The Realities of Staying Home: My Husband Makes Me Feel Guilty

Wreath courtesy of angiemakes.com.

Ok, now that I have your attention due to my controversial title (because let's be honest, any man that saw it is ready to chew me up and spit me out and all the women are ready to fight on my behalf), let me explain.

My husband does make me feel guilty....because he is my helpmate, my true partner in life.  Shortly after we got married, I got some advice from a family friend.  He said that we needed to realize that marriage is never 50/50.  There will be days that your husband does 90% of the work.  There will be days you do 90%.  The thing to remember is that marriage is about partnership, and that it is your job to pick up the slack when your partner can't.  Over the course of a marriage it may end up being 50/50.  It may not.  But if you are getting married only expecting to put in half the work, then you shouldn't do it.

I think that my husband and I have been pretty good at embodying this principle.  When I was still going to school while completing my first year of teaching, I was working from the time I got up to the time I went to bed almost every day.  My husband did most of the cooking and cleaning during that season of our life.  When it comes to babies, I'm the one that usually gets up at night to feed them (I nurse so he can't really help anyway....) and change them and I try to not wake my husband if possible.  Even five months in, I still spend a lot of time nursing.  J eats about as soon as we get done eating dinner in the evening, so my husband, even after a long day of work, cleans up while I feed J.

This is where the guilt comes in.  My husband has done a lot of the laundry and dishes here lately.  I've been busy most days dealing with the garden and canning on top of doing the daily taking care of the kids thing.  He picks up my slack, but I feel bad that there is slack to pick up.  I feel there shouldn't be household things that need to be done when he gets home.  I'm a type A, perfectionist.  I HATE asking for and accepting help.

But instead of feeling guilt, I need to remember the advice given to me and be grateful that I have a husband that embodies a helpmate.  In chapter 2 of Genesis, it is described how God wanted to make a helpmate for Adam and that He did not want Adam to be alone.  None of the beasts of the earth were suitable, so God made Eve out of Adam's rib.  In verse 2:23 the Bible states, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."  One.  It takes two to make one life and run one house.  It does not matter if you do most of the work sometimes and your husband does most of the work at other times as long as you are trying and giving all that you have to give at the time.  You were made to support your husband and he to support you.  We need to make sure to show gratitude to God and our husbands for the help and let go of the guilt.  If one person were meant to do it all, God wouldn't have had to make Adam AND Eve.