The dilemma I have been with my husband for 10 years and he is an amazing man and a fabulous father to our kids (with another on the way). He never learned to drive as a teenager and after uni he moved to London so never needed to. Four years ago he took a year of lessons and passed first time, but it’s now at least two years since he has driven at all. He claims that he doesn’t feel competent to drive with our kids in the car. Every time I bring the subject up, I end up being the asshole. I have tried every tactic I can think of to get a breakthrough – humour, guilt, reverse psychology, annoyance – but to no avail. He has never been in a car accident or any other traumatic vehicle related incident, so that’s not to blame.

Mariella replies What a conundrum. If you were writing about drugs or alcohol, porn addiction or rages, a tendency to anger or a predilection for putting you down, there would be plenty of murmurs and signs of recognition out there. But the frustration of sharing your life with someone who refuses to do something is a much more original vantage point. Whether it’s not putting dirty clothes into the laundry basket or never opening their post, never replacing bulbs or not refilling the car with petrol, the predictability of certain chores falling to one person often creates a deep sense of frustration. But are you right to consider your husband’s preference for not driving a fault?

In your longer letter you describe how you are also lumbered with all the administration that owning a car entails and that seems to me the greater injustice. Driving is, after all, a choice and a valid one at that. I’m sure, like me, you’ve shared car rides with people who make you think both pedestrians and other drivers would be safer if they’d never been given a licence.

Despite the fact that it’s a bit of an own goal at my age to complain about elderly drivers, it does seem that there’s an argument for retesting at points in our lives when we become a liability. A test might offer a reminder of small details like the dangers, not only of driving way above the speed limit but also way below, the latter particularly where other drivers’ sanity is concerned. It’s also good to have a refresher on what indicators levers are for (they are not to hang your house keys on as I witnessed recently), or how to park in the increasingly tight spots available on the average high street.

Such questionable driving skills, whether through reckless youth or decrepitude in maturity, are one of the many uniting elements between teenagers and the elderly. The autonomous car promises to take this pesky issue out of our hands altogether (although, personally, I’m loathe to have another skill set eroded as technology takes over from brain power). Perhaps we need to be looking not directly at the “to drive, or not to drive” question, but instead at the division of labour in any family.

Second-wave feminism encouraged the embrace of shared domestic labour, but maybe we’ve taken it a bit too literally. Just because you’ve coupled up doesn’t mean your individual skill set has doubled in capacity, so should domestic jobs simply be halved and shared?

I’m not one to often quote Theresa May, but in the hue and cry over “boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs” there remained a kernel of sense in so far as each of us has unique abilities. Like Mr May I’m particularly good at putting the bins out. I’d prefer to pull my weight technologically, but were I to be handed such responsibility we’d be back to being an analogue family within seconds. If in the May household the dustbins fall to one happy camper and bungling an election to the other, could it be that in yours that driving is a talent you should own?

It sounds like the more general division of labour could be at the root of your dissatisfaction and not the fact that a man, with whom you are otherwise extremely happy, lacks confidence when sitting behind the wheel. How about you compromise and he does all the dreary taxing and insuring, booking in for services and even washing of the family car, while you get the pleasure of steering it on the road?

Since most of my marital discord takes place when my husband is behind the wheel, bellowing along to Bob Dylan and looking at me as he diatribes, instead of at the road, I have to admit to a degree of envy. If your man doesn’t want to drive, let him fork out for minicabs when required, pull his weight on broader transport responsibilities and leave you the pleasure of the open road. Owning it instead of moaning about it might actually work.

If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1