In this day and age, women are running everything. The house, a career, the family schedule... I'd like my Man to do some taking charge. Any suggestions of things he can do to step up to the plate and make me feel "taken care of"?
She said: First I have to say be careful how you phrase that. It may be your experience that “women are running everything,” but I know plenty of households where that isn’t true and there are many families that actually have reversed roles so that the woman is off at work all day and the husband is “Mr. Mom.” However, you aren’t asking about them, you are asking about you so…
In my experience, people will get away with what they can get away with. In a previous question you mention ten years of marriage so you may have an uphill battle here because it sounds like maybe you are changing the rules in the middle. If you set the precedent that you were going to “take care of him” by doing all those things you mentioned above, but now you wish you hadn’t, it is hard to blame him for letting you.
But ultimately what you need to do is talk with him about your feelings. Tell him what specifically you want, whether it is to feel taken care of, or to have less autonomous responsibility, or to relinquish certain tasks like bill paying or making dinner. Then, and this is the most important part, once you have BOTH agreed upon what he is going to take over, let him do it! That means don’t micromanage; delegate and be done. If he forgets to defrost something for dinner after agreeing that diner will be his responsibility, make that his problem when he has to run out to the grocery store at the last minute. Or, if he forgets to pay a bill make the financial responsibility of the error fall strictly to him (he can take it out of his beer money- see my earlier post: “Entertaining Budget Ideas”). But be careful not to ask him to do something and then tell him how to do it. If you give someone a responsibility, you have to let him handle it his way.
He said: My advice is that if he is the primary financial provider and you are the main caregiver and household caretaker, that you cut back on your career if at all possible. Today’s woman wants to do it all, but then complains that it is hard to be everything to everyone.
But if cutting back on your career is not possible for financial reasons, then you need to appeal to his man-side (grunt, grunt bang on chest). Explain to him that you are having problems managing everything and see if he’ll take some things over, then let him.
Remind him that the family is his main responsibility and that the financial aspect is only one part of that. Put forth all the chores you are doing and all the stress you are under and appeal to his sense of fairness. Ask him which things (bill paying, cleaning, cooking, kids homework, etc.) he would like to take over. If you sit down with a prepared list of responsibilities and engage him in trying to divide it up as evenly as you both can, you should be able to come to a reasonable division of labor that will be fair to both of you.
