Have a New Husband by Friday (14 page)

That puts the ball firmly in your husband’s court. Most guys would rather do the labor themselves than pay someone to edge their lawn and clean up the dog doo.

How you approach your husband with your words makes all the difference. But he needs it to be his idea, and he doesn’t have to be reminded once you’ve asked him. The trust factor is huge in this. You need to trust that he’s going to follow through on what you asked him to do, without reminding him like you do your child. He’s not your 6-year-old; he’s your husband.

9 Things You Can Say to Get
Your Man’s Attention

“Honey, help me understand something.”

“I don’t have a clue, and I really need your help.”

“Can I tap into that wonderful, logical, linear-thinking brain of yours?”

“You’re so good at . . . [
fill in the blank
].”

“I wish I could think like you.”

“I was wondering. Do you think it would be a good idea to . . . [
fill in the blank
]”?

“I’m sorry. Would you forgive me?”

“I can’t get enough of you.”

“What do you think?”

Learn to Respond, Not React

When you respond, you assess the situation, decide what you’re going to do, and then act as a result. When you react, you let your emotions take over your head. In far too many marriages, the spouses react to each other rather than taking the time to respond.

Let’s say you asked your husband to fix the dishwasher. You tell him that you really need it fixed by Sunday, because the next week is going to be crazy and you need all the help you can get—including not having to hand wash the dishes. Sunday comes and goes. By Wednesday you’ve had it. Do you call him up at work and rail on him: “You
promised
to fix that dishwasher!” Do you give him the silent treatment at dinner? No, you call a repairman.

Every guy likes to solve his own problems before he gets “help” from another guy.

Your husband might be dumb as mud, but he will have a clue that something’s working when he sees you putting dishes in the dishwasher again. He’ll ask, very logically, “Hey, is the dishwasher working again?”

“Sure is,” you can respond. “I got it fixed today.”

He’ll look puzzled. “Fixed?”

“Yeah. I needed it fixed, so I called the repairman. He came right over. The bill’s on the counter.”

You say it (nicely), turn your back, and walk away. You don’t harangue your husband with, “You should have done it yourself. It would have saved us $180, but no, you decided to be lazy.” Instead you just state the facts and walk away. Problem solved.

Chances are, you’ll leave him behind thinking,
Hmm, she asked me to fix it. But I didn’t do it. And she’s not mad. She just got it done.

I bet you anything the next time you ask him to get something done, he’ll get right on it. Every guy likes to solve his own problems before he gets “help” from another guy. He needs to know you’ll give him a chance to do it and you won’t pester him, but he also needs to know you won’t wait forever for what you need.

A little reality therapy goes a long way toward getting a new husband by Friday.

Let’s say your husband was supposed to pick up your daughter after school, in order for you to finish up your work and be ready by 7 to go to a dinner for his work. He forgets to pick up your daughter, and the school calls, so you have to go get her. At 6:30 your husband calls out, “Honey, are you just about ready?” (He ought to know better. After doing your work as a lab pharmacist and then getting caught in the rain as you picked up your daughter, you look like something the cat dragged in.)

You could get snippy and say, “Well, do I
look
like I’m ready?” or, “I’m not ready because I had to pick up
your daughter
since you forgot.”

Or you could take a deep breath and say, “Honey, I still need to take a shower. It will take me 40 minutes to do what I need to do before we get out the door.” And when he looks at you with surprise, tell it straight, but kindly. “When you didn’t pick up Megan today, that put me 40 minutes behind schedule. We’re just going to have to be late.”

What a man doesn’t want is to be late for a work event, so he’ll get the idea.

If your husband criticizes you at dinner, then wants you to roll around in the hay with him that night, just say no. “I don’t feel like having sex with you right now because you criticized me all through dinner. That doesn’t make me feel romantic in the least.”

You see, B doesn’t happen until A is completed. You’re not going to be a willing partner for sex until you and your husband talk through what happened at dinner.

So tell him what’s bothering you, and be specific. He can’t help solve something if he doesn’t know it upset you.

Ask Dr. Leman

Q:
I can’t take it anymore. I’m sick of my husband blowing me off every time I ask for help. I tell him I need help, I ask for help, and nothing happens. It’s like it doesn’t even register. I get left holding the bag, doing all of his “stuff,” because he doesn’t get around to it. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t help. He’s a big nada in my life. I’ve had it. I need some quick help.

Andrea, Maryland

A:
Every time your husband doesn’t help you, what’s going on in your mind? You’re probably thinking things like,
He just doesn’t care. He doesn’t really love me. I don’t even exist to him. Why did I marry this guy anyway?

Frankly, you might have married a man from a very dysfunctional family. Maybe he’s not capable of thinking past his own self. But more likely, he doesn’t have a clue that his lack of help is sending a message to you that he doesn’t give a rip about you.

Here’s what I’d suggest. Have a sit-down with that man of yours. Don’t hold back; tell it to him straight. “Today I asked for help with X. You didn’t help. Every time you do that, it makes me feel like you don’t care at all about what’s important to me, and you don’t care about me. If you really don’t care, then I need to start making different plans. If you do, things need to change. This isn’t working. I don’t know if you’re happy or not, but if it counts, I’m not happy. It might be working for you because I’m tucking the kids in at night, helping them with homework, doing your laundry, taking your mom to the doctor, and all those things. But it’s not working for me. I feel disregarded and disrespected. And I don’t want to live like this any longer.”

Such a conversation is a tough one to have, because sometimes you’ll like the results and sometimes you won’t. If he really doesn’t care whether he’s in your life or not, wouldn’t you rather know now than wait 20 years? And oftentimes this shock therapy can work wonders to wake up a man who is just living in his own zone, unaware of what you need. Either way, you need to know.

Soften the Blow

When you know you’re going to offer a strong opinion and have reason to believe he may not see things the way you do, start by saying, “You know, I may not have a clue on this, but I think it would be a good idea if you talk to Roger again before we commit ourselves to doing the back addition on the house.” (You’re smart—you’re admitting you may not have a clue. Your husband’s defenses go down immediately.) “You know I’m not handy at things like that. But I think maybe we should run it by Roger again, just to make sure the cost is accurate. Again, I could be completely wrong.” Saying this in a nonpushy way guarantees you’ll get him to listen.

Pick Your Time to Talk

Choose your time wisely if you have something important to say to your husband. The last quarter of a football game isn’t a good time to share with him. Right after one of you has paid the bills isn’t a good time either, especially if you or your husband is thinking,
I don’t know if we’re going to make it this month.
If you ask at that point, you probably won’t get the answer you want.

Keep Your “Honey-Do” List Short

Because you women are all such incredible multitaskers, you’ve always got more than one thing on your brain at a time. You feel the pressure of your job, children, and school, and just thinking about everything you have to get done makes you start another list that has to get done.

Let me encourage you to make your list for your husband short. One thing at a time is best—not because he’s simpleminded, but because he’s focused on getting one job done at a time. Then say, “There’s one thing I’d like to get done in November.” You’re not saying he has to do it
now.
You’re giving him the credit for believing he’ll arrange his schedule to get this important thing done for you. Having some freedom to slot into his own schedule what you want done is very important to your husband.

Don’t Talk about Him to Your Girlfriends

Never
ever
talk to your girlfriends about anything dumb your husband did. Don’t share anything he’s told you about stress he’s under at work or about any personal situation. If you do, you are deeply violating his trust of you, his one and only. When a man dares to share, he’s daring to share with you, not the whole world. Respect him enough to keep his confidences. You wouldn’t like it if your secrets were blabbed to the world, would you? Then extend him the same courtesy.

What you
can
do (and he’ll welcome this kind of gossip) is tell your girlfriends what an incredible man you have, about something sweet or helpful he did, or about how thoughtful he is. Those are the kinds of things your girlfriends will tell their husbands (probably with a “How come
you’re
not like that?” comment aimed their direction). When your girlfriends’ husbands pass the good word back to your husband, his chest will puff out with contentment.
Wow, I’m such a lucky man. My wife really thinks I’m a great guy. What a woman I married!
That’s the kind of gossip that does wonders for your man.

Even better, why not whisper those things in
his
ear? He’ll be doing cartwheels for you in no time.

Having some freedom to slot into his own schedule what you want done is very important to your husband.

Say What You Mean; Don’t Make Him Guess

I came home early recently to surprise Sande and take her out to dinner. “When do you want to go?” I asked.

“Oh, 6:00 sounds good.”

“Where do you want to go?” I asked.

“Wherever you want to go,” she said. “I want you to choose.”

“Okay, let’s go to the soup and salad place.”

“Uh, honey, I don’t like that place anymore.”

“Well then, how about the Italian place?”

“No, I don’t want to eat there. They put weird stuff on the food.”

By now I was a little exasperated. “Then you pick!”

And on the conversation went. If Sande had told me up front that she had a hankering for salmon, that would have been all the information I’d need. I would have known exactly where to go, because she’s had salmon at a certain restaurant before and raved about it.

One of my friends called me this week as Sande and I were getting ready to go somewhere. He wanted to come over for 15 minutes and talk.

“Sure,” I said. “Come on over.”

Sande poked her head into the room. “Leemie, wait a minute. He can’t come over now. We have to get ready and leave by 5:00.”

I checked my watch. That was an hour away from now. “Honey,” I said, “it’s Mark. He’s a guy. When a man says he needs to talk for 15 minutes, he means 15 minutes.”

She just lifted an eyebrow.

But it’s true. A man says what he means. Contrast that to a woman, who says, “I’m just going to run in here for a few minutes. . . .” I ought to know.

When my wife says that, I spend a lot of time parked on a bench outside the stores in the mall. (Good thing I can do a lot of my work by cell phone.) But you know why I do that? Because even if Sande is busy shopping, and that’s not my natural inclination, I know that she enjoys my presence with her. That’s worth spending some of my time, don’t you think?

Talking At or Talking To?

Women in my counseling office have told me for years that they want to talk with their husbands. But when I dig a little deeper, what they mean is, “I want to talk
at
my husband.” Women have no idea how much the steady flow of nonstop words can snow a man.

So let your guy be a guy—not a girlfriend.

Don’t Talk Down to Him

“Listen, Leemie, this is very important. I want you to get one lemon meringue pie and one pumpkin pie at Marie Callender’s. Leemie, listen to me now, I want you to get this right. It’s one lemon meringue pie and one pumpkin pie,” Mrs. Uppington told me with her index finger raised. She was in full-blown firstborn mode. Like a teacher talking to a 6-year-old. But, you see, she’d already asked me the day before to get the pies and had given me the instructions about what kinds. I didn’t need to get it again.

Your husband will sometimes act like the boy he once was, but he doesn’t want to be treated like it.

Heads Up

Telling him he’s your man keeps him from becoming someone else’s.

Don’t Pull Out the Tears

Women can be hormone driven. (Like I had to tell you that.) From the time they are pubescent at age ten, emotions run awry. Dr. Sande Leman, who has more than earned her doctorate in relationships as a mother of five and husband to said psychologist for 40-plus years, says that the worst possible age of all for women is ten years old. There’s truth in that. Prepubescents are on the cutting age of adolescence. Their bodies are changing. Their hormones are changing. And PMS is well documented; it’s not the “myth” that some misguided males still believe it to be (but then again, you knew that too).

I’m not saying men aren’t emotional—they get emotional about fishing season, hunting season, football, and hockey, but that’s a little different. Watch two pairs of children exit a school at the end of their day. What are two 10-year-old girls doing? Walking hand-in-hand, looking at each other, interacting, and sharing their feelings. What are two 10-year-old boys doing? Smacking each other upside the head, yelling, “Well, I can do X better than you. See?” Even young boys don’t “share” feelings with each other; they act out their emotions.