My newly married daughter called me tonight and the conversation went something like this:  Mom, I had just cleaned and dried the kitchen counter…and he had totally watched me do it…and then he took his dripping wet plate and laid it right on my freshly cleaned and dried counter!  I asked him, “Did you not just see me finish cleaning that counter?” …he answered, “Yeah, I saw you clean it…but it’s fine…it’ll dry itself off…”

Awwww  husbands… we love ‘em…but some days we really wish they’d consider the fact that no husband has ever been shot while doing dishes….just sayin’  🙂

I have to say it was a lot of fun to be able to bond and laugh out loud with my daughter tonight as we talked about all the unique challenges we wives face living with our husbands.  And let’s face it, as women the expectations we had of men going into relationships that came from us spending years watching all those Nicholas Sparks romantic chick flicks definitely set us up for a teensy weensy little bit of disappointment when we got into actual relationships…. most husbands don’t want to sit and talk about emotional things for hours on end, and most husbands don’t think to fold the laundry without being asked, and most husbands don’t WANT to do the dishes even though we wives want them to WANT to…oh yeah, and most husbands don’t want to just sit and snuggle….

There is no question that we as wives have to learn to adjust our expectations of our husbands from that overly idealistic picture we had in our minds or we are bound to find ourselves very unhappy unbelievably irritated A LOT of the time.  That doesn’t mean we can’t expect our husbands to be good men and good providers and good fathers, because we can and should. It just means we might need to realize that folding the laundry will never be as big a priority to them as it feels to us.

And by the same token I think husbands need to learn that whenever their wife is mad or upset with them she’s not actually upset so much by the “what you did” or “what you didn’t do” – what she’s really upset about is that “what” made her feel like you don’t really love her – period – end of story.  I know you men might see that as dramatic or illogical but it really is the underlying truth behind so much of what a wife is likely feeling in those moments.  And know that a wife is not likely to tell you she feeling unloved in those moments because it’s far easier say your mad at your spouse then it is to admit you feeling unloved (although wives I can tell you from the voice of experience that admitting something makes you feel unloved works far better for correcting his behavior than getting mad will).  Bottom line advice to husbands is – always stop and consider the message you are about to send before you do something like put a wet plate on your wives clean kitchen counter 😉

Never forget:  Happy Wife, Happy Life.

~Amy Rees Anderson