I recently was out of town for 5 days on a business trip, as a blogger we call that a conference. I purposefully took an extra day on either side of the conference to build in a bit of work time/away time.
Truth is: I don’t think my husband sees me as an equal partner.
Fact is: We fight about it.
Burns a bit, but it’s the truth. When I was gone for those 5 days he managed to keep the kids fed, clothed, and the house clean. His version of clean has a lot more to do with clutter control than germ inspection. But I came home to a ship that was running smoothly … only to have me interrupt it again with my non-conforming scheduling and my ability to scrub surfaces.
We’re no stranger to couples counseling and in one of our sessions we had to evaluate our “love languages”. Essentially – what we needed most from our partner. It still bothers me that he put, in his top three, the fact that he felt loved when he had Domestic Support. (Trouble is, that was in my top 5.)
I struggle with feeling like all I’m good for, in his eyes, is to cart our kids around, clean their clothes, the bathrooms and make him dinner. But knowing I don’t do it well enough or that I’m “letting a few things go” as I get busier with my own career.
Which happens to also not be equal to his. I’m not our main income earner and it used to be something he never worried about. No, he didn’t even think about it. Could have cared less if I brought home a piece of bacon but all of a sudden it matters. And it’s not enough, or, more importantly, it’s not on par with his seasoned bacon.
I’m pissed.
Now it’s his turn to leave on a business trip, this one lasting 6 days. I know I can handle this because for the past 7 years I’ve done a damn fine job of running a house with kids while he was absent. Work takes him away, even if his head is on his own pillow at night. I’ve single-parented my way through this marriage for large chunks of it and this isn’t new.
I used to undertake huge home-improvement projects on his business trips because I know the hassle of the discussion was absent. No more laboring over “well, what if we did this instead?” or arguing about “but if only we had chosen this color/knob/layout/finish”.
I work well inside of a team, just not when they’re opposing. We’re in the trenches of life (again) but for some reason this trench isn’t bringing us together, it’s tearing us apart.
I do have compassion and realize that the large picture decisions of our lives aren’t mine to make alone. That’s the whole idea of marriage. But when every.single.thing needs to be discussed to the death? I just stop talking.
I don’t care if you’re comfortable with green over blue because I changed my mind. I don’t want to recite a litany of reasons on why or walk you through the process of the simple change. I’m a get-it and do-it girl. I’m the adventure seeker, the risk taker.
And it’s sad, yet true, that I feel like I can breathe when he’s away. Is it because we’re drifting? Our dreams are changing? Or one of us is just growing faster than the other?
Have you been here? What got you out of the woods?
This Curvy Girl Guide Contributor wishes to remain anonymous.
I am there right now. My husband makes almost 3 times what I bring in. My particular job requires some very late nights, and on those nights he has empathy. But on nights when I leave at 5, he does not see the child care, cooking, and cleaning responsibilities that wait after hours as anything but my responsibility. After all, he supports us with his income. To be fair, he works 20 hours more a week on average than I do, and I know he works very hard.
We are discussing a plan where I would stay home. My biggest fear is that I lose the one thing I have to compare with him. I will no longer be able to complain of being tired in his eyes.
And yes, I do most house projects when he is gone. I adore him, but I look forward to a “me” weekend every month or so to get things done on my time frame and in my own way. I find his priorities with house projects are different than mine. To avoid the arguments, I just do my plan on weekends when he is gone.
This is a struggle that I think a lot of married women go through. Here’s what happened with mine.
We are, and have been since we said “I do”, traditional. ie) he makes the money, I do the home thing. And I did the home thing too, for a lot of years. Over the years, there were times when it was made clear that i wasn’t “pulling my weight” according to him. In addition to this, there were plenty of times when the hints or accusations would be there about my opportunities to have an affair. Sometimes it was even flat out suggested that i was. I wasn’t.
Then, when the last of the kids got into full time school, i started to do my own thing. Mommy blogging, writing, even working part time. And you know what? I think he resented that i was no longer there to be the full time homemaker he had come to know. Not that he ever did any of the things he complained about. Rarely did dishes or cooked, almost never does laundry, bathe the kids, stuff like that. But he’ll be the first to bitch if these things are not done.
I get it, he works, he’s tired at the end of the day. And I only technically work part time, but when you include in all the stuff I’m also doing at home, it’s like 80-100 hours a week.
He travels for work. I love it. I get a day, two days, sometimes a week to just breathe and be able to do the things I want to do when I want to do them.
Last year when I was in a bad spot and we were in a worse one, I actually did have a small affair. I think it was more out of needing to feel needed again. I confessed it to him and it has opend the door to all kinds of talks that were probably long overdue. We’re really talking now about how we let the larger picture of our marriage blur in the wake of fixating (or NOT fixating) on all the millions of smaller things. We let go of ourselves as a couple as kids got older and not as needy and we both became compartments in each other’s life instead of the focus.
Sometimes it takes a hard and awful wake up call to find this.
Have you talked to your husband about it? Because I would hate to have your situation errupt the way mine did if it’s avoidable.
Open the gates to talking and soon, or else your post title may wind up with a whole different meaning.
And good luck. Marriage is a lot of work, but it’s worth it.
My husband for many years had a job that brought him home for lunch. Every.Single.Day. I feel like it sounds bitchy of me to complain about getting to spend “extra” time with him but he absolutely drove me nuts, aside from the fact that he was mean to me (that’s another story). I was a stay home mom and he would interrupt the flow of our day, cook a messy lunch and leave all those dishes for me in addition to anything else I had to do. After about 10 years he decided to change careers to a job that took him out of town very frequently. I felt free at last. At first I figured it was just the matter of having spent SO much time together that I was finally able to breathe without having to hear him complain about every little thing. I always felt suffocated around him. With him gone if we wanted to have cereal for dinner, we could. If we wanted to sleep until noon on Saturday, we could. If I didn’t want to do the laundry until Friday, I wouldn’t. None of those things were all that important to me. The kids were always clean and fed. They always had clothes to wear, I never saw what the problem was…why sweat the small things, they were happy. When he called the first time from a trip to say he wasn’t coming home in between trips, I was relieved. I didn’t want him coming back and disturbing “our” life without him. He made everything more difficult. He was tired and grouchy all the time from all the travel and time change. I started to fantasize about getting a divorce and living life without him. That’s when I realized we had completely grown apart. I didn’t love him, it was just easier to stay married and hope that he was traveling most of the time. I eventually caught him having an affair and we are now divorced. I’m happier now than I ever was being married to him. The moral of the story is if you feel relieved when he’s not around, and especially if you prefer your time along with him being gone more than you enjoy him when he’s home you should definitely ask yourself if you really want to be married to him anymore.
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