What Mums Want (and Dads Need to Know) (eBook)

CHAPTER ONE

Dear mum

When my husband is interested in me, and is kind and generous to me, every part of me lights up. I feel happier and more enthusiastic about everything. I feel more loving and physically more attracted to him. I have more energy. I’m more interested in him.

His attention makes me be me; it allows me to enjoy the relationship I always wanted. I can love, respect, honour, and adore. I can do things with and for my husband. That’s the person I am. I don’t have to put on a persona.

When my husband neglects me, I can put up with it for a bit. But it slowly weighs me down, like a wet blanket. It’s demotivating, boring, unpleasant, and unsexy in the extreme. I feel cold and resentful. I don’t even like the person that I love.

At these times, I tend to go into micro-manage mode. Life’s negatives overwhelm all the positives, which means pointing out all the things that haven’t been done, mended, or planned. It’s as if they flash up in neon lights.

The wife who feels neglected talks about the bins, the children, the dishwasher, the bills, the mowing, the broken handle, the problem with the car, and the shopping. These are all the things that need doing.

What she really means is, “What about me?”

So doesn’t it seem utterly ludicrous that we need to remind our husbands, the ones with whom we have our most intimate relationship on this planet, that we need them to notice us, to be friends with us, to be kind and gentle?

Harry’s and my story is of a marriage brought back from the brink. It’s a story that’s both real and filled with hope. That’s what I feel today after being married for thirty years. But the early years of our marriage seemed anything but hopeful, especially when we had young children. The confrontation you’ve just read about happened eight years into our married life. Far from the dream of “happily ever after”, I languished in a state of utter dissatisfaction.

We should never have got into such a mess in the first place.

Harry’s part in our downfall was mostly a matter of ignorance. My Harry hasn’t a malicious bone in his body. For many years he was both a good man and a useless husband. He’s still a good man. Now he’s a lovely husband.

I played my part too. I need to hold my hands up and take some share of the responsibility for what went wrong in the first place. We’ll come to that.

The supreme irony is that, as a couple whose marriage was in deep crisis, we have ended up teaching thousands of new parents and other couples how to have a happy marriage! The principles we have taught were well grounded in research into what works. But it was always encouraging to hear how many people could relate to our personal illustrations of the ups and downs of married life.

Yet even though our story strikes a chord with some couples, how representative is it of what you, or mums in general, might want?

Especially for this book, we surveyed 291 married mothers and asked them what they most wanted from their husband. Almost everybody told us the same three things:

I was quite heartened by these findings. I wasn’t the only mother who needed to feel cherished and enjoyed and loved. It seems that this is what most other mothers want as well.

For me, friendship means being kind and gentle. It means being prepared to drop stuff and listen, being open and encouraging with me, asking me how I am, being involved in my life, and being interested in my opinion. It means showing initiative and not waiting for me to ask. And it means noticing me and maybe giving the occasional compliment.

Just as important is what friendship isn’t. It isn’t loud, opinionated, and absolute. It isn’t dismissive of things I do or like. It isn’t about putting me down or belittling me. It isn’t rude and disrespectful. It’s also not about the functional side of life, how well we fulfil our different roles and responsibilities. It’s definitely not about how well stuff gets fixed and money gets earned, and how well husbands provide – if that’s how you choose to divide your roles.

Before we had children, we had time for each other and ourselves, energy, money, and flourishing careers. With those ingredients in the cupboard of life, it’s not hard to enjoy this stage, even if the relationship has the odd flaw.

Becoming parents blew a hole in this idyll. We were supposed to be the happiest little family unit. We both wanted children, and our first daughter arrived at the perfect time, healthy and demanding. Two years later, our second was born.

As a new mother, I became completely wrapped up in my babies. I loved them to bursting and relished every moment of their newborn stage. “Milky heaven” is what I used to call that time. I didn’t ever really think about what my having babies would do to my relationship with Harry.

Both of us got stuck into our new life as parents. I discovered that I was made to be a mother. Harry loved our girls instantly, and was a helpful and attentive father.

Our drifting apart was so very subtle. It wasn’t all bleak, of course: we still had a lot of fun. But the inevitable post-baby exhaustion was thick and dark, like being in a long tunnel. I needed Harry to care about me and not just the baby. I couldn’t put my finger on what I needed exactly, but I felt increasingly disappointed and cross that I wasn’t getting it.

Harry sensed that he was in trouble and retreated somewhere inside himself that was safe and closed off. On the surface he was working hard to provide for us; he was emotionally engaged and engaging with our daughters. But our own cosy friendship seemed to slip away. At the same time, I pulled away from Harry to protect myself. I hid this conscious withdrawal behind the mammoth task of motherhood and the vortex it creates. We failed to check in with each other. We just functioned.

I know 100 per cent when I’m being noticed and cherished. I also know when I’m not.

When I asked Harry why it wasn’t natural and automatic for him to be friendly and adore me, he said that he just didn’t think about it. He would never be deliberately unfriendly or unkind. But, left to his own devices, it never crossed his mind that his number-one role was to be my friend, to adore me, to be pleased and interested in me, to be kind. Instead, he focused on work.

I wonder what I could have done better to make Harry know how much we loved and needed him.

Harry and other male friends have recently talked about being left out or cast aside the minute the baby came home. They felt cut out during pregnancy too, as our female brains, bodies, and emotions were already hooked on the baby. I simply didn’t ever consider it at the time and, as Harry wasn’t very emotionally literate, he never voiced it until much later.

For me, the turning points began with talking to a friend and led to the confrontation with Harry, about which you’ve just read.

For Harry, the turning points were the confrontation, which came like a bolt from the blue for him, and then a letter I wrote that made him change his whole attitude.

For our marriage, the turning points were all of these, followed by a marriage course we did over a weekend together. Thereafter it’s been a question of working it out as we go along.

The changes Harry made were all very real, although it took ages for me to believe it. Harry still has all the qualities that I saw and loved in him when we got married...