I am sitting here after reading my students' paper (I was pleasantly surprised), considering if I should begin writing my own paper or clean and get dinner for tomorrow ready because my hubby will be working forever for the next few weeks or maybe I should start a load of laundry or maybe even go to bed early so that I won't be so tired tomorrow... when it hit me that my husband doesn't think like this.
When he is tired, he goes to bed. He'll finish it tomorrow or not worry about it. He worries about work but never "home stuff." He doesn't worry about my son's snack or my daughter's daycare blanket. And it hits me that I need to think more like my man.
No one has ever died from not having a perfectly clean blanket at daycare or not having a snack at school...dinner can be thrown together tomorrow night if I need to...and well the rest of it can wait while I drift into sleep that seems too precious to me to even mention without angels singing in the background.
Why do women worry about all of the "little" things? And why do they always seem to fall to us to worry about? I like to think that my hubby is enlightened (and he is) but he doesn't notice a sink full of dishes unless he thinks I'm the one who should do them. He doesn't seem too concerned that he won't be home for a while. He knows that I've got it taken care of...but if I should want to be away for a while, I worry and coordinate to make it easier on him.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not complaining about him but about ME! I think that I need to slow down and chill. I need to deal with tomorrow tomorrow and just go to bed. So I will but I will return having cleaned the blanket and given the snack...I have said it before and I'll say it again...I really wish that I had a wife:)
2 comments:
Amen, amen, and amen! What you say is exactly true.
Get some sleep, Lisa!
We think about those things because we see them as important.
And you're right: unless they are stay-at-home dads, men rarely think about daycare blankets or afternoon snacks. Instead, he's thinking about work--or, if he's anything like L.--about what he needs to do to get promoted, when he's going to get the taxes done, how the kids' car is running in subzero temps, and whether it's time to change the oil in the Jeep.
I think the differences don't reflect his lack of investment--they reflect his investment in different things. L. doesn't think about dinner until he gets hungry. He doesn't think about laundry until his stash of socks gets low. When the scale reads five pounds more than it should, he cuts out ice cream and spends a couple of extra days at the gym--he certainly doesn't diet.
Yes, we should think more like men.
L. gets up in the morning, works hard all day, makes difficult decisions that impact people's lives, and then falls asleep in 90 seconds flat, confident that he's done his best, and if there's any fall-out, he'll deal with it better if he's had plenty of rest.
I get up in the morning, work hard all day, make difficult decisions that occasionally impact people's lives, and then spend 90 minutes before I fall asleep going over each decision, conversation, phone call, etc. with a fine-tooth comb, thinking about decisions that I might have to make tomorrow, and predict which decisions might arise next week and wonder how I'm going to handle them.
I think it boils down to confidence. Seriously! We're so worried that we're going to forget something, that someone's going to be uncomfortable, and that suddenly, we won't be "A GOOD MOM" that we run ourselves into the ground...mercilessly. Women often feel like we have something to prove, and our culture perpetuates these feelings of inadequacy by telling us what GOOD moms do, how thin they are, how they dress, what they give their kids, how clean the house is...and that they manage to do it all while they "supplement" the household income with their little "home business" to the tune of six figures a year.
When we can't meet thise expectations (who could???), we feel guilty, defensive, and unappreciated. We react by spoiling our kids, grumbling at our husbands about the unfairness of it all...and by perpetuating the myth for our daughters as they watch us get up each morning, work hard all day, make decisions that impact people's lives, and then stay up late washing a daycare blanket and making a snack.
I'm with Janet. Go to bed, Superwoman. Tomorrow's another day.
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