128. How Do I Get my Husband to Do What I Want?
Meet the Host
Five years ago, after achieving my degrees and teaching as a professor, I was feeling proud that I had checked everything off my life list. But, I wasn’t satisfied in my marriage.
Today, I’m a relationship coach on a mission to resurrect the side of you that got lost in your marriage. Millions of people around the world soak up my content for advice on how to have a more satisfying relationship.
Are you asking yourself…Why do I need to remind my husband to do something a hundred times? Why am I the only one carrying the weight of the house, the schedule, the appointments, the plans, and the kids? How do I get my husband to do what I want?
In this episode I talk about why this happens, how it impacts your relationship, and I coach you through 3 practical ways to stop over-functioning in your marriage while still getting your needs met.
This isn't just about getting tasks done. This is about both of you feeling seen, supported, and valued. I want to help you create a marriage where both partners feel super present and highly engaged.
Click the link to listen, and let me know what you think - I’d love to hear from you!
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Episode Transcript:
Karina: Amigos, welcome back to the Relationship Reset with me, your host, Karina F. Daves relationship expert, speaker and podcast host of this dope podcast. Today's episode is called, how do I get my husband to do what I want? Spicy, right? This episode is for you if right now you are asking yourself, Why the heck do I need to remind my husband to do something a hundred times? Why am I the only one carrying the weight of the house, the schedule, the appointments, the plans, the kids, and he just gets the liberty to forget. I want you to know that the exhaustion that you're feeling is one that you feel like you're the default parent. You feel like you're invisible in your own homes. Not only is all the weight on you to manage the household, but there's also a lack of acknowledgement of everything that you do. And so today we're gonna spend some time unpacking why this happens, discussing how this impacts your marriage. And I'm gonna coach you through practical steps of how to stop over-functioning in your marriage while still getting your needs met. You understand?
Okay, let's dive right in. So let's first talk a little bit about why this dynamic occurs in our marriage. Plenty of times the dynamic of one partner leading the home, leading the management of the home happens unconsciously over time. It's not like y'all decided that it should be this one person. And I know from your perspective, you perceive your husband to be lazy, right? And I want you for a second. And I know that you're already rolling your eyes. But I want you for a second to imagine that perhaps it may not be laziness. Perhaps it may be a mental load of difference. And what I mean by that is you have a certain type of mental load and he has a certain type of mental load. So it's not to say that y'all have different capacities, but y'all allow the mental load of certain things to weigh on you differently, right?
The second is, he might be forgetful because he's either distracted or overstimulated. I know, listen, I can literally feel your eyes rolling. I'm sharing this with y'all because plenty of times when we have issues in our marriage about anything, it doesn't necessarily have to be about the imbalance of taking care of our household, but plenty of times we first complain, we first get frustrated, we first grow resentment before we lean in and become curious about what are the possibilities as to why we are here. That goes a longer way and is a quicker way to solve the issue that's happening rather than remaining in your complaint and your resentment, which by the way, I get is super valid.
But today I was listening to a sermon by Joyce Myers and she said that complaining makes you weaker. Living in gratitude is what gives you strength and power. And I don't know what it was about that, but it just really spoke to me. And so I'm grateful that you're in this marriage and I know that you are too. At the end of her sermon, she said, even if you don't like your husband, just so you know, there's a lonely woman waiting to have him. And I just could not stop laughing, but that's neither here nor there.
So anyways, your husband could possibly not be lazy but be overstimulated, could be ⁓ distracted, could just live in avoidance of the household stress. Like some people, like some, I'm a type of person that I walk into a mess and I can't shut the door. Like I walk into a mess and I need to clean it. Other people walk into a mess and need to avoid it, right?
I had a client who was very forgetful about his partner's appointments and about certain dates that him and his wife were making. And it left her feeling like she was second best. And so what we started to do was implement a system that matched the way that he worked in his business, right? Something on the whiteboard, something on a calendar, something as a reminder. And he started remembering not only remembering things, but he started having additional events just because, and it just wowed her and they got to a better place because she started to feel seen. And that's exactly what I want for you because at the end of the day, there is this large emotional impact that occurs when you continue to carry the weight and the resentment of what's going on because you feel like the manager in your marriage.
It strips you of feeling like the partner. And so you just become buried in all of the reminders, right? And this is exactly where disconnection starts to drop, where intimacy lessens, where partnership starts to feel one-sided and where you actually start to feel the flavor of being roommates rather than partners or teammates. And I don't want that for you. God doesn't want that for you. And so I'm gonna give you three practical ways that is going to help you rebalance the load and I'm talking specifically to wives, okay, that feel this way. And listen, if the tables are turned, this message is for you too.
Okay. ⁓ the first thing I want you to, to do is I want you to get clear on what actually matters. Not every single task is worth arguing about. What I instead want you to do is come up with the top two, three priorities that are non-negotiable in your home. Some people that's, cannot go to sleep with dishes in the sink. Some people it's the garbage cannot be full before we go to bed. Everybody has a thing. So in my marriage, in our household, it's the kitchen. The only exception and the only two times that dishes are left in the sink is if the dishwasher is running, right? Or, or two, it's the weekends. Because on the weekend, nobody cares. Like the weekends are slow. Nobody's in a rush. It is what it is, right? Those are the only two exceptions. But during the week, I mean, it's a huge ordeal. Counters need to be cleaned. Dishes need to be put away. Dishes need to be put in a dishwasher. It is a must. OK, another must is that the garbage needs to be taken out, not like the primary garbage, but the collection of all the rooms of the garbage are taken out every single Saturday, if not Sunday, like it happens every weekend, non-negotiable, non-negotiable, okay? That is because I'll let you in on our thing. We don't use our front door, we use our side door. And the side door enters through the kitchen. It's the first thing that people see when they walk into our house. So for us and for our own sanity, it's very important to walk into either somebody cooking, somebody eating at the dinner table or a clean kitchen. You understand?
Okay, number two, I need you to start make the invisible visible. And what I mean by that is instead of verbal reminders, I need a shared system. I need this to be plastered everywhere. I need you to shift from nagging your husband to having shared ownership with him. So what this looks like, for example, is for us, we bought a dry erase board from Facebook marketplace for $20. This was probably in the sixth year of our marriage, when we had our kids, it was just becoming too cumbersome to be the reminder. And it was just a lot. It was causing a lot of strife. So my husband had this genius idea and he was like, listen, I ain't going to check an app. I'm not going to check a calendar invite. Like, I'm just not tech savvy like that. And I was like, okay, so what do you want? Mind you, the guy has an iWatch and Apple Watch. He's very techy, but I was like, all right, I get it. So what do want to do? He said, let's get a dry erase board. Let's put it in the middle of the house. You and I will write the things that need to get done. And I will, and we will put a T or a K and I will check them off and you will check it off as we do it. We did that for almost a year and a half and it helped so much with sex. It's not even funny. It not only helped with sex, but it helped with our connection. I started to feel like well, dang, like he really is taking ownership for his own stuff. And when he would forget, he genuinely will feel would feel actually bad about it because it there was a list. He would walk by it every single day. It was right by his bathroom. And so that not only increased our intimacy, but it also created a habit in our household where now we don't have the whiteboard. But now the muscle of remembering is there. Now the feeling of, when I get this done, my wife and I can connect much better about things that we actually want to talk about versus spending an hour talking about our tasks. You understand? Okay.
The third thing that I want you to do is you're going to have to start to create buy-in. And I know what you're thinking. This is manipulation. It's not. It's not. You're going to have to create buy-in by changing your language instead of requesting demands.You're going to have to request partnership. And let me give you an example. Instead of saying, you never help with the kids. First of all, the never and the always doesn't work. So you never help with the kids versus I feel overwhelmed with doing our bedtime routines. Can we split it so I can breathe a little? You see the shift is different. The agreement is different. We're no longer keeping score. And this is exactly what I teach in my marriage coaching program. It's all in the language and the delivery of things. There's been so many times where I've wanted to curse out my husband, but instead of doing that, I took a step back and I leaned in first, became curious about what his stance was on it, and then changed my language.
I remember my husband actually recently saying to me, you know, it's all in the tone. He said, you're perfect. Like you don't do anything wrong. I just view you as the most perfect person. And I was like, I'm not. And he was like, but there's one thing about you that really, really you got to work on. And it only comes out from time to time. And I was like, why? And he's like, your tone. You have this tone that can go from making someone feel seen and heard to quickly making someone feel like they're the most horrible person. And I just had to take a step back and choose to believe him. If I'm choosing to sleep with this man and call him my husband and trust him, I also have to trust that he's my mirror and trust that what he's saying about me probably is true, but I'm just not seeing it that way. And I think a part of me didn't want to believe it because it's something disgusting that I don't want to be true about myself. But if it's something that I genuinely believe would change the course of our marriage and the dynamic of our marriage by just simply changing my tone and watching my tone and watching how I speak to him in certain high level conversations, then why not try? And so in that moment I said to him, you know what? I don't see it, but it must be true. And I promise you, I'm gonna give it my best shot. And I have, I really have. I mean, this literally was probably just a couple of weeks ago.
So those are the three things that I want you to work on. Getting clear on what actually matters. So what are your non-negotiables? Make it two or three. Number two, make the invisible visible, whether you're using a dry erase board ⁓ or you're using a shared calendar and you're making sure that you're no longer nagging, but you're painting the picture that we are sharing this ownership. And three, creating that emotional buy-in.
I want you to understand that this isn't just about getting tasks done. This is about both of you feeling seen, supported and valued. You understand me? When partners understand the emotional weight of responsibilities, they organically will show up differently. It's not about having control in your marriage. And I know that that's what it looks like right now, which is probably why your husband isn't on board, but it's about creating a marriage where you both feel super present and highly engaged. Okay? Listen.
If right now you feel like you're carrying the weight of everything at home and you're exhausted, you need to work with me. Go to link in my bio, book a call so we can talk about everything that's happened so far, what you've tried and how I can help. Okay. Let me pray for you.
Father God, I thank you so much for giving us the gift of our tongues and the gift of our minds. However, it is so important to note that the power of life and death lives in our tongue and that sometimes it's important that we hold and grasp onto our tongue and think before we speak. The people that we hurt the most are the people that are usually the closest to us, that love us, that choose to love us and be with us. And so Lord, in this very moment, I just ask that you would allow us to pause when we talk to our partners, to pause before we say the striking thing that we've been dying to say, to just take a beat and pause. I thank you for the gift of being present. I thank you for the gift of taking a breath and just pausing. In Jesus name we pray, amen.
Okay, if you enjoy this episode, make sure you leave me an Apple podcast review, share it with all of your amigos or log onto my website, karinafdaves.com and learn more about joining my email listserv, which is called Release Your Relationship.
Thank you so much for coming back for another week and I cannot wait to share with you all more. I actually was thinking that we should do an episode called, how do I get my wife to sleep with me? I think we should do that. If you think we should do that, me a DM. Okay, love you so much. Bye.
