Tough Love for Entitled Husbands

(See also: Women are humans.)

Disclaimer: #NotAllMen. No really, though. (Insert obligatory praise of all the good men and loving husbands who get all this stuff right, including my own husband.) If this post does not describe you, you do not need to be offended by it. If it does describe you, though, I hope you’ll be offended enough to change what needs fixing.

I spend an inordinate amount of time talking to women and have mentally catalogued the trends in frustrations that are brought to my attention. I hope to address some of them here, so without further ado, a list of reminders to inform the way you treat your wife:

1. Before she was your wife or the mother of your children, she had plans and dreams and passions of her own. If she gave them up to be a housewife, that’s often a major sacrifice on her part. Would you be willing to trade places with her? Would you be willing to stay home every day and rely on her income for sustenance? If not, why not? How would it affect the way others see you? More importantly, how would it affect the way you see yourself? How much would you have to love someone to be willing to do that?
   
   Now sure, some women grow up dreaming of being stay-at-home moms, and that’s great if you can make that work as a team, but there are countless other women out there with unique skills and interests outside the home, so if they tabled those things to stay home and take care of your children, the appropriate response from you should be gratitude, not entitlement.
   
   So the question here is What are you currently doing to encourage the cultivation of your wife’s passions? Anything? If not, why not? Why are yours the only ones that get to matter?
   

2. She is not your personal maid. If you get something out of the cupboards, put it back. If you shave, clean up your own dang hair, and unplug your razor. If you can consume, you can contribute. You can do dishes. You can do laundry. You can offer to cook dinner. You can clean up after dinner.
   
   And here’s a big one- if you have a baby, you, too, get to change diapers. We live in a world with a ridiculously low standard for paternal involvement. As someone wittier than me put it, “Men go viral for brushing their daughters’ hair. That’s how low the bar is.” Man up; raise that bar.
   

3. Cut the umbilical cord. Hear me on this one; establish healthy boundaries with your mother. You just have to. That means Mom should not be in your home trying to outshine your wife or pick up her slack. Maybe your mom enjoyed picking out your father’s outfits and ironing his shirts and folding his underwear. That’s between them. But you don’t get to put those expectations on your own wife. She did not sign up for an additional child; she signed up for a husband. Again, be a grown-up. Make sure you’re not inadvertently allowing your mom to eclipse her.
   

4. If she doesn’t want to have sex with you, you’re probably doing it wrong. That’s a YOU problem, not a her problem. How are you doing in the emotional intimacy department? Does she feel close enough to you to want to be dominated this way? If not, why not? Does she climax, or do you always just make sure you get yours? Seriously, this is a major issue, and I can’t tell you how many women I’ve heard expressing frustration over it. As Sheila Wray Gregoire put it, (I’m paraphrasing), when women have sex without achieving orgasm, it’s like inviting them to a 5 star dining experience and then not serving them any food. Husbands, this is your department! If you can find pleasure without ever once stopping to wonder how your wife’s experience is, I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but you’re being selfish. Knock it off. Also, whining about not getting enough sex is probably one of the worst ways to get more sex.
   

5. Stop punishing her for leaving you with the kids for a few hours. Seriously, guys. You leave for multiple hours every single day of the week, leaving her to manage all the diapering and bathing and cleaning and napping and recreating all by herself. Hours. Probably more than 40 of them per week. So if she wants to go run some errands on a Saturday without a kid in tow, the VERY least you can do is to make it a pleasant experience for her. Do not text her every two minutes to ask for assistance with watching your own kids. You are a parent, not a babysitter. Figure stuff out. If you can’t find something, try looking for it yourself. Don’t sulk or pout if she takes longer than you anticipated.
   

6. Don’t act intellectually superior. Just because you’re the one with the money doesn’t mean you’re the only one with a brain. If she’s a stay-at-home mom, she has voluntarily chosen to give you a form of power of her; you hold the purse strings. Despite what some popular Christian marriage books may tell you, women actually need to feel respected, too. How are you showing your wife that you respect her? Are you treating her like arm candy and only rewarding her for looking pretty and taking care of you? Or when she expresses an opinion, do you value it? Do you wrestle with it? Do you elevate her voice and her expressed needs?
   

7. Do not make insane demands of her appearance. I just spoke to a woman today who had a baby just over a year ago. This woman is drop-dead gorgeous; she looks like a living, breathing Barbie doll. By almost any standard, I have to believe most men would rate her a 10 out of 10 on the superficial scale of physical attraction- washboard abs, perfect body. Her husband has asked her to start going to the gym so she can get a bigger butt. I hear this kind of crap and immediately want to march up to these men and read them the riot act. Newsflash, guys- we can’t control how naturally big our back ends are any more than you can control how big your front ends are. Sorry if that’s too blunt, but it’s such an absurd and demeaning request. Like what fantasy world do you even live in to imagine this is an appropriate thing to ask the woman you’re supposed to value more than life itself? What broke inside your conscience to make you think it’s acceptable to make her feel badly about herself so that she can be more sexually appealing to you? I’m just mystified by this kind of behavior; I have very little patience for it.
   
   In my former marriage, I remember feeling so degraded when I was 7 months pregnant and my (now ex) husband complained that I wasn’t wearing stilettos enough. It signaled such a blatant disregard for the physical reality of my aching back and the life I was growing inside me.
   
   If your wife balloons up to like 500 pounds or just completely stops caring at all about her physical appearance, then yeah, you might need to have some loving conversations about her physical and mental health, but these should be just that- conversations- not demands that center your selfish preferences above her actual needs.
   
   Some of these things feel like basic common sense, but it’s kind of astounding to me how many women I have personally heard expressing frustration over them. It basically boils down to this: Give as much as you take, and by “give,” I mean more than a financial contribution. Your wife is a person; treat her like one. The litmus test is this: If you would not be happy trading spaces with her and being on the receiving end of your treatment, then you probably need to change a few things. The sooner you do it, the better.