An interesting thought popped into my head this week and that was there were probably people who thought my hubby was lazy and took advantage of me. The reason I’m bringing this up is two fold: 1) I never really considered this; 2) I’ve never understood women who let themselves be walked over and their dreams ignored, in favour of their partner.
Strangely this all spring-boarded from cooking. I know that’s strange but none-the-less…
Last weekend I hit a really low point. It was closing week of the show I was doing, work was being a pain and I haven’t been sleeping well. It all culminated with me having a mini break apart something along the lines of ‘You need to step up because I can’t keep doing all this anymore. When you were working I did everything around the house, now I’m working I’m still doing it all. From now on you need to cook two meals a week.’
This may not seem like much but it was a big thing for me to ask. I don’t like to admit I’m not coping and I don’t like to ask for help. Also hubby has often said he’s not good at cooking anything except spaghetti bolognaise.
To tie this into my two points, not long ago a friend said she thought he wasn’t carrying his share of the weight. I just excused it as a creative low. Yes he has been in one of those but it’s no excuse. Some of our problem (because when it involves family it becomes our) was him but in some ways the bigger part of the problem was me. I didn’t ask or let him know I was struggling. Cooking is something I mostly don’t mind doing and I didn’t want to live on spaghetti every night so I only asked him to cook on occasion. Guess what though? It turns out with a little practice cooking is something he is going to be fairly good at and I think he actually enjoys it.
So he has stepped up, in fact he did nearly all the cooking this last week. And our eldest is interested in learning so they will get the chance to do some of that together. Another bonus as far as I can see.
Moving on to point two. It may seem that the two points aren’t connected but just bear with me. There are women who do everything for their partner’s and it often seems as though they do little for themselves. I have wondered, I admit, why they let their partner dictate their whole life. I didn’t see that from the outside my life probably looked a bit like that because I have a tendency to do everything and let hubby do whatever he wants. Part of the reason I didn’t see it was because I still get to write and play at the theatre. He has never asked me nor expected me to give up those things. Yes a lot more money has gone on his pursuits than mine but mine don’t require much equipment and he is always encouraging me to spend more money on myself. So I’ve never really thought of it as being taken advantage of.
The dynamic of our relationship is a natural state of unbalance, he’s a phleg personality and I ‘m a choleric; that is he’s laid back (yes sometimes lazy) and I’m ‘let’s do it now and the right way which is my way’. He is not inclined to volunteer to do something I seem okay doing and I’m not inclined to ask him to help. Somewhat of an impasse really.
So what have I learnt? Sometimes things aren’t what they seem if you are on the outside looking in. And sometimes when you are inside looking out you can’t see what’s really there. Also sometimes the problem isn’t always the other person (it’s often hard to see the problems with ourselves).
Thankyou God for eyes to see, courage to ask for help, a husband who hears and does and the wisdom of friends.
