July 17th, 2006
If I have to tell you…
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, if you have to ask, I don’t want to tell you.”
How many times have we heard those lines spoken on TV? One thing’s certain; no one who reads that dialogue has to ask which one is the wife.
No woman I know would utter those exact words - at least not without immediate horrification that they had echoed a sitcom - but I think the premise is pretty much accepted. In fact, I know it is.
You tell me. Do we or don’t we - at least sometimes - act like our husbands should not only instinctively know what we want them to do, but also do it, do it right, and do it now? And don’t we tend to be rather affronted if they fail at any of those points?
What if we decline to spend any calories on whether or not our husbands should already know what we need, but just ask them for it? And instead of filling three minutes with unnecessary detail, what if we instead choose to be specific and concise, allowing them to come away with a clear picture of our request?
And later, if they get distracted and forget to do it, what if we simply remind them, kindly?
This works.
You can just say, “The kids have worn me down to my last nerve and I need a break - right now - for about 20 minutes; preferably away from the house.”
Maybe he’ll give you the keys and a kiss and send you off to the spa.
More likely he’ll say, “I need to finish this one thing, and it should take about five minutes, then I’ll take over making dinner and you can go for a walk. Would that be OK?”
And, because five minutes always grows into 10, you can say, “Can I set the egg timer and then just go?”
“OK, set if for seven minutes and tell me that you’re leaving.”
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Who, What, When, Where, Why, and for How Long. Then compromise. Then happiness.
I think sometimes I don’t ask for what I want because I know I probably can’t have all of it; RIGHT NOW *is* pretty hard to deliver on. But if I just go ahead and risk asking for what the ideal thing would be, and if I get at least 80% of that, at least 99% of the time, I feel like a queen.
Think about it. Can a married woman be treated like a queen by her husband? Yes, she can. But she needs to remember she married a king, not a minion; nor a mind reader.
*”I don’t want to be worshipped. I want to be loved.”* - Tracy Lord, [The Philadelphia Story](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032904/)