How do I respond to help that's not helpful?
March 13, 2016 12:43 AM Subscribe
My husband is a good guy. He consistently provides me with solutions to problems that a) aren't actually the problems, b) cause more work and stress for me, and c) perpetuate purchases instead of pitching in. I need help. But not like this. Advice on/scripts for discussion, please?
I feel like I am losing my mind, and need some perspective on whether this invisible dynamic is a problem, how I can be more gracious and understanding of his efforts, how and whether I can talk with him about this recurring issue, and whether it's really my problem and not his.
I have to preface this by saying that I know my husband means well. I'm not going to DTMFA.
The dynamic tends to work like this: I will identify a specific problem and ask for his help with it, he buys a solution to it that means more work for me (or that clashes with what I value), I get annoyed and he is bewildered and hurt because he was trying to help.
For example: My old laptop is dying, and I'm trying to preserve it as long as I can. His solution: buy a new laptop and transfer software, with a "Hey, it's your project, you work it out."
For example: The house is a mess, and I'm trying to use up food out of the freezer (that is, make healthy meals) so I can defrost it and clean it out. My request: Please take the kids out of the house today so I can get this cleaning and defrosting done. His response: Takes kids out for fast food, comes home two hours later with frozen sweet goodies.
For example: I make a to-do list. His buddy volunteers to come help with projects. We agree that this will happen Saturday afternoon, after he's home from work. Get a call at 9 a.m. Saturday that buddy is free and can come over now, OK? No. NOT OK. I am frustrated because I have planned my morning; he's frustrated that I say I need help, but will not accept it when offered.
And you know what? It's true. I have a terrible time admitting (to people not my husband) that I need help, and I feel shame in accepting and paying for/making homemade goodies in return for help. I am really good about keeping a LOT of balls in the air and find that scheduling and planning really helps me keep them there; my husband is much more flexible and spontaneous than I am, and it sometimes makes me feel overwhelmed. So this overthought plate of beans is fraught, and maybe just in my head? (Him: "Hey, honey, I got you an appointment to fix your engine issue, but you have to drop everything and drive over there by yourself with the kids right now" is helpful, but not helpful?)
I am super-pissed about this dynamic, but I really do try to give benefit of doubt and be kind toward his efforts. I recognize that he heard...something...and is trying to help. But I'm really tired because of the extra work and stress his solutions cause (not least because it feels like it is not so much teamwork as it is I-throw-the-ball-and-you-hit-it-past-the-fence-into-traffic-where-I-have-to-retrieve-it-so-the-game-can-continue. Which may be my problem? I can't even tell anymore.)
How can I be more effective at (doing all of the work to outline the issue before) talking with him? How can I be more forgiving about solutions that don't work for me? How can I get him to participate in the solution in a way other than purchasing it? (Spoiler: adult autonomy is difficult!) How can I get beyond the creeping and corrosive suspicion that he's not really engaged with me, or with our mutual concrete problems? Maybe he is also doing the best he can, and I need to relax? I cannot get any of this straight in my head or heart, and could really use some, well, help.
I feel like I am losing my mind, and need some perspective on whether this invisible dynamic is a problem, how I can be more gracious and understanding of his efforts, how and whether I can talk with him about this recurring issue, and whether it's really my problem and not his.
I have to preface this by saying that I know my husband means well. I'm not going to DTMFA.
The dynamic tends to work like this: I will identify a specific problem and ask for his help with it, he buys a solution to it that means more work for me (or that clashes with what I value), I get annoyed and he is bewildered and hurt because he was trying to help.
For example: My old laptop is dying, and I'm trying to preserve it as long as I can. His solution: buy a new laptop and transfer software, with a "Hey, it's your project, you work it out."
For example: The house is a mess, and I'm trying to use up food out of the freezer (that is, make healthy meals) so I can defrost it and clean it out. My request: Please take the kids out of the house today so I can get this cleaning and defrosting done. His response: Takes kids out for fast food, comes home two hours later with frozen sweet goodies.
For example: I make a to-do list. His buddy volunteers to come help with projects. We agree that this will happen Saturday afternoon, after he's home from work. Get a call at 9 a.m. Saturday that buddy is free and can come over now, OK? No. NOT OK. I am frustrated because I have planned my morning; he's frustrated that I say I need help, but will not accept it when offered.
And you know what? It's true. I have a terrible time admitting (to people not my husband) that I need help, and I feel shame in accepting and paying for/making homemade goodies in return for help. I am really good about keeping a LOT of balls in the air and find that scheduling and planning really helps me keep them there; my husband is much more flexible and spontaneous than I am, and it sometimes makes me feel overwhelmed. So this overthought plate of beans is fraught, and maybe just in my head? (Him: "Hey, honey, I got you an appointment to fix your engine issue, but you have to drop everything and drive over there by yourself with the kids right now" is helpful, but not helpful?)
I am super-pissed about this dynamic, but I really do try to give benefit of doubt and be kind toward his efforts. I recognize that he heard...something...and is trying to help. But I'm really tired because of the extra work and stress his solutions cause (not least because it feels like it is not so much teamwork as it is I-throw-the-ball-and-you-hit-it-past-the-fence-into-traffic-where-I-have-to-retrieve-it-so-the-game-can-continue. Which may be my problem? I can't even tell anymore.)
How can I be more effective at (doing all of the work to outline the issue before) talking with him? How can I be more forgiving about solutions that don't work for me? How can I get him to participate in the solution in a way other than purchasing it? (Spoiler: adult autonomy is difficult!) How can I get beyond the creeping and corrosive suspicion that he's not really engaged with me, or with our mutual concrete problems? Maybe he is also doing the best he can, and I need to relax? I cannot get any of this straight in my head or heart, and could really use some, well, help.
Yeah, my mom and I had/have a similar dynamic... I couldn't talk to her because it was like we were speaking two different languages in terms of what one of us said and the other understood.
What really helped was a) therapy, both individually and together and b) making more of an effort to communicate clearly.
posted by Tamanna at 1:14 AM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
What really helped was a) therapy, both individually and together and b) making more of an effort to communicate clearly.
posted by Tamanna at 1:14 AM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
This is not a direct answer to your question, but might get at an indirect contributor to the problem. How many balls does your husband keep up in the air compared to you? Could it be that you do the bulk of logistics and work at home and for the family? If so, maybe he could take more actual responsibility rather than just helping you with what is now yours. Then he could own any of these problems entirely and solve them his way and they wouldn't be yours to follow up on and do more work for them.
posted by meijusa at 1:38 AM on March 13, 2016 [44 favorites]
posted by meijusa at 1:38 AM on March 13, 2016 [44 favorites]
First of all, I think you need to pick your battles. Some things would tick nearly any spouse off like buying a new laptop. You could set a spending limit, like 200 dollars, where you need to ask the other spouse first.
Other things, you can just turn down his help if it's not working for you in the moment. Babe, thanks for making this appointment, but I just can't drop everything right now. Babe, that's great Tommy can help this morning, but I'm overbooked at this morning as it is.
Some things are not going to be perfect no matter what. Thanks for taking the kids out, you need to get them to throw away the ice cream because I am cleaning/just cleaned the fridge.
You could be really specific about the help you want, but I think you should delegate entire tasks. You're not interfacing well with cotasks. You could try delegating entire areas or responsibility like laundry or car maintenance etc. If both of you agree.
If he does help, and it's not a huge inconvience, just say thank you. He's not a mind reader and some of your examples are on the knit picked side. Some flexibility is required in marriage and half needs to be from you. You could consider individual counseling or couples counselling to make your half less stressful to you.
posted by Kalmya at 1:42 AM on March 13, 2016 [11 favorites]
Other things, you can just turn down his help if it's not working for you in the moment. Babe, thanks for making this appointment, but I just can't drop everything right now. Babe, that's great Tommy can help this morning, but I'm overbooked at this morning as it is.
Some things are not going to be perfect no matter what. Thanks for taking the kids out, you need to get them to throw away the ice cream because I am cleaning/just cleaned the fridge.
You could be really specific about the help you want, but I think you should delegate entire tasks. You're not interfacing well with cotasks. You could try delegating entire areas or responsibility like laundry or car maintenance etc. If both of you agree.
If he does help, and it's not a huge inconvience, just say thank you. He's not a mind reader and some of your examples are on the knit picked side. Some flexibility is required in marriage and half needs to be from you. You could consider individual counseling or couples counselling to make your half less stressful to you.
posted by Kalmya at 1:42 AM on March 13, 2016 [11 favorites]
Individual or couples counseling for sure. The fact that you thought you had to fend off DTMFA answers suggests that some serious perspective changes are in order.
posted by cakelite at 1:47 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by cakelite at 1:47 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Would you two be amenable to delegation rather than problem solving? Meaning, when you have something you need help with, outline it and he gets to solve it as he wants. He has to present you with the final result, a complete deliverable, and you don't get to worry about how it was accomplished. This will mean that you'll have to stop yourself caring if he throws money at it (I assume he's ok with budgeting, as that is a separate problem) or cleans the freezer then adds ice cream to it but there is still space for healthy meals.
posted by tavegyl at 3:15 AM on March 13, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by tavegyl at 3:15 AM on March 13, 2016 [8 favorites]
Individual or couples counseling for sure. The fact that you thought you had to fend off DTMFA answers suggests that some serious perspective changes are in order.
To be fair to the OP, most relationship problem posts end up with a combination of "therapy" and "DTMFA" responses regardless of the severity.
OP: It sounds to me as if you are in charge of most of the things that happen around the house. Is it possible to give some of those responsibilities up? As in, don't delegate them on a day-by-day basis, but instead, for example, hand over Friday night dinner to your husband.
In addition, it really does sound as if there is a lack of explicit communication in your examples. I can't imagine going out and buying a laptop for my wife without talking with her. On the other hand, your second example doesn't sound like such a big deal unless part of what you were doing while they were out was making food for everyone.
So, yeah. More explicit communication both ways seems called for, but also finding ways he can pitch in where he has full control and responsibility for how it gets done. Your third example seems like a perfect example of this: why wasn't your husband in charge of coordinating the work with his buddy?
posted by Betelgeuse at 5:33 AM on March 13, 2016 [17 favorites]
To be fair to the OP, most relationship problem posts end up with a combination of "therapy" and "DTMFA" responses regardless of the severity.
OP: It sounds to me as if you are in charge of most of the things that happen around the house. Is it possible to give some of those responsibilities up? As in, don't delegate them on a day-by-day basis, but instead, for example, hand over Friday night dinner to your husband.
In addition, it really does sound as if there is a lack of explicit communication in your examples. I can't imagine going out and buying a laptop for my wife without talking with her. On the other hand, your second example doesn't sound like such a big deal unless part of what you were doing while they were out was making food for everyone.
So, yeah. More explicit communication both ways seems called for, but also finding ways he can pitch in where he has full control and responsibility for how it gets done. Your third example seems like a perfect example of this: why wasn't your husband in charge of coordinating the work with his buddy?
posted by Betelgeuse at 5:33 AM on March 13, 2016 [17 favorites]
I think this is a communication problem. Try being more specific about what you want from your husband. Asking for help can be hard, try with little things and work your way up. With the information you give in these examples, I'm not 100% sure which part of his solutions bother you.
The laptop: I would be thrilled to get a new laptop as a gift. Maybe he thinks similarly. Why not ask him to help you with transferring everything? If you don't like that particular laptop you can always have him return it.
The helpful friend: Could you not just say now is not a good time and let him know a specific time that would work? If the friend flakes or changes plans that's not your husband's fault.
Taking the kids out: Maybe your husband isn't really sure what fun activities the kids would like. Could you give him ideas next time? Bringing home more frozen food is a bit silly, but if they didn't take up much space he probably didn't consider it a problem. If you wanted them out longer than a couple hours, let him know in advance that it's going to be a long project, so keep them entertained until 5.
Just some ideas. I understand why you're frustrated but I think the only solution is to work on communication between you two. And that's something you'll both have to put work into, it's not all on you. If you ask your husband to take the kids out for the day, while it's helpful for you to be more specific about a time frame, he should also know to ask.
posted by blackzinfandel at 5:59 AM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
The laptop: I would be thrilled to get a new laptop as a gift. Maybe he thinks similarly. Why not ask him to help you with transferring everything? If you don't like that particular laptop you can always have him return it.
The helpful friend: Could you not just say now is not a good time and let him know a specific time that would work? If the friend flakes or changes plans that's not your husband's fault.
Taking the kids out: Maybe your husband isn't really sure what fun activities the kids would like. Could you give him ideas next time? Bringing home more frozen food is a bit silly, but if they didn't take up much space he probably didn't consider it a problem. If you wanted them out longer than a couple hours, let him know in advance that it's going to be a long project, so keep them entertained until 5.
Just some ideas. I understand why you're frustrated but I think the only solution is to work on communication between you two. And that's something you'll both have to put work into, it's not all on you. If you ask your husband to take the kids out for the day, while it's helpful for you to be more specific about a time frame, he should also know to ask.
posted by blackzinfandel at 5:59 AM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
When my (ex) wife would tell me her problems, my inclination was to come up with a solution. She wasn't really asking for solutions it turns out. She was asking for empathy.
I, obviously, have no idea what it is you are looking for in your husband's response, but it helped my relationship when my wife told me, "here is a problem I am having. I don't need a solution, I need a shoulder to put my head on." I was trying to make the problem go away according to my preferences, she did not want that, she wanted recognition that she was having this problem and some emotional support, not logistics support.
Figure out in each situation what it is that will help, and ask for that. Sometimes it is logistical support like taking the kids out of the house and sometimes it is a sympathetic ear to vent to.
posted by AugustWest at 6:00 AM on March 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
I, obviously, have no idea what it is you are looking for in your husband's response, but it helped my relationship when my wife told me, "here is a problem I am having. I don't need a solution, I need a shoulder to put my head on." I was trying to make the problem go away according to my preferences, she did not want that, she wanted recognition that she was having this problem and some emotional support, not logistics support.
Figure out in each situation what it is that will help, and ask for that. Sometimes it is logistical support like taking the kids out of the house and sometimes it is a sympathetic ear to vent to.
posted by AugustWest at 6:00 AM on March 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
I think you're nit-picking a bit and from your examples it seems like you aren't being super-clear with him. I don't see where he's giving you more work at all, really.
*The laptop issue could have been fine if in the discussion you said you wanted to keep it. When surprised with a new one, you could have told him you didn't want a new one but you appreciated the gesture. How much more work is it to get a new laptop up and running versus trying to keep a dying one alive?
*The kids and the food? He got the kids out of the house, right? Unless you specifically said NOT to return with freezer items, I don't see the issue.
*The friend being able to help out earlier than planned doesn't seem like an issue at all. You just needed to either rearrange your schedule or tell him the morning wouldn't work.
I understand your frustration. I've been involved with men who thought "helping" with dinner involved ordering pizza as though the idea of wasting money by ordering pizza never occurred to me. And men who spent hours pruning a lilac post-hurricane, completely ignoring a half-acre of yard wreckage.
But in your examples, it doesn't seem like he's really screwing things up that much.
In any case, the answer is to be really clear about what help actually looks like.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 6:02 AM on March 13, 2016 [26 favorites]
*The laptop issue could have been fine if in the discussion you said you wanted to keep it. When surprised with a new one, you could have told him you didn't want a new one but you appreciated the gesture. How much more work is it to get a new laptop up and running versus trying to keep a dying one alive?
*The kids and the food? He got the kids out of the house, right? Unless you specifically said NOT to return with freezer items, I don't see the issue.
*The friend being able to help out earlier than planned doesn't seem like an issue at all. You just needed to either rearrange your schedule or tell him the morning wouldn't work.
I understand your frustration. I've been involved with men who thought "helping" with dinner involved ordering pizza as though the idea of wasting money by ordering pizza never occurred to me. And men who spent hours pruning a lilac post-hurricane, completely ignoring a half-acre of yard wreckage.
But in your examples, it doesn't seem like he's really screwing things up that much.
In any case, the answer is to be really clear about what help actually looks like.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 6:02 AM on March 13, 2016 [26 favorites]
It's a big style difference but you're both okay. He does sound like he is helping from a genuine place, but he doesn't plan/think through things the same way. My guess is you can come closer together but it will always be a point where your personalities rub. Things that might help:
1. Acknowledge that his spontaneity has an up side too. Yes, the kids ate junk food but going out with one parent for junk food is a bonding experience too. There are probably healthier ways his spontaneity provides your family with moments of being alive to the possibility of the right now, so if you look for that upside it will remind you it's an approach to life, not an act of aggression against your plans.
2. Develop the ground rules like for spending. An anecdote: my husband has moments of wild generosity. One Xmas when we were already overspent in my opinion, he bought my 9 year old a *$700* guitar. I made him return it, which humiliated him and took a big fight. It was awful. But it needed to happen. The next year we made a serious Xmas budget and both stuck to it. Later he agreed. On the flip side, for a while I was driving a lemon of a car whose electrical system would just die, and it was getting dangerous. We'd had it in the shop multiple times. (Volvo, if anyone cares.) My husband made us take a loan for a new to us car. I was upset about the money but in retrospect he was right, and we worked it out financially. We each have spending strengths and weaknesses.
3. you asked for perspective so...my husband and I both have a tendency to /not start/ things. I am a bit better at it but we'll look at a job like redoing the driveway and freak out at the time/money/decisions. I almost wish one of us would throw the ball even if there would be craziness in chasing it down. Neither of us asks friends for help and I am almost salivating at the thought of a spouse who would arrange for help rather than (actual example) building an entire scaffolding system in a room to hold drywall up. So...your feelings are valid and your boundaries are important! For sure! But imperfection is okay and his approach does have some advantages, like things actually do start happening.
Hope that helps.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:31 AM on March 13, 2016 [7 favorites]
1. Acknowledge that his spontaneity has an up side too. Yes, the kids ate junk food but going out with one parent for junk food is a bonding experience too. There are probably healthier ways his spontaneity provides your family with moments of being alive to the possibility of the right now, so if you look for that upside it will remind you it's an approach to life, not an act of aggression against your plans.
2. Develop the ground rules like for spending. An anecdote: my husband has moments of wild generosity. One Xmas when we were already overspent in my opinion, he bought my 9 year old a *$700* guitar. I made him return it, which humiliated him and took a big fight. It was awful. But it needed to happen. The next year we made a serious Xmas budget and both stuck to it. Later he agreed. On the flip side, for a while I was driving a lemon of a car whose electrical system would just die, and it was getting dangerous. We'd had it in the shop multiple times. (Volvo, if anyone cares.) My husband made us take a loan for a new to us car. I was upset about the money but in retrospect he was right, and we worked it out financially. We each have spending strengths and weaknesses.
3. you asked for perspective so...my husband and I both have a tendency to /not start/ things. I am a bit better at it but we'll look at a job like redoing the driveway and freak out at the time/money/decisions. I almost wish one of us would throw the ball even if there would be craziness in chasing it down. Neither of us asks friends for help and I am almost salivating at the thought of a spouse who would arrange for help rather than (actual example) building an entire scaffolding system in a room to hold drywall up. So...your feelings are valid and your boundaries are important! For sure! But imperfection is okay and his approach does have some advantages, like things actually do start happening.
Hope that helps.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:31 AM on March 13, 2016 [7 favorites]
I would definitely get into ciunseling about this. There are a few reasons why this question makes my spidey-senses tingle a bit.
One, I think part of it may be your issue, in the sense that if you have a serious struggle to ask for help in the first place (if it elicits feelings of shame or inadequacy), then having to *further negotiate* when it was so painful to ask in the first place is probably a big part of your resentment. The gist is, I was already in this humiliating position and I hate it, and any further need to dwell on it is excruciating. In fact, it's normal to need help, and in a healthy partnership there is a less fraught give and take about it. So I think you'd benefit from some personal work about not feeling like you need to run it all and being ok with asking for help.
But the other part of it is, the I'm-listening-but-all-I'll-come-up-with-are-infuriating-responses thing is so incredibly resonant of my experience with a passive-aggressive husband that I bet there is a lot going on, on his end too. Passive-aggressives are frequently dependent on their super-competent partners, but are deeply conflicted about it, and that seeps out in super sneaky ways--made even more maddening because there is very often this layer of plausible deniability. Is he conflict avoidant? What happens when you raise this issue with him? Does he get defensive ("but I did help!")? Have you tried the tack of delegating entire projects to him and he just won't take them on? If so, big red flags.
posted by Sublimity at 6:37 AM on March 13, 2016 [26 favorites]
One, I think part of it may be your issue, in the sense that if you have a serious struggle to ask for help in the first place (if it elicits feelings of shame or inadequacy), then having to *further negotiate* when it was so painful to ask in the first place is probably a big part of your resentment. The gist is, I was already in this humiliating position and I hate it, and any further need to dwell on it is excruciating. In fact, it's normal to need help, and in a healthy partnership there is a less fraught give and take about it. So I think you'd benefit from some personal work about not feeling like you need to run it all and being ok with asking for help.
But the other part of it is, the I'm-listening-but-all-I'll-come-up-with-are-infuriating-responses thing is so incredibly resonant of my experience with a passive-aggressive husband that I bet there is a lot going on, on his end too. Passive-aggressives are frequently dependent on their super-competent partners, but are deeply conflicted about it, and that seeps out in super sneaky ways--made even more maddening because there is very often this layer of plausible deniability. Is he conflict avoidant? What happens when you raise this issue with him? Does he get defensive ("but I did help!")? Have you tried the tack of delegating entire projects to him and he just won't take them on? If so, big red flags.
posted by Sublimity at 6:37 AM on March 13, 2016 [26 favorites]
Sublimity's answer was so close to what I was going to say.
Sounds like there is little to no alignment of communication styles or problem-solving strategy models. You value re-use, working with what you have, planning, structure, goal-oriented methods of managing situations.
He values... other things.
Not that this is wrong or bad- but it is when these styles cause conflict and all the negative things you wrote about. Causes them over and over again. Whoever commented about "speaking different languages" nailed it. That is exactly what is going on. He does not understand you. You do not understand him. You cannot communicate.
You need to learn each other's language. Communication will never occur otherwise. Counseling as soon as possible. With the degree of frustration you are expressing, nothing else will work.
You sound smart, articulate, aware, and capable of verbalizing your needs and your expectations. you probably are very successful in other areas of life that rely on those evolved communication skills. So here, you also feel you should be able to make this work. And thus you keep trying (but failing). And it is starting to crush your own self-esteem.
If for no other reason, you must do what is necessary to address this. It's never OK to sacrifice your own peace of mind. Your kids need you to be your best self. You need to be your best self. Your husband deserves your honesty. He needs to know how deeply unhappy this dynamic is making you. And if you were capable of fixing it, you would. But if a problem is bigger than your own abilities, you must seek out help. There is never shame or failure in that. Don't allow yourself to feel like seeking help is an indicator of your own deficiency.
Relax. Breathe. Acknowledge that help is required and use your skills to set forth a course of action that accomplishes the finding, scheduling and initiation of counseling for you and your husband.
Just making that decision will probably boost your mindset. The first step is the biggest one.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 7:02 AM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
Sounds like there is little to no alignment of communication styles or problem-solving strategy models. You value re-use, working with what you have, planning, structure, goal-oriented methods of managing situations.
He values... other things.
Not that this is wrong or bad- but it is when these styles cause conflict and all the negative things you wrote about. Causes them over and over again. Whoever commented about "speaking different languages" nailed it. That is exactly what is going on. He does not understand you. You do not understand him. You cannot communicate.
You need to learn each other's language. Communication will never occur otherwise. Counseling as soon as possible. With the degree of frustration you are expressing, nothing else will work.
You sound smart, articulate, aware, and capable of verbalizing your needs and your expectations. you probably are very successful in other areas of life that rely on those evolved communication skills. So here, you also feel you should be able to make this work. And thus you keep trying (but failing). And it is starting to crush your own self-esteem.
If for no other reason, you must do what is necessary to address this. It's never OK to sacrifice your own peace of mind. Your kids need you to be your best self. You need to be your best self. Your husband deserves your honesty. He needs to know how deeply unhappy this dynamic is making you. And if you were capable of fixing it, you would. But if a problem is bigger than your own abilities, you must seek out help. There is never shame or failure in that. Don't allow yourself to feel like seeking help is an indicator of your own deficiency.
Relax. Breathe. Acknowledge that help is required and use your skills to set forth a course of action that accomplishes the finding, scheduling and initiation of counseling for you and your husband.
Just making that decision will probably boost your mindset. The first step is the biggest one.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 7:02 AM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
You are not communicating to him well and he's not a mind reader.
1 The computer thing. You want to preserve it as long as possible. But it's causing you enough grief and aggravation that you're bitching about it all the time. Solution: shit doesn't last forever, just get a new one, laptops are cheap as dirt now. He didn't anticipate that you'd have an issue with transferring the data There's a solution: Take it where you got it, and have THEM do the transfer.
2. You asked him to take the kids out of the house so that you can clean and defrost. You didn't tell him how long you needed him gone. "I need 6 hours, see a movie, take them for putt-putt golfing. Don't come home with any junk!"
3. You planned for buddy to come in the afternoon. Buddy decided he'd rather knock it out and do something else in the afternoon. Buddy is doing YOU the favor. You juggle your shit to accommodate buddy's schedule, or you thank him for offering but perhaps another time.
People have very different styles of thinking. Some would say that women tend to have webs of thoughts interconnected in patterns and men tend to be very linear, only able to keep one idea or task in mind at a time. It's just how we're wired. Neither way of doing things is wrong, it's just different.
I find that being VERY specific helps me get my point across and keeps it easy for Husbunny to follow the directions. So I draw up a list of things to do, and put it in the order in which I need him to do them. Otherwise he get's frustrated at my frustration.
What kept you from asking him when he came home with the kids too early, "Hon, I need WAY more time. Can you take them out for another 4 hours?"
Accept that you have very different ways of thinking and that it's okay, just shift the way you talk to him. If therapy can help, then do that. But just try being more specific first and see if that helps.
Also, if someone helps you with something, you don't have to pay them back by adding more to your burdens (baking a homemade cake.) Offer to have them join you for dinner, or get pizza and beer.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 7:06 AM on March 13, 2016 [27 favorites]
1 The computer thing. You want to preserve it as long as possible. But it's causing you enough grief and aggravation that you're bitching about it all the time. Solution: shit doesn't last forever, just get a new one, laptops are cheap as dirt now. He didn't anticipate that you'd have an issue with transferring the data There's a solution: Take it where you got it, and have THEM do the transfer.
2. You asked him to take the kids out of the house so that you can clean and defrost. You didn't tell him how long you needed him gone. "I need 6 hours, see a movie, take them for putt-putt golfing. Don't come home with any junk!"
3. You planned for buddy to come in the afternoon. Buddy decided he'd rather knock it out and do something else in the afternoon. Buddy is doing YOU the favor. You juggle your shit to accommodate buddy's schedule, or you thank him for offering but perhaps another time.
People have very different styles of thinking. Some would say that women tend to have webs of thoughts interconnected in patterns and men tend to be very linear, only able to keep one idea or task in mind at a time. It's just how we're wired. Neither way of doing things is wrong, it's just different.
I find that being VERY specific helps me get my point across and keeps it easy for Husbunny to follow the directions. So I draw up a list of things to do, and put it in the order in which I need him to do them. Otherwise he get's frustrated at my frustration.
What kept you from asking him when he came home with the kids too early, "Hon, I need WAY more time. Can you take them out for another 4 hours?"
Accept that you have very different ways of thinking and that it's okay, just shift the way you talk to him. If therapy can help, then do that. But just try being more specific first and see if that helps.
Also, if someone helps you with something, you don't have to pay them back by adding more to your burdens (baking a homemade cake.) Offer to have them join you for dinner, or get pizza and beer.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 7:06 AM on March 13, 2016 [27 favorites]
> I will identify a specific problem and ask for his help with it,
I'm wondering if you are giving him the bigger picture, or if your dislike of asking for help means you are asking only for the thing that is most desperately needed. If he's knows that he is taking the kids out while you clean, then bringing home some freezer-fillers and kids that aren't hungry is a kindness. If he knows instead that you are making dinner and frozen meals for the next two weeks, and there will be a healthy dinner and full freezer when he gets home, then the behavior might be different. In my more guess-y family, buying a computer would be the correct answer to complaining about computer problems (in fact, I did this exact thing recently and it was clearly the right response.)
My partner and I "captain" different projects, and that may be another answer: "honey, you are captaining the Gutter-Cleaning Ship this weekend, and I've got the USS Power Washing to helm. If your friend can do that work solo that's fine, but I'm in the middle of my project right now." It sounds like he might be thinking of these things as "partner's project I have to help with" instead of "thing I am in charge of". Changing the framing might help.
On the other hand, if he is making appointments for you without checking your schedule beforehand, then that's also an issue with lack of communication and his assumption that your time is always unscheduled. So maybe you just need more time to talk about short and long term goals, or have a shared calendar or to do list, so he knows what is going on that he doesn't see. It might be a couples counseling thing or it might just be an uncomfortable conversation or two.
posted by tchemgrrl at 7:20 AM on March 13, 2016 [13 favorites]
I'm wondering if you are giving him the bigger picture, or if your dislike of asking for help means you are asking only for the thing that is most desperately needed. If he's knows that he is taking the kids out while you clean, then bringing home some freezer-fillers and kids that aren't hungry is a kindness. If he knows instead that you are making dinner and frozen meals for the next two weeks, and there will be a healthy dinner and full freezer when he gets home, then the behavior might be different. In my more guess-y family, buying a computer would be the correct answer to complaining about computer problems (in fact, I did this exact thing recently and it was clearly the right response.)
My partner and I "captain" different projects, and that may be another answer: "honey, you are captaining the Gutter-Cleaning Ship this weekend, and I've got the USS Power Washing to helm. If your friend can do that work solo that's fine, but I'm in the middle of my project right now." It sounds like he might be thinking of these things as "partner's project I have to help with" instead of "thing I am in charge of". Changing the framing might help.
On the other hand, if he is making appointments for you without checking your schedule beforehand, then that's also an issue with lack of communication and his assumption that your time is always unscheduled. So maybe you just need more time to talk about short and long term goals, or have a shared calendar or to do list, so he knows what is going on that he doesn't see. It might be a couples counseling thing or it might just be an uncomfortable conversation or two.
posted by tchemgrrl at 7:20 AM on March 13, 2016 [13 favorites]
I disagree with some previous responses to the point where this thread feels pre-emotional-labor-thread. I don't think that if you're cleaning out the freezer that Husband needs to be given direction on how to care for his children or not to immediately fill up the freezer again. That's common sense or, at least, the sense that women have to develop while in charge of all these balls in the air that men aren't obligated to.
I agree that splitting up taks might help the most ( as well as communication therapy). Right now it's hard to communicate taks so why not make them solo jobs? List all the things you need to do, then his (and I bet you're list will be a lot longer) and anything that affects the house or relationship or children or neighborhood, that gets divided evenly and he's in charge of the whole thing. You pick items you won't need assistance in and get them checked off easily. Along with the lack of stress improving your relationship, I wonder if putting things directly on his plate instead of your husband feeling like he only has to "help" with the house or kids ect would help him rethink ways to handle problems
posted by blue_and_bronze at 7:35 AM on March 13, 2016 [28 favorites]
I agree that splitting up taks might help the most ( as well as communication therapy). Right now it's hard to communicate taks so why not make them solo jobs? List all the things you need to do, then his (and I bet you're list will be a lot longer) and anything that affects the house or relationship or children or neighborhood, that gets divided evenly and he's in charge of the whole thing. You pick items you won't need assistance in and get them checked off easily. Along with the lack of stress improving your relationship, I wonder if putting things directly on his plate instead of your husband feeling like he only has to "help" with the house or kids ect would help him rethink ways to handle problems
posted by blue_and_bronze at 7:35 AM on March 13, 2016 [28 favorites]
I would really look at this more as communication and a process problem to be worked on mutually.
So parts that you could consider:
Define the problem with all parameters (asmentioned, how many hours? )
After the problem is presented, why dont you both brainstorm more than one way to address it with contingencies? He might have had a few options for kid afternoon. You might have had a list of tasks with different options (he doesnt show up, only a few hours, all afternoon).
Meet to discuss. This is where you two could avoid halfof the problems before plans are implemented.
Step away and reflect on what the other person proposed, then meet up again. You could have pushed for item b with the kds. You coukd have suggested alternative to the computer problem.
Discuss all of these a week later after it has happened. Not as a why didnt you, but what might have helped, how could communication by improved, acknowledgement and thank you.
Other things to that could make this smoother:
- what things are eachof you good at, or like/dont like to do? So working with friend in the morning should have been easy...maybe that should have been he is better at communicating with his friend or plan does not go according to plans. Or did you not want to transfer files and coukd he have done that?
-i would step back and acknowledge and be thankful, too. As in a friend helping out is a huge favor, they might only have time x available. Be thankful about tht.
-Ask yourself if part of the stress is that it didnt go your way? The computer solution seemed appropriate. It wold break down, files wold be lost. Sit back and ask yourself why this wasnt viable (or give freedom for more than one solution.). Or if you had x hours to clean, is junk food/happy kids not interrupting really that bad?
posted by Wolfster at 7:38 AM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
So parts that you could consider:
Define the problem with all parameters (asmentioned, how many hours? )
After the problem is presented, why dont you both brainstorm more than one way to address it with contingencies? He might have had a few options for kid afternoon. You might have had a list of tasks with different options (he doesnt show up, only a few hours, all afternoon).
Meet to discuss. This is where you two could avoid halfof the problems before plans are implemented.
Step away and reflect on what the other person proposed, then meet up again. You could have pushed for item b with the kds. You coukd have suggested alternative to the computer problem.
Discuss all of these a week later after it has happened. Not as a why didnt you, but what might have helped, how could communication by improved, acknowledgement and thank you.
Other things to that could make this smoother:
- what things are eachof you good at, or like/dont like to do? So working with friend in the morning should have been easy...maybe that should have been he is better at communicating with his friend or plan does not go according to plans. Or did you not want to transfer files and coukd he have done that?
-i would step back and acknowledge and be thankful, too. As in a friend helping out is a huge favor, they might only have time x available. Be thankful about tht.
-Ask yourself if part of the stress is that it didnt go your way? The computer solution seemed appropriate. It wold break down, files wold be lost. Sit back and ask yourself why this wasnt viable (or give freedom for more than one solution.). Or if you had x hours to clean, is junk food/happy kids not interrupting really that bad?
posted by Wolfster at 7:38 AM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
I agree with blue_and_bronze. How come the OP has to tell her husband not to bring home any frozen food when she sent him out of the house so she could defrost the freezer?
And sure, the friend was doing her a favour, but that still doesn't mean he should just change plans - do we know how often OP or her husband have helped that friend?
I'm seriously surprised that this thread has become a pile-on of "do more emotional labour!" Unfortunately, I can't really come up with a solution that isn't "do more emotional labour"...
posted by LoonyLovegood at 7:39 AM on March 13, 2016 [37 favorites]
And sure, the friend was doing her a favour, but that still doesn't mean he should just change plans - do we know how often OP or her husband have helped that friend?
I'm seriously surprised that this thread has become a pile-on of "do more emotional labour!" Unfortunately, I can't really come up with a solution that isn't "do more emotional labour"...
posted by LoonyLovegood at 7:39 AM on March 13, 2016 [37 favorites]
This isn't uncommon. You want things done your way on your terms. Many women go through this. You will be happier if you start letting go of things. Controlling everything can make you crazy and can ruin the love and joy that he is throwing your way. Therapy can sometimes help but, the big thing is for you to decide to let things go and be happy. It's really hard but doable.
Things that help:
1. Understand that your husband is not Jesus. He cannot be everything to you. You must find friends to talk to to take the pressure off of him.
2. Outsource what you can. Hire a cleaning service, a lawn guy, a baby sitter. If you want something done the way that you want it done, then get it done by a professional. You aren't paying your husband so he is allowed to do things in his own way.
3. Let go of certain expectations of yourself. Just throw all that crap out of the freezer. Forcing your family to eat something so that it doesn't go to waste is silly. The world will survive is you toss a 6 month frozen chicken. The kids will still thrive if they have fast food. It doesn't make you a careless person to buy a new computer, with all the bells and whistles, and dump your old computer.
4. If you ask your husband to do something, value his contribution, even if when he does it in his own way.
5. If you want something done a certain way, do it yourself. Don't force your way of doing things on others (unless you are paying them).
6. Flake off at least one morning a week. Leave the kids in their pajamas and let them eat whatever they can reach in the pantry while you have a second cup of coffee. Notice how nothing bad happens.
7. Look for the wonderful things that your husband does. Watch how your children smile when he walks into the room. Listen to him breathing next to you at night. Love him for who he is.
8. Accept yourself as flawed and still lovable.
This is the big one-
9. Figure out who in your life is critical of you and get them out of your life. If it's mom, don't talk to her every day. If it's a friend, boot them. If someone makes you feel like crap every time you see them, you don't have to see them anymore. It's okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. You owe it to your children to be the best mommy that you can be and allowing someone to tear you down is doing a disservice to your babies. You can ask your husband to help you with this, ask him to be your buffer. He might be really good at it.
posted by myselfasme at 7:43 AM on March 13, 2016 [13 favorites]
Things that help:
1. Understand that your husband is not Jesus. He cannot be everything to you. You must find friends to talk to to take the pressure off of him.
2. Outsource what you can. Hire a cleaning service, a lawn guy, a baby sitter. If you want something done the way that you want it done, then get it done by a professional. You aren't paying your husband so he is allowed to do things in his own way.
3. Let go of certain expectations of yourself. Just throw all that crap out of the freezer. Forcing your family to eat something so that it doesn't go to waste is silly. The world will survive is you toss a 6 month frozen chicken. The kids will still thrive if they have fast food. It doesn't make you a careless person to buy a new computer, with all the bells and whistles, and dump your old computer.
4. If you ask your husband to do something, value his contribution, even if when he does it in his own way.
5. If you want something done a certain way, do it yourself. Don't force your way of doing things on others (unless you are paying them).
6. Flake off at least one morning a week. Leave the kids in their pajamas and let them eat whatever they can reach in the pantry while you have a second cup of coffee. Notice how nothing bad happens.
7. Look for the wonderful things that your husband does. Watch how your children smile when he walks into the room. Listen to him breathing next to you at night. Love him for who he is.
8. Accept yourself as flawed and still lovable.
This is the big one-
9. Figure out who in your life is critical of you and get them out of your life. If it's mom, don't talk to her every day. If it's a friend, boot them. If someone makes you feel like crap every time you see them, you don't have to see them anymore. It's okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. You owe it to your children to be the best mommy that you can be and allowing someone to tear you down is doing a disservice to your babies. You can ask your husband to help you with this, ask him to be your buffer. He might be really good at it.
posted by myselfasme at 7:43 AM on March 13, 2016 [13 favorites]
Before you read what I've written below, I just want to say that I don't believe that your husband is doing everything perfectly, and he almost certainly needs to work on the way that he communicates with you. That said, I think that some of your own behaviors and attitudes may be causing you trouble, and since you have more control over your own behavior and attitudes than his, you might want to start with yourself.
So, to the point. I say this with all kindness and sympathy, because you remind me of myself in this regard: I think you're being a bit of a perfectionist. It feels like you're trying to control all the factors, all the time, even ones that are not truly under your control (or his), and you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself (and him) when it doesn't work out. It might be worth it for you to recognize areas that you can't control, cultivate flexibility, and accept some 80% solutions.
For instance, in the laptop situation, what would you have accepted as a satisfactory solution? It sounds like you wanted something like this: "My husband and I will spend time and energy on bandaid fixes for this laptop that is going to die soon anyway, also taking the risk that it will die suddenly and take a bunch of data with it, so that we can feel like we did everything possible to delay the inevitable cost of a replacement." Now, reasonable people can disagree about the point at which the diminishing returns of such a project make it more sensible to just stop wasting time and buy a new laptop. It sounds like he made a judgement call that the time spent on bandaid fixes was no longer worth it and that you needed a new laptop -- which is not unreasonable. Meanwhile, you were thinking that it was still worth sinking your (and his) time and energy into it -- and that's not unreasonable either, unless you have a pattern of chronically undervaluing your (and his) time and energy.
About the friend coming over to help: in this situation, it sounds like you're holding your husband responsible for his friend's behavior, which is not even under his control. It sounds like he had a choice between (1) getting his friend's help at an unexpected time, and (2) not getting his friend's help that day at all. It sounds like he made a reasonable judgement call. You might have made the opposite call -- to forgo the friend's help instead of changing your plans -- but at what cost? Would you then have spent time doing those fixes yourself, or expected your husband to do so? Would you just have put up with the inconvenience of not doing those fixes for a while longer?
About the car repairs -- same deal. The shop didn't have an appointment at the perfect time, so he had to choose between (1) prioritizing the engine repair and accept an early appointment at a non-ideal time, or (2) delaying the engine repair in favor of a later, more convenient appointment. Again, your husband didn't have control over what times the shop has available, and he made a reasonable judgement call. You might have made the opposite call -- but at what cost? Would you have accepted the risk of not repairing your car for a longer time?
Maybe I am overgeneralizing here, but what sounds familiar to me about your pattern of choices is that you're demanding perfection (even about things that aren't under your control), and you're trying to get there by ...
- working harder, faster, longer
- spending less money on yourself and the things you need
- accepting inconvenience and risk to yourself
- depriving yourself of time, energy, and the tools you need for living
- basically, undervaluing yourself in a lot of different ways.
And, unfortunately, it seems like you may be extending these attitudes to your husband and kids to some degree as well.
Here are some ideas about how to change this pattern.
Talk to your husband about what your ideal solutions would look like. What are your success criteria? Do these criteria seem reasonable? Does it seem like achieving success is completely under your (and his) control, or might it be only partially under your (and his) control? This also gives him a chance to communicate clearly with you about what he thinks is reasonable or not, and what success would look like to him.
Try letting go of control of the problems your husband is working on. You're not his manager; if he's taken responsibility for something, try stepping back from it a bit. This is not to say you shouldn't express your needs, but just that you can experiment with letting go of taking responsibility for all the things, all the time. Another way to think about it: work with him to establish WHAT you both want to happen -- but if he takes responsibility, let go of control over the WAY it happens. Ask him to (or let him) take responsibility for a larger share of tasks than he's currently doing, and then practice letting go of those.
Practice being flexible and rolling with the punches.
Practice asking for help.
Practice accepting the 80% solution: "That works just fine." "That got the job done." "That's good enough."
Practice recognizing external circumstances that aren't under your control. Try saying out loud: "That isn't under my control."
Experiment with unstructured time -- what's life like without a to-do list for a day or a week?
Experiment with mindfulness and being present in the moment. You can start with the tiniest amount of time you like -- try just 3 breaths.
Experiment with prioritizing your own needs.
Spend some time thinking about how you feel about yourself when you don't tick off every box on your to-do list. Does it make you feel like a failure? Do you feel ashamed of yourself? Are you self-critical and mean to yourself? Do you feel frustrated and angry at yourself? Does it make you stressed or irritable or anxious? Do those feelings spill over to the people around you?
Experiment with being extremely, extremely kind to yourself -- way kinder and more forgiving of yourself than you think is reasonable. See if that spills over to the people around you, too.
If any of this is ringing true for you, you may also wish to look into individual therapy, or even just start by reading some articles or books about perfectionism.
I wish you all the luck in the world on this.
posted by ourobouros at 8:14 AM on March 13, 2016 [26 favorites]
So, to the point. I say this with all kindness and sympathy, because you remind me of myself in this regard: I think you're being a bit of a perfectionist. It feels like you're trying to control all the factors, all the time, even ones that are not truly under your control (or his), and you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself (and him) when it doesn't work out. It might be worth it for you to recognize areas that you can't control, cultivate flexibility, and accept some 80% solutions.
For instance, in the laptop situation, what would you have accepted as a satisfactory solution? It sounds like you wanted something like this: "My husband and I will spend time and energy on bandaid fixes for this laptop that is going to die soon anyway, also taking the risk that it will die suddenly and take a bunch of data with it, so that we can feel like we did everything possible to delay the inevitable cost of a replacement." Now, reasonable people can disagree about the point at which the diminishing returns of such a project make it more sensible to just stop wasting time and buy a new laptop. It sounds like he made a judgement call that the time spent on bandaid fixes was no longer worth it and that you needed a new laptop -- which is not unreasonable. Meanwhile, you were thinking that it was still worth sinking your (and his) time and energy into it -- and that's not unreasonable either, unless you have a pattern of chronically undervaluing your (and his) time and energy.
About the friend coming over to help: in this situation, it sounds like you're holding your husband responsible for his friend's behavior, which is not even under his control. It sounds like he had a choice between (1) getting his friend's help at an unexpected time, and (2) not getting his friend's help that day at all. It sounds like he made a reasonable judgement call. You might have made the opposite call -- to forgo the friend's help instead of changing your plans -- but at what cost? Would you then have spent time doing those fixes yourself, or expected your husband to do so? Would you just have put up with the inconvenience of not doing those fixes for a while longer?
About the car repairs -- same deal. The shop didn't have an appointment at the perfect time, so he had to choose between (1) prioritizing the engine repair and accept an early appointment at a non-ideal time, or (2) delaying the engine repair in favor of a later, more convenient appointment. Again, your husband didn't have control over what times the shop has available, and he made a reasonable judgement call. You might have made the opposite call -- but at what cost? Would you have accepted the risk of not repairing your car for a longer time?
Maybe I am overgeneralizing here, but what sounds familiar to me about your pattern of choices is that you're demanding perfection (even about things that aren't under your control), and you're trying to get there by ...
- working harder, faster, longer
- spending less money on yourself and the things you need
- accepting inconvenience and risk to yourself
- depriving yourself of time, energy, and the tools you need for living
- basically, undervaluing yourself in a lot of different ways.
And, unfortunately, it seems like you may be extending these attitudes to your husband and kids to some degree as well.
Here are some ideas about how to change this pattern.
Talk to your husband about what your ideal solutions would look like. What are your success criteria? Do these criteria seem reasonable? Does it seem like achieving success is completely under your (and his) control, or might it be only partially under your (and his) control? This also gives him a chance to communicate clearly with you about what he thinks is reasonable or not, and what success would look like to him.
Try letting go of control of the problems your husband is working on. You're not his manager; if he's taken responsibility for something, try stepping back from it a bit. This is not to say you shouldn't express your needs, but just that you can experiment with letting go of taking responsibility for all the things, all the time. Another way to think about it: work with him to establish WHAT you both want to happen -- but if he takes responsibility, let go of control over the WAY it happens. Ask him to (or let him) take responsibility for a larger share of tasks than he's currently doing, and then practice letting go of those.
Practice being flexible and rolling with the punches.
Practice asking for help.
Practice accepting the 80% solution: "That works just fine." "That got the job done." "That's good enough."
Practice recognizing external circumstances that aren't under your control. Try saying out loud: "That isn't under my control."
Experiment with unstructured time -- what's life like without a to-do list for a day or a week?
Experiment with mindfulness and being present in the moment. You can start with the tiniest amount of time you like -- try just 3 breaths.
Experiment with prioritizing your own needs.
Spend some time thinking about how you feel about yourself when you don't tick off every box on your to-do list. Does it make you feel like a failure? Do you feel ashamed of yourself? Are you self-critical and mean to yourself? Do you feel frustrated and angry at yourself? Does it make you stressed or irritable or anxious? Do those feelings spill over to the people around you?
Experiment with being extremely, extremely kind to yourself -- way kinder and more forgiving of yourself than you think is reasonable. See if that spills over to the people around you, too.
If any of this is ringing true for you, you may also wish to look into individual therapy, or even just start by reading some articles or books about perfectionism.
I wish you all the luck in the world on this.
posted by ourobouros at 8:14 AM on March 13, 2016 [26 favorites]
How is his buddy offering to come over early your husband's fault?
I ask that question, because it feels like you're internalizing a lot of things and bundling them together as all part of a big huge problem, when they're at worst minor incidents. I realize that these are just examples, and there are probably more of them, but as you deal with this problem, however you deal with it, you have to be cautious that you aren't making it more than it actually is.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:00 AM on March 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
I ask that question, because it feels like you're internalizing a lot of things and bundling them together as all part of a big huge problem, when they're at worst minor incidents. I realize that these are just examples, and there are probably more of them, but as you deal with this problem, however you deal with it, you have to be cautious that you aren't making it more than it actually is.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:00 AM on March 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
I disagree with some previous responses to the point where this thread feels pre-emotional-labor-thread. I don't think that if you're cleaning out the freezer that Husband needs to be given direction on how to care for his children or not to immediately fill up the freezer again. That's common sense or, at least, the sense that women have to develop while in charge of all these balls in the air that men aren't obligated to.
To you it's common sense, but in many cases people can't extrapolate that. Husband thinks a couple of hours will cut it, Wife needs 6 hours. You have to COMMUNICATE this. Common Sense ain't so common and sometimes it's a difference in thinking, NOT a dude slacking.
Honestly, if I thought the freezer was defrosted and cleaned, I might bring home some new stuff to put in there too.
You really do have to decide what you want the outcome to be. Do you want your husband to be on your same wavelength without having to be told explicitly? That may never happen. Do you want him to stay out of the house for 6 hours? Tell him that.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:03 AM on March 13, 2016 [24 favorites]
To you it's common sense, but in many cases people can't extrapolate that. Husband thinks a couple of hours will cut it, Wife needs 6 hours. You have to COMMUNICATE this. Common Sense ain't so common and sometimes it's a difference in thinking, NOT a dude slacking.
Honestly, if I thought the freezer was defrosted and cleaned, I might bring home some new stuff to put in there too.
You really do have to decide what you want the outcome to be. Do you want your husband to be on your same wavelength without having to be told explicitly? That may never happen. Do you want him to stay out of the house for 6 hours? Tell him that.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:03 AM on March 13, 2016 [24 favorites]
I think there's room for improvement in the communication department on a couple of axes, but one of them is easy low-hanging fruit: make sure you have an actual dialogue about things instead of [request][acknowledge][wheels fall off].
I totally see the issue with the friend coming over at 9am, and it's because your husband both didn't hear you AND in turn did not communicate the actual circumstances with the friend. You said "we're doing this from 2-5" and your husband said "hey can you come over Saturday".
Why? Because. Maybe there's some ADD there, but he's not engaging and you can't make him care, but you can make a point of bringing the details out in the open instead of hoping he secretly divines them.
You just have to make overcommunication a habit, there's no point in wasting your time being mad about it when you can fix a lot of it just by talking an extra 90 seconds. "The reason I say 2-5 is because other times will be for other things, so make sure you tell him that, okay? We'll feed him dinner." "It's going to take probably 4-5 hours to defrost the freezer, what could you do with the kids to kill that time?...Okay, great, and hey - the freezer won't be back up to speed for a day, fyi. Don't feed 'em more than a snack, we're having Freezer Surprise for dinner."
Ask him to brainstorm solutions with you instead of just telling him to fix something and leaving him to it, if you want control over that process. (I personally would have bought you a new computer too, unless you are in dire financial straits it was going to need to happen eventually, life's too short to spend that much time waiting for shit to crash. He solved the problem, it was a reasonable solution, it just wasn't YOUR solution. I hear you, it would have made me mad too, but a little bit because he was right. Though it shouldn't have been a surprise, it should have been "get your purse, we're going to Best Buy." But if you're participating in a dynamic that requires guessing, it might have felt like he had to do it that way.)
Someone else mentioned the common sense problem, and you'd be surprised how much of that you can mitigate just by voicing the information you're holding in your head. I have to do this at work all the time so I'm used to it, and I have anxiety so I always need to walk through the details, so unless it's something I know he's experienced before, it's always "I'm going to do X. It will probably take about Y time, and I need your help lifting the Z at the beginning and end so I need to do it when you're going to be home. Will Sunday around 2:00 work?"
We still have some bizarre Murphy's Law corollaries that I don't always anticipate. If I send him for a thing but don't have a brand and size, I have to describe in detail what I want and what I don't want, or he will bring home something that surely only sprung into existence at the moment he grabbed it. If I sent him to the store for chicken without specifying thighs, boneless skinless, family pack (even if he has put away exactly that thing from the shopping hundreds of times before) he will bring home a single chicken knee. I don't understand it, I just have to plan for it and stay near my phone because we have fewer fights if he texts me a picture of the chicken knee from the store asking if that's what I wanted.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:35 AM on March 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
I totally see the issue with the friend coming over at 9am, and it's because your husband both didn't hear you AND in turn did not communicate the actual circumstances with the friend. You said "we're doing this from 2-5" and your husband said "hey can you come over Saturday".
Why? Because. Maybe there's some ADD there, but he's not engaging and you can't make him care, but you can make a point of bringing the details out in the open instead of hoping he secretly divines them.
You just have to make overcommunication a habit, there's no point in wasting your time being mad about it when you can fix a lot of it just by talking an extra 90 seconds. "The reason I say 2-5 is because other times will be for other things, so make sure you tell him that, okay? We'll feed him dinner." "It's going to take probably 4-5 hours to defrost the freezer, what could you do with the kids to kill that time?...Okay, great, and hey - the freezer won't be back up to speed for a day, fyi. Don't feed 'em more than a snack, we're having Freezer Surprise for dinner."
Ask him to brainstorm solutions with you instead of just telling him to fix something and leaving him to it, if you want control over that process. (I personally would have bought you a new computer too, unless you are in dire financial straits it was going to need to happen eventually, life's too short to spend that much time waiting for shit to crash. He solved the problem, it was a reasonable solution, it just wasn't YOUR solution. I hear you, it would have made me mad too, but a little bit because he was right. Though it shouldn't have been a surprise, it should have been "get your purse, we're going to Best Buy." But if you're participating in a dynamic that requires guessing, it might have felt like he had to do it that way.)
Someone else mentioned the common sense problem, and you'd be surprised how much of that you can mitigate just by voicing the information you're holding in your head. I have to do this at work all the time so I'm used to it, and I have anxiety so I always need to walk through the details, so unless it's something I know he's experienced before, it's always "I'm going to do X. It will probably take about Y time, and I need your help lifting the Z at the beginning and end so I need to do it when you're going to be home. Will Sunday around 2:00 work?"
We still have some bizarre Murphy's Law corollaries that I don't always anticipate. If I send him for a thing but don't have a brand and size, I have to describe in detail what I want and what I don't want, or he will bring home something that surely only sprung into existence at the moment he grabbed it. If I sent him to the store for chicken without specifying thighs, boneless skinless, family pack (even if he has put away exactly that thing from the shopping hundreds of times before) he will bring home a single chicken knee. I don't understand it, I just have to plan for it and stay near my phone because we have fewer fights if he texts me a picture of the chicken knee from the store asking if that's what I wanted.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:35 AM on March 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
Oh, and when something happens that is actively unhelpful, have a little post-mortem so it will be better next time. Sometimes I have to flat out ask my husband, "what was the plan here?" And sometimes it's a totally great plan, it's just so far off from what I had in my head that I can't see it.
Sometimes it was a really bad plan, but it's usually because I knew something he didn't, or he misunderstood some aspect that I had already figured out but didn't know he didn't know. Sharing information is great, once you get used to it.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:42 AM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
Sometimes it was a really bad plan, but it's usually because I knew something he didn't, or he misunderstood some aspect that I had already figured out but didn't know he didn't know. Sharing information is great, once you get used to it.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:42 AM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
I favorited Ruthless Bunny's comment about "Husband thinks a couple of hours will cut it, Wife needs 6 hours. You have to COMMUNICATE this. Common Sense ain't so common and sometimes it's a difference in thinking, NOT a dude slacking." At the same time, when it becomes a consistent pattern of behavior, I can see how it becomes frustrating. I have some of the same perfectionist tendencies, and I also find it's hard to accept help and am often frustrated with the help I do get.
We have found a lot of success in our marriage with the organizing concept that whoever cares more takes the lead. Serves as the "general contractor", if you will, making the high level choices and most importantly, shepherding the project to completion. I'll admit that there are a lot of downsides, such as the fact that the house is a mess because neither of us cares. But the advantage is that the person who cares the most is also the one most likely to be disappointed when things go wrong, and knows what the criteria for success are. But that requires a lot of effort from both parties. If he's doing way less than 50% of the work, it's going to be hard to get everything done with the "he who cares, shepherds".
That said, your husband's pattern of behavior would drive me nuts. Making an appointment at an inconvenient time is one thing, but then the person who made the appointment should find out when a good time is and change it! This is called taking responsibility. Bringing home frozen treats when the freezer is full is just idiotic. Buying a whole new laptop without checking first is not respectful of your possible interest in choosing the thing.
posted by wnissen at 9:42 AM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
We have found a lot of success in our marriage with the organizing concept that whoever cares more takes the lead. Serves as the "general contractor", if you will, making the high level choices and most importantly, shepherding the project to completion. I'll admit that there are a lot of downsides, such as the fact that the house is a mess because neither of us cares. But the advantage is that the person who cares the most is also the one most likely to be disappointed when things go wrong, and knows what the criteria for success are. But that requires a lot of effort from both parties. If he's doing way less than 50% of the work, it's going to be hard to get everything done with the "he who cares, shepherds".
That said, your husband's pattern of behavior would drive me nuts. Making an appointment at an inconvenient time is one thing, but then the person who made the appointment should find out when a good time is and change it! This is called taking responsibility. Bringing home frozen treats when the freezer is full is just idiotic. Buying a whole new laptop without checking first is not respectful of your possible interest in choosing the thing.
posted by wnissen at 9:42 AM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
Oh, and does he really not know when people are going to be around the house on the weekends? Not everyone is super-organized, but shouldn't a mature adult at least be aware of the whereabouts of his children and wife? Maybe a shared calendar would help with this. I just picture him sitting in an empty house, wondering, "Where is everyone?"
posted by wnissen at 9:52 AM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by wnissen at 9:52 AM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
It sounds like you all don't necessarily agree about your budget and goals, so it's naturally going to be tough for him to work independently but also do things the way you would have. Have you talked about what to (ideally) feed the kids, how much to spend on convenience, et cetera? Is his position perhaps that you're welcome to do things your way, but if left to his own devices he'll do things his? That was basically my parents' dynamic, and things were honestly much easier when my mother just embraced it. Things happened differently than they would have with her, but my dad always worked within the parameters they did share or had specifically agreed upon, so it was actually pretty predictable what would happen. And, as others have suggested, things did go most smoothly if one parent took an entire project instead of trying to jam two entirely different philosophies together. (In my own relationship, we manage to mingle responsibilities somewhat more than that, but there are still moments of, "no, I need you to do it the way I would" and, "sigh, I guess I should do it their way" on projects that are particularly important to one or the other.)
posted by teremala at 9:56 AM on March 13, 2016
posted by teremala at 9:56 AM on March 13, 2016
Sorry to say this, but I think the problem is that you're not providing context for your problems when you're communicating. You're leaving out context then getting mad when he fails to fill in the blanks. You're asking him to read your mind.
The fast food example? "Take the kids, but NOT to eat, because I'm doing XYZ for ABC reason." He just heard "take the kids," and thinks hooray, mission accomplished.
9 a.m. Saturday? "It'll be great to get help in the afternoon, so IN THE MORNING I can do XYZ for ABC reason." He just heard, "bring help on Saturday," and he did.
Laptop battery? "I want to save this laptop, NOT replace it, for ABC reason." He heard, "solve laptop problem" and wants a high five.
Try some severe over-communicating for a while. "Hey, let's stop for a second. Here's why I want XYZ to happen. Here's why it's important to me. Here's how I want the help to arrive. OK? Are we agreed?"
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:10 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
The fast food example? "Take the kids, but NOT to eat, because I'm doing XYZ for ABC reason." He just heard "take the kids," and thinks hooray, mission accomplished.
9 a.m. Saturday? "It'll be great to get help in the afternoon, so IN THE MORNING I can do XYZ for ABC reason." He just heard, "bring help on Saturday," and he did.
Laptop battery? "I want to save this laptop, NOT replace it, for ABC reason." He heard, "solve laptop problem" and wants a high five.
Try some severe over-communicating for a while. "Hey, let's stop for a second. Here's why I want XYZ to happen. Here's why it's important to me. Here's how I want the help to arrive. OK? Are we agreed?"
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:10 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
you'd be surprised how much of that you can mitigate just by voicing the information you're holding in your head.
I read through the other answers and this stuck for me. You sound anxious to me. And I know that because I do very similar things, had a lot of these unsatisfactory interactions with my partner that turned into me being like WHAT WERE YOU THINKING and wanted to find something better than that. And your husband could do some things differently, but this is just talking about you right now. A few things helped us....
1. Realizing that the goal state wasn't the project at hand, but to have better outcomes for Team Us. So a lot of communication about what that looks like, specifically...
2. Helping means doing something in a way that actually assists the other actual person, not an idealized version of either the situation or some generic person. The laptop situation I can see from both sides but ultimately it's a problem that isn't solved yet. You feel like he dumped it in your lap ("I didn't want ANOTHER project") and he probably feels like he stepped up to do something because you were constantly complaining. The issue: more discussion needs to happen so you don't feel like it's over and he didn't help you finish it. You feel bad because you now feel like you have to ask for help AGAIN to get this sorted.
3. You have to talk about what you need even though it's awkward for you. The thing that sticks for me about a lot of your exchanges is that you feel they're ended with an unsatisfactory outcome but I see them with room for more negotiation. So the car repair: "Thanks for making the appointment but I can't do that right now, so either you take it or we schedule it for another time that works for everyone" So you acknowledge that yes he was trying to be helpful but no his chosen solution didn't really help and then Team Us makes a plan that works for everyone. Similar with the buddy coming over "No that timing does not work for me, tell Fred to come over in a few hours."
It sounds as if you feel like you are being placed in "take it or leave it" situations. If you're like me (and I don't know if you are) this may be because you had terrible parents who were basically self-involved and grew up with this sort of thing. But a marriage doesn't have to be this way. At the same time, it does mean more asking for help, more explaining the situation, etc. Your husband may not be a person who is good at anticipating your needs or at achieving a mental map of what you want. This is hard but manageable. Working on your own "I am overwhelmed!!" feelings (meditation helped me, exercise, yoga, less caffeine) has made me a lot more understanding about my partner who is sweet and gracious but a lot more intuitive with less follow-through than me. I chose him for a reason but I need to remind myself of that when I am in a stressful place.
posted by jessamyn at 10:20 AM on March 13, 2016 [8 favorites]
I read through the other answers and this stuck for me. You sound anxious to me. And I know that because I do very similar things, had a lot of these unsatisfactory interactions with my partner that turned into me being like WHAT WERE YOU THINKING and wanted to find something better than that. And your husband could do some things differently, but this is just talking about you right now. A few things helped us....
1. Realizing that the goal state wasn't the project at hand, but to have better outcomes for Team Us. So a lot of communication about what that looks like, specifically...
2. Helping means doing something in a way that actually assists the other actual person, not an idealized version of either the situation or some generic person. The laptop situation I can see from both sides but ultimately it's a problem that isn't solved yet. You feel like he dumped it in your lap ("I didn't want ANOTHER project") and he probably feels like he stepped up to do something because you were constantly complaining. The issue: more discussion needs to happen so you don't feel like it's over and he didn't help you finish it. You feel bad because you now feel like you have to ask for help AGAIN to get this sorted.
3. You have to talk about what you need even though it's awkward for you. The thing that sticks for me about a lot of your exchanges is that you feel they're ended with an unsatisfactory outcome but I see them with room for more negotiation. So the car repair: "Thanks for making the appointment but I can't do that right now, so either you take it or we schedule it for another time that works for everyone" So you acknowledge that yes he was trying to be helpful but no his chosen solution didn't really help and then Team Us makes a plan that works for everyone. Similar with the buddy coming over "No that timing does not work for me, tell Fred to come over in a few hours."
It sounds as if you feel like you are being placed in "take it or leave it" situations. If you're like me (and I don't know if you are) this may be because you had terrible parents who were basically self-involved and grew up with this sort of thing. But a marriage doesn't have to be this way. At the same time, it does mean more asking for help, more explaining the situation, etc. Your husband may not be a person who is good at anticipating your needs or at achieving a mental map of what you want. This is hard but manageable. Working on your own "I am overwhelmed!!" feelings (meditation helped me, exercise, yoga, less caffeine) has made me a lot more understanding about my partner who is sweet and gracious but a lot more intuitive with less follow-through than me. I chose him for a reason but I need to remind myself of that when I am in a stressful place.
posted by jessamyn at 10:20 AM on March 13, 2016 [8 favorites]
I could be your husband, I guess. When we first got married, my wife would ask me to do things, and I'd try to do them. But I also felt like a reasonably smart, capable adult. At least people at work seem to think so. So, when something didn't work out exactly to plan, or there was a roadblock to following the instructions, I improvised, substituted, or otherwise just made it work.
And I'd often find that that was the WRONG THING. We'd have arguments about exactly what brand of thing I bought, or what order I did the things, or that I did it in the afternoon instead of the morning. I didn't have a piece of information, so I guessed instead of calling. Essentially, I was being like you describe your husband.
I've learned that I'm not the kind of person who can be told a task and then do it literally exactly to every detail, no deviation or input. Or rather I can, but I won't unless I know it's important to. And I hate every second of it. It's just the way I am, I need my autonomy.
We've learned that she can't just tell me to take the kids out. Better, but still not quite there is to give me a 6-hour itinerary. Best is to just tell me what the goal is, and I can make that happen. You want 6 hours to take the freezer offline with no kids to worry about. Got it.
At the same time, on my side, I've learned I need to communicate my intentions better instead of trying to be Mr. "and it magically happened, voila". So I might say, what if I bought you a new laptop? Then you could say no, don't do that. But even better would be if you said no, my goal here is to extend the life of this one as much as possible before buying a new one.
Maybe I'm not completely fixed though, because I'm not sure what you wanted in the buddy helping situation. When the new information popped up, the buddy could come earlier, he called to ask instead of just assuming an answer for you. I guess you wanted him to just know without asking? That's not how it works and asking him to try that is only going to end up badly when he guesses wrong.
posted by ctmf at 10:27 AM on March 13, 2016 [20 favorites]
And I'd often find that that was the WRONG THING. We'd have arguments about exactly what brand of thing I bought, or what order I did the things, or that I did it in the afternoon instead of the morning. I didn't have a piece of information, so I guessed instead of calling. Essentially, I was being like you describe your husband.
I've learned that I'm not the kind of person who can be told a task and then do it literally exactly to every detail, no deviation or input. Or rather I can, but I won't unless I know it's important to. And I hate every second of it. It's just the way I am, I need my autonomy.
We've learned that she can't just tell me to take the kids out. Better, but still not quite there is to give me a 6-hour itinerary. Best is to just tell me what the goal is, and I can make that happen. You want 6 hours to take the freezer offline with no kids to worry about. Got it.
At the same time, on my side, I've learned I need to communicate my intentions better instead of trying to be Mr. "and it magically happened, voila". So I might say, what if I bought you a new laptop? Then you could say no, don't do that. But even better would be if you said no, my goal here is to extend the life of this one as much as possible before buying a new one.
Maybe I'm not completely fixed though, because I'm not sure what you wanted in the buddy helping situation. When the new information popped up, the buddy could come earlier, he called to ask instead of just assuming an answer for you. I guess you wanted him to just know without asking? That's not how it works and asking him to try that is only going to end up badly when he guesses wrong.
posted by ctmf at 10:27 AM on March 13, 2016 [20 favorites]
It seems like you both are working a bit independantly, and then expect the other to either mind read or go along with the plan you have in your head (you want him to do X to laptop, he buys new laptop to fix problem, you both are perplexed by each others actions).
You guys could try solving this by creating an explicit division of labor where you're each fully in charge of certain projects, and then let each other solve the problems as you each see fit. When you're setting that up, certain ground rules are laid out: I.e. no spending over $X without an in depth discussion. You both need X amount of lead time to add something to your individual schedules. Maybe develop a shared Google calendar. So when he is in charge of scheduling car maintenance, he knows to schedule it X days in advance but not on Wednesdays, when you need it for the car pool. He can then schedule it for a day when he can drive it there. You may still have to be the project manager, but at least you can off load some projects and then truly letnthem go.
Or you could try scheduling a state of the household meetings. That way you both have to talk about what's going on and what needs to be addressed. And don't view the meetings as asking for help: it's his house and kids too, so you guys are working together to develop a plan that you both can live with. That may mean things are a bit more up in the air than you'd like, and he will probably find things to be more scheduled than he likes, but that's life. So next time you want help keeping the laptop going, it's a discussion: Honey, my laptop is starting to go, help me keep it going. He can then say, darling, that sucker's toast within 6 months, why don't we just buy you a new one. You can then clarify, I think X will keep it going longer, or fine, but we can't replace it for at least 3 months, etc. You can start with weekly meetings, and adjust the timing as needed. y
Or you guys do a hybrid: draw up a master list, divide, create rules and then have monthly updates to see how everyone feels about the progress being made.
By forcing both of you to talk through your individual thought processes, you both start to hear what the other is thinking and feel heard. You guys can start anticipating each other's blindspots and trusting each others strengths.
The trusting each other can make a world of difference on how you feel, even if the outcome is the same. I.e. he calls to say he's so sorry, but the car needs to be taken in now, you know it's because there's literally no other time that will work ( and he's acknowledged it's not a great time for you too rather than just blindly dictating).
posted by ghost phoneme at 10:36 AM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
You guys could try solving this by creating an explicit division of labor where you're each fully in charge of certain projects, and then let each other solve the problems as you each see fit. When you're setting that up, certain ground rules are laid out: I.e. no spending over $X without an in depth discussion. You both need X amount of lead time to add something to your individual schedules. Maybe develop a shared Google calendar. So when he is in charge of scheduling car maintenance, he knows to schedule it X days in advance but not on Wednesdays, when you need it for the car pool. He can then schedule it for a day when he can drive it there. You may still have to be the project manager, but at least you can off load some projects and then truly letnthem go.
Or you could try scheduling a state of the household meetings. That way you both have to talk about what's going on and what needs to be addressed. And don't view the meetings as asking for help: it's his house and kids too, so you guys are working together to develop a plan that you both can live with. That may mean things are a bit more up in the air than you'd like, and he will probably find things to be more scheduled than he likes, but that's life. So next time you want help keeping the laptop going, it's a discussion: Honey, my laptop is starting to go, help me keep it going. He can then say, darling, that sucker's toast within 6 months, why don't we just buy you a new one. You can then clarify, I think X will keep it going longer, or fine, but we can't replace it for at least 3 months, etc. You can start with weekly meetings, and adjust the timing as needed. y
Or you guys do a hybrid: draw up a master list, divide, create rules and then have monthly updates to see how everyone feels about the progress being made.
By forcing both of you to talk through your individual thought processes, you both start to hear what the other is thinking and feel heard. You guys can start anticipating each other's blindspots and trusting each others strengths.
The trusting each other can make a world of difference on how you feel, even if the outcome is the same. I.e. he calls to say he's so sorry, but the car needs to be taken in now, you know it's because there's literally no other time that will work ( and he's acknowledged it's not a great time for you too rather than just blindly dictating).
posted by ghost phoneme at 10:36 AM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
This is the "hard part" of living with someone else. You are both intelligent independent human beings who will approach this differently. You married him for who he was/is. You didn't marry a robot / Stepford husband. You have to let go of some of the control you think you need. It is freeing. Will things get messed up? Yes. Do you ever make the wrong decision under the current system? I'm sure.
I've fallen into the trap of expecting perfectionism from others, while failing to acknowledge that I too make mistakes. Thank goodness my husband doesn't get mad at me every time I do something differently than he would have.
I think it will be helpful for all involved if you let yourself be a little more flexible, and a little less controlling. Try to look at the bigger picture. Don't take others' actions as a personal affront.
posted by hydra77 at 11:01 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've fallen into the trap of expecting perfectionism from others, while failing to acknowledge that I too make mistakes. Thank goodness my husband doesn't get mad at me every time I do something differently than he would have.
I think it will be helpful for all involved if you let yourself be a little more flexible, and a little less controlling. Try to look at the bigger picture. Don't take others' actions as a personal affront.
posted by hydra77 at 11:01 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
As someone who has been in similar situations in the past, I think the two of you are probably collaborating on this dynamic. I also suspect that there are a lot of motivations and feelings and expectations and resentments in this situation that you didn't list, possibly / probably because you've been living with them for so long that they don't even feel like THINGS any more.
In my own case, my (wonderful, beloved, delightful) husband would always react very positively and cheerfully when I asked for help with specific, discrete tasks with a well-defined solution, like "Would you stop by the store and get bread and milk on your way home?" or "Will you take our cat to the vet to have the conversation about whether it's time to let him go, because I simply cannot?" or "Can you figure out whether it's worth it to refinance our mortgage and, if so, figure out what steps we have to take to make that actually happen?" They didn't have to be simple, they didn't need to be obvious, but they did need to have an end point. But when I came to him with more amorphous requests like "My grandmother is dying and I'm coming unglued and I need your help" or "Our son is exhibiting some serious developmental delays and I'm terrified and I don't know what to do" or "I have been sick for three months and I'm not getting better and I can't keep doing all the family things that I'm doing, I need you to take some of them over," he would. . . just not do that. He would do one small thing (like research bereavement fares, or send me a list of typical developmental milestones, or get take-out for dinner one night) and then go back to his normal routines, making me ask again and again. And he would get palpably more irritated with me every time I asked.
So, like anyone in a positive/negative feedback situation, I gradually changed my behavior to only ever ask him for help with specific solvable problems. But this didn't mean I stopped needing help with the other things, and it didn't mean I stopped WANTING help with the other things; I would just give him the specific request and hope like hell that he would read it as a signal that I needed proactive, responsive help with this much larger area and volunteer his assistance, so that I wouldn't have to go through the loop of begging an increasingly surly and distant partner to please just keep helping me out until I didn't need help any more. Of course this never happened. And every time we tried to discuss it, he would be all "It's not my fault, I can't read your mind, if you want help with something you have to actually ask for it," and, well, that's true, right? But at the same time, dude, when you respond to my requests for help with annoyance and disdain and pretend that I never actually asked you for help, that part is NOT my fault.
So yeah. I see ways in which you could be more specific about what you need from your husband, like in saying "I need help keeping this specific laptop alive, because I do not have it in me to deal with the problems of transferring all my software and data, please help me solve this exact problem" or "I need you and the kids to be out of the house for no less than this specific amount of time, and I will be empyting out the freezer and I will have dinner ready when you get home so please don't feed them or buy anything that needs to go into the freezer." But at the same time, that shit is EXHAUSTING, and your husband is a grown adult who is responsible for his end of the partnership, and if he's not sure about what you really need, he can ASK. He can say "Is it more important to you to have a perfectly functioning laptop, or is it more important to have THIS laptop functioning as well as it can function even if that's not perfect?" He can say "How long do you need me and the kids gone? Should I get them something to eat? I see that you are cleaning out the fridge -- should I avoid bringing anything home that will fill it back up again?"
Just because he's defined this problem as being 100% in your court doesn't mean that it is, and just because it's theoretically possible for you to do all the work to solve it doesn't mean that's a truly reasonable solution. You may need to initially be more specific about things like "I need you to be more observant, to accept what I'm saying at face value, to believe that when I ask you for something specific that I have a reason for asking that, and to be willing to do your own work in clarifying my expectations when you don't understand how to proceed," but at a certain point if he's not willing to pick that ball up and run with it, it doesn't mean it's your fault for not taping the ball into his arms and giving him a push.
posted by KathrynT at 12:22 PM on March 13, 2016 [20 favorites]
In my own case, my (wonderful, beloved, delightful) husband would always react very positively and cheerfully when I asked for help with specific, discrete tasks with a well-defined solution, like "Would you stop by the store and get bread and milk on your way home?" or "Will you take our cat to the vet to have the conversation about whether it's time to let him go, because I simply cannot?" or "Can you figure out whether it's worth it to refinance our mortgage and, if so, figure out what steps we have to take to make that actually happen?" They didn't have to be simple, they didn't need to be obvious, but they did need to have an end point. But when I came to him with more amorphous requests like "My grandmother is dying and I'm coming unglued and I need your help" or "Our son is exhibiting some serious developmental delays and I'm terrified and I don't know what to do" or "I have been sick for three months and I'm not getting better and I can't keep doing all the family things that I'm doing, I need you to take some of them over," he would. . . just not do that. He would do one small thing (like research bereavement fares, or send me a list of typical developmental milestones, or get take-out for dinner one night) and then go back to his normal routines, making me ask again and again. And he would get palpably more irritated with me every time I asked.
So, like anyone in a positive/negative feedback situation, I gradually changed my behavior to only ever ask him for help with specific solvable problems. But this didn't mean I stopped needing help with the other things, and it didn't mean I stopped WANTING help with the other things; I would just give him the specific request and hope like hell that he would read it as a signal that I needed proactive, responsive help with this much larger area and volunteer his assistance, so that I wouldn't have to go through the loop of begging an increasingly surly and distant partner to please just keep helping me out until I didn't need help any more. Of course this never happened. And every time we tried to discuss it, he would be all "It's not my fault, I can't read your mind, if you want help with something you have to actually ask for it," and, well, that's true, right? But at the same time, dude, when you respond to my requests for help with annoyance and disdain and pretend that I never actually asked you for help, that part is NOT my fault.
So yeah. I see ways in which you could be more specific about what you need from your husband, like in saying "I need help keeping this specific laptop alive, because I do not have it in me to deal with the problems of transferring all my software and data, please help me solve this exact problem" or "I need you and the kids to be out of the house for no less than this specific amount of time, and I will be empyting out the freezer and I will have dinner ready when you get home so please don't feed them or buy anything that needs to go into the freezer." But at the same time, that shit is EXHAUSTING, and your husband is a grown adult who is responsible for his end of the partnership, and if he's not sure about what you really need, he can ASK. He can say "Is it more important to you to have a perfectly functioning laptop, or is it more important to have THIS laptop functioning as well as it can function even if that's not perfect?" He can say "How long do you need me and the kids gone? Should I get them something to eat? I see that you are cleaning out the fridge -- should I avoid bringing anything home that will fill it back up again?"
Just because he's defined this problem as being 100% in your court doesn't mean that it is, and just because it's theoretically possible for you to do all the work to solve it doesn't mean that's a truly reasonable solution. You may need to initially be more specific about things like "I need you to be more observant, to accept what I'm saying at face value, to believe that when I ask you for something specific that I have a reason for asking that, and to be willing to do your own work in clarifying my expectations when you don't understand how to proceed," but at a certain point if he's not willing to pick that ball up and run with it, it doesn't mean it's your fault for not taping the ball into his arms and giving him a push.
posted by KathrynT at 12:22 PM on March 13, 2016 [20 favorites]
Hmm. It feels like you're stressed out (you mention lots of balls in the air). Are you project manager for all of the household things? If so, could he take on more domains of work, e.g., auto maintenance? If you have everything scheduled down to the minute to get everything done, it makes changes of plan a much bigger deal than they'd be if you had less going on.
I can see how in some of these cases, it feels like he's working at cross-purposes to your values (frugality, healthy meals) or project goals (an empty freezer). That would make me feel frustrated and unheard. Are these areas of long-standing disagreement that keep coming up? If so, counseling might be a good way to improve the dialogue here. I also wonder, how much did you discuss these values and goals with him? E.g., was he aware that "healthy meals" was a big part of what you wanted to get out of the freezer project, and was he on board with making that more of a household priority? I could see having no idea and just thinking you wanted things clean. I could also see it just not being that important for him right now. Sometimes one person cares a lot more about something than the other person, and that can be okay; he kinda has the right not to care (though at a certain point it'd be good if he supported it knowing that you care).
posted by salvia at 12:25 PM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
I can see how in some of these cases, it feels like he's working at cross-purposes to your values (frugality, healthy meals) or project goals (an empty freezer). That would make me feel frustrated and unheard. Are these areas of long-standing disagreement that keep coming up? If so, counseling might be a good way to improve the dialogue here. I also wonder, how much did you discuss these values and goals with him? E.g., was he aware that "healthy meals" was a big part of what you wanted to get out of the freezer project, and was he on board with making that more of a household priority? I could see having no idea and just thinking you wanted things clean. I could also see it just not being that important for him right now. Sometimes one person cares a lot more about something than the other person, and that can be okay; he kinda has the right not to care (though at a certain point it'd be good if he supported it knowing that you care).
posted by salvia at 12:25 PM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
I think the problem isn't about you controlling or needing to step back, it's about you feeling like he doesn't really understand what you do / your workload / your role in the functioning of the household. I'm guessing that you feel frustrated because, 'duh, dude, it takes longer than two hours to defrost and clean a freezer and where the hell am I going to put that shit you just brought home for the kids to ruin their teeth on?' Also, 'Why are you buying my a new laptop? Besides the fact that I spend hours planning all the meals so we don't go over budget, I don't want to/ don't have the time to deal with all the set up and porting of information- this is not a gift!'
I think you want the gift of understanding from your husband. I think you want him to really 'SEE' you. I think you guys should go see a therapist after you see one to really help you suss out what is missing for you. That way you come to the table knowing what to ask for.
posted by PorcineWithMe at 12:29 PM on March 13, 2016 [5 favorites]
I think you want the gift of understanding from your husband. I think you want him to really 'SEE' you. I think you guys should go see a therapist after you see one to really help you suss out what is missing for you. That way you come to the table knowing what to ask for.
posted by PorcineWithMe at 12:29 PM on March 13, 2016 [5 favorites]
I'm a bit surprised by many of the answers here. I completely agree with this:
I disagree with some previous responses to the point where this thread feels pre-emotional-labor-thread. I don't think that if you're cleaning out the freezer that Husband needs to be given direction on how to care for his children or not to immediately fill up the freezer again. That's common sense or, at least, the sense that women have to develop while in charge of all these balls in the air that men aren't obligated to.
I would be upset, too, if I said to my partner, "Hey, I'm going to spend the afternoon cooking what's in the freezer so that I can defrost it; could you take the kids out for the afternoon?" and he said "Sure!" but then a) didn't actually take the kids out for the entire afternoon and b) came home with a thing that actually got in the way of me completing my task. I would expect that my partner would have the empathy and the consideration necessary to process the various components of my request: "Okay, sounds like CtrlAltDelete has a big project going on, so I'll take the kids out for the entire afternoon; she's going to be cooking, so I won't feed the kids a big meal; and she's going to be defrosting the freezer, so I shouldn't bring home a treat for later that needs to be stored in the freezer, because then either she will have to stop working on the freezer in order to preserve the dessert or she will have to feel responsible for ruining my 'treat'." Those aren't giant interpretive leaps, and I would expect my life partner to think enough about me and my day to draw those conclusions. This is the kind of consideration and planning that many women are trained to do by default, and it is not too much to expect that your partner do so in return.
I have had similar issues with my own partner, and even just being in therapy by myself has helped a lot. Not because I took on the extreme emotional/logistical burden of articulating every. possible. thing. that my partner might misinterpret about my request, but because I learned how to calmly state my bigger need, which was for my partner to stop and THINK ABOUT ME before he did things, and ask himself questions like these: "What did CtrlAltDelete say she needed? How will what I do next influence her, either emotionally or practically? Given what I know about her and her preferences, would she be happy or upset with my idea? If I'm not sure, should I ask her before I do it?" These are the kinds of questions that I ask myself about him automatically. But since he didn't get the same kind of cultural training, he has to work at it a little more.
I'm not surprised that the persistence of this issue is making you doubt your husband's feelings and commitment to you; it is incredibly demoralizing to feel like your life partner isn't thinking about your or your needs, even if they don't mean to hurt you and are acting this way because they never learned that men should act any differently. But this is not an insurmountable hurdle, if your husband is willing to see that it's a problem and work with you and/or a therapist to fix it.
On preview: I second much of what PorcineWithMe, salvia, and KathrynT have added. This is a complicated dynamic, and it's a lot bigger than you just figuring out the right way to 'manage' your husband.
posted by CtrlAltDelete at 12:51 PM on March 13, 2016 [21 favorites]
I disagree with some previous responses to the point where this thread feels pre-emotional-labor-thread. I don't think that if you're cleaning out the freezer that Husband needs to be given direction on how to care for his children or not to immediately fill up the freezer again. That's common sense or, at least, the sense that women have to develop while in charge of all these balls in the air that men aren't obligated to.
I would be upset, too, if I said to my partner, "Hey, I'm going to spend the afternoon cooking what's in the freezer so that I can defrost it; could you take the kids out for the afternoon?" and he said "Sure!" but then a) didn't actually take the kids out for the entire afternoon and b) came home with a thing that actually got in the way of me completing my task. I would expect that my partner would have the empathy and the consideration necessary to process the various components of my request: "Okay, sounds like CtrlAltDelete has a big project going on, so I'll take the kids out for the entire afternoon; she's going to be cooking, so I won't feed the kids a big meal; and she's going to be defrosting the freezer, so I shouldn't bring home a treat for later that needs to be stored in the freezer, because then either she will have to stop working on the freezer in order to preserve the dessert or she will have to feel responsible for ruining my 'treat'." Those aren't giant interpretive leaps, and I would expect my life partner to think enough about me and my day to draw those conclusions. This is the kind of consideration and planning that many women are trained to do by default, and it is not too much to expect that your partner do so in return.
I have had similar issues with my own partner, and even just being in therapy by myself has helped a lot. Not because I took on the extreme emotional/logistical burden of articulating every. possible. thing. that my partner might misinterpret about my request, but because I learned how to calmly state my bigger need, which was for my partner to stop and THINK ABOUT ME before he did things, and ask himself questions like these: "What did CtrlAltDelete say she needed? How will what I do next influence her, either emotionally or practically? Given what I know about her and her preferences, would she be happy or upset with my idea? If I'm not sure, should I ask her before I do it?" These are the kinds of questions that I ask myself about him automatically. But since he didn't get the same kind of cultural training, he has to work at it a little more.
I'm not surprised that the persistence of this issue is making you doubt your husband's feelings and commitment to you; it is incredibly demoralizing to feel like your life partner isn't thinking about your or your needs, even if they don't mean to hurt you and are acting this way because they never learned that men should act any differently. But this is not an insurmountable hurdle, if your husband is willing to see that it's a problem and work with you and/or a therapist to fix it.
On preview: I second much of what PorcineWithMe, salvia, and KathrynT have added. This is a complicated dynamic, and it's a lot bigger than you just figuring out the right way to 'manage' your husband.
posted by CtrlAltDelete at 12:51 PM on March 13, 2016 [21 favorites]
Lots of folks are suggesting that the OP communicate more clearly, or that her husband might have some learning to do to be more thoughtful. Those might well be true, and it would be great if those things were workable. My suggestion above about the passive-aggressive stuff is a reminder that in some cases, sadly, there really is no amount of explaining clearly that will yield a cooperative, thoughtful, or helpful partner. If you're being extremely clear and communicative about what would be helpful and your spouse is responding in ways that undermine you, even if there's a surface element of "helpfulness"--well, there is the formal (although terrible) possibility that all that great communication is telling your partner exactly what they need to know to hurt you most through obstruction and denial.
Aside from the possibility that I'm wildly projecting my own situation on the OP's (it's MeFi, so sue me)--one of the things that really grabs me about this post is that it opens with "my husband is a good guy." OP, I swear to you, for YEARS I lived in that state of bewilderment where I had to aggressively remind myself that my husband was a "good guy". There were many ways I trusted him--indeed, in some of those ways still do, even though we're divorcing-- though these were alongside lots of ways that he let me down, that he really profoundly let me down and violated my trust, and despite every effort really would not apologize or compromise or work with me in any way, shape, or form about these important issues, which generally had to do with responsibility and teamwork and, well, examples not dissimilar to the ones you're describing. I chanted the mantra of "my husband is a good man" for a really long time... until the part when he was finally held accountable for some truly inexcusable behavior and it turns out he really wasn't such a good man after all.
There are many sensible and good-sounding suggestions here and I hope for everyone's sake that among them you find the things that work to unlock this gridlock. If you do try one, three, twelve of these suggestions and you find that you are really getting no traction at all... Please remember that this is supposed to be a partnership. If you are communicating your distress and he is not fully supporting you and doing his part of the problem-solving assertively, then something is genuinely out of whack.
posted by Sublimity at 2:37 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
Aside from the possibility that I'm wildly projecting my own situation on the OP's (it's MeFi, so sue me)--one of the things that really grabs me about this post is that it opens with "my husband is a good guy." OP, I swear to you, for YEARS I lived in that state of bewilderment where I had to aggressively remind myself that my husband was a "good guy". There were many ways I trusted him--indeed, in some of those ways still do, even though we're divorcing-- though these were alongside lots of ways that he let me down, that he really profoundly let me down and violated my trust, and despite every effort really would not apologize or compromise or work with me in any way, shape, or form about these important issues, which generally had to do with responsibility and teamwork and, well, examples not dissimilar to the ones you're describing. I chanted the mantra of "my husband is a good man" for a really long time... until the part when he was finally held accountable for some truly inexcusable behavior and it turns out he really wasn't such a good man after all.
There are many sensible and good-sounding suggestions here and I hope for everyone's sake that among them you find the things that work to unlock this gridlock. If you do try one, three, twelve of these suggestions and you find that you are really getting no traction at all... Please remember that this is supposed to be a partnership. If you are communicating your distress and he is not fully supporting you and doing his part of the problem-solving assertively, then something is genuinely out of whack.
posted by Sublimity at 2:37 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
I will identify a specific problem and ask for his help with it,
You think you're trying to be specific, but you really aren't. You have a solution in mind, but you get frustrated that your husband doesn't resort to the kind of solutions you would prefer.
The laptop thing: laptops become obsolete. It is normal to replace them, and he provided the best solution. Next year or the year after, you were going to continue to ask for more help in trying to maintain an increasingly out of date laptop. Now that is fine, but you didn't articulate the nature of what you wanted and discuss what you wanted vs. what your husband thought was a good solution. And we all know that you would likely ask for more help down the line, so your husband was coming up with a solution with an eye towards a year down the road.
In each and every case, you are asking for help with things that are your problems and that you have certain priorities you want to consider when it comes to a solution, but your husband doesn't, because they aren't directly his problems.
Now he COULD be simply ignoring your priorities. That might be a counseling issue. But in each and every story, he is being helpful in a relatively logical fashion, but his solutions don't line up with the solution you would prefer. You need to first be more explicit, and second roll with the punches (bringing home a few frozen goods that end up back in the freezer might not be your vision for an ideal freezer but isn't a hill to die on).
posted by deanc at 4:54 PM on March 13, 2016
You think you're trying to be specific, but you really aren't. You have a solution in mind, but you get frustrated that your husband doesn't resort to the kind of solutions you would prefer.
The laptop thing: laptops become obsolete. It is normal to replace them, and he provided the best solution. Next year or the year after, you were going to continue to ask for more help in trying to maintain an increasingly out of date laptop. Now that is fine, but you didn't articulate the nature of what you wanted and discuss what you wanted vs. what your husband thought was a good solution. And we all know that you would likely ask for more help down the line, so your husband was coming up with a solution with an eye towards a year down the road.
In each and every case, you are asking for help with things that are your problems and that you have certain priorities you want to consider when it comes to a solution, but your husband doesn't, because they aren't directly his problems.
Now he COULD be simply ignoring your priorities. That might be a counseling issue. But in each and every story, he is being helpful in a relatively logical fashion, but his solutions don't line up with the solution you would prefer. You need to first be more explicit, and second roll with the punches (bringing home a few frozen goods that end up back in the freezer might not be your vision for an ideal freezer but isn't a hill to die on).
posted by deanc at 4:54 PM on March 13, 2016
He sounds a little self-centered and cavalier to me. The fact that he says things like "you work it out" makes me uncomfortable. If he was told you are trying to reduce the number of items in the freezer so you can clean it, and he brings home more things for the freezer, clearly he's not paying enough attention to what's going on around him. Did he apologize for doing that? Did he slap himself in the head and say "Oops I totally forgot" or "Oy, what was I thinking?"? If not, then I think he's a little self-absorbed and you have your work cut out for you.
posted by OCDan at 10:54 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by OCDan at 10:54 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
It sounds like there's an undercurrent of financial inequality here that's turning your different approaches to problem solving into an upsetting power dynamic. I don't know if you are a SAHM or not but that's the impression I get from your post, so YMMV.
It sounds like, in a lot of these situations, you are trying to work on projects and your husband keeps pulling out the trump card of buying something (a laptop, a mechanic's appointment) and forcibly deciding that project's direction, while creating unwanted work for you because you don't know how to accept (or can't because they are useless, or have to majorly reorganize your task list to accommodate) these purchases as-is and as the positive things your husband seems to think they are.
(Note of bias: if a partner I was dependent on bought me a laptop without consulting me at all about what kind would fit what I needed it for I would feel deeply disrespected and humiliated-- it would feel like a statement of, "You don't have any financial autonomy in this relationship; I make the money so you don't get to make choices; you'll take this laptop and you'll like it.")
I'm not sure what your household finances are like, but there seems to be a major mismatch between the way you and your husband think about your household budget. You value frugality and stretching resources; your husband is totally cavalier with buying new things to replace still-usable old ones, like the laptop or the frozen goodies, which I wonder if he was buying because his idea of what it means to defrost the freezer involves throwing all the old frozen food out rather than using and reorganizing it. You are coming from a mentality of scarcity and barely being able to keep everything together by assiduous scheduling and hard work, and your husband seems to be living in a totally different reality. I don't know which one of you has a more accurate assessment of your family's finances, but I think you could both stand to move a bit towards each other's values. As other commented are pointing out, you may be seriously undervaluing your time IE willing to put in needless work to save a dying computer that needs to be replaced. Ouroboros' post about being willing to be flexible and shedding unnecessary anxiety about accepting both help and nice/new things is on point-- a lifestyle based around resource/scarcity anxiety when you can actually afford not to live that way adds so much stress to your life, and will also create a lot of confusion about how money works for your kids in the long term. OTOH if you are using every frozen thing during a defrost cycle because you can't really afford to throw it out, your husband is being super irresponsible with your family's money and needs to get himself in check. Whichever is going on, you two need to work towards getting on the same page when it comes to money, because your very different attitudes towards it seem like a big part of your miscommunications and your frustration-- you may need to learn to let go of saving or reusing everything, and he needs to respect when you see a task as a project and not something to be purchased away.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 12:59 AM on March 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
It sounds like, in a lot of these situations, you are trying to work on projects and your husband keeps pulling out the trump card of buying something (a laptop, a mechanic's appointment) and forcibly deciding that project's direction, while creating unwanted work for you because you don't know how to accept (or can't because they are useless, or have to majorly reorganize your task list to accommodate) these purchases as-is and as the positive things your husband seems to think they are.
(Note of bias: if a partner I was dependent on bought me a laptop without consulting me at all about what kind would fit what I needed it for I would feel deeply disrespected and humiliated-- it would feel like a statement of, "You don't have any financial autonomy in this relationship; I make the money so you don't get to make choices; you'll take this laptop and you'll like it.")
I'm not sure what your household finances are like, but there seems to be a major mismatch between the way you and your husband think about your household budget. You value frugality and stretching resources; your husband is totally cavalier with buying new things to replace still-usable old ones, like the laptop or the frozen goodies, which I wonder if he was buying because his idea of what it means to defrost the freezer involves throwing all the old frozen food out rather than using and reorganizing it. You are coming from a mentality of scarcity and barely being able to keep everything together by assiduous scheduling and hard work, and your husband seems to be living in a totally different reality. I don't know which one of you has a more accurate assessment of your family's finances, but I think you could both stand to move a bit towards each other's values. As other commented are pointing out, you may be seriously undervaluing your time IE willing to put in needless work to save a dying computer that needs to be replaced. Ouroboros' post about being willing to be flexible and shedding unnecessary anxiety about accepting both help and nice/new things is on point-- a lifestyle based around resource/scarcity anxiety when you can actually afford not to live that way adds so much stress to your life, and will also create a lot of confusion about how money works for your kids in the long term. OTOH if you are using every frozen thing during a defrost cycle because you can't really afford to throw it out, your husband is being super irresponsible with your family's money and needs to get himself in check. Whichever is going on, you two need to work towards getting on the same page when it comes to money, because your very different attitudes towards it seem like a big part of your miscommunications and your frustration-- you may need to learn to let go of saving or reusing everything, and he needs to respect when you see a task as a project and not something to be purchased away.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 12:59 AM on March 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
I keep coming back here because I could have written a similar question two years ago.
The essential elements for me are if he's giving equivalent effort. Maybe not in the same tasks, but overall, do you feel reasonably balanced with household and relationship work once you remove paychecks from the equation? Or are you doing a lot more work and this is irritating you because it's the visible sign of him not listening to you because you know deep down, he's not really listening to you about the big stuff either?
And is he sabotaging your plans with kindness? My ex would buy me my favorite chocolate when I was sick. Sweet. Except I was trying to lose weight for health reasons and would ask him not to, or to buy tiny bars. But I kept finding ice cream in my favorite flavors and big blocks of chocolate in the freezer. He'd get angry over a small purchase of a book, and buy me an expensive surprise gift. How could I be angry when he was so kind? Rescheduling appointments, how could I be mad when he'd gone out of his way to get a friend to come over in a really busy weekend just to help, and how was he supposed to know I had plans for the afternoon, I don't communicate well enough, why didn't I keep a family calendar....
I am still pretty bad at asking for help now, but I've been well trained that way and it's only recently I've realised that it's not because I was a terrible communicator. Be careful about blaming yourself if his help always seems to end up making you feel worse.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:09 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
The essential elements for me are if he's giving equivalent effort. Maybe not in the same tasks, but overall, do you feel reasonably balanced with household and relationship work once you remove paychecks from the equation? Or are you doing a lot more work and this is irritating you because it's the visible sign of him not listening to you because you know deep down, he's not really listening to you about the big stuff either?
And is he sabotaging your plans with kindness? My ex would buy me my favorite chocolate when I was sick. Sweet. Except I was trying to lose weight for health reasons and would ask him not to, or to buy tiny bars. But I kept finding ice cream in my favorite flavors and big blocks of chocolate in the freezer. He'd get angry over a small purchase of a book, and buy me an expensive surprise gift. How could I be angry when he was so kind? Rescheduling appointments, how could I be mad when he'd gone out of his way to get a friend to come over in a really busy weekend just to help, and how was he supposed to know I had plans for the afternoon, I don't communicate well enough, why didn't I keep a family calendar....
I am still pretty bad at asking for help now, but I've been well trained that way and it's only recently I've realised that it's not because I was a terrible communicator. Be careful about blaming yourself if his help always seems to end up making you feel worse.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:09 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
So at first I liked the "over-communicating" suggestion, where you sit him down and stare into his eyes and Really. Spell. It. Out. And ask if he understood? Is he sure he understood? Because this is why this is important. Does it make sense? Stare. Into. Eyes. Some. More. And sure, that could potentially work, but is also exhausting, takes tons of time, will probably make him feel condescended to and like he needs to rebel, etc.
So now I think you should just delegate entire tasks.
"Honey, you are in charge of my laptop. I need word processing and all of my photos/calendar/emails on a new laptop. You are in charge of making this happen by x date. Please help me with this."
"Honey, I need you to defrost the freezer. Please look up how to do it properly, or ask your dad or sister. It's more complicated than you would think. I am going to go to run errands today, and when I come back, I would like the freezer defrosted properly, please."
"Honey, I need you to find time to fix the car. I don't have the time or energy. You will need to take the car in. I will need a rental car." Etc.
posted by quincunx at 11:28 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
So now I think you should just delegate entire tasks.
"Honey, you are in charge of my laptop. I need word processing and all of my photos/calendar/emails on a new laptop. You are in charge of making this happen by x date. Please help me with this."
"Honey, I need you to defrost the freezer. Please look up how to do it properly, or ask your dad or sister. It's more complicated than you would think. I am going to go to run errands today, and when I come back, I would like the freezer defrosted properly, please."
"Honey, I need you to find time to fix the car. I don't have the time or energy. You will need to take the car in. I will need a rental car." Etc.
posted by quincunx at 11:28 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by Too-Ticky at 12:56 AM on March 13, 2016 [7 favorites]