Husband frustrated by irritable wife?

[conuly]

DEAR NATALIE: My wife has a busy life and a hectic work schedule. We have two small children and she works full-time as a lawyer. I am also a lawyer, but she always seems to have more to do than me. Whenever we are home from work, there’s homework to do, dinner to make and clothes to put away. I keep telling her it’ll get done, but then she becomes exasperated with me. “Who’s going to do it?” she says. I have offered to get a cleaning service or a part-time nanny to help her, but she says that there are better things to spend money on. At the end of the day, she’s exhausted and really irritable toward me. I want to do something to make her feel better, like a vacation, but I’m worried she will say that we don’t have time for it. What can I do to make her happier? I don’t want this to hurt our relationship. -- FRUSTRATED HUSBAND

DEAR FRUSTRATED HUSBAND: I want you to look up the term “emotional labor.” I want you to study what you just wrote to me. Reflect. Recognize your role in all of this. Your wife is doing the same job as you, but when she comes home, her role as house manager kicks in and your work appears done. She has every right to be irritable and exasperated — she feels like everything at home is falling on her shoulders. Instead of offering to hire a cleaning service, fold the laundry when you see it in the dryer. (You do know where your dryer is, right?) Instead of asking what you can do to “help,” take a proactive role as a partner: See what needs to be done and just do it. Also, don’t expect a pat on the back for doing dishes, vacuuming, getting the kids ready for bed or cooking a meal. Show that you care instead of asking her why she’s stressed. A vacation is only a band-aid. Equity should be in the home as well as the workplace. The real work begins when you show up for your household like you do at your job. Both of you will be less stressed when you share the load.

https://www.uexpress.com/ask-natalie/2020/2/19/husband-forgot-your-40th-birthday-and

Comments

[purlewe]

These are all very good points. And hopefully if something like this happened they could sit down later and talk about it and figure out what really works for them. And hopefully they do.

partly I think it is gender. Also partly I think it is how people are socialized and raised. if you grew up in a household with parents who never let a kid learn how to do things, then they will always feel like they never do it "right" and they will back way off it. (add a small dash of abusive or bad parenting to that and it gets a whole lot worse) then you add socialized gender norms into it. how typically the wife is supposed to be the household manager and have her finger in lots of pies. You could even throw in a dash of how mothers are supposed to be perfect in every aspect and how they get shamed by looking online at all the women who do it all. Add that last bit of a husband, seeing their partner do it all and say "don't worry it all gets done" without acknowledging that their partner is the one doing the work.

it's just hard. super hard. I just wish that when we talked to each other we actually heard what the other person was saying.

[melannen]

Yeah. The other thing is that a household does, inarguably, run better if it has a full-time Household Manager, and people who grew up in a house with a full-time Household Manager have trouble figuring out how to run a house without one. Even if both partners are putting good-faith effort into doing equal work, there are a lot of things that don't work as well without one person taking point on the management part (Even if you try to split the management work, somebody has to manage *that*.)

And if they both grew up with a woman doing it full-time, they'll both fall back into that pattern unless they actively try to stop it. The problem is that you can't be a full-time career builder and a full-time household manager and also a full person. You just can't, male or female. So eventually you either have to compromise on how the household is run or compromise on the careers or the whole thing falls down, one way or the other.