A month or so ago, I penned a piece titled “Spouse Confessions: My Time Is Valuable TOO.” I wrote about how exhausted I was and detailed my struggle in getting my husband to understand and respect that MY time is valuable too. I briefly detailed the fight that led me to write that piece, and sent it on its way to Military Spouse.
It wasn’t until the readers began responding to my article, that I realized how unfairly I’d painted my husband. “I’m calling it – he’s an A-hole;” It was this comment in particular that helped me see it.
My first instinct was to nod my head and say, “Yeah. He really was being an A-hole.” But barely a split second went by before I realized how absolutely hurt my husband would be if he read that comment.
My follow up here isn’t so much to salvage my husband’s feelings, because we’ve never been ones to tiptoe around sloppy feelings that will inevitably change in a day or two anyway. The reason I’m writing a follow up is because I unfairly portrayed my husband as some chauvinistic jerk who views his wife as the little woman whose job is to cook and clean while he sits on the couch and farts and picks his nose, all the while talking about his self-importance. He really isn’t like that at all.
If anything, that’s pretty much the polar opposite of what my husband actually does.
While he isn’t always the most romantic and understanding dude in the world, he has always been a freaking superhero around our house. Unlike the complaining I often hear from other wives about their husbands, Mike is always the first one to clear the table after dinner, throw some clothes in the wash, fold and put away laundry, and make the beds. When it comes to household work, Mike has always pulled his own weight- and then some. It’s not an uncommon sight to see him vacuuming while I’m locked in my office working, and at least half of our family meals are prepared solely by him.
It is not out of the ordinary to hear the following conversation on a Saturday morning:
Me: “Babe, I have a video conference with [insert name here] at 11. Can you keep the kids quiet?”
Him: “Yeah. I’ll take them upstairs with me and we’ll clean the [insert which ever room he has deemed is disgusting].”
When I’m in a full blown acting gig- he’s the one doing homework with the kids, he’s the one helping them get ready for bed, and he’s the one I forward all the emails from the teachers to. He is definitely an equal partner in our house, both with equal voting rights and with equal responsibilities. All-in-all, I’m a pretty fortunate girl to have him.
That’s not to say that our fight and my anger over it wasn’t warranted. Just like every marriage, ours has moments where one of us is a bigger jerk than the other; he just happened to be wearing the crown that day.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wear that crown, too…
A few mornings ago, our son wet the bed. It was about 7 in the morning, and he came and got me up. I went to wake up our other son (they share a bunk bed, and wouldn’t you know it, they prefer to sleep on the same level) so I could change the sheets, and they decided to get up. I went downstairs to help them with breakfast, and then I had to be on a video call, and I totally forgot about the sheets. It wasn’t until bedtime that I remembered about the sheets, and I grinned at my husband, put my finger on the tip of my nose, and shouted, “Not it!”
He was less than pleased, and it really was a jerk move on my part. I should’ve just changed the sheets, but he wound up doing it while I sat on the couch and watched “Madam Secretary.” A few days before that, I adamantly refused to run a load of laundry (in my defense, I’m not the maid), and the task fell to him.
