Dear husbands:
I’m curious. Do you get upset that your wife talks to her
friends about your marriage? Does it bother you that she confides in her
girlfriends or that they know so much about your relationship? Do you perhaps
feel threatened by how close she is to her friends? After all, you don’t tell
your friends shit, and you are still as close as bros can be without going all Brokeback,
right? You never understood why women went to the bathroom in groups or told
the same story twenty times to twenty of their closest friends, and you still
don’t understand that constant need for contact and conversation. You wish it
would all just stop, and your wife could just be your wife. Am I right?
Well, guess what? Get over yourself.
First of all, when you got married, your wife didn’t become
your property. Just because she is your wife doesn’t make her under your
control. She can talk to anyone she damn well pleases, about whatever the hell
she wants to. You don’t get to decide who her friends are any more than you can
dictate the topics of conversation. It isn’t all about you, no matter how much
you want it to be.
You need to chill the fuck out.
Or maybe it is all about you. Do you really want to hear
what she thinks about your snoring or how you destroy a toilet or how she
laments that you are physically unable to put a dish in the dishwasher? If all
the Hallmark cards for men are about how you fart and fall asleep in front of
the television or play golf all weekend, then maybe you need to stop. Possibly
it’s time for you to be a little more considerate. You are a man now, after
all. So enough sniffing the armpits of your t-shirts and put them in the
laundry hamper already. And while you’re at it, throw a load in the wash. Take
a moment to hang up her bras before you put that load in the dryer. Stop giving
her a reason to complain about you. Just a thought.
Here’s something else you might not have thought about.
Maybe, just maybe, your wife likes to talk about her problems. Maybe she finds
discussion about what you consider to be unpleasant topics helpful and positive.
Just because you don’t do that doesn’t make it wrong. Guess what’s cheaper than
therapy? A bottle of wine at girl’s night out.
Give her a break from you, Jonathon Livingston Seagull.
And if you are the unpleasant topic she wants to discuss, let
her have at it. Talking to friends is a great way to get advice or just vent.
Despite what you may think, we wives aren’t all sitting around trying to decide
how to make your life miserable. Trust me, you don’t need our help for that.
What we are doing is something you might not be very good at. We are listening.
We take turns saying how we feel, and we listen. We might validate. We might
say wait a minute, you need to look at it this way. We might say hey, friend,
you are way off base. What we do know is the very act of listening is what
helps. We like to be heard, and talking to friends is a great way for us to get
that need met.
If your wife didn’t have friends to talk to, do you know who
would have to listen to her? That’s right. You. Do you really want to listen to
your wife go on and on about what’s bothering her, especially if you are the
bother? She might criticize, and chances
are you would counter with some choice words about the constant nagging, and
there you go, giving her more reason to need to vent. All that time she is talking
on the phone, or texting, or instant messaging, that could all be aimed at you
instead of sent to someone else. Seriously, you should be buying roses and
chocolate and shit for all of her friends, thanking them for giving you some
fucking peace. They are making your marriage better and you don’t even realize
it, you dumb schmuck.
Remember when you were a little boy and you were told to
buck up and stop crying and be a man? Well, your wife wasn’t. She was allowed
to have emotions. Now that she is grown up, she still does. You do too, by the
way. Having emotions is compatible with having a penis. Expressing those
emotions is also allowed for you. If you choose not to, well, so be it. That
doesn’t mean your wife doesn’t get to.
It’s time for you to stop feeling so threatened by your
wife’s friends. She isn’t plotting your murder with them. She is expressing how
she feels with them. She might be complaining about you, but so what? What if her friends complain about their
husbands too and you turn out looking pretty good? She might even come home and
show her appreciation that you weren’t as horrible as she thought you were.
The next time you feel vulnerable because of your wife's oversharing,
take a deep breath and go back to whatever the hell you were doing. Go watch a
football game. Go drive your car too fast. Go eat four double cheeseburgers and
drink too many beers and put extra salt on your fries. Go Dutch oven your bed. You
are going to do all those things anyway. Just give your wife a break when she
bitches about it to someone else. Because that is the thing she is going to do,
and you can’t make her change that behavior any more than she can change yours.
Sincerely,
Your wives and all her friends
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