The Surrendered Wife (21 page)

On the other hand, maybe you don't mind the answer you assume your husband will give, but you're completely
bored
with the fact that you always know what he's going to say and therefore never have to ask him. That one goes like this:

• I already know what he's going to say before I talk to him. This “same old, same old” thing sure is getting dull.

• I wish my husband would say something different once in a while.

• I am now bored with my husband because he would have said the same thing he always says
if
I had talked to him.

In the examples above, you are now irritated with your husband even though he has not even spoken to you. Anticipating your husband's reaction is the same as reading his mind. Just as you can't know what he's
thinking
, neither can you know what he's going to
do
.

Every second you spend thinking about what he's probably going to do or say is another second that you miss interacting and connecting with him in the present. Seconds turn into minutes, which turn into hours and days. Some women spend their entire marriage anticipating instead of connecting, which means they never get the chance to be intimate. A good rule of thumb is to avoid dwelling on thoughts that start with the word “if” because they're not about the present. You cannot anticipate and be intimate at the same time.

Jessica got a sizable bonus at work and was lamenting about how her husband would spend it on stocks instead of the vacation she'd been longing for. I reminded her that she didn't know for sure what he would do with the money, and to just enjoy the possibilities for the moment, and that she could always tell him what she wanted.

She resisted this at first, but then admitted that she certainly wasn't finding any enjoyment in complaining about his choices before he'd even made them. Instead, she focused on how proud she felt that her family would have something extra from her bonus—even though she didn't know what it would be. She soon admitted that celebrating and enjoying the satisfaction she felt at providing an unexpected gift sure beat thinking about how she would feel
if
he did something she didn't like. In fact, thinking about being disappointed is as bad as actually being disappointed.

Anticipating is a second cousin to setting up negative expectations.
If you are anticipating hostility or stinginess based on his response before you surrendered, you're setting up a negative expectation. To cultivate intimacy with your husband, listen to him instead of preparing an argument for what you imagine he is going to say. Focus on really hearing and understanding his words instead of interpreting his tone and expression.

Only once you've heard him is it fair to say that you know what he thinks.

“Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.”

—BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Give your husband space. If he is supposed to take care of something, let him take care of it. Even if you think he will have trouble (or can't do it), mind your own business.

Remember that your husband can meet whatever challenges arise and learn his own lessons as necessary. Trying to fix everything cramps his space, undermines his abilities and emasculates him.

I
love to play volleyball, and I love to be the setter—the player who receives the ball from a passer and puts it up high enough for the hitter to slam it over the net. As a general rule, the setter always gets the second ball unless she calls for help. This rule keeps people from crashing into each other or letting the ball hit the ground unnecessarily.

Inexperienced players sometimes worry that the setter won't be able to get to the ball in time. They try to “help” by standing under the ball so that they can set it if necessary. This is called crowding the setter. I hate when that happens because when I try to set the ball, there's someone standing in my way. I might even drop the ball because I can't get past my teammate. Often the inexperienced player will turn around and say, “Why didn't you call for help? I could have gotten it!”

Indeed!

If the rookie had stayed out of my way, I would have given her a beautiful set and the satisfaction of pounding the ball into the other team. Instead, she was too busy crowding the setter—worrying that I wasn't going to do my job and then blaming me when I couldn't get past her.

Did I mention I
hate
when that happens?

O
NE
L
ESS
W
ORRY
F
OR
Y
OU

“When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.”

—LOUIS NIZER

S
o what does volleyball have to do with surrendering to your husband? Just as crowders worry that a setter won't do her job, you may worry that your husband won't do what he's supposed to—and then get in his way. If you hover around him under the pretense of being ready to help, you're really making his job much harder. You're also dragging your team down, and you're blaming the wrong person for your troubles.

Crowding the setter is just another form of control. When you try to get your husband to go somewhere on time, suggest that he call the plumber, or remind him to pay something before there's a late fee, you're crowding him.

Just as I don't feel much team spirit for the volleyball player who gets in my way, don't expect much intimacy from a man when you've invaded his space.

H
E
D
OESN'T
N
EED
B
ACKUP

Better a hundred enemies outside the house than one inside.

—ARABIAN PROVERB

E
ven if you're not saying anything to your husband, you can still crowd him by putting energy into what he's doing. Checking on the pile of bills to see what he's paid—even when he's not around—is a form of crowding the setter. Listening to a phone conversation he's having with a client, being on alert in case he asks you where to turn, and wincing because he shouldn't have said something are all examples of crowding the setter.

You don't even have to say something to crowd your husband, because he can read you like a book. He's so familiar with your expressions and body language that he can sense when your energy is all over what he's doing. He can feel you breathing down his neck. If you've just been in his stuff, he'll sense your presence lingering in the way you've left the chair at his desk, or unconsciously straightened the papers in his “to-do” pile. Therefore you need to keep your energy to yourself so he has the space to take care of things as he deems appropriate. He needs space to be independent. That's true for anybody, and most especially true for a man.

Although Ken and Kelly had a standing agreement that he would take the kids to school in the morning, Kelly often got up early and got dressed, “just in case.” Ken did indeed run late sometimes, or complain just before car pool time that the morning was too busy for him to transport the children. He would ask Kelly to take the kids for him, so she fell into the habit of always being on call. One day it occurred to her that he was shirking his responsibility
simply because he knew that she was there for backup. In this case, she ended up crowding him
and
cramping her own style, waiting around for the ball to drop.

Finally, Kelly decided to stop “crowding the setter” by staying in bed later and trusting that everything would work out fine. Amazingly, when Ken realized there was no backup, he stopped running into trouble in the mornings and consistently took their children to school.

As best you can, stay out of your husband's space and remind yourself that you don't have to anticipate anything going wrong. Remembering that he's got everything under control will help curb your own urge to control.

Not only that, you'll be giving the setter enough space to put the volleyball up in the air so the hitter can slam it over the net.

Did I mention I
love
when that happens?

Nature is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing. The monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom.

—FRANCIS PICABIA

Instead of throwing out traditional gender roles, try them on again. There may be some value in them that you would like to reclaim. They can help you feel protected and feminine, and therefore more intimate.

Practice “changing your hat” when you leave work. A surrendered wife can be a force to be reckoned with at work and a soft, gentle woman in marriage, as long as she surrenders when she comes home.

A
s a modern woman, I expected that my husband and I would divide the work in our marriage equally according to our strengths. I believed we would come to the relationship as individuals, rather than limiting ourselves to outdated gender stereotypes. I presumed that we would share the housework evenly and decide together how to invest our savings. Perhaps he would stay home with the children while I ran a big corporation. Everything would be negotiated rationally, so that together we would find the best possible life. We would have a true partnership.

We never realized my egalitarian vision. In fact, we never even came close. Still I kept thinking if we just tried a little harder, we could do it. Gender just didn't matter! I knew that because everything I'd grown up with, from Marlo Thomas's
Free to Be … You and Me
to Betty Friedan's
The Feminine Mystique
said this was so. It never occurred to me that the model I was using was impossible to live by.

The trouble started when I noticed that my strengths seemed more practical than John's. His fun-loving good nature didn't seem useful when it came to the serious business of paying a mortgage and maintaining the cars. I loved to hear him play the guitar and sing to me, but that didn't help with getting dinner on the table every night. His contentment with life started to seem like laziness when he resisted doing home-improvement projects.