How do you get more help from your Husband?  Praise his effort!

Want your husband to help you out more? Of course you do.  So how can you get your husband to share the load?  Sounds overly simple, but it can pretty much work with anyone, Praise His Effort.

Men NEED respect!  Women NEED love!
According to my husband Jack as well as many experts in the fields of love, relationships, and psychology, men DO in fact NEED respect, and though women want and need to be treated with respect, it is not on the same level as a man’s NEED for respect.

In our cornerstone post, 15 Ways to Show RESPECT to your Husband, we gave a list of …you guessed it, 15 ways to show respect to your husband.  Welcome to part three in our follow-up series of posts where we discuss our suggestions in greater detail. You will find real life examples and be provided with ideas to help you find ways to strengthen your marriage while giving your husband the respect he needs.

Often husbands do help their wives with a task such as washing the dishes or folding the laundry only to be corrected for not doing it the “right” way at which point the husband thinks something along the lines of, “Really, here I am trying to do something nice, and all she is doing is complaining. Guess I won’t be helping her with this ever again, and maybe I won’t make the effort on anything else either.” Our husbands are trying to do something helpful and probably subconsciously expecting a compliment or a thank you, and instead, we just gripe.  Why in the world don’t we just say thank you and praise his effort?

For example, I recently observed a conversation where the woman commented to her husband that he had mowed the yard wrong. She told him that he should have mowed all of the front first, then the sides. Though there may have been a valid reason for her thought process, all it did was anger him and show him how unappreciated and (in his mind) disrespected he was.  Why not instead Praise his Effort which probably would have helped them to have a better day together and made him feel his effort was not in vain.

Women, if they join in with you on a task or offer to assist you in something that you know you want done a specific way, you might say something along these lines, “Honey, thanks for your help. Would you mind folding the towels, and I will focus on the clothes. I know it seems kind of silly, but I fold the towels like this (demonstrate) simply because they fit in the cabinet best that way.” This makes the “direction” given have only to do with the way it fits in the cabinet not a reflection about him. Then acknowledge (not over the top) the help again briefly. “Hey babe, thanks for your help with the laundry. I had gotten really backed up, and that helped me out.” Jack also suggests about three days later saying something along the lines of, “You know the other day you helped me out with the laundry, and I just wanted to say that I really appreciated it.” You could even add something like, “Because of your help, I was able to…get bills paid earlier in the night, play board games with you guys, make your favorite stroganoff rather than hamburger helper 🙂 .”  This lets him know that you have been thinking of him and that you really did appreciate his help.  Do NOT do this right before chore time, you never want your compliment or thanks to seem to have an ulterior motive rather than being truly genuine..

Jack suggests not giving any direction on how to fold the towels or how to do another task. He says it may make your husband irritable to be told how to help. Instead Jack believes you need to just let your husband fold the towels then ask him to put them in the cabinet with the idea that your husband will realize that the towels might have fit better a different way, and the next time he helps, he will adapt. Jack reminds me that our initial goal is to get reoccurring assistance from our husbands.  After about three times, if your husband has not adapted his methods or asked you how you would like something done, then maybe next time he offers to help, you ask him to help with a different task such as hanging clothes.

I think as women, we tend to think that it is of no help to us if the task is not done “right”. Let’s be real, his assistance may not have saved you more than ten minutes or it may have even created ten more minutes of work if they did not “help” in a way that was helpful, but if we want to foster in our husbands a desire to assist, gratefulness is a sure-fire method, so please Praise his effort.

In my career, I have worked with many women who “know” that they can do “it” better and faster than their husbands; frequently that may even be the case, but do you really want to spend your whole marriage doing everything?

My aunt Earlene is famous for not accepting help from my uncle Earl.  He may come into the kitchen to help, and she actually says to him, you will just slow me down or get in the way. Ughhh. Though this may be true, it is problematic on so many levels to say or even to allow yourself to think. Consequently, with time, uncle Earl feels unappreciated, disrespected (especially if comments are made within someone else’s earshot), and of course he quits helping.  So what did my aunt accomplish? She now does the work all by herself, misses out on visiting with the family since she has to do all the work, has hurt her husband, and if we are really honest, probably hurt the relationship a little bit. Why not just thank him and praise him for his effort instead.

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So let’s talk through some real world scenarios.
 – bottle cleaning – I am very particular about my baby’s bottles being thoroughly cleaned. The dishwasher is not enough. Hand washing is not enough. Boiling is not enough. The women in my family want to help me, but they know I am particular about the bottles. After my baby reached a certain age, I tried to just be thankful for the assistance rather than to focus on my high standards not being met. I mean really, everything the baby can put in his mouth goes in his mouth, so a bottle that was not triple cleaned is not going to be the reason he becomes ill.
 – dishes – he put the dishes in the wrong place.  Now you have to ask where a dish is. So?  What does that matter really?  You just say, “Honey, do you know where the blue mixing bowl is?”
 – laundry – Does it really matter if the towels are not folded the way you want, or is his desire to assist more important? He does all the laundry for you, but leaves the last load in the dryer to wrinkle. Irritating, sure.  You’ve never done that, right? 🙂 So, if you take out one garment, wet it down and throw it back in the dryer for 15 minutes to de-wrinkle the load, he still saved you time on doing all the laundry, right?

To some degree, it is about your perspective.  Do you want to do all the work just because you want it done your way or are you willing to accept some help and praise his effort to hopefully gain even more assistance?

The result may not always be what you were hoping for, but noticing the effort will encourage additional effort and desire to assist. Don’t be quick to point out what he has done wrong, but instead, thank him for what he has done right and praise his effort.

Remember to keep the end goal in mind, you are seeking help from your husband and doing so by showing him respect and appreciation.  We are looking to change our hearts through the right attitude and re-learning respect for our husbands which will also change his heart.

I would love to hear ways in which you have been successful in getting your husband to help you more.

Thanks for joining me Down the Winding Way,

Jill

P.S. I love to hear your success stories of how simple praise has accomplished the goal of getting your husband to help in your marriage.