Dear Dr. K,
My wife recently told me she wants a divorce. She said I don’t respect her and don’t listen to her. She says all I want her for is to cook, clean, care for the kids, and have sex with her. That’s just not true. I do listen to her, and try to help but it’s never enough. Now she says she’s done with me and with the marriage.
I had no idea she was so unhappy. She used to complain a lot, but then it stopped, and I thought we were doing better. Then this.
How can I demonstrate that I am willing to be a better husband? The kind of man she wants to stay with for the rest of her life? I love her and don’t want her to leave and break up our family. It would not only kill me, but it would also hurt the kids.
Blindsided Husband
Dear Blindsided Husband,
It is shocking to hear that something you thought had finally been settled, your wife’s unhappiness with your role in the family, actually just went radio silent.
She just stopped complaining because she saw that it did no good. You had no intentions of stepping up and taking a more active role in that half of your life.
Without giving it another thought, the half that you should have been doing kept being done by her. The house and child care ran so smoothly, the way they had for years, and you thought she was now happy to donate her life energy to you despite its inequity.
If she was like most women in this sort of marriage, before she gave up, she complained about the unfairness, on average, every other week. And when she talked to you, it felt like she was attacking you, constantly criticizing you, and telling you that you were a lousy husband. And when she did, do you remember how you responded? Here are the most common ways men respond to hearing about this unfairness, according to one study:
- 84% yelled at their partners
- 53% called them names or left the house
- 18% threatened their partner, while
- 20-22% threw or broke objects
In other words, rather than listening to and validating her complaints, things escalated.
John Gottman’s research named this as a “refusal to accept a wife’s influence.” It’s another gender difference he discovered because he didn’t see the same behavior in women.
And it’s not a rare problem. Gottman discovered that 65% of men refuse to accept their wive’s influence. What does this mean?
You bought into stereotypes that told you that your home was your castle, a safe haven, a place to retreat from the pressures of your job and the rest of the world.
When you came home, your goal was to relax and know that everything was alright, your kids and your wife, but that’s not how it turned out. Instead, your wife wanted more action from you, like bathing the kids, starting dinner, and taking the mail off the table. And you felt resentful, not only because you weren’t getting the peace in the home you were expecting but because she wasn’t happy with you. If your home was your castle, it wasn’t the place of peace where everyone was happy as you had hoped.
She may have had other complaints: “You don’t talk to me,” “We never go anywhere,” “Why don’t you ask me about my day?” and blah, blah, blah.
Chances were good that she complained about being tired A LOT. It seemed like you could never make her happy by doing what she asked of you, or you did them wrong, or you just made more work for her.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Maybe you weren’t happy with the sex. Maybe it stopped or became infrequent. Most women say no to sex because they are tired (83%) and are angry with their partners because he doesn’t do his fair share around the house (63%). When these women talk about the unfairness, they report that their partners are “mean to her” (51%). Therefore, she says no to sex because his refusal to play an equal part in their domestic life leaves her with just too much to do (52%), and she can’t relax in a messy house (37%).
The Walk-Away Wife
Then, like your prayers were answered, all of her criticism stopped. You finally got her to see you for the type of guy you were…doing enough, being enough, and for once, she seemed satisfied.
And then she asked for a divorce. When you told her that you thought things were better between the two of you (after all, she stopped complaining), she got enraged or overwhelmed and started crying or just stood there coldly and said, “If you thought things were good the last two years, then there’s no hope for us ever working this out.”
You were left totally puzzled by her saying that.
As one wife put it:
“Fast forward . . . 23 years and 3 kids later, and I had, indeed, stopped talking to him about what I needed or what needed to change and frankly focused on creating stability for our kids as I contemplated my exit.
The last thing I said to him about our marriage was:
“I don’t think I can do this another year. Marriage to you requires a complete sacrifice of myself” (indeed, it was the only way to keep peace and stability).
And he said:
“I don’t have a problem with my behavior. You do, which makes it your problem.”
How can you be a better husband? On a very fundamental level, being a better husband means looking at your wife with fresh eyes. It means not viewing her as a “wife” or even a “woman” but as a human being.
Your wife asked you to share the heavy lifting of managing a marriage, not only domestic labor and childcare but the emotional responsibility to care about her as a human being, to get to know her, to value her opinion and seek it out, to listen to her complaints and weigh them as carefully as you do your own.
And don’t trivialize how seriously she took unequal domestic labor. Women report doing an average of 80% of household labor* and parenting tasks. While most couples never talk about the division of household labor before marriage, the vast majority (over 93%) have discussed it afterward an average of 27 times in the past year alone. If you think a sink full of dirty dishes isn’t significant enough to cause divorce, think again. These women felt that men not only refused to do their fair share but added more work to their load, 11 extra hours more, according to one study.
The culture trivializes housework and childcare, but women don’t. They report feeling stuck with the lion’s share of the labor, which robs them of significant time, resources, and opportunities. This time could have been used to advance their careers, participate in greater self-care, and feel better about themselves and their lives.
But the problem is invisible to many men. Over half of the women surveyed say their spouse denies that things are unequal between them. You, yourself, told me that her complaints “just aren’t true.” The invisibility of unequal labor is particularly common if the husband believes he does more around the house than his father. And when you aren’t the one doing it, these tasks become invisible to you and look automatic.
And in case you believe this is all overblown, Gottman’s research found that of the 65% of men who trivialized their wife’s concerns, were unmoved by her requests, or showed her no respect during an argument, 81% ended up divorced.
What to do
First, notice your emotional reaction to everything I’ve said here. Do you feel misunderstood? Picked on? Are you interested in ignoring what I’m saying and pointing out how you are the exception? This attitude is likely to carry over to your discussions with your wife. Instead of listening to what part is true within your marriage and looking inside to see how you can be different, you reject influence out of hand.
We call this “defensiveness.” It’s a bad habit that belies an unwillingness to change. That won’t help you save your marriage or become a better husband.
Next, learn all of the tasks that your wife does that may be invisible to you.
Do your research instead of asking your wife for a list of tasks she wants you to do (do you ask your boss each day for a list of tasks to complete? Or would that make you look unmotivated?). Research household and childrearing tasks and what age-appropriate tasks children can do.
Here are some examples:
- Learn more about your children, including less obvious things like naptimes, allergies, favorite teachers, challenging subjects, friends’ names, new and old interests, developmental milestones, shoe and clothing sizes, and preferences.
- Organize your kids’ toys before the holidays. Donate or sell old toys and replace them with developmentally appropriate new toys.
- Pack up the kids for holiday visits to relatives.
- Decide where the holiday decorations should be placed, and ask for input about your ideas.
- Talk about sharing the holiday gift buying or wrapping this year.
- Propose helping the kids make holiday cards and sending them to relatives.
- Get a list of all the kids’ upcoming doctors and dental appointments and ask how these should be shared equally. Then, when you are at that appointment, make the new appointment at a time that suits you so that you can continue this pattern.
- Know the names of your child’s teachers, good friends, upcoming birthday parties, and what gifts should be bought for those parties. Be sure to RSVP for the children. Make sure the children write thank-you cards afterward. Memorize which parents go with which kids.
- Watch who sits down after work and who actively does tasks each day. Resist the urge to justify your passivity with the phrases “I worked all day,” or “Her standards are too high,” or “I do X and she doesn’t.”
- Initiate a discussion about basic parenting subjects like screen time, handling tantrums, sports schedules, teaching hygiene and adolescent changes, dating guidelines, etc. Learn to ask open-ended questions and jot down the answers. Give your opinion when asked.
It may become an entirely new discovery to realize that your wife has an entire “secret life” of jobs that you never knew existed and that these jobs are part of what has made her feel taken for granted.
If you are serious about becoming a better husband, these things are an excellent place to start. Even if it doesn’t save your marriage, it will set you up for being a better divorced father.
Thanks for writing.
Dr. K
*Many thanks to the critical work, writings, and studies done by Zawn Villnes.
