15 Things Moms Would Change About Their Husbands, If They Could
When you get married, you never think that one day, you’ll be wondering what things moms say they’d change about their husbands. But if you ask anyone who has been married for any length of time they will tell you that marriage is hard work. Not always the bad kind of hard work, but being with someone as closely as you are with your partner for life, well, you have a tendency to get on each other’s nerves. It’s normal and would be a little strange if that wasn’t the case, only cause that would make most of our friends side eye.
If you’ve been married — or partnered — for a long while there is probably a thing or two you would say that you could change about your partner, if given the opportunity. You know those small nagging things that they do that day-after-day irritate the shit out of you? Yep, we’ve all got them — and I’m sure they could come up with a list as long as ours for us. But, in solidarity fellow partnered people, there are things so many of us would change about our partners if we could and here’s a small taste.
Sneezes like a hurricane
A man who sneezes loudly is terrifying. Fully aware this sounds petty, but you’re not getting the full effect of what we’re talking about here. This guy is 6’5” and has a loud booming voice all the time, but when he sneezes, it sounds like a nuclear bomb is going off. It literally hurts people’s ears when he sneezes, and as sneezes come on rather quickly and powerfully, it scares the *hit out of people. It makes people mad because they get so startled. It’s the fight or flight reaction. Just imagine, you’re minding your own business doing whatever it is that you do at your house and your husband decides to throw a stick of dynamite at you for no good reason at all. That’s my husband sneezing. We wish there was a way we could get a warning so that we could brace ourselves but as you can’t control sneezes, we’ll take a little scary sneeze in exchange for a lifetime with the Big Guy.
Romance over grab *ss
We women love PDA. It shows us that you are still into us, especially after we’ve been married for a while and we’re getting older, and we’re starting to feel ”invisible.” Sometimes a little grab *ss is just what the doctor ordered for our weary, mama hearts and egos. However, I think most women prefer some sweet nothings and gentle somethings to a hard, aggressive anything on most days. Honestly, give me an unsolicited body massage and things are most likely going to go your way. There will be some grab *ss happening, but for the love of Pete, please don’t try to go directly to the grab *ss. Women need to be warmed up a little emotionally, mentally and physically before the grabby part can happen.
No concept of a budget
Money does not grow on trees and the way it takes a village to raise a child; it takes parents who are both savers to put kids through private school and college. Spoiler alert: I’d love to not pay attention to finances too but then where’d we be? Homeless and divorced, probably. You work hard to support us, and I do too. I think you should be able to splurge from time to time, you’ve earned it but if we don’t have it”¦we don’t have it. And I know that you splurge on all of us and it’s not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, I do, but the stress of covering the tab after you treat everyone to a little something is not worth the Louis Vuitton. Just let me keep Kate Spading it and know that I love you for the thought.
Sleep through a hurricane, and that includes the kind of bickering children
Boys, we’re so happy for you that you can sleep anywhere, anytime. It must be freaking awesome. Truth be told, we ladies are a little bit jealous. We try to be chill and ignore the craziness, but it’s in our head. It bores into our soul and lives there. There have been nights when I couldn’t remember if I locked the car doors and had to get up at 3 am to double check just so I could give myself permission to close my eyes. I couldn’t let my babies cry it out, and I can’t let my tween and teen fight it out either. It’s in my DNA to resolve the issue. How do you sleep through the entire thing? How do you believe so innately that life will work itself out?
Hygienic habits
Please stop leaving your mustache hairs in my sink where I brush my teeth, and would it kill you to not leave your toenail clippings on the coffee table. There are some things that could cause a divorce, and this just might be one of those things. Basic hygiene in a hygienic way that is not disgusting, and offensive is others is important. I don’t recall the vows love, honor, clean up your mustache hairs and not complain about stepping on your rogue toenail clippings being part of the deal. I did not and would not agree to that. Rogue toenail clippings are about 1000% more irritating and painful than any LEGO or Polly Pocket ever was.
Destination procrastination
OMG!! Stop procrastinating!!! We’re talking about everything and all the time!! It drives us insane!!! We all procrastinate, but some people like to play a game of chicken with time and deadlines. Not cool, especially not when you have other people depending on you. It makes everyone depending on you to get things done feel like they are walking around on eggshells. Waiting for everything to fall apart. Just do what you said you would, what you are expected to, what you said you would do already. Let’s get it done and move along. Once you are married and have children, you no longer have the option to only do what you want to do when you want to. That option is gone. Adulting sucks.
Your ZZZs are killing me
Please stop snoring!! Logically, we know they have no control over this but when you are exhausted, and you’ve been dealing with sick kids, and you want nothing more than to just get in bed once the kids are asleep and get some sleep yourself, snoring it the epitome of all things you hate in the world. Imagine laying down, kissing your husband good night and having him roll over and start to saw wood at a zillion decibels when the list of the day has just started to replay in your head. Worse still, you are finally so tired you are passing out from sheer exhaustion and previously referred to sick kids starts to wake up and cry for someone, anyone and the snoring pile of the dead to the world next to you can’t hear the kid above his own snoring. Dude get a CPAP machine or go sleep in the spare room or something before someone gets murdered in their sleep or dies from exhaustion. Please – stop the snoring.
His ability to empathize and to show it
We know men are from Mars and women are from Venus or whatever, but can we at least try a little fake it till we make it? Seriously, do men really think we care about all the crazy, inane hit our kids tell us day in and day out? Hate to break it to you, but I get just as bored as the species with the penises hearing what Ella at school did for the 100th time today, but you have to listen to hear what you need to hear. If I have to sort through the bull*hit to not miss the fact that my kids are telling me in some subtle way that she’s being bullied, then I have to listen to all the Ella stories. Also, when your kid gets hurt or your wife’s feeling particularly tired after a long day, they need you to pretend to care (even if you really don’t get why they’re such babies.) Sometimes you just need to put other feelings above your own, and sometimes people just need a hug and to be told it’s all going to be alright.
Having to tell you what to do
We women really wish that we didn’t have to tell our husbands what needs to be done and instead they’d just take the initiative and do it. See a dirty dish, clean a dirty dish. See that we’re out of milk? Go buy some milk. See something, do something. Why do we have to point out the dirty dish and ask our spouses to clean it? Then it makes us appear naggy and negates the whole point of our husbands helping. We moms shouldn’t have to pick up after everyone. We all have our jobs to do, and we all live in the house, so why can’t we all help take care of it?
Patience Grasshopper
We’d love it if our spouses could have more patience with the kids and remember what they say carries a lot of weight, especially on little girls’ hearts. Dads are the standard by which little girls will measure all other men. Boys and men, the male species, in general, are rougher around the edges then women. Men insult each other on a sports level, and they laugh about it. If women insulted other women in jest the way men do and at the same frequency, there would be a war, therapists offices would be filled round the clock, and the suicide rate would go up exponentially. Women get collaterally insulted just being within earshot of men insulting each other.
Pay attention, please
We wish our husbands would pay attention to what the kids are ”actually” doing and not just what they are supposed to be doing. Sometimes it feels like we have one extra, supersized child with facial hair he trims over our toothbrush. Grow up! Often when the kids are arguing, or roughhousing or having a slap fight breaking all of the *hit in the house, including we moms’ sanity, two feet away from where our husbands are sitting willfully deaf watching the football game. Then, when we call it to their attention, suddenly everything is in living color and instead of talking to the kids in a way that actually helps the situation, said husband joins in the yelling because he’s annoyed that mandatory parenting has interrupted his otherwise scheduled football game. Can’t we all just get along?
Pick up your stuff
All women secretly wish their husbands were just a little bit OCD and definitely anal retentive so they couldn’t comfortably leave their stuff lying all over our homes. They have closets and a man cave. Why can’t it all go there?? Why must it be all over the house, like they’re marking his territory? We get it; our husbands live in the houses too. Why can’t clothes go in the hamper? Toilet paper on the toilet roll? Socks, shoes, and underwear in their designated place rather than the middle of our houses like we’re having a fire sale? I don’t think men purposely try to make women’s lives harder. I just think men and women are wired differently and why we are nurturers who are wired to take care of our people, men are wired to be providers. Providing socks and other assorted *hit to be strewn around our homes. Here are the things, we can both provide and we can both nurture. We can both do everything. I have complete faith in men that they can do all the same things women can and that includes putting a new roll of toilet paper on the roll.
Wish he was taller, a baller
No woman wants to be bigger than her man. Men are generally bigger than women, and it makes us feel secure that they can, if the need arise, protect us. Of course, all though men are generally still stronger than women even if they are smaller, we want them to be bigger than us. It sounds ridiculous, and I don’t think we’d ever kick a good man who happens to be shorter than us or weigh less than us out of our lives, but I think it’s something innately ingrained in our DNA to want to feel small and demure next to a man. Maybe it’s television or our moms but this is what society tells us is normal and we should want.
Wish he was more outdoorsy
If only our husbands were as outdoorsy as they pretended to be when we were dating. Some of us women love being outside with nature. Nights sleeping outdoors under the stars in a Yurt, maybe hiking up to a waterfall for a skinny dip on a warm day or even a cool night on the beach sitting around a fire pit sounds romantic and fun but what if your husband doesn’t even like to eat outside at barbecues? You’re at a beautiful location with all the world in front of you, and all you want to do is, have a picnic in the forest, and he hates the bugs, what do you do? Some women complain because their husbands only want to be outside roughing it but the rest of us just want a healthy compromise.
Let’s talk
Every woman I know wishes their husband would open up more. Men are taught from childhood to keep their feeling inside and ”suck it up” and ”rub some dirt on it.” We women we like to talk things out, it’s how we process. We talk about it, and then we talk about it some more, and then we mull it over and discuss it one more time, hoping for some input but we getting it is like pulling teeth. Women like to get things resolved. Men tend to be more laid back about everything. Women feel all the feelings, its one of the perks of being a woman. No one judges us if we cry or get upset about things. Men, however, are always expected to keep it together, even when they are falling apart, and that feels like a disservice to men. They need to be able to fall apart occasionally, so they can lift the weight of the world off those broad shoulders.
If you could change anything about your husband what would it be and why?
