculous projects at the most inopportune times? Fleeing outside when extra help is so desperately needed inside.

Are they repeating what they saw with their own parents? Do they simply care less about everything being perfect? Or do they seriously think the pool filter could make or break the party? They’re questions being asked beyond the world of social media – and into the offices of marriage counsellors.

Local therapist Kylie Playford says these scenarios are raised all too often in couples’ therapy sessions.

“It might be that men are worried they won’t do it the perfect way their wife would do it, so they quietly disappear,” she says.

“Or they don’t seem to see the significance of something that the wife is seeing as significant.”

She says there’s often a breakdown in communication style.

Women like to use what she calls suggestion-based language, over demand-based.

“Are you expecting him to read your mind like we do with our mothers, sisters and friends?” she asks. “Women use suggestion-based language, lots of non-verbal cues like facial expressions and body language which other women can read.

“Men are often task-based.

“Help them understand exactly what it is you want. Saying ‘I could really do with some help setting the table’ might not be clear enough.

“Instead, you could say, ‘Can you please set the table? Here’s a photo of how I want it.’”

It’s little wonder blokes are too scared to give it a crack though.

We can’t help but tell them the right way to cook dinner, dress the kids and do the shopping.

But have you ever watched someone put a quilt cover on inside out? Or a nappy on back to front? It’s nearly impossible to bite your tongue.

What’s the worst that will happen though?

They return home with paper towels instead of toilet paper. This happened in our house last week. But did it really matter?

“Don’t scold him if he gets the table setting wrong. How you come in if something isn’t perfect is really important,” Playford says. “If the knives and forks are round the wrong way. Be gentle.”

Sage advice if you’re hosting this weekend.

Originally published as Why do men embark on random tasks moments before guests arrive? | Elspeth Hussey