Mom or Martyr

In the Treehouse: Mom or Martyr

Samantha S. Daviss

As moms and wives, are we really martyrs or do we adhere to our motherly and wifely duties by choice or guilt?

Taking notice not too long ago, maybe with a little envy, that my husband, who is a wonderful father and husband, told me he was running out of the house for an hour to go meet a friend for a drink; this tickled me a little bit.

It tickled me because if I ever even thought of “running” out of the house for an hour, on a whim, would be an act of Congress. I love my life, I love being a mother, and a wife, but all the stars must align before I could “run” anywhere. So why do the men get to do all of the “running”?

So with this thought in my head I mentioned it to my husband a few days later, not out of spite, just a topic of conversation. What instigated it was I had been invited to go to a girlfriends’ house for a vendor show and some “girl time”. I had mentioned it to him a few hours ahead of time, and he told me to go…but then I realized I had homework to complete with my son, dinner to make, baths to fill, and a baby to put to bed. Not that my husband isn’t completely capable of doing all that himself, but it may take a few hours longer.  So with that, I resolved myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be having “girl time” that evening.

He said “if you had only mentioned your girls’ night a few days ago, it probably could have worked out”. And he is absolutely right, but why? I asked in my head. Why do we have to clear it with the Congressional Party a few days in advance and they (the men) can just bop out of the house whenever they feel like it? Is it because we are martyrs, or we actually know that our households won’t be able to function like the finely tuned greased wheels that they are without us around…or will they just not operate the way we want them to operate?

I think we as women are so set in our ways of doing things, that we aren’t able to accept the fact that life can be done in another fashion, the way our husbands would do it. But on the flip side, even if the house was running smoothly and we could slip out for a few hours with out the house becoming unhinged, why don’t we do it more often? Do we feel guilty, or selfish—is doing something for ourselves such a horrible thing? We need to remember that if we aren’t happy, nobody is happy (at least that’s what I heard somewhere).

So maybe in fact it is a control issue. We get upset with our counterparts, when in fact we need to learn to relinquish some of the responsibilities to our spouse. We need to learn to ask for help. And remember, just because it doesn’t get done “our way” doesn’t mean that it is wrong. We also need to remember, that the men in our lives take time for themselves, to decompress after a long day at work or time at home by maybe playing golf, or a friendly game of poker. So just remember ladies, a little “us” time won’t knock the Earth off its axis.