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Husband Husbandry
We’ve been talking a lot about marriage and divorce around here lately. As someone who’s been married for almost 13 years with some very rough spots along the way, I feel like this is a topic about which I can speak authoritatively. In particular, I’d like to talk about a duty that primarily — though by no means exclusively — falls to wives: ego management.
I like to nap in my car over lunch, particularly during lovely weather like we’ve had lately in Kansas City. As I was trying to drift off Thursday afternoon, I heard a woman screaming into her phone. She was informing her husband in a vulgar fashion that his family hated her for no reason, she hated them, and that — while it was his responsibility to defend her — he was refusing to because he lacked testicular fortitude. I was sorely tempted to scream back in an equally vulgar fashion that if she wanted her husband to have testicles, she should stop performing double orchidectomy surgery.
The temptation to state that complex problems have in fact simple solutions is always present, but my life experience has taught me that a simple solution to many marriage challenges is proper ego management of one’s spouse. No matter how frustrated, how annoyed, how angry one may be with him, tearing him down is never the solution. The dishes will not get washed or the baby changed if he feels he cannot meet her standards. Resumes will not be sent out and job interviews will be wastes of time if he feels like a failure. If he feels like he has to ask permission for every penny, he will be far less inclined to work as hard or may spend extravagantly on the theory of “might as well earn my tongue-lashing.” And without feeling attractive to his wife, the marriage bed will be a place of frustration and disappointment.
Husbandry is an old term for the care and cultivation of crops and animals. Husbands need husbandry too, and that is our job as wives. If we want men who will go out into the world and earn for us, protect us, and support us, we have to nurture and care for not only their bodies but also their egos. Whether through words of praise, tender caresses, performing chores without complaint, or joining him in hobbies, we have to let our man know that we appreciate his sacrifices, believe in his goals, and desire him physically. (For more suggestions on the practical aspects of this, I highly recommend The Five Love Languages.)
Martin Luther said, “Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let the husband make his wife sad to see him leave.” Ladies, we can’t make the latter part happen, but if we work on the former, it generally happens.
Published in Culture, Marriage
Reason 1: None of those guys is my husband.
Need I say more?
EDIT: I guess I should be thankful that E.J. didn’t photoshop in fellow Ricochetti, at least. That might be hard to explain to Mr. Amy.
Gonna have to do better than that Amy.
I’m not here to cause trouble (He said unconvincingly) but I’ll delete.
This is so edifying (and the comments so full of humor and good will). Troy’s great and all, but posts and exchanges like these are a better antidote to the hostilities of late.
Whatever you’re planning, EJ, you should stop. You’re dealing with a woman who knows how to sew corsets and has the word orchidectomy in her everyday usage.
This ends in tears. Possibly also traction.
It’s okay … just teasing back. :)
To echo Midge’s experiences, my wife comes from a family who cannot be direct, and who always assumes that you are not being direct either – they read between the lines of everything, always looking for what you really meant. I told my wife early on in our dating that I do not do that – if I say something, don’t look for another layer of meaning beneath it, and don’t come at me sideways. If you want me to do X, then just ask for it. If I’m doing something wrong, don’t hint at it, just tell me flat out. If you don’t want to do something, just say it and don’t go all passive-aggressive in pretending that you want to do it while thwarting it at the same time. This has been great for us in keeping lines of communication open, but early on it was a struggle as she would hint at things, then be hurt when I did not get the hints. Always interesting to find the subtleties of family communication dynamics.
Is there no limit to the dorkiness of this infernal website?
Your advice is spot on, Amy, and quite insightful I might add!
God sees His children as who they can become and treats them accordingly.
We would be wise to treat our spouses the same way.
At the risk of hijacking your thread, I would suggest that husbands who want their wives to be hot trophy babes treat them as such and tell them every day how beautiful and sexy they are and how much you love them. Not into expressing your emotions, guys? Get over it!
BYU made a short film in the 70s called Johnny Lingo that addressed the issues I’m talking about. It’s kinda corny and low on production values but it’s central message is profound for husbands and wives.
Amy is a ten cow wife.
You flatter me.
I’ve been a horrible wife. To the extent I am a ten cow wife now, it is because of a lot of love and forgiveness from a husband who deserves far better than I have treated him.
Only by the grace of God does Mr. Amy not have a horror story of his own to tell on the divorce thread.
I’ve found from hard experience that marriage is rarely a 50-50 proposition. Sometimes it’s 0-100, sometimes it’s 100-0, and sometimes it’s 100-100. Don’t keep score.
Is that anything like a three dog night?
So apparently people haven’t heard this story … I guess it’s a just a Mormon/quasi-Mormon thing.
http://www.ultimatehusband.com/8cow_wife.htm
Versions differ on 8 or 10 cows, but the point is the same. The husband pays a dowry far more lavish than such a homely girl deserves, and the act of paying her family such a dowry causes her to transform into a wife deserving of the lavish dowry.
Ah yes, Jason & Amy, my quasi-Mormon peeps. You guys know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. And since Jason lives in SLC, he knows what I mean when I say I that my wife went to Kearns HS – definitely a finding-a-10-cow-wife-in-the-rough story!
Richard Fulmer
I’ve found from hard experience that marriage is rarely a 50-50 proposition. Sometimes it’s 0-100, sometimes it’s 100-0, and sometimes it’s 100-100. Don’t keep score.
Richard, you are SO right. Any husband or wife who tries to keep score will be the loser.
We’ve been married 41 years…sometimes it seems short and sometimes that seems like a loong, loooong, time. And wow, husbands need to you to respect them more than anything else (besides sex when they’re younger). Always find a way to build up your husband to him, or in public to others; and if you want to gripe about him, do it all alone, in the shower, or in a diary.
Modern marriage information geared toward womyn is often hostile and competitive and the opposite of what men really need. You don’t lose anything by being a kind person.
Once my husband (an engineer) said, “When I say something, the words mean just what they say. There isn’t any “deeper meaning.” I grew up in a world of girls, and so I had a steep learning curve as a new wife.
OK – I will be the contrarian here…
First of all, if all you are doing is “nurturing ego”, then I think you have the wrong approach.
A person who is supportive and a good earner will support and earn. A person who needs me to nurture their egos and bodies in order to support me sound a bit of a loser to me.
I would rather find a person that I truly love and admire. The support is easy when you are into what you are supporting.
For the record, I never wanted “men who will go out into the world and earn for us”. But I am odd that way.
How many negative likes to cancel out the moor’s law of likes?
Neither did I. But we don’t always get what we want. Had I thought marriage worthless the moment I could no longer be an equal partner to my man, I might have done this to him.
Frankly Barkha, Mr. Amy already struggles with feeling he’s a loser. So should I add on to that? Lambaste him for failing to get good grades in college while depressed, for failing at the HR game to get a good engineering job, for working for a company that went under? For not then finding a job that would let us pay our mortgage? And when I finish this litany of faults and failures, do you think that he will then be motivated to try not to be such a failure?
I married for better or for worse. Well, worse happened. And we never would have gotten to better had I said that a man who needed me to support him, financially and emotionally, wasn’t worth my time.
Lucky you that apparently you’ve never been there.
Indeed, I am constantly told how lucky I am. Here’s wishing “nurturing ego” works for you, and that you find luck soon.
But Amy was talking about the times that support is hard.
Assuming this person you truly love and admire is just that – a person – and not some higher being, then I presume that there may be times he could fall short of the thorough and consistent embodiment of all you truly love and admire. Or, through no fault of his own, end up bowed and bloodied, even if just briefly, by events beyond his control.
So when that happens, will you help patch him up and outfit him with fresh supplies before sending him back to the front? Or will you slap him across the face with a dusty field glove and tell him what a worthless coward he is before throwing him back in the fight?*
[*NB: No disrespect meant to the memory of George S. Patton who, while a great American hero, is not necessarily the ideal role model for a wife.]
Amy, I just wanted to throw many more likes upon the heap, and mention that your post title is stupendous.
My husband’s an awesome guy, so the husbandry comes easily. I’m blessed.
Support? Always. “Nurture ego”? Not.
Support *is* easy when you are into what you are supporting. Irrelevant of the say physical condition. Less than what I truly love and admire? Impossible.
Perhaps that is why there is no need for “nurturing egos”.
“Ah yes, Jason & Amy, my quasi-Mormon peeps. You guys know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. And since Jason lives in SLC, he knows what I mean when I say I that my wife went to Kearns HS – definitely a finding-a-10-cow-wife-in-the-rough story!”
Oh, God. Kearns. At least it wasn’t Magna. Well, there have to be a few out there, I guess.
Like, totally.
Oh, EJ. That picture finally popped back up for me.
Amy, my mother counts this as a turning point lesson in her life. Whether it was her family, or Mormon culture, or a mixture of both, she grew up with this idea of male invulnerability. They’d been married for a couple years when my dad finally said, “why are you being so mean to me?” It had never occurred to her that a woman could hurt a man.
I reviewed marriage books with my Pastor a couple of years ago for use in a Sunday School class. We agreed that the two best ones are the one Amy recommends (The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman) and the one cited by lesserson at #17 (Love and Respect, by Emerson Eggerichs).
Most-welcome and wise, Amy…Thank you! Like ‘to infinity – and beyond’. (I think that may be, eternally, actually.)