Your husband shouldn’t be in trouble

Your partner should never be “in trouble” with you, because you are not their parent. Peers, which you hopefully are, should feel free to have open conversations about what they do and do not want to do with their time, safe from any manipulative pouting or judgmental, sitcom-style jokes. (And, frankly, any issues you have with what he or she enjoys—assuming they’ve been honest—are your problem.)

I’m talking about, roughly:

• all of the jokes on Everybody Loves Raymond, like whenever Ray tries to weasel out of some chore or another to go golfing, and Deborah yells and/or rolls her eyes;
• most of the jokes on The King of Queens, like the time Doug buys a motorcycle without Carrie’s approval, so she takes up smoking in retaliation;
• jokes based on the assumption that many of the interests more popular among men (football, cars, beer) are immature;
• a family member’s well-intended comment that your (anxiety prone) husband should be with the whole (loud) gang on such-and-such holiday;
• how when Dad orders pizza for dinner it’s because he’s lazy and doesn’t know how to cook (and it’s funny), but when Mom does it it’s a genius hack because she’s so busy;
• any implication that sex might be withheld until some expectation is met.

As funny as they sometimes are, I think these types of jokes might actually be pretty harmful, because they:

• can be passive aggressive and manipulative;
• are insulting to the person whose interests are being belittled;
• imply a certain amount of ownership or say-so with regard to what your partner may or may not be allowed to do;
• are based on assumptions about how relationships should work (like who gets to make decisions about what), and help to embed these assumptions into our expectations of each other;
• tend to shut down open communication, which can foster resentment (If someone is already “in trouble” the case is closed, right?);
• proliferate expectations that leave less room for negotiating a relationship that works for everyone;
• disempower men from taking ownership of household things by telling us that the home remains the woman’s realm, and that men don’t enjoy doing home stuff (with an exception for grilling) and should expect to be laughed at if they try to.

Isn’t it healthier to simply acknowledge that one of us wants or doesn’t want to do something, and have an honest negotiation about how to budget or work around that, than to pretend it’s not a problem, joke about it, and then grow resentful? I know that learning to say “no” to some social stuff has been a worthwhile effort in my own happiness, especially with scarce time off from work. Maybe you’ll learn that neither of you want to go on your cousin’s birthday camping trip. Win win.

Deciding that I want my partner to be happy, and letting go of giving a shit about what they’re up to (as long as my needs are being met), helped teach me to take ownership of my own happiness. I had to let go of what I thought were our expected roles to give us the room we needed for a healthy rapport. Yet, these expectations linger. I feel like I’ve had an epiphany and left everyone else behind.

I know there’s a lot going on here, from the sources of these mindsets to the problems that they cause, and that I’ve just scratched the surface of the issue. My conclusion for this small piece is that if everyone here is an adult, no one should be afraid of getting in trouble. And if you want your partner to “help out” with the dishes, don’t make fun of him when he doesn’t do it your way. (I learned the hard way.) I don’t know when passive aggressive, judgmental jokes about our partners’ interests and preferences became an acceptable form of communication, but I’d really like to find out.