Adelle wasn't familiar with the term weaponised incompetence before reading our recently published story, but she knew the behaviour intimately.
"I found the difference in effort and care levels beyond annoying," says the 63-year-old from Adelaide, who asked we don't use her real name.
As Adelle watched her children leave home and enter adult life, she feared the same responsibilities of caring while her husband sat on the sidelines awaited her again.
"Developed, capable women with good enough employment and super do not need to stay around to endure burden and the cycle again with grandchildren," she says.
So, after more than three decades of marriage, Adelle "walked out like Shirley Valentine", cycled around Europe, and returned home to live in a caravan.
These are her words.
'The nicest man I'd met'
Like a lot of girls of my generation, I stayed living in the family home after I graduated from high school in 1978.
My dad was quite controlling — I had to be home at a certain hour, and was limited by only using the family car, even though I had an income of my own.
Eventually I met my husband through a friend, and he was the nicest man I'd met. I'd also had some gynaecological issues and needed to get on with having kids.
So I just thought, "He's a nice man, this is the best fit."
But it wasn't wildly passionate like I'd imagined it might be.
'Marriage felt repressive'
Throughout my pregnancies my husband never attended any of my ante- or postnatal visits.
It never occurred to me to ask him, and he certainly never offered.
Throughout having my three children, I was adamant about hanging on to my own income and staying employed.
It was always me having to take time off work to care for the kids. He never attended children's medical appointments.
There was just generally very little personal investment in parental thought from him.
I remember after my third baby I had a hysterectomy, and I was home with the six-month-old and two older children that needed to get off to school.
I was lying on the couch trying to recover, staring at our open roof that needed repair work, and I remember hearing the click of the door shutting as he went to work.
I thought, "F*** me dead, you won't even have a fight at work to look after me and help with the kids, after all the fighting I've done."
There was never any encouragement to go off and have fun, do things for myself. Marriage felt repressive.
The final straw
I didn't know what weaponised incompetence was, but my mother would call it "making the most of your inadequacies".
I was trying not to recognise the behaviour, I just wanted to hold the household together.
Looking back, maybe it was more that he 'wouldn't' do certain things rather than he 'couldn't'. But how can you do something if you never practice?
There was such a massive difference in the energy I put into our family, and the risks I took, compared to him.
It felt like neglect.
Then finally, the final summer of our relationship, I had lost a lot of weight.
But not because I was trying to. I was desperately unhappy.
We were on holiday, and I'd said to my husband, "If you see me looking good, just offer to take my picture."
Well, at the end of the holiday, he'd taken photos of everything else but me.
I told him I was unhappy about that, and desperately unhappy in general.
So I booked a ticket to Madrid with a friend and that was it. I biked around Europe with a tent and had a wonderful time.
I did return to the family home for a few months, but he was angry. And he didn't put in much effort to repair the relationship.
He didn't want it that badly.
Starting life over
I built a caravan in the backyard, drove it away, and lived in that for a couple of years.
Later I bought the apartment I live in now. I also have a yacht which I've learnt to sail — and sometimes retreat to.
I've met another fellow recently, but it's early days.
I'm not sharing my house with a man again. I want my own digs.
I believe every marriage should have a 10-year-span that ends unless you renegotiate the terms for another decade.
I like to think my children have much better education around birth control and relationships — they can get out and find out what they like, and what they don't.
They don't have to settle.
