How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids

by Jancee Dunn

  So what motivated him to change? For starters, he was fully aware that he had been getting away with doing very little—he told me so later, and admitted that he constantly felt guilty about it. He knew that I had reached my limit, and that I was burned out and frustrated.

  When he started helping me out, he did it strictly to keep the peace. But the more he did his share, the happier I was—a tangible benefit for him. The idea that you can create an “upward spiral” of happiness was, in our case, true. When Tom pitched in, I was relieved and grateful. Our sex life improved. We were more polite to each other. I stopped falling asleep at 9 p.m. from sheer exhaustion, and stayed up with him to watch his depressing Romanian films. I baked his favorite ginger cookies, unasked. And our naturally upbeat child was even cheerier when we didn’t fight, so our family life had a newfound ease and effervescence.

  As University of Oregon sociologist Scott Coltrane has observed in his research, while men often report some difficulty assuming more responsibility around the house, “initial frustration is typically short lived.”

  Treating your spouse with consideration does not mean you are “caving.”

  As FBI crisis negotiator Gary Noesner points out, all human beings want to be treated with respect. Terry Real instructed us to make a commitment that nothing we say to each other should drop below the level of simple respect. It seemed impossible at the time, but I’m here to say that it can be done. If you’re about to blurt out something disrespectful, says Real, “then, with all due respect, shut up.”

  Say “Thank you,” and say it often.

  For us, thanking each other was what The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg calls a “keystone habit”—an influential habit that creates “chain reactions that help other good habits take hold.” A prime example of a keystone habit is exercise, which prompts people to eat better; so is having regular family dinners, which seems to correlate with children who have better homework skills, higher grades, and greater emotional control.

  Voicing your gratitude takes almost no effort, and to my mind, it’s nearly impossible to thank someone too often. I told Tom repeatedly for months until it lodged in his head that women don’t like to feel invisible. A simple “thank you” renders you visible and takes away the feeling that you’re a stagehand, silently engineering the props while the others have all the fun.

  Divest yourself of the “story you are making up.”

  Rising Strong author Brené Brown calls it her “number one life hack” for relationships that go the distance, and it was one of the most helpful things I learned. Brown, as I wrote earlier, says that we often construct an elaborate motivation for someone that may have nothing to do with reality (if a coworker doesn’t return your smile, then obviously you offended her somehow and she can’t stand you).

  Whenever I find myself writing a custom thought bubble above Tom’s head (which usually has a gloating or evil tone), I follow Brown’s recommendation and share it with Tom. This deflates tension and helps both of us understand the other’s perspective. Tom doesn’t seem quite as evil when he informs me that what he was really thinking about was electronic cord management strategies, not how he can trick me out of having to help with the chores.

  It’s been illuminating to learn from the observational psychology research and insights from experts such as biological anthropologist Helen Fisher the role that optics can play in relationships: how sometimes men can take what is closest at hand for granted not because they are hopeless jerks, but because they just don’t see it. On the flip side, when women focus too closely on matters at home, it can make them fail to see more pressing ones on the horizon.

  Use your power.

  If Tom was under a tight magazine deadline in the summertime, I would occasionally take our daughter to my parents’ house for a few days to give him space to work. Our absence created a recognizable pattern: For the first two nights, Tom celebrated his liberation with takeout food, a violent-film festival, and international computer chess tournaments that stretched into the wee hours. But by the third day, a low-grade funk had darkened his mood and he would mournfully inquire when we were coming home.

  My friend Marea, a stay-at-home mom, describes a similar scene when she and her daughter take their annual summer trip to visit Marea’s father in Pennsylvania. Her husband doesn’t accompany them because summer is a busy time at his advertising office. “My dad cooks us dinner every night,” Marea tells me. “He cooks well, and it is such a gift to have a lovely, delicious, healthy meal placed in front of you—I always think, ‘Wow, this is what Sean must feel like every day of his life.’ Meanwhile, Sean is back in Brooklyn falling apart. He aimlessly comes home from work to an empty apartment. He calls me too much. During one of those calls last summer, he told me what he had for dinner: a hot dog bun with cold shredded cheese on it. I’m like, ‘You couldn’t even heat it up?’ Well, I didn’t feel sorry for him. I just said, ‘Grandpop made apple pie. I have to go.’”

  Women, as it turns out, have more leverage than they think: two-thirds of all divorces among Americans over forty years of age are initiated by women, not men. “As our recent research shows, marriage and parenthood are no longer negotiated on men’s terms alone,” sociologist Scott Coltrane wrote in the Atlantic. “One of the biggest shifts in recent years is that many women will simply not put up with partners who don’t contribute at home.”

  And your husband may be more emotionally dependent on you than you realize. Sociology professor Terri Orbuch recommends an exercise to help women understand their importance in a marriage. She has each spouse draw five concentric circles, like a target. She instructs them to write their names in the bull’s-eye, then has each partner list the five people they feel closest to, with the inner circle signifying the most intimate and the other circles representing decreasing closeness.

  The responses of men and women are radically different. Women tend to cram all five people in that bull’s-eye, and often ask Orbuch if they can list seven or eight. Husbands, meanwhile, put their wives right next to them in the inner circle. The rest, including children and other close relatives, are usually relegated to outer circles.

  When Tom and I try it, he places me and our daughter in the inner circle. I put in five intimates and wish I could ask Orbuch if I could list seven or eight. “For women,” Orbuch writes, “the knowledge that you are the main provider of reassurance and intimacy for your husband gives you incredible power. Most women have no idea they have this much ability to influence their husband’s long-term happiness and short-term behavior.”

  Know that no matter what you and your spouse tell yourselves, your child is affected by your arguing. Period.

  If you think otherwise, as I did, ask your child, and see if you can live with her answer.

  Symbolic gestures: minimal effort, maximum effectiveness!

  Tom now makes dinner once a week. Even though I cook dinner the other six nights, I still appreciate it. I don’t care that it is not equal—I feel supported, and that perception is important. Scott Coltrane has noted that when men share “routine repetitive chores of cooking, cleaning, and washing,” women feel they are being treated fairly, they’re less likely to become depressed, and the couple has less marital conflict.

  I am amazed (and sometimes a little dismayed) at how much mileage some of Tom’s largely symbolic gestures have resonated with me. He doesn’t need to toil with me side by side: if he takes our child to the park for forty-five minutes so that I can putter happily around the house, I’m good for the day.

  Some of his largely symbolic actions resonate with our daughter, too. Aside from chaperoning those class trips, Tom, for the first time ever, attended a parent-teacher conference and a birthday party solo, and took Sylvie to the doctor when she had pinkeye. All of those gestures—and I’m aware they were mostly gestures—took a total of a few hours, but she was thrilled, it deepened their relationship, and the goodwill he received from me lasted for weeks.

  Find
ing the tasks your mate can’t tolerate if they’re neglected, and then foisting them on him, is an exciting game of strategy.

  Couples therapist Joshua Coleman’s advice is ingenious: once I trained myself to notice, I discovered many tasks that Tom couldn’t tolerate if they were left undone. He has to have coffee first thing in the morning, for instance, in order for the consonants to reappear in his speech. Why, then, was I the one making the coffee? He is a stickler for being prompt—one quality that I loved about him when we were first dating, after a series of boyfriends who would keep me waiting, sometimes for hours—so it drove him nuts that I could never seem to get our daughter to soccer on time. Aha: you take her!

  Does your husband twitch if grocery supplies run low or your dog needs a bath? Here you go—all yours, hon!

  Couples counseling is not always, in the words of my father, “a buncha crap.”

  Especially, I would add here, if you can find a therapist who yells at your husband, “Stop with your entitled attitude, get off your ass, and help her out!” Heaven! And couples counselors needn’t cost what Terry Real charges—many therapists, particularly those at university psychiatric centers, have sliding-scale fees. Some facilities offer counselors in training for a reduced cost; others will do Skype sessions if parents are crunched for time.

  It may well be that Tom’s motivation to change had nothing to do with me, and is entirely based on a deep fear of returning to Terry Real. I’m fine with that.

  Children learn what they live.

  As child psychologists like to repeat, kids often register what you do more than what you say. I can’t count the number of soaring speeches I gave to our daughter about how girls—and women—can do anything. Girls rule! Then why was she given to observations like “Moms do the boring stuff, and dads do the fun stuff”? Because day after day, it was her mom who was doing the boring stuff. That is what she saw, so that was what she knew. Again: you can’t be what you can’t see.

  Prevent future arguments by tackling the big questions about parenthood in advance (not just the fun ones such as “Should the crib mobile have ducks or bunnies?”).

  Many people with a baby on the way spend weeks or even months online, researching the best crib, the safest car seat—but spend little if any time thinking about the titanic impact the baby will have on their marriage. Couples therapists John and Julie Gottman run a national program called Bringing Baby Home, in which expectant parents spend a total of twelve hours learning how to resolve fights, divvy up chores, and navigate touchy topics like leisure time and sex.

  Many psychologists and hospitals now offer similar classes. Of course, there are plenty of issues that can’t be worked out in advance, no matter how much preparation you do. But never is there a better time to do a life hack than pregnancy, when time itself seems to move very slowly, and your life is dictated by forces that are still slightly in your control. Tom and I could have avoided so many post-baby battles if we had taken the time beforehand to simply address some of the issues the Gottmans explore in their workshops.

  A sampling: Should we have mealtimes together? Who will take care of the kid when she is sick? How should we include our relatives in our baby’s life? How much television should we allow? How do you feel about the child sleeping in the same bed as us? Will religion play a part in her life? Write down three to five things that you liked about how you were parented that you plan to include in your parenting, and three to five things you did not like that you plan to avoid.

  Many of the questions the Gottmans provide are useful even for parents of older children, because they drill down quickly to your values, many of which you may never have identified in any meaningful way (certainly, we haven’t). The Gottmans say that parents can quickly and easily build intimacy just by asking open-ended questions like these: In what ways has our child changed our relationship? How do you think we could have more fun in our life? How have your goals in life changed since we had a child? What things are missing in your life? Who is your role model as a parent? What are your biggest worries about our future?

  Most parents tend to ask closed-ended questions that can be answered with a brief mumble: Where is the Go-Gurt for her lunch? Well, why didn’t you buy it when you were just at the store? You do know that if you just made a grocery list, you wouldn’t have to run back there later? Are you even listening to me? Okay, what did I just say, then? Wrong!

  If you are able to swing paternity leave, your marriage, and your baby, may benefit hugely.

  Research shows that having an involved father early on is essential to forging a more equal division between partners as the child grows. The benefits actually begin if Dad is present in the delivery room, as is the case for 91 percent of US men: research has shown that it reduces hostility later on between mothers and fathers.

  A study of four countries—England, Denmark, Australia, and the United States—revealed that dads who had taken even short amounts of paternity leave were more likely to bathe, dress, feed, and play with their offspring long after their time off had ended. Nearly half of the leave-taking American dads were more apt to read books with their toddlers than men who hadn’t taken time off.

  Sociologist Scott Coltrane, who has studied the role of men in childcare and housework for decades, has found in his research that men who take time off for family reasons are more likely to take a hit in their long-term earnings. But the benefits of paternity leave, he argues, can outweigh the loss of long-term income: wives are happier (and, in one study, had lower rates of postpartum depression), children thrive from having two dedicated caregivers, and men develop better nurturing skills.

  When fathers experience skin-to-skin cuddling with their newborns, the babies go to sleep faster, cry less, and are calmer than babies who did not have the same contact with Dad, research has found. And Swedish researchers discovered that men who take paternity leave live longer than others—with those who took the longest leaves reaping the greatest rewards. They speculated that the fathers’ deepened involvement curbed some of the “damaging behaviors traditionally linked to men,” such as alcohol abuse, risk taking, and violence. Talk about long-term benefits.

  Date nights: a corny necessity.

  Some of my more capable friends manage weekly date nights, but the most Tom and I can do is once a month—and it is still one of the most important ways of reinforcing our bond. How liberating it is to talk without having a kid interrupt you forty times! How freeing not to have to assemble your face into an attentive expression as your child drones on about the intricacies of Minecraft! Instead, you can bring up inappropriate subjects, flirt, reminisce, and speculate on which members of the restaurant waitstaff are sleeping with each other!

  On a daily basis, it is transformative to take just ten or fifteen minutes a day to talk about anything—anything—except scheduling, our child, or the fact that we’re running low on paper towels.

  Be mindful of the ways you are shutting your husband out, or making him feel incompetent.

  Maternal gatekeeping comes in many sneaky forms. When I was texting with a group of moms recently about an incident at school, Tom asked me what was going on. “Oh, you wouldn’t be interested,” I said, and then stopped myself: Why was I excluding him?

  I now make a concerted effort to stop this automatic, offhand dismissal, especially after my daughter, not yet the recipient of a birds-and-bees talk, made this observation: “You and I are related because you grew me in your stomach. But Daddy’s just some guy that lives with us.”

  When I am engaged in a kid-related activity, I have noticed that I often reflexively leave out the men, assuming they will be bored. One day, Tom and I took my parents to lunch at their favorite Chinese place in New Jersey, which is festively housed in a giant red and gold pagoda. En route, Sylvie, my mother, and I were playing a word game we devised in which you name a brand—say, Legos—and the next person must name a brand starting with the final letter of that word—say, Superga. It’s an excellent g
ame for young kids in particular: toddlers who can’t name a single country can unsettlingly rattle off a hundred brand names.

  Then I noticed something: when Sylvie got stuck on a brand beginning with the letter M, I saw my father mouthing “Michelin tires.” When my mother was stumped by a T, Tom quietly uttered, “Thermos.” They wanted to play!

  Now I actively try to include men in the kid stuff.

  What does it cost you?

  This unerringly useful advice, given by professional organizer Julie Morgenstern, has prevented many a scene. If your mate wants a nap or a run or a night out with friends, what is it really costing you? Is it increasing your workload or robbing your child of precious quality time—or is it just annoying, because you would never presume to take a nap?

  One Saturday morning, Tom was sleeping in (per our new arrangement). Sylvie and I spent the morning coloring and creating a tea party for her stuffed animals, a chance for her to surreptitiously eat cookies (“Look, they ate five Fig Newtons! They sure were hungry!”).

  At around 11 a.m., I went into our bedroom for a sweater and saw Tom quickly stash his phone under his pillow and shut his eyes. Normally my impulse would be to announce, “Okay, quit hiding—time to get up.” But I was having a lovely morning with my daughter. His lingering in bed wasn’t costing me a thing—I was just irritated on principle. So I pretended not to notice his ruse, and shut the door.