Most women don’t worry about becoming a Stepford Wife. Then again, most women have never been in a loving, functional relationship and endured several candid discussions with concerned peers or supervisors about how they really aren’t being abused in any way.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I grew up in a town where girls had to stand up to their parents and peers and announce they were not going to college to get an MRS degree (i.e. – to catch a husband). However, most of my difficulty finding a balance falls closer to home.

My mother may be a neuropsychologist, but she hasn’t practiced for 30 years. She focused on her children and her husband. As such, she tended to do some little things the way my father preferred, if he showed a preference.

Furthermore, my mother was raised by her mother and didn’t fully shake everything her mother deeply believed, nor did I (since she visited every other weekend, for my entire childhood). I may not have mentioned this before, but my maternal grandmother had a conviction that men were to be served by women, they were to be feared or revered, but always above us. It didn’t really hit me until I was old enough to notice more quiet dynamics within a household, which also coincided with my mother having my baby brother. Suddenly, I was not the spectacular darling I once had been, but (when he was around) a spectacular tool to help her serve my brother. She loved me; she adored him. At the funeral, we joked that she would have been horrified if she’d been there, that my brother was forced to shave, choose a clean slightly-itchy black sweater, and go alone to BUY a pair of pants – she’d have said he could wear anything he was comfortable in, like what he wore the days before: his 3-week-dirty jeans and warn-out shirt were wonderful and his stubble manly.   She would sit on the floor or stand, so a man could have a chair. She would flutter around the room trying to divine their needs for food and beverage (or anything else) before they even thought of it themselves. All this despite having 3 brothers.

So I grew up with this hiding in my head, waiting for just the right man to bring the crazy out. My husband wound up being just that man. I guess it was the only way I knew for a woman to show affection for a man without hanging all over him… or it was my idea of being a good mate. It was a bit visible to others when we were in college, but it really came out when I came to live with Peter, immediately after graduating from college. In a new city far from home, my whole world became graduate school, our two tiny siamese kittens, and Peter. So I came to discover what he preferred and how he preferred it and did my best to anticipate his needs. I felt like a failure when I did not deliver and forgot something when grocery shopping or didn’t immediately hand him the remote or didn’t drive as he would have driven (I quickly decided it was easier to have him drive, which helps tame his road rage). When I started student-teaching, and would suddenly rush to leave and bring work home (due to my perfectionist ways) because “he doesn’t like it if I’m not there to greet him,” people began to worry that I was being abused. It’s hilarious because the worst thing he might do is get grumpy, but the abuse was all me-on-me in my pursuit to meet unvoiced desires and be the perfect pseudo-wife.

Don’t get me wrong – this didn’t extend to cleaning the house obsessively (or at all) and wearing an apron. It was just all in little things to make his life easier so that he would be happier, because  I loved him.

When I work, I become very student-centered and stop coming home on-time or grocery shopping or being willing to make love on a school night (unless there’s plenty of time for me to get a good night’s sleep and I was planning on taking a shower the next morning anyways). That will have to change too, because if I could sleep in my classroom I might not have come home some nights. When I am in pain, I do nothing. I don’t get up to greet him, I don’t cook, I don’t shop, I’m hesitant to be intimate…

But right now, I’m back in my obsessive need-meeting mode. I want Peter to be happy and to be happy with me. There is so much I need to make up for and so much stress and strain on him right now. I’m going to try to temper that, but I don’t know whether I should or how much or in what ways. But I guess it’s more the mindset I should cool down than the actual actions. Making your husband happy is good. Wanting to make your husband happy is good. Self-flagellation after not meeting an unspoken desire is not acceptable. Physically cringing and having nauseating fear over in any way adding to (or not resolving) whatever is making or may make your husband angry (or grumpy or pissed or whatever you want to call it, an unpleasant, tangible fog fills the room) is not healthy.

So I’m really really trying to improve my reaction to and anticipation over my husband’s reactions. And I’m trying to find little, everyday ways to show my love aside from gifts or routines. And somewhere, deep in there, is the balance between Stepford Wife and absentee wife.