Weaponized Incompetence

You don't shrink the laundry on purpose. You just don't check labels. The dishes come out with food still on them because you didn't rinse first. The grocery run comes back wrong because you didn't ask enough questions. Eventually she takes over. You stop being asked.

This works. That's the problem.

The game

You have tasks you don't want and a partner who cares more about them being done right than you do. The path of least resistance is to do them badly enough that she concludes it's easier to do them herself. The worse your performance, the faster you're relieved of duty.

This is a dominant strategy in the short game. You get out of the task. She gets it done to her standard. Nobody has to have a conversation about it.

The equilibrium

The strategy works reliably, so it keeps getting used. Each successful escape reinforces it. The tasks accumulate on her side of the ledger, not because of any explicit negotiation, but because incompetence is cheaper than competence when you don't want the job.

The equilibrium is stable until it isn't. Resentment accumulates quietly. She's doing more, you're doing less, and neither of you has said that out loud. When it surfaces, it surfaces all at once. Not as a complaint about the laundry but as an indictment of the entire arrangement.

Dominated strategies

Weaponized incompetence is the dominated strategy. It works every time and still loses.

Each task you escape leaves her more certain you can't be relied on for it. The scope of what she expects from you shrinks. That feels like less pressure. What it actually is: she's started managing around you. The resentment is about the picture that's been forming: that you're someone to work around, not with.

The negotiation you're avoiding takes one uncomfortable conversation. Skipping it means the same conversation eventually. Except by then she's stopped expecting anything from you, and that's harder to come back from than the fight would have been.