“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.”
—BEN STEIN
Don’t hesitate to tell your husband what you want, whether it’s a vacation, new furniture, piano lessons for the kids, time to yourself, or even a baby. But make sure you are describing an end-result, not telling him how to do it.
When you tell your husband what you want without telling him when, why, and how you want him to get it—without controlling him—you are giving him a new opportunity to feel accomplished and proud about how happy he makes you. Letting him please you will make you feel adored and intimate.
When you treat yourself well by doing plenty of self-care, you also encourage everyone around you to treat you well, including your husband. Taking that one step further, the more you know what you want and say it out loud, the better your chances of getting it.
When you express a desire purely and simply, you’re acknowledging and honoring your self and providing your husband with an opportunity—nothing more. By contrast, complaining that you don’t have something is not only overbearing, it’s downright unattractive.
Prior to surrendering, I used complaining and demanding to try to get my husband to do the dishes, which never worked. About a year ago I said, “I’d like to make us a nice dinner tonight, but it’s going to make a mess and I don’t want to do the dishes.” He promptly offered to do them that night. In fact, he did them several times over the next week. Now he does them all the time and I never wash dishes. I started to wash them once many months ago and he said, “Thanks for doing the dishes for me.”
Some of us have had the “I want” trained out of us. Maybe we were once told not to be so self-centered, or to think of others who have less, or to be more practical. For instance, when a woman at the park told her preschool aged daughter that it was time to leave, the little girl said simply, “I don’t want to go with you.” The mother then responded by saying, “That’s not very nice. Don’t you like to be with your mother?” The mother twisted the daughter’s statement of desire into a personal attack. She was unfortunately well on her way to training the “I want” out of her daughter.
Like the girl at the park, some of us were told it’s not polite or considerate to express what we want, but that just isn’t true. Knowing what you want and being willing to express it are the purest ways to be true to yourself, which is a very attractive quality. The alternative to being direct about what we want is to be manipulative, which is totally unappealing. A third choice is to ignore our own desires, which means that we live without the things that would make us happiest, and suffer a corresponding drop in energy, vitality, and satisfaction with our lives. We also become resentful, and that’s ugly.
Saying what you want means that you’re aware of your feelings and desires and that you’re willing to honor them. It means that you know that you deserve to have new things and things that you love. It means you don’t have to waste energy thinking about how to get what you want by making it seem like it actually serves some other more noble purpose. You’re not a martyr, and nobody has to guess what will please you. A woman who knows and respects herself simply says to her husband, “I want.”
WHY MEN GO TO THE STORE FOR TAMPONS
If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.
—ORSON WELLES
It may not seem like it, but your husband wants to shower you with things that you love. As long as he knows you respect him, all you have to do is tell him what you want or don’t want, as in “I want a cat” or “I want to send the kids to summer camp” or “I don’t want to move.” Whenever he can, the husband of a surrendered wife will gladly respond to these words because one of his foremost goals is to make his wife happy. If you don’t believe me on that point, ask any married man you know how important it is that his wife is happy. I’ve asked hundreds of men this question, and their answers were always things like “Imperative,” “Critical,” and “It’s everything.”
Whenever I think about the men I know who will hold their wife’s purse while she’s in the fitting room, give up their jackets because she’s cold, or run to the store for a box of tampons, I’m reminded of what great lengths men will go to for our happiness. On top of that, you see men moving their families across the country to be near her parents, commuting to work every day so she can live in a bigger house, and driving an old car so she can have the new one. Could their priorities be any more obvious?
Still, we have a tendency to ignore the fact that our husbands want to make us happy and to believe that saying what we want is poor form. Sometimes we try to make our men guess what we want so we don’t have to acknowledge our own desires. To get a sense of what that’s like, imagine a server at a restaurant comes to take your order, and instead of telling her what you want, you say, “I think you know,” or “Can’t you see I’m hungry?” At best, the server could suggest that you order the special, or she could choose something off the menu at random and bring it to you. Chances are slim that your dinner would be what you want.
Asking your husband to guess what you want is just one of the ways we try to avoid expressing our desires because we are uncomfortable admitting that we want something. Here are some of the other frustrating habits we have that prevent us from getting the desires of our hearts.
Stop Telling Him How to Get You What You Want
As I’ve said, trying to tell your husband how to do something is highly ineffective. Still, it’s not unusual for women to try to get what they want by giving their husbands instructions about how to get it—as if he wouldn’t otherwise know that there’s such a thing as a florist or a mall nearby.
This doesn’t work because when a husband feels controlled or disrespected, he gets worn down and lethargic. He reacts with stinginess and distances himself because he’s lost the motivation to be generous. If you suspect your husband is stingy, it could be that he’s been so preoccupied with defending himself and avoiding your criticism that he hasn’t had the energy to focus on doing things to please you. If you excuse yourself from having to respect him because he seems so unkind and selfish, he will probably continue to withhold, and the two of you will be locked in a permanent standoff.
Let’s go back into the restaurant for a minute to illustrate this point. The server wants to take your order, but instead of telling her what you want—say the apricot chicken—you begin telling her how to prepare it. You describe how to clean the chicken properly, then how to season it, and how much of each ingredient to use. You tell her how to cook it, and for how long, and how to garnish it so it will be appetizing. Naturally, the restaurant staff would find you pretty irritating. Even if they did follow your instructions, they’d probably also take a nice long cigarette break before they brought your food to the table because nobody wants to be told how to do his job.
Fortunately, most of us go into a restaurant and order a meal without telling the server how to make it. This works beautifully. The server gives the order to the cook, who prepares the dish, which arrives at our table. Everybody is happy.
Although I don’t think of my husband as a server whose sole job is to fill my orders, this same system works very well in my marriage. If I tell my husband I want something, he works to get it for me as best he can.
If you think your happiness is a low priority for your husband, you’re dead wrong. He’s probably just responding defensively to you telling him how to do what you want him to do.
Once you are respecting him most of the time, his natural gratitude and desire to please you will surface, so start telling him what you want. Tell him in a way that is respectful and self-honoring by refraining from saying anything that could—even in the slightest way—be construed as controlling how he pleases you.
Just state your desire, and let him figure out the rest. When you say to your husband, “I want a new dress,” or “I want another baby,” or “I want a bigger house,” you are giving him a new opportunity to feel accomplished and proud about how happy he makes you. In return, you do feel happy and taken care of, and both of you appreciate that.
Notice, however, that these examples are all end-results. Expressing the desire for a new dress is very different from telling him to go to the department store and buy you a blue dress for your birthday. Saying you want another baby is far different from telling him he needs to wear looser underwear to keep his sperm count up. Saying you want a bigger house is a lot different than telling him to ask for a raise so the two of you can afford one.
Do you see the difference? I’m suggesting that you tell him the end-result, but not specify how it happens.
Stop Telling Him Why He Should Get You What You Want
Another common technique that women use to try to motivate their husbands to do what they want is giving them lengthy explanations to justify their demands. As you can imagine, this approach is also highly ineffective.
Just as you would tell the server at a restaurant what you want without a long song and dance about how hungry you are because you haven’t eaten all day, there’s no need to elaborate about why you want what you want.
It’s not necessary to say, “I want the apricot chicken because chicken is not as fatty as beef, and I like chicken with a sweet sauce on it and I’ve had the chicken here before and it’s not too dry.” Nor do you need to say, “I want to get a new dress because all of my old ones are worn out, and it’s been three years since I bought anything new for myself, and I saved $40 on groceries with coupons last month.” Although you’re just adding explanations, they sound dangerously like complaints, which automatically put him on the defensive and may even cause him to tune out. The subtext of your message is “You never think I deserve anything, but I am going to tell you why you’re wrong.”
Telling your husband what you want isn’t a play for power or a forum for testing how well he responds to your demands. Rather, it is a way for both of you to feel pleased. Saying, “I want a bigger house” is not the same as saying, “I want a new house because this one is so small it is absolutely driving me nuts! I’m sick of having to live in such cramped quarters. Plus, I think the neighborhood is going downhill….”
Stop Making Demands
Many wives make demands, which cause terrible resentment. Saying, “You should buy me that necklace in the window at Tiffany’s” is a demand. Any sentence that starts with “You should …”, “Why don’t you?” or “I want you to …” is automatically a demand because it’s a request expressed with a sense of control.
When you demand something of your husband, you’re still controlling him, still acting like his mother, and he will still resist being told what to do. Making a demand tends to raise his ire and actually push him away from getting you what you want.
Before you tell him what it is you want, think about it carefully and make sure that you are specific about the end result you have in mind. Expressing what you want is about letting your husband know what it is that you need and like, which is completely reasonable.
You are imparting information about yourself—not activating your control clutches. There’s also no need to make requests—which can be perceived as demands—because your husband will want to give you what he knows you want.
In the movie Phenomenon, John Travolta’s character visits a woman who lives on the outskirts of town, and gives her two kids a ride home along the way. When he gets there, she asks him what a man who drops in and brings her kids home is expecting—to be served dinner? Travolta responds by saying, “Not expecting, just hoping.”
She served him dinner.
As you express your desires, be sure that you are not expecting, just hoping. As long as you do that, you are free to want absolutely everything in the world! Most women do. Don’t be afraid to express your pure desire for something you want but fear your husband can’t afford. You’re not making a demand—but you are giving him the opportunity to surprise and please you.
Stop Asking for Permission or Agreement
Sometimes it’s tempting to soften your desires by asking your husband for something instead of just saying you want it. This may sound odd, but I notice women express themselves in questions all the time. I did it not long ago when a friend was over. The windows were open in the living room, and as I jumped up to close them, instead of saying, “I’m cold” I said, “Aren’t you cold? I’m going to close these.” As it turns out she wasn’t cold. She also didn’t mind my closing the windows, but it had nothing to do with her desires. I was the one who wanted to warm up, but I tried to win her agreement to make myself feel less selfish.
One woman was disappointed when her husband refused her after she asked, “Can we take the kids for pizza tonight?” Again, she didn’t come out and state her desire. She probably felt like she did, but instead, she asked him for something, as if he were Santa Claus, or her dad. Since he said, “No, not tonight,” he was the bad guy.
By contrast, if this woman had said, “I want to go out for pizza with the kids tonight,” as a statement, she would not have put any demands on him, but she would have given him the opportunity to make her happy.
Take ownership of your own desires by making a statement (as opposed to asking a question) that starts with “I want” or “I don’t want.”
Stop Projecting Your Desires
Sometimes we try to project our desires onto our husbands so that we don’t seem to want so much. Have you ever said something like, “Don’t you want to see the Grand Canyon this summer?” or “Don’t you think it would be great to have a swimming pool?” I have. Then, when my husband says he doesn’t feel strongly about seeing the Grand Canyon or getting a swimming pool, I’m compelled to argue with him about why he doesn’t want what I want. Then he gets exasperated and just agrees with me to keep the peace. But I don’t just want him to comply; I want him to feel the same way I do, even when he doesn’t.
I find it’s much easier to take ownership of my desires by saying, “I want to see the Grand Canyon this summer,” or “I want to have a swimming pool.”
A variation on this theme is using the word “we” when what you really mean is “I.” Whenever you find yourself using the word “we” with your husband, chances are you’re trying to distance yourself from your own desire.
When my husband hears me saying that “we” should do this or that, he immediately sees that I’m speaking for him out of a need to control. He doesn’t care about things that “we” want. He cares about things that I want.
Instead of saying “we need to get the kids piano lessons” or “we need new miniblinds,” try to say “I want to get the kids piano lessons” and “I want new miniblinds.”
IF YOU DON’T ADMIT YOU WANT SOMETHING, YOU WON’T GET IT
“The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.”
—JONATHAN SWIFT
About six years ago, I wanted to buy a new house in the worst way, but I thought we couldn’t afford it. We had poor credit, a condo that was worth far less than we owed on it and no down payment. Still, I told my husband my desire. We looked at houses almost every weekend, and I hoped that somehow we’d find a way to buy one.
One rainy night my husband and I went to see a house that was advertised in the paper as “For Sale by Owner.” The neighborhood was pleasant, but the house looked spooky, with dead trees in the yard and bars on all the windows. I was sure this could not be our house, but my husband saw immediately that it was. A few months later, we had sold our condo and bought the spooky house from the owner by assuming his loan. We got in without a credit check or a down payment, and sold the condo for the amount we owed on it, despite my belief that this was not possible. We took the bars off the windows and removed the dead trees and six years later I still love living in our beautiful four-bedroom house.
If John hadn’t known what I wanted, he wouldn’t have insisted on getting the house with the great potential, which I would have walked away from. Often you get what you want in a way that’s not what you imagined.
The same thing happened with a friend of mine, who wanted carpet in her garage, where her toddler spent much of his time playing. She knew it wasn’t in the financial plan, but she still let her husband know she wanted it. The next week he came home with a roll of carpet just the right size for the garage. A client had been putting in new carpet and had this extra to give to her husband for free.
A realtor told me the story of making a verbal offer on a million-dollar house on behalf of a client. As a joke he added, “and that price includes the Mercedes in the garage!” The sellers didn’t realize he was joking, and when they accepted the offer, they agreed that the Mercedes would be part of the deal.
If I hadn’t told my husband I wanted a house, he might not have persuaded me to buy the one we have now. If my friend hadn’t told her husband she wanted carpet, he might have turned down his client’s gift. If the realtor hadn’t said the buyers wanted the Mercedes, they wouldn’t have gotten it.
See how important it is to say what you want?
There’s one more benefit to expressing your desires: A woman who is clear about what she wants also gives her husband an added gift. Her husband is confident that she wants him.