Don't Dump on Your Husband

This post was inspired by a post I read here entitled "Ask Your Husband." In case you don't have time to read it, the gist of the blog post was that often we ask anyone and everyone except our husbands for advice on how to solve certain problems.

This post comes from a lesson that I learned very recently in my own marriage - don't just dump problems on your husband. When we take problems to our sisters, female friends, mothers, etc., we often use them as a sounding board and expect nothing but empathy in return (i.e. no problem-solving needed - just a listening ear). That's not to say that our husbands cannot and should not be an occasional sounding board who can listen and offer empathy. The problem comes in when we consistently and continuously dump our problems on our husbands without expectation of him helping to solve them so that we can "unload" and feel better.

Why is that a problem? Let's face it - men are (in general) hardwired to be problem-solvers. When we treat them like we treat our female friends and relatives, we are asking them to go against their nature as problem-solvers. We are tying their hands and thus emasculating them. It's really no different than a man expecting a woman to help him fix the car engine even if she's never seen one or play hard-tackle football with him and his 250 pound friends, or lift her end of the 300 pound armoire when they're moving. For most women that I know and have come across in my 30 years, those things would be difficult (if not impossible) and horribly frustrating at the very least. Just imagine our husbands doing that to us not just once, but on a daily or near daily basis! How many of us would really feel like they saw us as ladies? Wouldn't most of us feel like they saw us as "just one of the guys" (but one that he's married to, wants physical intimacy with, wants to take care of his home and children)?

Just as it's unfair for our husbands to expect us to be ladies when we cook, clean, take care of the kids, and be intimate with him but then be "one of the guys" whenever he sees fit, it's unfair for us to expect our husbands to be "just one of the girls" (i.e. our empathic sounding boards like our female friends and relatives) when we have problems and then our big masculine providers when it comes to money, protection, etc.



**Side Note** I do realize that some women out there like to take apart car engines, play tackle football, and can lift her side of a 300 pound piece of solid wood furniture. I am merely trying to make a parallel between our treating our husbands like we treat other women in our lives and what that might look like in reverse.