BINTEL BRIEF How do I get my control-freak husband to back off?
Bintel says set some boundaries — and tell him to ‘quit banging the teakettle’
He’s driving her crazy micromanaging their business. (Illustration: Beth Harpaz/Canva)
By Beth Harpaz June 1, 2023
The Forward has been solving reader dilemmas since 1906 in A Bintel Brief, Yiddish for a bundle of letters. Send us your quandaries about Jewish life, love, family, friends or work via email, Twitter or this form.
Dear Bintel:
My husband and I have been together almost 25 years. For 20 of those years, we worked together in broadcast media, although mostly in different capacities. He then retired to pursue an adjacent profession. He constantly offers me professional advice, based on his own experiences — which, while valid, no longer relate to the Way Things Are Done Now. Also, I’ve been working in this business for more than 40 years myself, and have been the main breadwinner since 2001. (Which I try very hard not to bring into the conversation.)
If I try to explain that things are different now, I’m told that I’m invalidating his experiences. If I don’t take his advice, he says it’s just because it’s from him. If I need his assistance with a project, it has to be done his way, or not at all. And he insists that he has to control the recording equipment — because it’s his.
It’s at the point where I’ve turned down work because I know I can’t get clients what they need. This has been going on for awhile, but it’s worse now, with advancing years and fewer opportunities.
And it’s not just about work. It’s about health, money and almost anything else that might cause friction between two people who live together.
I’m just trying for peaceful coexistence, to be able to live — and work — without tearing my hair out. Any thoughts?
Signed,
ManSprained
Dear ManSprained:
We get it — and probably so do most women who’ve been in the workforce as long as you have. We’ve been talked over, underpaid and overlooked. We put up with it, worked around it, ignored it, worked our butts off anyway and quietly built our careers despite the mansplaining — or as you put it, the “ManSpraining” (not a typo, we know).
Of course, most of us don’t have to share a home with the male colleagues bigfooting us at work. It must feel like there’s no escape from your husband’s relentless drive to dominate. However intolerable the situation sounds, I assume you want to keep the marriage going since you don’t indicate any interest in walking away. Have you considered couples therapy? It doesn’t come cheap but it could help. Here’s hoping your stubborn hubby might agree to it; if not, consider a few sessions on your own.
In the meantime, I consulted Kate Mangino, author of Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home, for advice on how to achieve the “peaceful coexistence” you seek.
She didn’t mince words. She called your situation “demeaning” and said that while it’s not your job to fix your husband, she understands your urgent need to improve things.
It all boils down to setting boundaries for what he can and cannot do or say in connection with your work.
“One new boundary could be that the husband is free to offer advice — but ManSprained is not under obligation to take that advice,” she said. Another boundary could restrict conversations about work to the home office — and ban them from the kitchen, living room and bedroom.
Develop those boundaries “the way a client would treat a consultant.” For every job, make clear what help is and isn’t needed.
If hubby oversteps, Mangino continued, tell him the next step will be for you to outsource his role. Point out that if you have to hire someone with the equipment he now provides, that’s less profit overall for your business and household.
Imagining these scenarios brought to my mind an old Yiddish saying: “Hak mir nisht kin tshaynik” — quit banging the teakettle! Or in plain English, “Buzz off!” It’s what my dad would say to shut down kibitzing and kvetching if someone was nagging him. Not exactly a high-minded response to a conflict, but it sends the message.
Mangino wondered whether your husband also tries to micromanage cooking, housekeeping and every other aspect of your lives together, or whether he mostly fixates on business. She was curious to hear his perspective: “Why does he smother his wife with advice?” What’s going on in that my-way-or-the-highway head of his?
Men are often socialized to feel “they are not ‘real men’ if they do not provide for their family financially,” she noted. Might your husband feel like a failure because you bring home a bigger paycheck? Maybe he’s trying to compensate by offering unsolicited advice. Is he just a control freak, or is he struggling with his role in your relationship?
He might be reluctant to open up. Questions like, “What pressures are you facing?” could be off-putting to someone whose self-esteem is running low, Mangino said.
To give that discussion the best chance, you should both agree to begin statements with “I” — ”I feel this,” “I want” — and avoid accusations and name-calling.
Mangino acknowledged that having an honest discussion with your spouse about his feelings adds an exhausting dimension to your game plan. “When you’re the one ‘doing all the things,’ the last thing you want to do is sit down and ask your partner: ‘So, how do you feel?’” she said. And all too often, managing and repairing relationships — “emotional labor” — falls on women.
But if you can bring yourself to ask with genuine concern and interest, and give him a little time, maybe he’ll let his defenses down and begin to examine why he can’t let you run your business as you see fit.
Whether he’s capable of introspection or not, you owe it to yourself to set those boundaries and ask hubby to respect them. If he doesn’t, “hold him accountable. Dig your heels in,” Mangino said.
And realize, ManSprained, that ultimately, it’s not in your power to change him. See how far empathetic listening and boundary-setting get you. Then you decide whether you can live in that place with him or not.
Signed,
Bintel
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