I remember those days when my children were small and they would knock a drink off the edge of the table, and I had to struggle not to shout at them. Or worse still, I’d yell at them “how many times do I have to tell you?”
It seemed like every day something small happened and I over-reacted. Flying off the handle had become my normal.
I knew that part of the reason was that I was stressed and tired. But I didn’t realise just how anxious I was (that came later!).
And the biggest thing was that I was blaming my husband for a lot of the things which weren’t working for me. And if I wasn’t blaming him, I was putting it down to work stress or worries about the family.
I knew that I was a bit lacking in self-esteem and self-confidence, but I never guessed just how much I had put myself into the position of victim…
I constantly felt like I was at my wit’s end, wondering what I had to do to make him change. Because nothing I did made any difference.
I wanted to stay and make it work, but I felt utterly helpless and trapped. No wonder I had such a short fuse.
What is it we want from our partners?
More than anything I wanted peace. I wanted support with the housework, but more than that I wanted a quiet life. With more love and affection.
And that was impossible because we were constantly fighting.
The stress we experience when we add conflict with a partner into the mix of raising children, working and dealing with everyday life is enough to put anyone on a short fuse. But the other ingredient in the mix is all the thinking we do.
Women generally do about twice as much housework as their men do, even though both partners are working. And added to that is the fact that the woman is the one doing the managing – remembering the jobs for him so that she can remind him to do them. This can tip the balance from 2:1 towards 3:1.
If he recognised how much she was doing, it might be easier. But a recent YouGov poll* found that men believe they are doing more than they actually are. You can see how this would breed resentment, can’t you?
So we are thinking about the things he forgets so that we can remind him. And we are thinking about what this all means. Like it must mean he doesn’t respect me or care about me or he’d remember to put the bins out. So the stress equation is:
stress = housework + thinking about his chores + thinking about what it all means + resentment
That’s quite a burden.
Is this all we want? For our menfolk to shoulder more of the burden of housework and childcare? No, we want more. We want a deeper level of understanding, a greater sense of oneness, more intimacy, better sex. We want to feel delight and excitement in our man’s company and we want to feel safe and relaxed.
At least that maybe what we think we want.
The truth is that while the thinking mind is wanting all this lovely closeness, there’s a part of us which wants something much more fundamental – we want him to give us what our parents did not.
And he wants the same thing. But we can’t give our partners what our parents didn’t give us. That’s not the role of a spouse or a lover. The only person who can do that re-parenting thing for you is yourself.
And when you start to give yourself what your parents were unable to, you are a big step closer to the peace and contentment which means you won’t keep flying off the handle.
You’ll probably still want him to do more of the housework, but at least there will be less on the right hand side of that stress equation. And you won’t fly off the handle nearly as often!
The first step towards giving yourself the loving care you’ve been missing is to let go of self-judgement and move towards self-acceptance.
If you’d like to find out more about how to move into that space of self-acceptance and to a place where you can ask your partner for the things you need, download my e-book, The Three Steps to a Magical Relationship.
* You can see the YouGov poll on housework here: The YouGov poll