My Husband is an Honorable Man

Something has been bugging me of late. It's always kind of bugged me, but it seems I'm either picking up on it more now or I'm hanging around more married people so it comes up more.

When two (or more) adult live in close proximity for any amount of time, they are going to get on each other's nerves from time to time. It's unavoidable, no matter how well you match up with someone, there will be the odd corner or two that is not complimentarily shaped and lo! friction. Sometimes you'll bitch to your friends about how your partner is doing this thing that drives you bonkers, and that's fine, so long as certain guidelines are followed. Generally I try to have those venting conversations 1-1 in privacy with someone who understands that I'm frustrated and this isn't to be repeated or taken as a measure of my partner's quality. We're crazy monkeys, stuff happens.

The bit that's been driving me crazy of late is when people talk down to or about their partners in public, or private mixed company. This goes from the little old lady at the fruitstand who chides "oh men, they can't do anything by themselves" to the "casual" comments at social gatherings about how the husband used to be messy when he was a batchelor, how he doesn't earn the lion's share of the income, how sometimes it feels like he's one of the kids one has to deal with. I try to be polite and either dodge the premise of the question or, as in the case with the fruitstand lady say something neutral so we can GTFO, but this is my blog, and it's time to say this.

Fuck.

That.

Shit.

Are you kidding me? Look, I understand the frustrations that can build up in any relationship and the tendency to want to "get a bit of your own back" and sometimes it feels like the only way you can do that is to be passive aggressive in public by showing the world what a doof your husband is and how great his life is now that you're in it but seriously, shut the fuck up. It makes you look like a complete ass. If your partner talked that way about you, you'd tear him a new one and if you were super polite you'd wait until you were in private to do it. Otherwise you'd have a fit right there and make everyone around you as uncomfortable as you are for the sake of your emotional outburst.

The next time you feel the urge to say something negative about your partner in public, bite your tongue and think about this: he puts up with your shit. All of your crazy, all of your demands, all of your insistence on changing the way he sees the world, the way he talks to you, the way he lives in his own home, the way he spends his time and how he shows you he loves you are things you've influenced and he swallows all of it because he's crazy about you. If you feel frustrated that he's not meeting some need, ask yourself, "have I ever actually *said* this to him out loud? Do I just assume that because he loves me he'll know what I mean to say?"

If the answer is Yes, you have some work to do. Expecting someone else to interpret your clues because you don't feel comfortable saying what you mean out loud is total bullshit. You're telling that person that your needs to not feel a little awkward are so important that they need to run their own lives, and spend extra attention on figuring out what you want. And you can do that, but the odds they'll get it right are slim, and all the energy they spend trying to figure out your cryptic clues could be spent on the two of you being happy together.

And don't think that just because you've made your needs clearly and plainly known means you're off the hook. You're not on a goddamn pedestal, he doesn't exist to serve you in whatever way you think is appropriate at any given time. He's a person, he has needs too. When is the last time you asked him what he needs, what he feels, what he thinks could be going better.

"Oh, men don't talk about their feelings"

Bullshit. They may not wax poetic and go on about it for hours, they may not chatter on as a form of bonding, but any man who's even remotely self aware knows when you piss him off, when you're being an unbearable ass and has an idea or two of things he'd like to change. If he says "fine" it's because you haven't created a space where he feels like he can actually talk and be heard without being shut down or criticized. If you have a knee jerk reaction to something he says, assume he means something else, have ever accused him of an off "tone"...those are in your head. Any meaning you put on someone else's words beyond what they say is your own internal dialog. Those are *your* emotional reactions to things you * perceive* and you, as an adult, are responsible for checking your emotional response, taking a break if you need one, until you can address the content of the conversation for what it is and not what your projections are.

If something in your relationship isn't working, it's 50% your fault. You can work on it together, you can explore the things you both need to do to change how you approach something. Sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes there's just no way to reach the middle ground. Sometimes that 50% both of you have are just different needs/offers and the relationship changes because what you need is not compatible. It happens, you grow, you change, you realize you built something up that wasn't there, you wanted something so badly you tried to make it what is wasn't. That's fine. It happens. It hurts. But you can be graceful about it, like a grown-up.

Your husband isn't a fucking child, stop treating him like one. Your husband is man, a grown-up, a person who deserves respect and kindness and for you to go out of your way to give him some of what he needs. Think about whether he's had sleep, whether he's in a conversational mood, think about all the things you want him to consider before bringing something to you before you unload whatever rant about him or someone else loose. Sometimes they don't want to hear it. Sometimes they don't want to hear it *right then* and because their needs are just as important as yours are, that means you have to fucking wait. You're an adult, you can do it.

My husband and I have had our share of disagreements, we've had the odd shouting match. We've both had a lot of growing to do to learn to trust each other. Part of that was him learning that his home is a safe space, that it's ok to tell me what he needs and wants and won't be accused of manipulating me (thanks angry, childish stepfather). A big part of that was me learning that I do some pretty messed up stuff too. I have a hypersensitive reaction to anger so I tend to try to shut it down, to explain how it's not my fault, to lean into the tiller until the conversation steers in my favor. This was a perfectly useful tactic when I was in a house with a crazy angry person who could escalate at the drop of a hat with her own internal monologue guiding the storm. It's a very *bad* tactic when you're not in a house with an abusive nutcase and are talking to a person you actually like who would like to feel like I listen to him once in a while without showing him (with citations) how he's wrong.

Maybe this is a key. I don't just love my husband, I *like* him. He's a person I like, and I want to treat him well. When he tells me I'm doing something that makes him feel bad, I may feel defensive or under attack, but those are reactions that have to do with the past, not the present. So I take a breath and do my best to let my rational reasonable mind take the lead, and if I fail, I come back to it until I get it right. I make mistakes, that's ok. I work to fix them. If you don't feel like you ever make mistakes, that you're a great wife and mother and the problem is all other people....I have a rude awakening for you.

If you *don't* like your partner, what the hell are you still doing with them?