The Subtle Difference Between Orders and Listening
“Free will” and “marriage” do not have to be an oxymoron.
Here’s the situation as discussed with a number of girlfriends. Husbands we know give their wives specific tasks to take care of. If their wives don’t do exactly what they tell them to do exactly how they suggested doing it, men sometimes feel like they are not being listened to. They feel ignored.
That’s not the case. Gentlemen, are you listening? You need to understand this.
When you give your wife an order, or direct her on exactly how to complete a task, she is listening to every word you say. (Her blood pressure may be rising, but she is listening.)
However, and this is a big however, there are multiple variables in her life that she has to take into consideration. Your direction is one of them. The kids or the chores or her job may be another.
Here is how we think. When the husband gives us an assignment with specifics on how said assignment should be accomplished, what he doesn’t often take into consideration is that there are several other factors involved – kids, homework, jobs, meals, and a thousand other things that affect said assignment’s completion.
What do we end up doing? Something that takes into account all of these variables.
The End Result?
Just because you may ask us to do something that we don’t do according to specifications doesn’t mean you are being ignored or that we are not listening to you.
As women with free will, your desires and directions are inputs into our decisions and actions. And then we do them the best way we see given those circumstances. We use our best judgment.
So, don’t take our doing things our own way as an insult. It’s not meant that way. It’s what keeps us both infuriating and interesting.
Ladies, do you agree with this?
Sincerely yours,
Sarah
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I don’t really see that there are “orders” or “tasks” to be given. If you are a team, then you are both working toward the same goals. Together you can strategize on how to accomplish them together. If one of you doesn’t like how the other is handling a task, they can always offer to help or choose to take on the task themselves next time.
If there is inconsideration of circumstances, you need to make that clear. They think we aren’t listening but they aren’t always paying attention. Communicate and there shouldn’t be an issue with free will at all.
Marissa,
I agree with you. It’s just that some of my friends and I, after having been married 2 decades, sometimes see our husbands “suggesting” what to do and how to do it. Explaining it to them this way has been pretty effective.
Sarah
My other half is sometimes baffled at how I couldn’t get everything done during the day, especially when he asks for something special not in our day-to-day schedule. When I let him take on a task or two just for a day (usually a weekend). His perspective changes immensely. Role reversal is awesome. But I still feel that there is a lack of acknowledgement that you are both on the same team. You want the same things. Of course you did your best with the situation. We are so quick to think the other doesn’t care or doesn’t listen. When in reality, you both try your best.
Micro managing is almost never a good plan unless the one being managed has not yet hit puberty.
It’s not good management. It prevents you from benefiting from the mind and skills of the person doing the task, and it makes that person feel unappropriated and as if you think they are stupid.
In short, why would any man who hopes to “get lucky with the wife” do such a thing?
Go Paul! You are a wise wise man! Plus, you’ve managed to condense an entire post into one word – micro-management.
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Coming from a marriage just shy of a decade where asking each other to do something comes from nothing short of the most carefully stated sincerety nearest the other side of the planet of ‘giving an order’, I know I shouldn’t answer for men…so first let me say ‘I’m sorry’ for being part of a generation of men that has somehow miseducated the lost souls who have managed to fall back to 1950 with this whole business about roles in marriage and life in general.
In the moment I was struck by the tone of your message I skipped straight past the defensive the dumbfounded and asked myself in full awareness that there must be, “are there really men like this” and equally “are there still women who wonder if this is their place”? Really? Do women in this century need to ask about ‘free will’? Do men ‘manage’ their wives? It amazes me in the way that people are seperated by skin color and religion and which side of the tracks they live on. Wake up America! I know, I said I should leave this alone…but I can’t.
Here is the answer…can they coexist? They must. Not in a literal liberal ‘I’m going to tell you how to be married’ way – even in North America we are all different in many respects – but in a going to bed with someone you love and respect equally at the end of the day way. The greatest gift of marriage is coming to the knowledge one day that it is exactly the way women are with eyes wide open that you choose us with complete free will, imperfectly perfect, because once upon a time, you knew you felt free, limitless, yourselves, respected and protected, and loved right there by our sides. I can’t imagine a marriage where I knew even knew what to expect making me feel so much myself at the end each day just like today.
Like Elizabeth Taylor said, “I did not deceive you sir. I was every bit as aweful when you married me.” (Giant) We love you for that.
Taylor
My wife and I have a simple philosophy..
You can tell WHAT to do OR
HOW to do it…….
but NOT both
Let’s try rewording this a little and see how it sounds.
Just because you may ask us to do something that we don’t do according to specifications doesn’t mean you are being ignored or that we are not listening to you.
Dear God, as men with free will, your desires and directions are inputs into our decisions and actions. And then we do them the best way we see given those circumstances. We use our best judgment.
So, God, don’t take our doing things our own way as an insult. It’s not meant that way. It’s what keeps us both infuriating and interesting.
How’s that sound? If Christ is really the head of the church and the man is really the head of the wife, I think it sounds like rebellion.
Of course women have good judgement and their own way of doing things. But violating the specs means that you didn’t accomplish the task. You accomplished what you wanted to do, not what God or your husband wanted.
Yes, specs can be so tight as to be micro-managing which no one (men included) want to be under. Yeah, I get that. But to say yes to God or your husband (or your wife) and then do something that ignores some of the specs of the job is more like the parable of the son that said “yes” but didn’t do what his father asked.
Dear Erik,
Hmmmm….. I see what your saying. What I have a problem with in your comment is that it takes away the judgment of the wife to integrate her husbands’ wishes into what needs to get accomplished.
How then, do you separate the reasonable from the unreasonable? If a husband expects 33 steps to make broccoli, and there are crying babies, you gotta set some boundaries. I don’t see that as disobeying the husband. I see that as navigating priorities.
I guess it all centers around the reasonableness of the husband and wife in making requests.
Sarah
Tom – exactly.
Erik – Sarah is so much more polite and politically correct than I could ever be. WTF? I am a modern man with my faith and I was taken aback (see above) by this story and you have just re-affirmed my flawed disbelief there are men who still think this way. Even King James knew the original text needed a modern view (in his time). Did you know the Catholic Bishop in charge of Science has stated creation can be interpreted as evolution? Surely in 2011 years AD America can see that men and women are in fact created equal.
“I am in charge.” Dalai Lama – as a boy.
“In charge of whom?” his mother.
Welcome to the new millennium Erik.
Taylor
Hmm. I’m with Taylor in that this post really surprised me in 2011! Erik’s response makes me shudder, I would be so miserable with a husband who thought he was God!
I wish this post would have recognized husbands and wives more as equal partners in a marriage, and that as they each make requests of each other it’s important to give each other respect and room to work, not micromanage, be patient and trust them. I love the way Taylor put it, appreciating each other as you are without pressure and expectations.
Overall I’m liking this blog, and will be checking often!