A perspective on marriage…divorce…and marriage…
AUGUST 17, 2010
By Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret
“So how is your wedding planning going?” My co-worker with the mullet asked me the other day.
“Oh, well, you know. It’s going just fine. Not too stressful, pretty easy,” I reply.
“Easy! Weelll! That’s good. You got your date and everything?”
“Yep. November this year.”
“November? Well that will be different.”
“…” I wasn’t quite sure how to respond.
“Well, I will be divorced by August hopefully. And, I cannot wait, I will be celebrating!” she replied.
“….Well that’s…great. Good for you?” And then I just turned away and pretended to be busy.
(In case you’re wondering, this blog is about marriage and tact.)
I do not know if other ladies sporting a diamond ring on the left hand have experienced this much, but for me, it is almost a daily, at least weekly, occurrence. Perhaps it is the nature of my job–meeting strangers, gesturing with my left hand to this bank of elevators or that hallway (I’m a front desk girl, remember?). But for some reason when people see the ring on my finger they feel this pressing, very urgent need to comment on it.
So it happened again: men admitting in a public forum to expecting a wife to be a mom. Last time it was Dr. Oz, this time it’s authors Chip and Dan Heath in their book Switch.
Switch is a book about motivating people to change — in corporate, social, community, or personal settings. I was reading along, minding my own business, enjoying the read until BLAM! I got to the part about checklists.
The Heath Brothers, apparently living in a world where husbands have no personal accountability, said if you’re frustrated because your husband can’t remember to pick up the dry cleaning, leave him a note in the car to remind him.
What the frick, guys? What world do you live in? If my husband can’t remember to pick up the darn dry cleaning he should write his own darn note to himself. Really, Chip and Dan, take some responsibility. Wives have enough to do on their own without micromanaging their husbands. Geez.
Maybe it’s time to Switch to taking responsibility for your own to do list.
A few women I know invited me to join their team for the Housewife Olympics. I had never heard of it, so they invited me to their first training meeting.
Once there, at the house of one of my potential teammates, I was given the Housewife Olympics brochure, which explains each event. It seems there are four individual events and a relay. Here are the details:
The Laundry Challenge
Show off your folding and sock matching skills in this fast-paced event. Includes- Fold full dry load
- Switch washed clothes to dryer
- Start new wash
Winner completes all tasks with fastest time. Points will be taken off for mismatched socks, putting non-dryables in the drier rather than on the drying rack, and forgetting to empty pockets and pre-treat stains. To make the task more challenging, a recording of a crying baby is played throughout the event.
The Kitchen Clean-Up
Display your sparking clean kitchen skills in this challenging event. Includes:- Clear table
- Unload clean dishes from dishwasher
- Rinse and load dishwasher
- Scrub pots
- Wipe counter
- Sweep floor
Winner completes all tasks with the fastest time. Points are taken off for clean dishes in the wrong place and for dishes that come out of the dishwasher still dirty. This event is made extra challenging by random visits from kids sent in to your kitchen space to play, argue, and/or pester you for dessert.
The Big Bill Pay
Arguable the most challenging Housewife Olympics event. Includes:- Pay eight bills
- Balance a checkbook
Winner completes task with the fastest time. Points are taken off for incorrectly balanced checkbook or running out of money. During this event the wifelete will be interrupted four times to help with homework problems.
The Company Super-fast Straighten
This challenging event is all about speed and presentablness. Three rooms – living room, powder room, and playroom all have to be cleaned and straightened for unexpected company. The winner cleans with the fastest time and rooms are also judged based on dust and fingerprint visibilty, clutter elimination, and dirt and debris removal. Perfection isn’t the goal only presentability. Creative solutions are encouraged. This task is made more challenging by the occasional child entering to dump a toy bin, track dirt, or pee sloppily.
The Relay Challenge
The final event is a relay in which each team member must complete a leg of the race:- Get three kids of various ages (7,5,3) dressed
- Make a meal that all three kids will eat at least part of in 30 minutes or less
- Get kids out the door and into the car with all appropriate gear. Each kid has a backpack, water bottle, and a change of clothes
- Drop kids at assigned activity locations: soccer field, baseball field, and gymnastics gym
When I asked my friends which event would be mine, they told me the Company Super-fast Straighten. Since my house is on the market, they said, I have the most experience with fast, creative cleaning. Which is true.
So, how could I say no to this opportunity to show off my housewifely skills? Who knows, I could come home with a gold medal in housewife-iness. I’m already in training, so why not?
Filed under: Wifey Rants | Tags: get off your iPhone, housewife, housework, man up dude, Marriage
I love it when my husband helps around the house. Really, I do. I especially love it when he helps out on his own, without being asked.
But sometimes he does things that, to him, seem really helpful while in reality, well, not so much.
The Top Things My Husband Thinks Earn Him Points But Really Don’t
- Doing laundry (without including the kids’ smelly soccer uniforms)
Help with laundry is so great, but leaving the smelly, muddy soccer clothes in the hamper just means I’ll have to do another load later… which kind of cancels out the help. - Getting the kids into pajamas (but leaving their dirty clothes strewn across the bedroom.)
Great, the kids are ready for bed. But who’s going to pick up all the dirty underwear, socks, and t-shirts you flung across the room? Oh, that’s right, me. - Loading the dishwasher (well, loading only his own dishes into the dishwasher).
“Oh, gee, thanks honey. Loading your one plate and glass into the dishwasher is so helpful. Did you happen to see all the other dirty dishes on the table… Honey, honey, where did you go?” - Unloading the dishwasher (but putting stuff in the wrong place because, even after 10 years, he still doesn’t know where we keep things).
Okay, if you don’t know where the dishes go after ten years in the same house together, you’re not cleaning up enough. Seriously. - Helping to get the kids out the door to school (by saying “Come on, guys, get your shoes on” while checking email on his iPhone).
If saying “get your shoes on” worked, I wouldn’t need help getting the kids out the door to school. - Setting the table (by saying “kids, set the table” while checking email on his iPhone).
If “kids, set the table” worked, I wouldn’t need help getting the kids to set the table. - Helping to make dinner (by playing Wii with the kids to “keep them out of the way”).
Now I just feel like the cook. - Packing his own bag for vacation (when I’ve packed myself and the kids).
…And made the reservations, and gassed up the car, and loaded the car, and dropped the dog at the kennel, and packed the cooler, and, well, you get the idea. - Coming home early enough to help with bedtime (and then getting the kids all riled up).
Once bedtime is done, I’m off duty (for awhile, anyway) so anything that makes bedtime longer – not helping - Offering to give me a backrub (while really expecting more).
If it leads to something more, great, but sometimes a backrub should be just a backrub.
Posted by cat
Filed under: Wifey Rants | Tags: equal partnership, housework, space-time continuum
Dear Dr. Einstein,
I don’t usually write to dead scientists but I need help: it seems time passes differently for my husband than it does for me.
The other day, I made breakfast, loaded the dishwasher, washed the pans, wrangled the kids into their clothes, got myself dressed, and started the laundry but my husband only had time to put on some clothes.
And last week when we had to get to the train, I was rushing around like a mad woman – we were running late! But it was clear by the way my husband was moseying along that time was passing differently for him and he had plenty of time.
How can this be?
Is it a problem of relativity? Could our house be operating in parallel universes? Could he be living in an overlapping time-space continuum? Does his E not equal MC2?
Please, Dr. Einstein, tell me: can you help align time in our home? I’m desperate. In the time I’ve written this letter, cleaned the play room, paid the bills, and folded the laundry, my husband has only taken a shower.
Thank you in advance for your assistance,
Cat
PS: I also sent a copy of this letter to Dr. Emmett Brown. Maybe his flux capacitor can help?
Crap. I just found out from Dr. Oz in TIME Magazine that I’m the Chief Medical Officer of my family.
Seriously?
On top of being in charge of the bills, the retirement and college funds, the kids’ education, the food, cleaning and laundry, the dog, and childcare PLUS being personal assistant and chauffeur to two darling children, PLUS making time for my own interests, I’m solely responsible for my entire family’s health care?
That makes me Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Education Officer, Chief Communications Officer, and now Chief Medical Officer… Wow, the whole damn Board (except Chief Technology Officer — thank you, honey!)
Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m in charge of my own health care. But up until now I thought the kids health care was a responsibility shared between me and my spouse. It turns out, Dr. Oz informed me, I’m wrong. And not only is the kids’ health care all my responsibility, but my husband’s is too. Who knew!
According to the good doctor:
“…[Y]ou can tell your husband 10 times to get a colonoscopy and he won’t do it, but if you tell him he has an appointment on Friday, you’ll be discussing his results on Saturday.”
What the…?! All this time I thought my husband was a grown man who could take charge of his own health care (and put his own dishes in the dishwasher, but that’s a different blog post). How wrong I’ve been. Apparently, when it comes to health care, my husband is just another child — albeit one who can drive to his appointments and doesn’t need me to hold his hand during shots — and I need to treat him as such by making all his appointments. Not just the yearly physicals, but the specialists, too.
Wow. Thank you Dr. Oz for setting me straight. I’d hate to treat my husband as an adult and hurt his feelings.
I’m sure my husband would love it if I took over scheduling all his appointments and reminding him when they are — or better yet, inputting them into his Outlook calendar for him. Who wouldn’t enjoy having a personal assistant coordinating their life? But I’m not a personal assistant, I’m a wife. And I expect my husband to man up and take responsibility for his own health care with me by his side, not leading him like a child.
Gosh, Dr. Oz, have I set my expectations too high?
Posted by Cat
The last word: He said he was leaving. She ignored him. When Laura Munson’s husband asked for a divorce, she ducked instead of fighting. He needed to learn, she says, that his unhappiness wasn’t really about her.
Fascinating article about a woman refusing to buy into her husband’s “midlife crisis” and callousness. Don’t know what to think of this. On the one hand, she seems like a total wimp not just leaving the ass. But on the other hand, hard to comment on other people’s relationships.
Maybe men (and probably some women, too), eventually need time to be an asshole during a marriage. And if they are given the room to be jerks – but at enough of an arms length to keep the kids safe from the crisis, if possible – then maybe there is room to start anew. It won’t be the same but maybe that is a good thing.
Marriage is fraught with so much emotional, political, spiritual and intellectual baggage. It is no wonder so many marriages fail.
Do you think she was right to wait his midlife crisis out or should she have given him the boot?
Filed under: Wifey News | Tags: Atlantic Monthly, Marriage, Monogamy, Relationships, Sandra Tsing Loh
Sadly, and to my horror, I am divorcing. This was a 20-year partnership. My husband is a good man, though he did travel 20 weeks a year for work. I am a 47-year-old woman whose commitment to monogamy, at the very end, came unglued.
So says Sandra Tsing Loh in her riveting piece in the July/August Atlantic Monthly about the disintegration of her marriage. She begins a deep exploration of marriage and whether we even need it in this day and age.
Is D-I-V-O-R-C-E no longer a dirty word and M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E is instead? Discuss.
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Filed under: Wifey Rants | Tags: Business, career, Employment, entrepreneur, home-based business, job, Mental health, work at home
In the same vein as my Dishes Be Damned post, I have a little more venting to do.
A certain husband doesn’t realize that he doesn’t really think my company is as “important” as his job. He insists that yes, it is JUST as important, however, then he says things that lead me to believe that he just isn’t in touch with what he really thinks about my company.
“They’re Different”
He says that our jobs are equally as important but different.
“Do you have to go to the office each day, clock in on a timeclock, record your time and get it approved by your boss…?”
“So because I don’t have to punch a timeclock, my business is not a real job???” I practically scream.
He acknowledges that yes, my business is a real job but “it’s just different.”
“Common Courtesy”
This all started when he didn’t like the way I told him today that I’ll be going on several business trips to conferences and speaking engagements. He would prefer that I be more courteous in my approach.
My approach was asking him if we could synchronize our schedule and discuss how we’ll handle toddler care for some trips I have scheduled. As we reviewed our calendars, I was saying “I’ll be in Chicago on this date and then Denver on this.”
He didn’t like the way I was saying it. It wasn’t courteous.
“Well, how do you want me to say it?”
“It would be more courteous if you said ‘I’d like to go to this conference in Chicago,’” he explained.
I exploded.
“What?!? Do I actually have to ask your permission to go??!?”
“No, of course not! You don’t have to ask me permission. It is just more courteous to say it that way,” he replied.
“Then why don’t you say it that way to me? Why don’t you say ‘I’d like to go to this training in such and such’?” I retorted.
“Because I don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice about going to trainings. They are required for my job,” he replied.
“So let me get this straight. It is better if I let you know about things I have on my schedule by prefacing with ‘I’d like to go…’ but you don’t have to tell me about your trips by saying ‘I’d like to go…’ because YOUR trips are REQUIRED while mine are OPTIONAL?!?”
He kept insisting that our jobs are different. HE is required to do things for his jobs but in the case of my company, since I’m the boss, I’m NOT required to do these speaking engagements or attend these conferences.
Then he added his other foot into his mouth to join the one that was already firmly planted there.
“How would you like me to say to you ‘I’m going hunting’ instead of ‘I’d like to go hunting?’” he offered.
“What?!? So now you are comparing my company, my BUSINESS, to a hunting trip? Hunting is a hobby, an optional thing, not a required thing like a COMPANY!”
“But hunting IS required for my mental health and physical well being. Getting out there is very important to me,” he reasoned.
“But you are comparing my COMPANY, my BUSINESS, to a HUNTING TRIP?!?”
Did he not know when to quit?
He insisted that he wasn’t comparing my company to his hunting trip,s but that it was only common courtesy for a spouse to phrase an upcoming event as “I’d like to go…”
“Then why don’t YOU also use that phrase? I’m YOUR spouse. Don’t you think YOU should be using the same phrase you are asking ME to use?” I demanded.
“Because I don’t have a choice about going on these business trips. They are REQUIRED of me,” he replied.
“So you can say to me ‘I have to go to…’ but I must say ‘I’d like to go to…’, is THAT what you are saying?”
“It’s only common courtesy,” he explained.
“It is a F-ING double standard!! From now on, I want YOU to say ‘I’d like to go to this required training’ and see how YOU like it. My business trips and speaking engagements are just as important as your required trainings!” I insisted.
“I do think they are important, honey. They’re just DIFFERENT.”
Will you please join me in a very loud and gutteral ARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH!!
Is it just me or does your spouse/partner/family still think your home-based business or company is something that is less important than their REAL jobs?
originally blogged by Aliza Sherman
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Filed under: Wifey Rants | Tags: dishes, housewife, housework, work, work at home
this post originally appeared on WorkItMom’s Entrepreneur blog
I am not trying to rebel. I’m not a slacker. I just can’t get to the dishes every day. Yes, I work from home. But the operative word is WORK. Pretend that I’m not at home all day, maybe that will help you understand why the dishes are still piled up on the countertop, why the countertop is covered with peanut butter and jelly from baby’s sandwich that I rushed to make to get her to daycare on time, why the half-sliced orange and half-sliced avocado is still on the cutting board. And why the clean dishes are still in the dishwasher and not in their proper places in cupboards and drawers.
Believe me, I do see the mess. I see it when I rush back into the house after dropping baby at daycare. I cringe. But if I stop now to wipe and wash, I’ll forget the brilliant idea knocking around in my brain about to leak out of my head into the vortex of forgetfulness. And I swear this is the next big idea that will bring additional income into our household. I see the mess as I glance up from my computer now and then to let my eyes rest for a few moments, to stretch my hands and fingers so I don’t get crippled with carpal tunnel. I consider cleaning for a moment, but email is calling and client projects are due.
Yes, I could at least put a damp sponge to the counters as I toss some leftovers into the microwave or scrounge around for a stick of cheese to call my lunch when the leftovers are gone. And I do, sometimes, but it isn’t a routine set in stone. The truth is that I don’t want to get sidetracked. A sponge to the counter turns into putting things into Tupperwares and into the fridge which turns into pulling things out of the dishwasher because the clean Tupperware is in there so might as well and then…it is time for my next meeting or phone call.
I’m working hard. I’m pulling in the extra money that has helped us get out of debt. Sure, I was also the cause of that debt, but we’re talking dirty dishes here, not family finances. The dishes are dirty because I’m working as hard as I can in the five and a half hours that are carved out each day for my workday. Five and a half hours. Most people get eight hour work days and compain it is too much. I would dance jigs if I had eight hours of straight work time. Then again, I wouldn’t dance a jig because that would take 3 minutes of precious work time away from me. I would dance a mental jig while scanning emails.
With the money I am helping bring in, we could afford a cleaning lady to come in daily to clean the kitchen. But not everyone believes in outsourcing housework. Because that is one of those wifely duties, right? I keep thinking that sometime I just might hire a cleaning lady to secretly come into our house in the afternoon hours to make things sparkle. Then I’ll roll up my sleeves, ruffle my hair, and greet my husband with a great big sigh about how hard I’ve been working but “Boy, look at those countertops SPARKLE!”
Why do I feel that secretly hiring household help is a deception? Not as bad as infidelity, of course, but in a way, it seems like cheating somehow or at least not being totally truthful. And I would have no real way of hiding the expense of a cleaning lady so any scan of the finances would reveal the truth of my frivolity.
But let’s get back to those dishes, those oranges and avocados, those peanut butter and jelly stains. They may or may not be there this evening. If they are, I promise to clean them up. If they aren’t, I expect some acknowledgement for managing to clean the kitchen AND earn the big bucks while working from home. Remember, I’ve been WORKING.
Am I the only one going through this?
originally blogged by Aliza Sherman
