A Mother's Day Message for Husbands

by Mark Roger

Spend enough time in a counseling office or a marriage workshop training room, and you’ll hear a common theme from wives who are disgusted with their husbands: they don’t want to mother them.

But it feels like they have to.

And that really ticks them off.

When Mother's Day rolls around, the average unhappy wife could say, “I can’t tell the difference between being a wife and being a mother, because my husband hasn’t got a clue.” Whereas most males would be mortified to think that they can’t cut it as an adult on the job, the average unhappy husband seems to tolerate being a perpetual adolescent at home without a wince.
In their jobs, most males won’t allow themselves to be incompetent for long. They work hard to get things done. They work hard to build skills. They work hard to find others to help them create results and achieve goals. They work hard to be productive team members and lead the teams they are responsible for.

But at home, they don’t seem to mind being underachievers.

Unhappy husbands don’t set goals for relating. They don’t build skills in communicating about feelings. They don’t require themselves to be competent at the tasks of creating a team spirit in their marital partnership. They let their wives do that work.

On the surface, it looks like they are allowing the more skillful person to be the leader, waiting for their wives to initiate conversations and take the initiative. Allowing the more skilled partner to take the lead is often an admirable team strategy. It makes sense to let the quarterback call the play, to let the hot shooter have the ball, to let the star kicker take aim at the net.

That’s a tactic that doesn’t work in marriage.

Intimacy and commitment require mutuality in partnership. You can’t run a marriage by the rickshaw model, calling it cooperation when you are merely a compatible passenger in the vehicle that your mate is pulling. It’s not teamwork to allow your wife to be the only goal-setter, the only initiative-taker, the only risk-embracer in the domain of relationship-building.

It’s being an adolescent emotionally. It’s letting someone else have the job of parent, while you get to toy with adult privileges but child-level responsibilities.

To make a wife really happy, husbands should:

• define themselves as fully responsible for climate-control in the relationship
  make plans and follow through on projects that have the goal of creating quality in the relationship (dates, vacations, conversations, problem-solving)
  build skill in conversation and dialogue, especially about feelings and experiences
  accept feedback and take suggestions about improving their performance as a mate
  keep promises and honor commitments, large and small
  

These are the marks of an adult partner, taking adult-level responsibility for relationship maturity. It’s what allows your wife to celebrate motherhood (and have a renewed appreciation for marriage) on Mother's Day. Send your mom a card, but give your wife the man you know you can be.