When Your Role-Shifter is Stuck

I’m a wife- a mom- a sister- a writer- a coffee drinker- a fan of Tom Selleck. (But that’s probably for another post.)  I’m lots of things simultaneously, because…well, aren’t we all?  Some of who I am overlaps neatly: coffee, for instance, can work quite nicely as a date with my husband, fuel for motherhood, an excuse to get with friends, a place to squeeze in distraction free-writing, and can even be enjoyed while watching an episode of Friends where Monica dates Richard.  (I promise that’s the last Tom Selleck reference.)

Some parts of who I am and the roles I play mix well- others don’t.  Writing, for instance, is not something best tried in the middle of watching three children.  You’re going to end up with either bizarre blogging or a bizarre household, and neither is pretty.

So while I love to write ABOUT my kids, I have to separate my role of mother and writer for everyone’s well-being.

But I’m realizing the trickiest roles for me to properly sort are those of mother and wife.  To be honest, I function most often in mother-mode.  My cue to get out of bed in the morning is usually when my husband comes in to tell me bye as he heads out for work.  When he comes home, we have an hour or more of dinner and bedtime routines with the kids, at which point my kids promptly take as long as possible to fall asleep.  Sometimes my husband and I look at each other with a sigh at 9pm wondering why the kids are still chatting upstairs, or shuffling through our peripheral to get to the bathroom while we’re trying to watch a movie.  So mom-mode is almost always on.

Wife mode, on the other hand, easily slips into secondary function.  In fact, wife-mode sometimes devolves into sorting and delegating the other roles in my life.  I coordinate kid stuff with my husband, divvy up household responsibilities like which one of us will pick up the milk and peanut butter, and discuss which of us gets a night OUT of the house.

On the nights that my husband goes out for a much deserved social or sport outing, I take my mom-role up another level, just enough to score a bedtime win, and then I’m done.  And by done, I mean I’m ready for tea and a movie or book, or some really focused time with God. Heaven forbid my children should interrupt this moment.

And heaven forbid my husband should come home when I’m still shifting out of mom-role and haven’t had my me-time yet.  Because then, poor guy, I act like this home has been my territory for the last 12 hours, and if he can’t be home for bedtime he has a lot of gall showing up before the kids have been in bed at least an hour.  The nerve of him for coming home at a reasonable time.  Geesh.

This whole blog post started because I misread a quote from an interview with Indra K Nooyi.  Nooyi said, “every day you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother, in fact many times during the day you have to make those decisions.”  And while she meant that you have to choose between your professional role and being a wife AND mother, I initially read it as a woman having to choose between being a wife OR mother.

But that got me thinking- maybe for me, I do need to choose sometimes.  Maybe I need to get better at just being a wife.  Maybe I get so caught up in trying to be a good mom, or at least an improving mom, who teaches my kids and takes them fun places and cleans up most at least 20% of their messes, that I forget to really invest in my role as wife.  I forget to invest in my husband.  I make all kinds of excuses for my wife-role because I simply have so many other roles to fill.

But then something doesn’t feel quite right- almost like I’m coexisting with my husband in parallel worlds that are connected but somehow not quite overlapping like they should.  I don’t think it has to be that way.

My husband is a wonderful man, and he loves me more than I’ll ever comprehend.  And because I love him back I need to better learn how to fully embrace my wife-role, even if I get stuck mid-gear sometimes.

I can post ways I’ve tried to work on this in the future, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear what YOU have tried.  Please share ways you’ve invested in your spouse and how you’ve honored that role over the years.  Thanks!