Man accuses wife of doing ‘nothing around the house’ — so she went on strike
A Connecticut woman is cleaning up in TikTok views after her husband accused her of doing “nothing around the house.”
In a video that has been seen more than 13 million times at publish time, Lindsay Donnelly shares her spouse’s comment — and how she responded.
For two days, Donnelly, 33, didn’t make beds or rinse a single dish. She showed laundry piled up on the couch, the family’s dining room table littered with dirty plates, toys and mail and towels strewn on the bathroom floor.
After filming the clip, which is set to Taylor Swift’s hit song “Karma,” Donnelly went away on a girls weekend, leaving the house in shambles.
Donnelly tells TODAY.com that she and her husband, Brian, both work full-time jobs. She runs a social media marketing agency, while he works in venture capital. The couple, who have been married for seven years, share two children ages 7 and 4.
She notes that Brian, 37, does a “majority of the cooking,” and that they try to split household chores as evenly as possible.
“The night he made the comment, I was getting the kids ready for bed, and he was cleaning up in the kitchen,” Donnelly says. “I noticed he was kind of grumpy and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ And that’s when he made the comment about me doing nothing around the house.”
Donnelly decided that rather than snap back at him, she would just go on strike .
"I didn't want to yell and scream and fight about it," she says. "I wanted to prove a point in a funny way."
She succeeded, according to her TikTok comments.
“Somebody commented on my video that this is how you make invisible labor visible. And I thought it was brilliant,” she says. “I’m constantly tidying — I’m picking up shoes, I’m doing all these things that go unnoticed but add up to a lot.”
In a follow-up video, Donnelly films Brian reacting to the news that he’s gone viral. Brian apologizes to Donnelly’s TikTok followers for his comment and she quickly assures viewers that that he is “actually a really good husband.”
“He’s not apologetic enough,” one person wrote in the comments.
Added another, “ummmm nope I was married to his type. this isn’t ok. you deserve much better.”
Brian tells TODAY.com that he and Donnelly have a “super strong relationship,” which is why he can “get away with saying some things every once in a while.”
“I was feeling frustrated and I directed that at her,” he says.
When asked if he regrets making the comment, Brian responds, “I think yes.”
Donnelly says the house was “spick-and-span” when she returned home from her girls’ weekend. Brian even cleaned their car.
“He told me he was so sorry,” Donnelly says, adding that the comments bashing her husband have been hard to read.
“He really is an amazing husband,” she says. “That was just one moment.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
