Pressuring your Husband

This email was receved from a friend....I asked her permission to share it here so it can be edifying to others as well. She did wish to remain anon.

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"I just wanted to share this with you sweet ladies as I had and "ah-ha" moment this week...and I can't believe I didn't "get" this sooner. I suppose hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

Anyway, as I've told you my husband works from home all days but Mondays. In today's economy, we both feel so blessed that he has a full time job and the fact that he can be home so much is just an added blessing. But of course, like any other family, we have a budget and an ongoing list of "needs" for the kids or house or vehicle...you ladies know what I mean, I'm sure. That list of things that sometimes gets whittled down slowly or sometimes stalls out for a while before you're able to pick something off of it again to take care of. I just look at this as a normal part of life when you have a family and home.

So, for the past several months, I knew that my husband was looking, quite actively, for extra work on the side. I didn't really give it much thought but would have preferred that things stay the same, even with a list of things we need to do that we don't quite get around to that often. Because I like where we're at and the type of schedule he gets to keep. But being the good submissive wife that I want to be, I didn't say anything and listened when he would talk about leads for a second job and side work. I tried to support where I could, even though I wasn't personally all hopped up on the idea.

Then this past week we were talking and that ever present "list" and then he was talking about continuing to find another job (on top of his already full time job) and it was like a light bulb went off in my head! When I look at that list of things we need to take care of, I see it as perfectly fine and normal to whittle it down a little bit at a time as we can and not stress about it beyond that. I guess I have an attitude of let's just eat that elephant one bite at a time. But when my husband looks at that list he sees all the things that he thinks he is supposed to be providing but isn't! Then it dawned on me....I had never actually told him that I was perfectly content with our life just like it is, ongoing list and all! (Insert smiley doing a face palm here.) So I talked to him and told him that I don't see that list as things he's not providing, I just see it as a normal part of being a homeowner and being parents. That I'm not one bit troubled by the fact that we can't take care of all of it in one fell swoop. And that I'm perfectly content with our life and what and how he provides right now. That I really don't think he needs to beat the pavement to find another job because I feel very well taken care of by how he is already doing things.

I honestly didn't realize before this week that when he and I look at the need-to-do's, we were seeing it from two completely different points of view. That I was seeing something we could work on over time but that he was seeing it as a blow to his ability to provide. And now I feel a bit ridiculous that I didn't see this sooner. So I guess what I'm saying is if there is something that you think your guy just knows without you verbalizing it to him....he just may not have a clue! I've certainly learned through this to not assume things in that department anymore!"