Lately, the term “weaponized incompetence” has been making the rounds on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Although users on social media have been using this term in the context of romantic relationships, it can be more than that. You see, as people age, they are expected to do the basic stuff that is needed to sustain life, but some people can skillfully avoid these basic tasks and delegate them to others. Men do this a lot, especially when they are in a relationship. We are here to talk about it, plus we’ll also go through the signs of weaponized incompetence while we do that.

What is Weapon Incompetence?

To properly understand the true weaponized incompetence meaning, we should examine some of the weaponized incompetence examples. For example, the husband of a couple might say that “I am so bad at doing the dishes,” to cop out of a responsibility that helps the household stay afloat when his wife might be completely exhausted and is essentially asking for help from him.

As we have mentioned before, weaponized incompetence is a term that has been popular on social media networks, but the true meaning of it stems from a 1986 issue of Harvard Business Review, where it was used as a term to describe skilled weaponized incompetence in the workplace. The 1986 issues aptly describe how workers in an organization would skillfully avoid certain tasks to avoid a conflict in the workplace, until it blew up much later as a bigger issue for the organization. It is not something like what we call mood disorders, such as bipolar disorder. It is more on the behavioral side.

On the leadership level, it is described as a strategic weaponized incompetence, a term that has its foundation in the weaponized incompetence psychology. Here, it is more related to the strategic incompetence in the context of leadership and entrepreneurship, where one strives to be unapologetically incompetent at redundant chores, so all focus can be shifted to the paramount tasks, as suggested by bestselling author Jonathan Acuff.

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Why Do People Practice Weaponized Incompetence?

Well, one of the reasons is to avoid working and being lazy, but there can be a wide range of reasons for the answers to questions like “What does weaponized incompetence mean?”. Let’s talk about them:

Malicious compliance:

As they may be similar, there shouldn’t be a debate between malicious compliance vs weaponized incompetence. Why? Because weapon incompetence can be achieved by malicious compliance. Let’s just say it is another form of weaponized incompetence. Malicious compliance is following a rigid rule to a tee, and so strictly that it highlights an issue or has negative consequences, and not the one intended. For example, an incompetent husband would try to tell his wife everything if the rule was for him to tell her everything, but he even starts to share too much information to the point of infuriating and irritating her.

Shirking responsibility:

Shirking responsibility involves avoiding responsibilities such as household chores, childcare duties, financial tasks, or emotional labor.

Avoiding discomfort:

Sometimes people practice weaponized incompetence to avoid the associated anxiety or any kind of discomfort surrounding a certain task. This way, the person doing weaponized incompetence gets to have a false sense of protection while another person takes up the discomfort meant for them.

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Control a partner:

Predominantly seen in toxic and abusive relationships, the abusive partner aims to control the subservient partner by making them do work via weaponized incompetence. There is a severe imbalance of power created by the abusive partner’s manipulation, which ensures a dangerous form of weaponized incompetence in relationships.

But What Causes Weaponized Incompetence

Perhaps, it could just be that they are not actually incompetent, and it seems like they are deliberately being incompetent. Some individuals might truly feel that they are not sufficiently competent at a certain task. Although this reinforces the dynamic of incompetence versus competence but some may assume that their partners will assume their work because they think their partners are more capable of that specific task. Sometimes, these people can have ADHD, which makes it difficult for them to focus on one task.

Additionally, people born with a silver spoon also tend to avoid work and unintentionally weaponize incompetence. They do this because they have always had a privileged life and are not used to doing their own work. It is like this for them because they either did not have work on the chores of the household because of the house help that was employed by their parents when they were younger, or their parents spoiled them for so long that they never learned to take care of themselves or contribute to household chores. This suggests that for some people who do weaponized incompetence, childhood experiences and patterns play a role, for which experts may prescribe child and adolescent psychiatry.

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Signs of Weaponized Incompetence

There are several ways through which incompetence can be weaponized:

• Ignoring boundaries

You will feel that your needs are not being met, and you are not being respected enough.

• Deliberately avoiding or messing up work

They will deliberately mess up work, and they will repeatedly do that, while also doing it so poorly that you will be inclined to do it.

• They will invoke outdated gender roles

This is one of those signs of weaponized incompetence that is more evident in weaponized incompetence in relationships. They may invoke gender roles when it comes to domestic tasks or specific tasks that were historically done by a specific gender. People who do weaponized incompetence do not think that household work is a shared responsibility.

• Use of dismissive phrases

They often use phrases such as “I am not capable of doing this” or “You are better at this than I am” to dismiss the idea that they are of any use.

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The Likely Culprit?

While anyone can do weaponized incompetence in relationships, weaponized incompetence in men is more predominant. It has been evident in research that gender inequality is still prevailing when we talk about household chores and childcare duties, where women take most of the burden (Sakuragi et al., 2022).

This is more evident in relationships where women are employed and, due to that, they have additional responsibilities along with the burden of work they have at home (Cerrato & Cifre, 2018). This can add extra anxiety and depression for them, especially when the husband is practicing weaponized incompetence and ensuring that she has to do all of the household work.

How Weaponized Incompetence Affects Relationships?

When it comes to weaponized incompetence in relationships (be it a professional one or a romantic one), it is capable of eroding the relationship. Gradually, the weaponized incompetence, whether deliberate or not, will get on the nerves of the partner who is affected by it and leave the partner who is doing it. It contributes to these things that negatively affect a relationship and ultimately lead to erosion:

• Imbalance of power in the relationship leading to toxicity
• Resentment towards the weaponized incompetence practicing partner
• Lack of trust that is capable of breaching the relationship
• Skewed distribution of responsibilities that frequently leads to conflict (Newkirk et al., 2016)
• There is a breakdown of communication that leads to frustration and anger, further straining the relationship in the process
• The affected individuals will feel emotionally disconnected due to their increasing feelings of being unsupported.

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How to Deal with Weaponized Incompetence?

There are many directions in existence that you can take to address weaponized incompetence in your relationship, no matter what kind it is.

Pay attention to your partner’s behavior

You need to recognize the persistent toxic patterns in your relationship. Pay strict attention to your partner’s behavior and closely follow the words they speak.

Create an open discussion

You cannot just go in head down, that they are deliberately doing it, it would be great if you analyze the pattern of weaponized incompetence to find out if it is indeed deliberate. Explain to them how their behavior makes you feel and how they can help meet your needs. Actively listening to them can also work.

Establish boundaries and assess progress

Once you have found out that the weaponized incompetence they are following through with was indeed deliberate, then it is time to establish boundaries and assess progress along the way.

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Seek professional help

Last but not least option is to seek professional help, especially when things are getting out of hand for the partners involved and issues are persisting with the communication gap becoming bigger. One can go for couples therapy or its telepsychiatry version to make things for you and your partner.

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Wrapping Up!

This is the end of the line for the topic of weaponized incompetence. We hope you know the answer to “What does weaponized incompetence mean?”. Additionally, we have talked about how to deal with weaponized incompetence. With all that knowledge, we think you should go for treatment at Orange Coast Psychiatry. We are not only adept at treating couples’ issues but also problems like weaponized incompetence or disorders such as OCD via treatments such as psychiatric medication management. Looking forward to meeting you!