Q & A

I Feel Like My Husband's Maid

Jay Kesler

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Q. My husband and I have a huge inequality when it comes to our leisure time. He works full-time away from home; I work part-time from our home and handle virtually all the housework and childcare except for car maintenance and outdoor Saturday chores. I have to get up earlier than he to get him and the kids ready for the day. He has time to play with our kids. In the evenings when he's settled down to watch TV, I'm still paying the bills or folding laundry. He takes his leisure when he wants or needs it, but I don't have that luxury. Is this a wife's role, and I should just stop complaining about it? It's hard not to be resentful.

A. Yours is not an uncommon problem. Most contemporary couples need to evaluate (or reevaluate) their housekeeping standards and tasks and the division of labor.

During all this time that your resentment has been growing, have you approached your husband, calmly, to talk with him about it? A good conversation and reconsideration of the housework involved may be eye-opening to your husband. In other words, it may be that you see things that need to be done more than he sees them, and that as he becomes aware of both the extent of the work to be handled and your feelings of hardship, he'll be willing to pitch in. Just having this conversation and working out a fair division of labor can help the two of you develop a better sense of teamwork or partnership, and you'll find your marital satisfaction growing again as you watch him take on more of the household tasks. Remind him that his help will allow you to share your leisure time more effectively as well.

Your reevaluation of the household and childcare work to be handled could lead to some adjustments on your part as well. Maybe you'll be able to relax some areas of your housekeeping standards as you realize they're not high priorities to your husband. Or maybe together you'll find some space in the schedule for some down time for you.

Work on this together. It's more productive than stewing in your resentments, alone.

Q. He'll Leave If I Become a Better Christian

My husband and I married young (we are both still in our twenties). We've been through a lot together but lately we've drifted apart. When I was a teenager, I became a Christian, but I haven't been living for God for a long time. Right now, part of me wants to go ahead and make the first step back toward life with God, but I'm positive that it will alienate my husband even further. He might even leave. What's your advice?

A. Your question has a cut-and-dried answer. It's not as if you were weighing your relationship with one human person against another. This time you're weighing you're relationship with a person against your relationship with God—and there's no question that your relationship with God is ultimately the most important.

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 2000, Fall

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