I have a bad back. It's just something that developed after I went through labor with my son, but I guess if that's the worst thing to come from delivering a 10-pound baby then I'm still pretty lucky. My back problems come and go, but for the most part I'm okay as long as I don't try to lift too many heavy things too often.

Of course, my husband is familiar with my back problems. He's seen me stumble around in a muscle-relaxer-induced haze when my back is really bad, and he's footed the bill for the deep tissue massages I get regularly to try to stave off future back flare ups. In other words, he is well aware of the problems with my back.

Now let me tell you the correlation between my bad back and my contemplating divorce. Our laundry room is in the basement of our home, and so there are a couple of flights of stairs to navigate when it comes time to take the dirty clothes downstairs. We go through a lot of laundry in our house, so it's a constant battle to try to keep the dirty laundry from piling up in the bedroom hampers. I've asked my husband many times to please take the laundry down at regular intervals so I don't have to carry it down and risk aggravating my back. It seems like a reasonable request to me, but even though I have tried my best to assign him this chore -- which would be the only household chore he's responsible for -- he still ignores the piles of laundry unless I pull it all out into the hallway and ask him to take it downstairs.

I know all about the theory that you have to ask a man to specifically do something each and every time you want it done, but I truly don't understand why this particular task cannot simply be his responsibility without me constantly hounding him. I'm not asking him to do it because I don't want to do it myself. I'm asking him to do it because I'm supposed to avoid lifting heavy stuff.

I would love it if he would embrace this responsibility as a chivalrous way of expressing how he loves me and wants to take care of me. Instead, as the hampers fill to ridiculous levels I get more resentful that he doesn't care. He once told me that he doesn't take the laundry downstairs because he doesn't want me to feel pressured into doing it. It sounds to me like a roundabout way of saying, "I don't care."