Q: I want you to know that I love my husband like crazy. He has a big heart, is generous beyond compare and loves me and our children to no end.
But he also frustrates me. As generous as he is, he has a tendency to not to listen to me or the kids.
He goes off and does things without checking to see if we are on board.
Last Sunday, he made a huge picnic lunch for us while we were at church but none of us knew that he was planning a family outing and we had other plans. What should or could have been a wonderful family time turned into a lot of hurt feelings and even some pretty harsh words. He signed our 14- year-old son up for hockey again this year without checking with him to see if he wanted to continue playing hockey. And he invited a small group of girls over to the house for our daughter when our daughter was actually planning an afternoon at the golf course.
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I am not sure what to do about all of this. I would like him to step back once in a while and talk to us before he goes off to do whatever, but I am not sure how to get him to change.
A: This is interesting. If you and your husband went for counselling, chances are pretty good that the counsellor would go after your husband for being a controlling husband and father. She would ask your husband to let things go and not try to control everything.
Of course, your husband would not listen to the counsellor and on the way out to the car to drive home he would tell you that the session was a complete waste of time and that he will not be going back to that counsellor.
I think that the odds are pretty good that your husband is trying to make up for various disappointments in his own childhood by making sure that his kids do not have to go through the same anguish.
Who knows what slice of his own developmental history was missed — perhaps his mom and dad were too busy trying to survive to spend loving time with your husband when he as child. Were they alcoholics? Was there family trauma of one sort or another?
Whatever were the problems he had to confront when he was a child, you can bet that he is going to make sure that his children do not have to share a similar experience.
The problem is that it is not going to work. All of us have our ups and downs in life, as do your children. It is all in the package, and trying to overprotect children simply denies them the full experience of what life has to offer. Your children do not have to go through the trauma their dad had but they will have disappointments, and your job and his job is to help them through the hard times; not to deny them the right to do so.
If I am right and your husband is reliving his own childhood through your children, he is not likely going to change without a struggle.
Maybe you should quit trying to make him change. Take up the gauntlet for yourself. Make sure that you are clear unto yourself what you think a good wife looks like, and then live up to that model. And if that means not going to some obscure park for a Sunday afternoon picnic, so be it.
You can also help your kids with this one. What does a good son look like? What does a good daughter look like? The better they get a sense of their own expectations, the better are the chances that Dad will come along for the ride and not have to control everything. And if he feels bad about all of this, he can go back to that counsellor he rejected and work through his own early childhood experiences with her.
