who cares?

Sarah takes care of the plants in our house. My only real job has been to carry the one enormous jade plant to the shower every two or three weeks. Obviously, I benefit from having attractive and healthy plants around. They can really tie a room together.

There are a number of similar instances in my life where I avoid work by claiming not to care about the result but then reap the rewards of another person's labour. I don't really seem to get it about an equal division of work.

I pretty much demand that any work I do around the house is met with an equal amount from Sarah, yet I continue to ignore whole realms of labour, especially things that are fun (potting plants, for example) and even more so things like planning, communicating and basically maintaining the relationship. All that stuff is a lot of work and I do a very small fraction of it.

I feel trained as a man not to care about my surroundings, to be self-reliant, a term that strikes me as hilarious right now considering that the amount of independence I feel is equal to my level of numbness and ignorance of my feelings. It's easy to meet your needs when you don't appear to have any. I'm completely unable to rely on myself because so often I don't even know myself.

I'm worried that the last part doesn't make any sense.