Relinquishing Control

Some ladies on a forum today have gotten me thinking about this topic.  Being a wife in this modern age of working either outside of the home or from the home, the workload on women has more than doubled.  It seems that for women married to men in certain professions, i.e. firefighting, law enforcement, military, or other shift-work careers, we are expected to be single parents and stand-in dads sometimes too.  Since women are expected to handle so much and accomplish so much in the short span of each day, we have had to adapt and become supermoms or else drown under the never-ending list of demands.

So, while over-committing is a chronic problem for me, I’ve actually had to learn how to relinquish control to my husband as a means of self-preservation.  That may not make sense to some women now, but looking back, I wish I had learned this lesson sooner in life.  When we got married, my husband worked full time as a paramedic and was a volunteer firefighter.  I was a full-time college student, commuting to campus from our house in the suburbs.  Life was fairly easy.  I studied more while he was on shift and we played more when he was home.  When life took hold and told me what to do rather than the other way around, was when our first daughter came along.  I had her during summer break.  I was the primary care-giver for any number of maternal reasons, husband’s work requirements and breast-feeding being two of the main ones. 

I won’t even begin to tell anyone that I had a schedule I stuck to.  I’m pretty much a complete failure in the scheduling department, which is why there is always a revolving load of clean laundry on our couch and I’m considering retrofitting the front door to hold a permanent “Under Construction” sign.  Even without having a schedule, I did notice that I developed a certain routine for juggling baby-care, home-care, and school requirements.  Every time my husband came home from shift, his sheer presence threw off my groove.  It wasn’t that he was trying to be in the way, it’s just that he seemed to end up there.

After another baby, a college degree, a couple cross-country moves, a career change to full-time firefighting and yet another baby, we have had to face this issue head-on with no wiggle room to avoid it.  I say “we” here because my husband and I have both had to come to some decisions together; and more than once.  Just as a marriage takes two and is a continuous work in progress, so is the ebb and flow of daily life. 

What works for us, won’t work for everyone else.  In fact, I’d say that what works for us shouldn’t even matter to others because it is so unique to our situation, our personalities, and our outside influences.  I will say though, that the first step is to take a look at you.  Analyze your own expectations.  Analyze what it is you think your husband expects of you too.  Ask him about those expectations sometime.  You might be very surprised to find out that he doesn’t expect nearly as much from you as you’ve always thought he does.  That knowledge alone can sometimes lift a huge burden of guilt to the point where you can breathe and handle things better than before. 

Also think about why (if you even do this) you take any baby-care or house-cleaning tasks from him even if he is home and willing to help you out.  Then think about what message you are sending to him when you take charge and push him aside.  You may not speak the words, but the action alone tells him he’s not smart enough or not good enough.  It is subtle and it might seem like a ridiculous notion, but it is quite true.  And trust me when I say that any man who is made to feel like he is not as smart as you or as good as you, will always feel like less of a man.  When belittled, he will likely react in one of two ways, fight back, or avoid these feelings in the future.  If he gets the same message with every attempt, just expect that very soon, he will attempt no more. 

I, for one, don’t blame him.  If I were to go to his fire station and make a full meal for him and the other firefighters, I would expect a certain level of decency and respect.  If, instead, they treated me like I was dumb for not knowing where everything was or they say they could order take-out that’s better than my cooking, I would probably say a few choice words, fly out of there on my broomstick, and I sure as heck would never feed those ungrateful punks again!  This scenario has never happened to me, but that is because they all treat me with respect and understanding that I will never know the firehouse as well as they do. 

So, turn the tables.  When my firefighter comes home from his shift, he enters my realm.  Sure, my home is his home too, but since I spend more time here he doesn’t know the imperfect routine of our household quite as well as I do.  So why, would I assume he would be as efficient or thorough as I am?  He won’t.  One thing to remember is that communication cures confusion.  Sounds too simple, right?  Or maybe it’s just annoying that you have to tell him to do things maybe he should already see need to be done.  Forget about that fantasy though.  Men can’t read minds and they are absolutely horrible at guessing about what you feel is most important.  Don’t run through a whole Honey-Do List every time he comes home.  But when he does have a day off and offers to help, give him something to do or ask him to help you with something specific.  If the time constraints of your normal routine are fairly strict, then offer him a task that doesn’t have to fit into your time frame.  Or try my favorite method; make it something you loathe, something you would rather not have to do but he could tackle in no time. 

For example, I hate trash.  I’m going to go out on a sexist limb here and admit that I feel trash should be the man’s job.  But, due to the fact that I willingly married a man who is often absent from our regularly scheduled life, I am usually stuck with it.  I collect it outdoors quite nicely, but the task of hauling it to the dump usually ends up on the top of my Procrastination List.  After getting on his case several times for not helping with the trash, I finally resorted to simply asking if he could make it a weekly task.  Could he please haul all the trash to the dump for me once a week so that I don’t have to wrestle the cans, carry the yucky stuff, gag on the fumes, and sweep up after the neighbor’s cat discovers the growing buffet-in-a-bag collection?  Sure he could do that, he said.  No problem.  It’s a huge help for me and he doesn’t mind that task.  He’s better at it anyways.    

That’s just one example.  It may seem unrelated to your problems, or trivial even, but I think it proves my point that if your man is willing to help out, give him something to do.  Again, heading out on that sexist limb, I’ll say that letting him have control over some things within the home setting, will make a marriage stronger.  Every man wants to feel smart, capable, and strong, especially at home.  I’m a woman who can do a lot of stuff; everything when I need to.  When my husband’s home though, I am all about letting him handle tasks that require more strength, more of his skills, or more dirty work.  If he wants to take care of some of the less manly stuff too, like baby care or mopping the floor, I consider it a bonus.  Even if he doesn’t do it exactly right or in the desired time frame, I reign in my inflated expectations and fall in love with him all over again for wanting to do things just because he wants to help me out.  Who am I to criticize him for that?