How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids

by Jancee Dunn

  I do—especially before playdates, which provide thousands of opportunities for judgment. Until I had a child, I had never been inside half of my friends’ New York apartments, most of which were so cramped that it was easier to meet at a restaurant or bar. Now that my friends and I constantly host playdates, we all make panicked sweeps beforehand to hide things that might raise eyebrows: the towels blooming with bleached-out stains from adult acne medication, the video game consoles (stash those behind the austere Swedish wooden educational toys), the catalog of foot supports and “comfort insoles,” the tube of Aquaphor on your bedside table that you use as cuticle conditioner but could easily be misconstrued as lube.

  Rivers of ink have been spilled over the impossible standards of perfection to which mothers hold themselves. One study of working parents found that women reported greater feelings of inadequacy when describing their family life: 30 percent said they were failing to meet the standards they wanted, as opposed to 17 percent of men.

  Brené Brown, author and research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, calls herself a recovering perfectionist. “Perfectionism is so destructive,” she tells me. “Never once in the twelve years I interviewed CEOs and award-winning athletes did I ever hear someone say, ‘I achieved everything I have today because I am a perfectionist.’ Never! What I hear people say is ‘My success is very much based on my ability to keep perfectionism at bay.’”

  However, that awareness, she added, doesn’t stop her from occasionally lurching awake at five in the morning “in a dead panic, like, ‘Oh, my God, I am such a loser, I can’t believe I didn’t email back that person about my son’s school project.’”

  I suspect that my husband deliberately takes his time when I ask him to do something, so I won’t ask him to do something else.

  “You are correct,” says every man, ever.

  “If I finish up quickly, Dinah has plenty of other jobs lined up,” says my brother-in-law Patrick. “So I’ve gotta be honest, I take my time.”

  “There’s something called Zipf’s law,” chimes in Tom, “named for a linguist, who said people naturally economize to do the least amount of work they can over time. It’s why most of us only use a small number of words in daily life—why reach for the obscure ones? Also, yes, I’m afraid you’ll ask me to do something else.”

  When we’re trying to get our three kids into bed at night, I’ve done fifty things in the time it takes my husband to put away Legos. It makes me crazy.

  During school mornings, I, too, am a hurricane, while Tom waits by the door jingling his keys, genuinely puzzled that I’m “never on time.” (Key-jingling is the soundtrack of my life. Tom’s tolerance for playgrounds tops out at one hour; then out come the keys. My father is similar: if we visit a museum, an hour and fifteen minutes is his absolute limit before he goes outside to sit on a bench and people-watch. “I’ve seen all there is to see,” he announced recently after a brisk stroll through the priceless treasures in the Met Museum.) Tom also tends to do one thing at a time; if I throw more tasks at him, I watch his eyes grow blank as his circuits overload.

  The old stereotype that women are better multitaskers might actually be true, according to a University of Pennsylvania study. Scientists found stronger neural connectivity in men from front to back and within one hemisphere, suggesting that their brains are built to “ease connectivity between perception and coordinated action”—that is, to perform a single task. In women, meanwhile, the wiring runs between the left and right hemispheres, suggesting it “facilitate[s] communication between the analytical and intuition”—so women have better memory and social cognition skills, making them better equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that can work within a group.

  A study conducted by UK psychologists found that in some cases, women may indeed be better multitaskers. In one test designed to mimic everyday life, a group of women and men had eight minutes to finish a series of tasks, such as deciding how they would search for a lost key in a field. (I have actually done this: Tom once dropped his keys in a field during a bike race in Red Hook.)

  As it wasn’t actually possible to finish everything in eight minutes, the exercise compelled the participants to quickly prioritize, use time wisely, and stay calm with a ticking deadline. Women aced the key search task in particular by drawing a map of the field and showing how they would methodically go around it in concentric rectangles—which is exactly what I did in order to find Tom’s keys. “That’s a highly productive strategy for finding a lost object,” study coauthor Keith Laws told the BBC, “whereas some men didn’t even search the whole field in any particular manner, which is just bizarre.”

  The women, he said, tended to plan out a strategy in the beginning, whereas men jumped into the “field” too quickly. One theory the researchers floated as to why women might be more skilled at multitasking is that in earlier times, they became adept at doing many things at once as they tended to the clan—a prehistoric “struggle to juggle”—while men were out doing more so-called linear tasks, such as chasing down dinner.

  If my wife is fuming that I stand there while she empties the dishwasher, why doesn’t she just say “Help me empty the dishwasher” instead of banging pots and pans around?

  In general, says leading communication scholar Julia T. Wood, men are more direct in speech than women within the context of relationships. “Some men may assume that if a female partner has a grievance, she will state it forthrightly,” she says, “and may not perceive the banging pans as a statement of anger.” Nonverbal cues, she adds, “operate largely on the relationship level of meaning—which some men are not especially adept at interpreting.” (Indeed, a large survey of divorced people over age forty commissioned by AARP found that 26 percent of men who were served divorce papers didn’t see it coming.)

  Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher says that the ability to read facial expressions and body postures is better in the average woman than in the average man. From an evolutionary perspective, she says, “Women for millions of years had to raise the most helpless babies on the planet, and for the longest period of time. And because the babies don’t talk for a while, the mothers need to know what the problems are—so women are better at reading emotions in the face, tone of voice, and all kinds of body postures, because of their long, long evolutionary job of raising babies.”

  In fact, she goes on, men are better at detecting emotions such as anger in the eyes of other men than they are in women. In hunter-gatherer times, men had to protect their group, “so it would be adaptive for a man to recognize anger in another man because those that didn’t, did not notice the blow coming, and died out, and perhaps the group died out. So there was probably positive selection for the kind of man who could read anger in another man: you could lose your life by not noticing anger in a man’s eyes, but you probably don’t lose your life by not noticing anger in a woman. You’re just gonna sleep on the couch.” In other words, that maddening thousand-mile stare on your husband’s face when he’s at brunch with you and the kids may be grounded in evolution.

  New York psychotherapist Jean Fitzpatrick says that in her practice, she has seen that “very often, for some reason, women think that guys are going to just pitch in and contribute, and if they don’t, then they’re deliberately choosing not to pitch in. Or they don’t care. So they go to ‘Well, he doesn’t really care about me.’ And instead, it would be really helpful to say, ‘Here’s what I need from you right now.’”

  Brené Brown calls this tendency to project a motive onto someone without actually knowing the facts “the story I’m making up.” In her book Rising Strong, she describes a scene in which it’s nearing dinnertime, her two kids are hungry, and her husband, Steve, opens the refrigerator and announces, “We have no groceries. Not even lunch meat.” She immediately snarls at him, saying that she’s doing the best she can and that he could do the shopping, too.

  Then she had a moment of clarity. She
apologized and told him, “The story I’m making up is that you were blaming me for not having groceries, that I was screwing up.” Steve told her that he was actually frustrated because he was planning to shop the day before but didn’t have time.

  I realize I do this all the time with Tom. If I’m doing five chores at once while he’s relaxing with a game of computer chess, my mind constructs a story in which he’s thinking, “I’ve suckered my wife into doing everything, and it feels fantastic! I’m king of the woooorld!”

  When in fact he’s thinking, “Do I castle on the queen side or the king side?” Which is slightly less diabolical.

  Why is it that my husband feels perfectly happy to plop down on the couch while I’m running around after our three kids and cooking dinner at the same time?

  Often, men simply feel more entitled to take leisure time. A University of Southern California study of married couples found that at the end of a workday, women’s stress levels went down if their husbands pitched in with housework. No surprise there—but the mind-boiling part is that men’s stress levels fell if they kicked back with some sort of leisure activity—but only if their wives kept busy doing household tasks at the same time (an effect I term While You’re Up, I’ll Take Another Cold One).

  When study author Darby Saxbe started looking at the data, she says, “We sort of thought it would probably be all the more relaxing to have leisure time if you have a spouse that’s doing that leisure with you,” she tells me. “So it was kind of surprising that we found the opposite effect—that the more leisure time dads had and the less leisure time wives had, the more men’s cortisol levels dropped.”

  The somewhat dispiriting conclusion: a man’s biological adaptation to stress is healthier when his wife has to suffer the consequences.

  Now that I have gathered some background information, it is time to move on to the tougher work: our fighting. Tom initially resists when I propose couples therapy. “I don’t know,” he says, shifting in his chair. “I guess I’ve always viewed couples therapy as a rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic sort of thing.” But he is more convinced when I tell him, calmly but resignedly, that if our situation does not change, I am afraid we will not stay together. When he goes away on business, I add, things at home are so much easier and more peaceful that I sometimes wonder if this would be a better situation for all of us. He looks stricken. For him, my subdued demeanor is much more alarming than my usual yelling.

  He thinks for a minute and clears his throat. “I suppose I can see where having new sets of tools handy could be useful,” he ventures, “especially when our old ones no longer seem to be working.” Because he is a naturally curious person, I am also able to sell therapy as an unusual new experience for us to try.

  He complies, but admits he still dreads the idea. And when I fill him in on the therapist we are seeing first, his dread promptly turns to panic.

  “Get off Your Ass and Help Out!”: Our Harrowing Encounter with the Man from Boston

  There is this amazing guy from Boston, a friend confided in me. You have this long, excruciating session with him where he drills down to your problems really fast, then sets you both straight. It’s not cheap. And he’s no bullshit, so you need to have a very, very thick skin. But he stopped us from getting divorced.

  I frequently write about relationships for magazines, so I have long known about Terry Real. A family therapist and founder of the Relational Life Institute in Boston, Real is a vociferous advocate of moving men and women beyond tired traditional gender roles. Famously blunt, he’s an East Coast version of Dr. Phil, sans mustache and Texas twang. Real’s specialty is working with couples on the brink of divorce whom no one else has been able to help, sort of a Memorial Sloan Kettering for marriage. Clients, among them celebrities and CEOs, fly to Boston from all over the country for his dramatic relationship overhauls—and pay $800 an hour for the privilege. I reason that a bracing session with him would be the perfect jump start.

  Suffice it to say that neither of us is looking forward to it. We aren’t alone in dreading couples therapy. Even therapists do: an article in the trade magazine Psychotherapy Networker revealed that many therapists are traumatized by the sometimes-vicious battles between couples, and infinitely prefer individual sessions. But it can be life-changing to learn how to talk to each other in an effective way—a survey of counselors found that the main reason couples get divorced is not infidelity, or money troubles, but “communication problems.”

  Our squabbling is not just affecting our marital health, but very likely our physical health, too. One study found that if a married couple’s method of fighting was harsh or controlling in tone, it was just as powerful a predictor for risk of heart disease as whether a person smoked or had high cholesterol. Researchers at Ohio State University, meanwhile, found that married couples’ wounds actually healed more slowly when they had hostile arguments compared with so-called low-hostile couples. The stress from a fallout, they discovered, drove up blood levels of hormones that interfere with the delivery of proteins called cytokines, which aid the immune system during injuries.

  Conversely, an avalanche of research shows that happy marriages can boost your health and wellbeing. People in positive long-term relationships have lower rates of heart disease, live longer, and are less likely to develop cancer. Swedish researchers even found that being married at midlife is linked with a lower risk for dementia.

  I’d like for us to be a long-lived, low-hostile couple.

  Terry Real books up months in advance, so I quickly secure an eye-wateringly expensive five-hour session. Soon afterward, I receive a note from his assistant:

  The office is a large, olive-green Victorian-type building. Come on in and have a seat, and Terry will come and get you when it’s time for your session. Dress for the session is extremely informal. Terry dresses comfortably and invites you to do the same. You’re going to have a long, hard-working day. Feel free to call me if you’re anxious.

  We are not sure what to do with Sylvie during our session: even though she has just turned six, we don’t have a regular babysitter. Tom and I, committed homebodies, rarely go out and are quite content being a trio. (It is not lost on me that our lack of dates is probably part of the reason we are in this mess.)

  Still, a couples therapy session is perhaps not the ideal place for a child. But my folks are out of town; Tom’s live in Chicago. Both of my sisters offer to take her for two nights, but because she had never spent the night at their houses, Tom and I worry: what if she can’t handle it for some reason, and we have to cut short our pricey session? Real has a strict cancellation policy.

  I phone Real’s assistant (well, she did say to call if I was anxious) and ask if we can bring Sylvie and stick her in another room.

  “I guess so,” she says hesitantly. “We had a client bring his dog once. But many clients cry and raise their voices. I’m just concerned about your daughter hearing that.”

  “Oh, I’ll bring headphones,” I say breezily. “We’ll load up the iPad with cartoons, and she’ll watch until her eyes bleed. I just need to position her near an electrical outlet in case it needs charging.”

  I can detect the hope in her voice when she tells me to let her know if anything changes and we are able to get childcare.

  Finally, the day arrives. We drive from New York to Boston and, after a restive night in a hotel, are dressed and ready to go an hour in advance. We make a tense drive to the large, olive-green Victorian-type building, Sylvie happily clutching an armful of stuffed animals and a loaded iPad.

  We arrange a makeshift nest for her on a sofa, and Tom assembles her gizmo, while I produce a large bag of cookies, candy, and chips. (Later, Sylvie will proclaim her parents’ therapy session “the best day ever.”)

  Tom and I seat ourselves and wait, leafing distractedly through the magazines on the coffee table. Is Real on the premises? A sign on the wall reads “Children Learn What They Live.” “Tom,” I whisper. “You will be ope
n to this, right? I mean, if we’re going to do this, we should really jump in.”

  “Yes, I’m open,” he whispers back, although his demeanor is that of a cat about to be stuffed into a carrier for a trip to the vet. Time for your shots!

  “Don’t worry,” I whisper. Why are we whispering? I squeeze his hand. “I think if we can—”

  Just then, the office door swings open and we leap up, almost knocking heads. The Man from Boston.

  “Hi,” he says, extending his hand. Tall and attractive, with penetrating blue eyes, Real looks to be in his early sixties and possesses a droll warmth that puts us slightly more at ease. He leads us to a wood-paneled office done in soothing greens, browns, and blues.

  He shuts the door and we settle in, fussing with our seating arrangements. Then he looks at us unblinkingly over his reading glasses. “I always start with the same question,” he begins. “This is a lot of money and you’ve come a long way. What are your hopes? What would a grand slam look like?”

  For the first half hour, we explain our situation: At least a few times a week, we fight about childcare, housework, and money, often in front of our child. I yell at Tom, and he shuts me out and ignores me; it is grinding us down and worrying our daughter.

  “Sylvie jumps to my defense, and I’m often the one who did something wrong,” adds Tom, turning to me. “Maybe that’s because you’re more, uh…”—he searches for a word that will not offend—“vocal?”

  Real looks at me. “See, Sylvie will side with him as a way of ameliorating your anger. She’s pleading his case to you—‘Mom, don’t be mad at him.’ But it does set up an alliance. And yeah, it’s gotta stop. This is not a good thing.” He stops talking and peers at me. “You look sad.”