by Tara Pringle Jefferson
An ongoing struggle throughout our short marriage has been the division of labor in our household. I’ve often felt like I’m shouldering 90% of the day-to-day work, while my husband gets the seasonal tasks of shoveling the driveway and mowing the lawn. We’ve tried 3,232 ways to make it work but we always seemed to end up in the same place: Me, grouchy and feeling unappreciated. Him, feeling tired of having to “prove” his usefulness around the house.
I share this struggle because I think a lot of couples (especially if they have kids) can relate. The endless list of things to do never gets shorter or goes away unless someone commits to doing them. If we don’t wash the dishes, they remain dirty. If we don’t vacuum, we’ll continue to accumulate dirt and dust bunnies until we’re able to trip over them. Simple fact: things need to get done.
So in our latest attempt to make the workload more balanced, I spelled out what I needed in simple terms. “Can you load the dishwasher after we eat dinner? Can you wash the clothes at least once per week? Put the toys away after the kids go to bed?”
In all honesty, I’d never tried to just say what I needed before. My requests always sounded like, “Could you be more helpful? Could you anticipate my needs more? Could you step in and take care of things when the kids are driving me crazy?” To me, that seemed like a no-brainer. Seemed simple. But my husband never quite understood what I meant. We’d continue to do the “Who’s going to do what” tango on and off.
This time, when I spelled out directly what kind of help I needed, things were different. Every morning for the past two weeks I’ve come downstairs to a clean kitchen, an empty dishwasher and a cabinet full of clean dishes. For a work-at-home mom, this has to be the best thing my husband could do to get my day off to a good start. Now I can just focus on making breakfast, rather than shoving dirty dishes out the way from dinner the night before.
I’ve gone out of my way to let my husband know I appreciate this. And I feel that his effort to have my days begin stress-free, coupled with my sincere appreciation for one small change, well, that has us on a new path of cooperation.
Sometimes in a marriage, we want the changes to come overnight. We suddenly want our non-talkative spouse to turn into a talk-show host in a matter of hours, we want the romance back over one date. We want things to change on our timetable, when in reality, true (and lasting) change takes much longer than that. Why? Because change itself requires time to blossom, and enough time for you to notice it’s taking place.
BMWK family, what do you do when you’re impatient about changes in your relationship?
Tara Pringle Jefferson is a freelance writer, blogger and PR professional living in Ohio with her husband and two kids. She’s also Managing Editor of BlackAndMarriedWithKids.com. Follow her on Twitter or check out her blog for her insights on what it means to be a mom, wife, student, writer, and about three other labels she’s too tired to remember.