“Be ready to be everything to him,” I said.
My coworker looked at me with wide eyes that seemed to encompass a new understanding. I couldn’t read the expression on the lower half of her face since she was wearing a mask, but she did say, after a pause, “That’s… interesting. I guess I never thought about that before.”
We had to get back to work so she said goodbye and left, but I was left struck at what had just come out of my mouth.
My coworker had stopped by for a quick chat at my office. She was a little peeved that her fiancé was going to spend yet another Friday night drinking beer and playing pool with his buddies. “At the end of the week, I want to come home and be with him,” she’d said.
“Oh, honey,” I responded. “Let him go. Do you know what it’s like to have a husband without friends?”
We got to talking about her upcoming wedding, and I just kept talking about how my husband had, throughout our marriage, expected me to be everything to him — secretary, lover, therapist, best friend, financial partner, etc., whereas to me, he was my husband and the father of my child.
“Be ready to be everything to him,” I said, then laughed nervously as her eyes got wide.
“Uh, marriage, one out of five stars, do not recommend,” I tried to joke to ease the tension of my overshare.
Even though it was awkward, I’m glad I had that conversation. No, I wasn’t trying to turn her off to the idea of getting married. However, there are a lot of things about heterosexual cisgendered marriage that women are never prepared for and deserve to be aware of. One aspect I’ve discovered is a dynamic common among many couples in which the wife fulfills a multitude of roles for the husband, while she has a network of people to rely on for various needs. Good thing, too, because being everything to someone is really, really exhausting.
I know this from experience
So now I have the words to describe the problem, but what am I supposed to do?
Continue to micromanage my husband’s life by setting him up with playdates? I mean, how do I undo so much brainwashing?
I can’t. I can tell him to go to therapy — which he does — and get us in couple’s therapy — which we are. I can continue to be as supportive as I can be. It helps me to think about it from his perspective. How isolating must it be to have only one friend? And I’m not sure I’m a particularly good one.
These are steps in the right direction. The next move is to try to raise a generation of boys who aren’t afraid of having real friendships and to actually access their emotions. I can’t wait to have a son so I can start from scratch. His future partner will thank me one day.
