Husband jokes about 'granny panties'; wife doesn't find the humor
Dear Carolyn:
What do you do if you've told your spouse several times that you feel like you do all the heavy lifting, and still nothing changes? Then what?
-- Heavy lifting
You figure out how much you're willing to do, and you do only that.
It may seem like bean-counting, but it's actually an important step in figuring out what exactly is wrong between you. For example, it's possible for half of a couple to be very high-functioning and to have unrealistic expectations of what the other half needs to contribute. Cutting your chore list to the minimum can help you see the advantages to relaxing your standards and asking less of everyone around you, starting with you. If your spouse meets you halfway at this new, reduced pace, then you'll see it's just a matter of differing definitions of "necessary."
It could also be, though, that one half is choosing not to do even the bare minimum and is perfectly fine with watching his/her mate hoist every burden to the point of utter exhaustion.
And if you make an effort to define the true minimum to-do list -- food, bills, just enough laundry to avoid offending passers-by, just enough maintenance to keep the cars running, etc. -- that will help you see whether you've been beating your spouse to every chore (and, therefore, s/he will step in when you back off), or whether your only reward for beating yourself up all this time was to enable your spouse to take advantage of you.
If it's the latter, then I strongly suggest reputable professional intervention, be it through marriage counseling or a marriage seminar/class.
There comes a point when standing up for yourself fails, when saying how you feel about it fails, when doing everything in angry silence fails, when doing your own cooking, laundry and dishes fails -- and that point is when the marriage fails. Best to bring in the disaster team before your anger at the unfairness swallows up all the love.
Dear Carolyn:
I was folding laundry with my wife, and I noticed her underwear has gone from Victoria's Secret when we met to bigger and whiter. So I held up a pair and joked, "Your Granny called, and she wants her panties back!"
When can I start having sex again?
-- Folding laundry When you have ear hair and/or when you can start braiding your eyebrows. Maybe.
Re: Granny pants:
Maybe his wife just had a baby and her body is still transitioning back to Sexy Underwear status? Not that I'm sensitive about my granny pants.
-- Anonymous So it will all be OK if she snaps back to some kind of mythical pre-baby form?
Growing old with someone -- top marriage goal, right? -- means watching each other's undies grow. The way to maximize grace and minimize couch nights is to support each other and have a sense of humor about the inevitable.
Doing housework and cracking jokes say he's supportive and able to laugh at her, but he'll need to be even better at laughing at his own decay if he wants her to lighten up. Avoiding the phrase "lighten up" will probably help.
E-mail Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com. © 2011, Washington Post Writers Group