Ready or Not: Hubby's Home for Good
A humorous look at how a wife adjusts when her husband decides to work from home.
On a sunny September afternoon in 1992, I was preparing to place a meatloaf in the oven when my husband bounded through our kitchen door with a large box in his hands.
"Hi, Honey — I'm home!" he shouted as he set the mysterious box on our kitchen table. Then, with all the flair of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, he reached into the deep confines of the box and excavated a fax machine.
"And thanks to this baby, I'm home for good," he announced with a grin. He set the technological wonder on the table and gave it a little pat. "I'll be able to telecommute from home and avoid that awful freeway commute. I may even have time to do some consulting work on the side."
This surprise announcement of his intent to work from home caused me to drop the platter I was holding. As I stared at the broken chunks of china and mounds of ground beef splattered across the floor, I thought, My life — like that platter — will never be the same again.
And it hasn't.
Gradually, though, I've been able to fit most of the pieces (of my life, not the platter) back together again. A few chips and cracks remain, but I'm still functional. The glue that holds me together is my faith and a sense of humor. On particularly trying days when I'm close to tears and find myself muttering, "Lord, give me strength," He does. Then He goes one step further and points out the humor in my situation — so that I end up laughing instead of crying.
If your spouse is retired or working from home, and it's creating friction, you may not see anything humorous about your life. Whether you're a homemaker, retiree, or career woman with an office under your own roof, if your husband is suddenly underfoot, you're probably struggling with the adjustment. Irritations like too much togetherness or a lack of privacy may make it hard for you to see anything funny about your situation.
But I promise that someday you'll be able to find some humor in having an at-home husband. To help you make that adjustment, I've developed a system I call the ABCs of Coping. The letters stand for:
- Accepting Your Situation
- Bettering Your Situation
- Cherishing Your Situation
Cherish Is the Word?
Right now you may be yelling, "Cherish my situation? Are you nuts? Do you have any idea what I'm going through?"
Believe me, I do. As a work-from-home writer and speaker, I face many of the same challenges. Here's an example. For the last 30 minutes I've been seated at the computer in my office, with the door closed. During this time, my husband has knocked twice — once to inform me that the weatherman is predicting rain on Saturday, then again to ask if I have anything that needs to be mailed. This happens every weekday at 10:25 A.M. Thanks to my spouse's predictability, I never need to phone the "time lady." Before making his usual trek to the post office at precisely 10:30, he checks the outgoing mail basket on our kitchen desk at precisely 10:25 and inquires, "Do you have anything to mail?"
"If I do, it's in the basket," I answer, right on cue.
"Just checking to be sure," he replies.
Do I cherish these interruptions? Of course not. Am I grateful to have my own personal meteorologist and courier? You bet.
Perhaps the word cherish is too strong. Try thinking of it as "being grateful" for your situation. (See, I have this little alliteration thing going with the ABCs of Coping and I need a "C" word instead of a "G" word.)
From Complaining to Compassion
I confess that being grateful was not an immediate reaction to my new situation. In the early stages of my husband's eternal presence, I spent hours complaining about my plight to anyone who would listen — the lady standing behind me in the grocery line, fellow shoppers at the mall, my dog's vet — anyone with ears. I discovered that just about everybody had a spouse-in-the-house story to tell.
After a while I decided that instead of holding support group sessions in grocery stores where they impeded traffic flow, we fellow strugglers needed to find a less crowded spot to share our house-spouse stories. So I called the local community college to pitch the idea of teaching a class on the subject of adjusting to a spouse's retirement or work-at-home status. It was an easy sale, since the director's father had recently retired. "He's driving my mom crazy," she confided.
Now that I had a meeting room, I faced the question of what to say to the group. Surely I had plenty of stories to fill the three-hour class — but since the women would be paying a small fee to attend, they deserved more than a three-hour gripe session. After all, they had plenty of friends and family members whose ears they could bend for free. What they needed were some skills to help them deal with their husbands' daily presence — or on preparing for the inevitable event if it hadn't come yet.
So I did further research, talking not only to fellow wives, but to professional counselors and pastors. The result was the ABCs of Coping.
Here's how the ABCs work. Once you make it through the toughest part, "Accepting," you move on to "Bettering" — where all the practical stuff is. And though you may not believe it now, you'll eventually reach the point where you can "Cherish" (or at least be grateful for) your situation — even if it's only for the fact that you now have someone around to carry in the groceries.
You'll also begin to develop compassion for your spouse as you start to consider his side of the story. This is especially important for those with retired husbands. Psychologists say that for men, the stress of retirement ranks right up there with life's three major stressors — puberty, death, and divorce. The retired husband often struggles with the fact that he's no longer welcome in his workplace. He also must figure out where and how he fits in at home. He may feel like the new kid on the block, sensing that you perceive him as moving in on your territory. Resolving these conflicts may depend on whether you can drag that welcome mat from its hiding place in your closet and let your husband know that you love and value him not for what he does (or no longer does), but for who he is.
In my workshops I ask the ladies to keep a "gratitude journal." They begin by writing down five things about their spouses for which they're grateful. Everyone finds this an easy assignment. I know you will, too.
It's been said that there are two ways of meeting difficulties: You alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them. You'll need to do a little of both as you adjust to your husband's being at home for good.
Why not give the ABCs of Coping a shot?
Let's start with . . . Accepting.