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agonyaunt2019-12-30 02:18 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2019-12-30 02:18 pm
Entry tags:
Beast Mode: I Want a Dog, but My Husband Refuses. Should I Just Do It?
I consider myself a feminist, and the idea that I need his permission really, really irks me.
My husband and I have been together for 20 years. I grew up with a menagerie of pets, and he didn’t have any. (His mother hates animals.) Today we have two cats, though I desperately want a dog. We both work full time, but I permanently work from home so I would provide 100 percent of the care (as I do for the cats—I don’t mind; I’m the animal caretaker). He’s ambivalent about the cats, but he says we can absolutely not get a dog. He says they are too messy, smelly, and expensive, and he gets angry when I bring it up. But really … those are not good reasons to me to not adopt a dog! We have a huge property and both work in the tech industry, where we make good salaries. I’ve wanted a dog for 20 years and have never been able to get one, but Hubby spends freely on his incredibly expensive hobby. Is my marriage doomed? Is there any way to convince him to “let” me get a dog? (By the way, I know pets are generally a family decision that should be unanimous, but I consider myself a modern feminist, and the idea that I need my husband’s permission for anything really, really irks me.)
Is there any hope? I want a dog in my life, and I’d like to keep my husband too. My family says I should just get the dog and let the chips fall where they may. Please help me convince him that a dog is not the end of the world!
—Living in a Dog-Less Marriage
Dear Living in a Dog-Less Marriage,
Humans didn’t always like dogs. According to one widely believed theory, history’s greatest friendship began thousands of years ago when packs of relatively docile wolves began loitering near hunter-gatherer camps to nosh on the leftovers and trash. These proto-pups realized this strategy was far easier than hunting, and so the species began its millennia-long effort to enter our good graces. Wolves evolved into dogs, and nature’s supreme suck-ups now live inside our houses and eat specially formulated food that we invented just for them. Playing the long game worked.
Nevertheless, some Homo sapiens, like your husband, have managed to resist dogs’ charm offensive. You may find it annoying, but you should be happy he’s doing this now and not thousands of years ago. If he had been one of those hunter-gatherers hanging around the campfire, he might have chased away those affable wolves and changed the course of human and canine history forever. Who knows, we could all be snuggling with our domesticated possums right now.
Your husband could become enchanted by the dog, but the opposite response is also possible.
I sympathize with your frustrations. You feel you are being denied something we both believe is great. The companionship that a pooch provides is special, and it’s hard for dog lovers to understand why some people wouldn’t want that in their lives. Hell, even the Grinch had a dog. But I don’t think your husband is a petty monster who lives in a cave and steals presents from the little wormlike mutants in Whoville. (Unless that’s the expensive hobby you allude to in your email.) Getting a dog is a big deal, and I imagine he’s more concerned about the general threat of change than the animal itself.
The “get a dog and let the chips fall where they may” strategy is pretty common. There’s even an entire Reddit page dedicated to dads who were once reluctant to get pets but are now helpless puddles of doting adoration. It’s insanely cute! Still, it’s a risky tack to take. A dog should be a source of joy, not resentment. You have the right to make this decision yourself, but the pup is going to have to live with everyone in your household no matter what. If this is going to drive a wedge between you and your husband, please think hard about that possibility—and about the furry wedge’s own well-being before you do it.
Your husband could become enchanted by the dog and turn into one of those adorable Reddit dads. But the opposite response is also possible. What matters most is that you are 100 percent confident that you can keep and care for the dog no matter the situation—and that any situation, including one that damages your marriage—is worth it.
You want me to convince your husband that getting a dog won’t be the end of the world, but I can’t do that. Only a dog can help accomplish this, which brings us to a potential solution. Shelters and rescue agencies are always looking for families to foster their animals. It’s still a lot of responsibility, but it might be easier to persuade your husband to give this a try because it is by definition temporary. (Though it can become permanent if you want it to be.) Think of it as a compromise with an option to convince.
This is not the simplest answer, especially with children or cats (make sure the shelter knows about them, by the way!). But at the very least, it’s a great way to help animals in need. With any luck, one of them might be able to turn your husband into a gushing dog lover, just like the rest of us.
My husband and I have been together for 20 years. I grew up with a menagerie of pets, and he didn’t have any. (His mother hates animals.) Today we have two cats, though I desperately want a dog. We both work full time, but I permanently work from home so I would provide 100 percent of the care (as I do for the cats—I don’t mind; I’m the animal caretaker). He’s ambivalent about the cats, but he says we can absolutely not get a dog. He says they are too messy, smelly, and expensive, and he gets angry when I bring it up. But really … those are not good reasons to me to not adopt a dog! We have a huge property and both work in the tech industry, where we make good salaries. I’ve wanted a dog for 20 years and have never been able to get one, but Hubby spends freely on his incredibly expensive hobby. Is my marriage doomed? Is there any way to convince him to “let” me get a dog? (By the way, I know pets are generally a family decision that should be unanimous, but I consider myself a modern feminist, and the idea that I need my husband’s permission for anything really, really irks me.)
Is there any hope? I want a dog in my life, and I’d like to keep my husband too. My family says I should just get the dog and let the chips fall where they may. Please help me convince him that a dog is not the end of the world!
—Living in a Dog-Less Marriage
Dear Living in a Dog-Less Marriage,
Humans didn’t always like dogs. According to one widely believed theory, history’s greatest friendship began thousands of years ago when packs of relatively docile wolves began loitering near hunter-gatherer camps to nosh on the leftovers and trash. These proto-pups realized this strategy was far easier than hunting, and so the species began its millennia-long effort to enter our good graces. Wolves evolved into dogs, and nature’s supreme suck-ups now live inside our houses and eat specially formulated food that we invented just for them. Playing the long game worked.
Nevertheless, some Homo sapiens, like your husband, have managed to resist dogs’ charm offensive. You may find it annoying, but you should be happy he’s doing this now and not thousands of years ago. If he had been one of those hunter-gatherers hanging around the campfire, he might have chased away those affable wolves and changed the course of human and canine history forever. Who knows, we could all be snuggling with our domesticated possums right now.
Your husband could become enchanted by the dog, but the opposite response is also possible.
I sympathize with your frustrations. You feel you are being denied something we both believe is great. The companionship that a pooch provides is special, and it’s hard for dog lovers to understand why some people wouldn’t want that in their lives. Hell, even the Grinch had a dog. But I don’t think your husband is a petty monster who lives in a cave and steals presents from the little wormlike mutants in Whoville. (Unless that’s the expensive hobby you allude to in your email.) Getting a dog is a big deal, and I imagine he’s more concerned about the general threat of change than the animal itself.
The “get a dog and let the chips fall where they may” strategy is pretty common. There’s even an entire Reddit page dedicated to dads who were once reluctant to get pets but are now helpless puddles of doting adoration. It’s insanely cute! Still, it’s a risky tack to take. A dog should be a source of joy, not resentment. You have the right to make this decision yourself, but the pup is going to have to live with everyone in your household no matter what. If this is going to drive a wedge between you and your husband, please think hard about that possibility—and about the furry wedge’s own well-being before you do it.
Your husband could become enchanted by the dog and turn into one of those adorable Reddit dads. But the opposite response is also possible. What matters most is that you are 100 percent confident that you can keep and care for the dog no matter the situation—and that any situation, including one that damages your marriage—is worth it.
You want me to convince your husband that getting a dog won’t be the end of the world, but I can’t do that. Only a dog can help accomplish this, which brings us to a potential solution. Shelters and rescue agencies are always looking for families to foster their animals. It’s still a lot of responsibility, but it might be easier to persuade your husband to give this a try because it is by definition temporary. (Though it can become permanent if you want it to be.) Think of it as a compromise with an option to convince.
This is not the simplest answer, especially with children or cats (make sure the shelter knows about them, by the way!). But at the very least, it’s a great way to help animals in need. With any luck, one of them might be able to turn your husband into a gushing dog lover, just like the rest of us.
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Dear LW's husband: if you need a couch to stay on while you figure out your new living arrangements, I will ask my housemates. No promises.
Dear LW: There is a difference between liberation and trampling other people. You need your husband's permission to get a dog not because he is male but because all housemates should be in agreement before adding another. (Check with the cats while you're at it.)
Dear Beast Mode: I rolled my eyes so hard at the evangelism towards non-dog people that one of my eyeballs nearly fell out. That said I'm relieved you didn't actually advise the LW to go ahead and foist a dog on the person she allegedly loves.
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Straight people could do worse, in situations like this, to ask what the answer would be in a same-sex couple.
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It's also cruelty to people, but LW obviously is an entitled prick and doesn't care about that, so maybe cruelty to animals will work as an argument. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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There's no contradiction between feminism and "everyone in the family should be on board and in favor of a major decision like this"...
One of my coworkers has a dog she hates. She has this dog because others in her family wanted a dog. So now there's a dog. She has not come around on this dog. I don't think she ever will. She's also the one taking care of it. Kinda a shitty situation.
Also, "fostering a dog" is getting a dog. It's getting a dog for a shorter period of time, but it's still getting a dog. The answer to "I don't want a dog" is not "we'll just have a dog for now, not forever".
As someone who doesn't want a dog ever, I am not sympathetic to the LW's boundary pushing.
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I don't hate dogs! I'm nice to dogs! I have rescued strange dogs who were wandering in the street and brought them back to their owners!
But I have a right for my HOME to feel safe and comfortable for me, and I can't genuinely relax if I know that a dog's head could pop up next to my face at any time.
My late ex-husband wanted a dog, and I said that it wasn't an option if he and I were going to live together. He always thought that was kind of unreasonable, and it was his right to feel that way, but it was MY right to not have to live with a dog that I would massively resent (especially since I was the person who was home during the day, due to my disability, and would have wound up with a lot of dog care foisted on me.)
He and I were both cat lovers, and we DID adopt two cats, and they're awesome.
We eventually split up for unrelated reasons, he got a dog, he was really happy about her, and he made a bunch of lifestyle changes to accommodate having a dog... and I'm glad he got what he wanted, without ME having to live with it.
I have pretty much zero sympathy for the LW, since there's no way for her to have a dog without it massively impacting her husband's life, and fostering a dog is 100% going to lead to her pressuring him to adopt it.
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LW, back the fuck off. Some people don't like dogs. Some people fear dogs! It would be great if your husband stopped trying to argue this on practical merits and said "I do not want to live with a dog, and if you want to live with me you need to respect that"—he gets to safeword dog ownership for his own reasons. You, a modern woman and enlightened feminist with a job that pays well, get to move out and use your money to live on your own with a dog if you like.
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There is an undercurrent here of unhappiness because your hubby is out spending whatever he wants on his hobby and you feel the imbalance. I recognize this vibe so hard from the so many other “modern” households in which supposedly everyone is equal and contributes to running the household but somehow the husband/father always seems to be the one who has time and money for their expensive hobbies (e.g. hockey) whereas mom is supposed to be certain that her hobby/interests are important enough before “wasting’ time or money on them, and/or should always be most interested in the kids as her hobby.
The solution is simple, divorce him, take the cats with you, get a dog (or two) and if future romance or partnership seems in the cards hold out for someone who genuinely loves the idea of living in a house with pets as this is clearly very important to you.
If one of the other commenters here wants to offer your soon to be ex-husband crashspace somthat he moves out rather than you and the cats then even better - it sounds like your lifestyle and home are perfect for dogs once you ditch the husband and his hobbies, but ditch him anyways even if you have to be the one to move out.
Sorry you wasted 20 years on him.
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Oh, you have a good point about the hobbies and the imbalance thereof. But a pet is not just a hobby but a living thing, which adds another dimension to the issue. On the third paw, that still doesn't contradict your excellent advice.
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Right, she wants a dog and he doesn’t.
It seems to be important enough to her that this is not an area of their marriage that she should continue to compromise on despite having done so for 20 years.
I’m pushing back against all the comments that consider her horrible and selfish for wanting a dog (and pets in general) when her husband doesn't, and she should leave him because they arent going to find a compromise on that front. Maybe there could be (e.g. she could volunteer at an animal shelter or start up a pet/housesitting business) but they may not fill the need she is expressing.
It all still doesn’t change the comment about the hobby: God knows we spend plenty of time in this community analyzing the subtext of even more subtle comments so Im not sure why my picking up on the underlying frustration in the letter is so weird. The way she phrased was immediately recognizable to experience.
Not to mention that we all know that letter writers take shortcuts in describing situations, sometimes because they are trying to elide details purposely and more because it’s damn difficult to give an outsider full context to our obvious head canon. We see that often too. Hence why its a detail that stands out.
I agree with everyone that LW cannot bring a dog into their shared home without her husband’s enthusiastic agreement (Id say or at least his enthusiastic willingness to give it a try but that’s not really fair to the dog if it fails). I just disagree with WITAH, the husband may not be but neither is the LW. Her wants may be incompatible with her husbands but they are legit - as are her frustrations with him - and that doesnt make her selfish.
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Huh. You think -- well, I can't talk about what others think, but you think I think she's selfish because she wants a dog? No, I don't. I think she's selfish because she wants justification to bring a dog into her and her husband's shared home despite his express wish not to live with a dog. And I reacted strongly because I can definitely imagine how I'd feel if the people I live with brought a dog home one day. I would not be happy.
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If you take the dog off the table, there's still a relationship dynamic of "I feel like he gets everything he wants and my needs are constantly being stifled", and the LW may want a way to fix that other than divorcing the dude and adopting a labrador.
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This reminds me of a fight a friend of mine and I had over a movie that I liked despite its sexism and she hated because of its sexism. We had a fight over it because she thought, aghast, that I approved of its sexism, and I flailed around until I could get across that I liked the universe and could see ways it wouldn't have to be as sexist as portrayed. You and
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I'm not actually seeing this as a discussion about the dog. I frequently find that people who aren't good at emotions don't frame their problems in emotional terms; they find a concrete surrogate. I'm reading this as fundamentally emotional; "I want something my husband won't let me have, and I feel this is unfair." In clinical terms, there is the "presenting problem", the thing the person says it is about, and then there's the actual problem.
So if the question is "Dog or no?" none of the answers really solve the problem. The real problem is hovering around, "How much should my feelings of happiness or unhappiness matter to my husband? How much should his feelings of happiness or unhappiness matter to me? Is it fair to devolve into this tit-for-tat squabble where I make him miserable and justify it by saying he made me miserable first?"
In which case "No dog" kind of works out to... "Just live with being unhappy and be the bigger person." "Yes dog" is like... "Make him miserable too."
So I think a bigger answer should be plucking out things like "Okay yeah, it is messed up that there's tons of money to spend on stuff he wants but not on stuff you want" and "just how angry is "angry"? and hell, maybe even "If it's been 20 years and this is still making your miserable, it's okay to divorce someone for not being a pet person." Not some middle-of-the-road stuff about "Well I'm not saying 'get a dog' but what if you did just get a dog..."
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Oh, ok. I see this as a discussion about the dog, you see it on a whole other level. That makes sense. I would agree with you on the overarching discussion you describe, but that's not what I see in this particular letter. I think everyone here agrees that people shouldn't be forced to live with dogs, though, right?
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Agreed with certain specific exceptions for service dogs:
for example
sibling under 18 needs a guide dog; other sibling under 18 dislikes dogs, both siblings live in the same house with parents.
or college dormitory room mate needs a guide dog; other college room-mate dislikes dogs but is not allergic. [Although ideally the college should try to find a room mate who does not dislike dogs]
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I find the further level that you elucidated to be really interesting, as that is a common and awful dynamic in our society, but I don't think those of us who are saying we're unsympathetic to the LW are saying "she should shut up about feeling unfulfilled in her marriage" or "it's wrong to want a dog", but instead are saying, "don't spring a dog on someone who doesn't want a dog, we disagree with you that doing so is justified or would have a good outcome." Our lack of sympathy is only concerning that one question.
There is potentially a lot of stuff about gender dynamics, marriage, equality, etc, to be discussed as another thread, but for me, and for several of the commenters here I think, my opinion on this situation only concerns whether or not to get the dog.
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FWIW I agree with everything you've said here. I also did not read the bit about the husband's spending as the central issue since it's half a sentence, which the LW throws on the mounting heap of reasons why she should be able to trample an important boundary. If there is an imbalance in LW and husband's financial freedom, that's a significant but separate problem from the dog.
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Oh goodness, thanks. :)
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The problem here is similar to the question of having kids. It's a zero sum game. You either have pets or you don't. I honestly wonder what, if any, conversations they had about this before they got married.
I sympathize with her desire for something she can't have. Who doesn't? There's a reason "Story of an Hour" often strikes a chord with women that it doesn't with men. But the way she's painting this, as it being so unfair that he doesn't want something living in their house, something she's known since they married he doesn't like, sets my teeth on edge, in no small part because I don't like being around dogs, and I've dealt with the, "but everyone loves dogs!" crowd before. If my spouse came home one day with a dog on the theory that I'd warm up to it, I'd be furious. I wouldn't even bring home a third kitten without his agreement, and we both adore cats.
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He's compromised on the pet issue by getting multiple cats. (And on this, I'm with LW - cats ideally come in pairs or trios.) He shouldn't need to get dogs as well just because LW grew up in and would like to live in a "menagerie".
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I'm hard-pressed to believe that LW didn't know this about him before they married. And this is NOT the kind of thing you make a unilateral decision about.
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2) Your husband not wanting a dog is an excellent reason why he should not have to live with a dog.
3) A dog is not a hobby. Your cats are also not hobbies. Your implied complaint about your husband's expensive hobby might be good topic for another letter, but is not relevant to this one.
4) If you want a divorce, then get a divorce. If you don't want a divorce, then it might be worth your while to work on not trampling boundaries.
5) Seriously, not everyone likes dogs.
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No dog. No. Ack.
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If you even for a second, a little bit, thought "the dog", you need to be thinking hard about whether you actually want to be in this marriage or not, and whether it's really the lack of dog that's making you unhappy, or whether it's him being him. You can worry about a dog after you figure out the marriage.
If you immediately thought "him, of course, the dog's never going to matter more than him" you need to work on why the lack of dog is making you so unhappy, and what you can do to fix that without making your husband miserable in turn.
(I suspect the actual problem here is not "I want a dog", it's "I feel like I don't have control over my own home and life", and probably both of you have some work to do here.)
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