Will You Still Respect Me Tomorrow?

I’ve been asking this question a lot lately. No, it’s not because I’ve embarked on a string of one-night-stands, it’s a question I’ve been posing to my husband ad nauseum since I decided to quit my job and be a stay at home wife. Note: If anyone has been waiting to call me hypocrite, here is your golden opportunity. Before I decided to leave my job, I wrote a long piece on why I thought the plight of the stay-at-home-dad was total bullshit, and that Mr. Mom should learn to suck it up and love his time off.

Er. Um. Sheepish sorry.

However, I’m not doing a 180. I hold fast to my opinion that there is no logical reason anyone shouldn’t respect a stay at home whomever, and that anyone in that position can feel confident of their value.

What I am realizing is that there is a pretty big psychological garden to tend to when one spouse is in this role. Despite my desire to approach this life change with logic and reason, I have felt the fear of losing my husband’s respect.

I feel myself being warped into a world where I’m disrespected for being a woman, particularly a housewife. I find myself saying things like, “Well, I’ve worked all day too…” to stake my territory as equal contributor to the family despite drastically reduced income.

To be honest, I’ve been working like a dog since I quit my job. I see just how disorganized we are, how lonely our pooch is, how much food we waste, how many calls need returning, and dishes and laundry that need to be washed. While I was busy working and studying, we either let things slip or it was my husband who took on the extra load.

Because of this, I’ve been eager to show my gratitude for his support, urging him to let me know if he needed me to do anything. But yesterday, when he asked me to iron his shirts, it was like some psycho-anti-man switch went off in my head.

I assumed he thought I wasn’t doing anything. I assumed that within a few short days, he thought he’d acquired a maid. I’m also sure I’ve been over-confident as to what I can accomplish in an 8 hour day (much like when I worked full-time) and have over-sold my schedule. I’m sure I just don’t understand how it all works yet.

I did take my own advice though and talked to him about my feelings before they got out of hand. He said, “This is nothing new. You’ve had this fear since we met and you always realize I still love and respect you.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“Okay, what about when we dated and you wouldn’t let me buy you things because you thought we wouldn’t interact as equals? Or how when you moved in you thought I was refusing to clear out closet space for you because I didn’t want you there, but in reality you never told me you needed it?”

“Um.”

“You are over that, right? Don’t you see as far as I’m concerned, we’re 50/50?”

The answer is yes. I know he means what he says. And after 15 more minutes of bickering all I could say was, “I know you respect me. But I need you to be extra sensitive that I am afraid you won’t for right now.”

I hate that I need coddling about this. I want to be strong and firm in my choice to dump my job. I know it’s the best choice, I know that I was going to lose my mind if I stayed. I know that I’m so much happier that I’ve done it. I know my husband respects me and I’m even more valuable now that he has a wife who is happy, self-assured, and can respect herself enough to leave an unhealthy situation.

So, since my husband is not the culprit and I’m not a fan of blaming “society,” I’ll need to spend some time asking myself why I feel this way despite evidence to the contrary.

Same story, different tune.

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