The Surrendered Wife (11 page)

Remember not to begrudge your husband taking care of himself. He deserves to enjoy a sense of peace and the desire for intimacy that flows from feeling relaxed and good about himself. As in Faith's situation, it wasn't inconsiderate of her husband to work out two nights a week, but it was self-neglect that Faith didn't do
something for herself, too. It's easy to point the finger of blame at somebody who seems to be having more fun than we are when we're miserable.

Y
OU'RE
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OT THE
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NLY
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ESPONSIBLE
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DULT IN THE
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AMILY

“Some women work so hard to make good husbands that they never manage to make good wives.”

—ANONYMOUS

W
hen it comes to self-care, never ask for permission to do something. Simply announce what your plans are, as in “I'm going out with some girlfriends tonight.” If you have children, leave it up to your husband to watch them or find other care for them. Don't say, “Will you watch the kids while I go out?” Just go, and trust him to take care of things or speak up if he needs something.

Obviously, you wouldn't want just to announce that you're going out on a night when you know he has plans because that would be inconsiderate. The point is not to inconvenience him or “let him have it” because he gets to go out and you don't. At the same time, don't assume that the kids are your sole responsibility when you have a perfectly capable man who is willing to share that responsibility with you.

When Donna started practicing good self-care by doing at least three things from her lists each day, she was amazed that no one in her family objected. “I thought I was being selfish at first,” she admitted. In time she grew accustomed to having fun and feeling
good every day, and even noticed a positive change at home. When she was happy and balanced, she was more available to support her family the way she always wanted to. What she considered “selfish” at first was actually a wonderful gift for the people she loved most.

“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.”

—BEN STEIN

Don't hesitate to tell your husband what you want, whether it's a vacation, new furniture, piano lessons for the kids, time to yourself, or even a baby. But make sure you are describing an end-result, not telling him how to do it.

When you tell your husband what you want without telling him when, why, and how you want him to get it—without controlling him—you are giving him a new opportunity to feel accomplished and proud about how happy he makes you. Letting him please you will make you feel adored and intimate.

When you treat yourself well by doing plenty of self-care, you also encourage everyone around you to treat you well, including your husband. Taking that one step further, the more you know what you want and say it out loud, the better your chances of getting it.

When you express a desire purely and simply, you're acknowledging and honoring your self and providing your husband with an opportunity—nothing more. By contrast, complaining that you don't have something is not only overbearing, it's downright unattractive.

Prior to surrendering, I used complaining and demanding to try to get my husband to do the dishes, which never worked. About a year ago I said, “I'd like to make us a nice dinner tonight, but it's going to make a mess and I don't want to do the dishes.” He promptly offered to do them that night. In fact, he did them several times over the next week. Now he does them all the time and I never wash dishes. I started to wash them once many months ago and he said, “Thanks for doing the dishes for me.”

Some of us have had the “I want” trained out of us. Maybe we were once told not to be so self-centered, or to think of others who have less, or to be more practical. For instance, when a woman at the park told her preschool aged daughter that it was time to leave, the little girl said simply, “I don't want to go with you.” The mother then responded by saying, “That's not very nice. Don't you like to be with your mother?” The mother twisted the daughter's statement of desire into a personal attack. She was unfortunately well on her way to training the “I want” out of her daughter.

Like the girl at the park, some of us were told it's not polite or considerate to express what we want, but that just isn't true.
Knowing what you want and being willing to express it are the purest ways to be true to yourself, which
is
a very attractive quality. The alternative to being direct about what we want is to be manipulative, which is totally unappealing. A third choice is to ignore our own desires, which means that we live without the things that would make us happiest, and suffer a corresponding drop in energy, vitality, and satisfaction with our lives. We also become resentful, and that's ugly.

Saying what you want means that you're aware of your feelings and desires and that you're willing to honor them. It means that you know that you deserve to have new things and things that you love. It means you don't have to waste energy thinking about how to get what you want by making it seem like it actually serves some other more noble purpose. You're not a martyr, and nobody has to guess what will please you. A woman who knows and respects herself simply says to her husband, “I want.”

W
HY
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O TO THE
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TORE
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OR
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AMPONS

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.

—ORSON WELLES

I
t may not seem like it, but your husband wants to shower you with things that you love. As long as he knows you respect him, all you have to do is tell him what you want or don't want, as in “I
want a cat” or “I want to send the kids to summer camp” or “I don't want to move.” Whenever he can, the husband of a surrendered wife will gladly respond to these words because one of his foremost goals is to make his wife happy. If you don't believe me on that point, ask any married man you know how important it is that his wife is happy. I've asked hundreds of men this question, and their answers were always things like “Imperative,” “Critical,” and “It's everything.”

Whenever I think about the men I know who will hold their wife's purse while she's in the fitting room, give up their jackets because she's cold, or run to the store for a box of tampons, I'm reminded of what great lengths men will go to for our happiness. On top of that, you see men moving their families across the country to be near her parents, commuting to work every day so she can live in a bigger house, and driving an old car so she can have the new one. Could their priorities be any more obvious?

Still, we have a tendency to ignore the fact that our husbands want to make us happy and to believe that saying what we want is poor form. Sometimes we try to make our men guess what we want so we don't have to acknowledge our own desires. To get a sense of what that's like, imagine a server at a restaurant comes to take your order, and instead of telling her what you want, you say, “I think you know,” or “Can't you see I'm hungry?” At best, the server could suggest that you order the special, or she could choose something off the menu at random and bring it to you. Chances are slim that your dinner would be what you want.

Asking your husband to guess what you want is just one of the ways we try to avoid expressing our desires because we are uncomfortable admitting that we want something. Here are some of the other frustrating habits we have that prevent us from getting the desires of our hearts.

Stop Telling Him How to Get You What You Want

As I've said, trying to tell your husband how to do something is highly ineffective. Still, it's not unusual for women to try to get what they want by giving their husbands instructions about
how
to get it—as if he wouldn't otherwise know that there's such a thing as a florist or a mall nearby.

This doesn't work because when a husband feels controlled or disrespected, he gets worn down and lethargic. He reacts with stinginess and distances himself because he's lost the motivation to be generous. If you suspect your husband is stingy, it could be that he's been so preoccupied with defending himself and avoiding your criticism that he hasn't had the energy to focus on doing things to please you. If you excuse yourself from having to respect him because he seems so unkind and selfish, he will probably continue to withhold, and the two of you will be locked in a permanent standoff.

Let's go back into the restaurant for a minute to illustrate this point. The server wants to take your order, but instead of telling her what you want—say the apricot chicken—you begin telling her how to prepare it. You describe how to clean the chicken properly, then how to season it, and how much of each ingredient to use. You tell her how to cook it, and for how long, and how to garnish it so it will be appetizing. Naturally, the restaurant staff would find you pretty irritating. Even if they did follow your instructions, they'd probably also take a nice long cigarette break before they brought your food to the table because nobody wants to be told how to do his job.

Fortunately, most of us go into a restaurant and order a meal without telling the server how to make it. This works beautifully. The server gives the order to the cook, who prepares the dish, which arrives at our table. Everybody is happy.

Although I don't think of my husband as a server whose sole job is to fill my orders, this same system works very well in my marriage. If I tell my husband I want something, he works to get it for me as best he can.

If you think your happiness is a low priority for your husband, you're dead wrong. He's probably just responding defensively to you telling him how to do what you want him to do.

Once you are respecting him most of the time, his natural gratitude and desire to please you will surface, so start telling him what you want. Tell him in a way that is respectful and self-honoring by refraining from saying anything that could—even in the slightest way—be construed as controlling
how
he pleases you.

Just state your desire, and let him figure out the rest. When you say to your husband, “I want a new dress,” or “I want another baby,” or “I want a bigger house,” you are giving him a new opportunity to feel accomplished and proud about how happy he makes you. In return, you do feel happy and taken care of, and both of you appreciate that.

Notice, however, that these examples are all end-results. Expressing the desire for a new dress is very different from telling him to go to the department store and buy you a blue dress for your birthday. Saying you want another baby is far different from telling him he needs to wear looser underwear to keep his sperm count up. Saying you want a bigger house is a lot different than telling him to ask for a raise so the two of you can afford one.