A Rant: Don’t Disrespect My Husband

Read this experience that my husband and I had. Read my thoughts and feelings about it and let me know your feelings on the issue. This has really been eating at me all week so I thought I would share it in hopes to get some feedback from you guys.

A week ago my husband and I made a trip to town together. I was going to get my nails done and while I did that he was going to play a round of virtual golf. I dropped him off, got my nails done and headed back to pick him up. His time wasn’t up so I went inside, found him and relaxed on the sofa while he finished up his last 10 minutes of playing time. As time came to a close, the guy working came back there to let him know his time was up. When he walked off he looked at me and said “Now you know where Daddy Daycare is.” I laughed as he walked off and didn’t think much of it.

We head to the front of the place so my husband could pay for his time and the same guy is there to check him out. He pulls his ticket and it goes a little something like this:

Worker to my husband: “No drinks?”

Husband responds: “No, no drinks. Just the golf today.”

Worker to me: “next time you need to give him a bigger allowance.” (laughs at his own comment)

Me: at a loss for words and unable come up with anything witty to say so I just say nothing.

Okay, here is the thing. I know the guy was trying to be funny. He was just making comments off the cuff without knowing me or my husband at all. He wasn’t trying to be offensive. I get it. And normally, I would just laugh right along with him and pretend to agree and we would walk away and I wouldn’t think about it again. But on this particular day I didn’t laugh. I didn’t pretend to agree. I just walked away and became more and more angry as the day went on. Maybe it was because I saw the reaction on my husband’s face when the guy made his comments about me giving him an allowance? Maybe it is because I have worked extremely hard to remove comments like that about my husband from my vocabulary. I don’t know what it was, but it still gets me worked up thinking about it.

I asked my husband how he felt about it all when we left to see if I was over reacting. He had a few choice words that he would have liked to say to that guy so I knew I was on to something and it wasn’t just me. He felt disrespected. Belittled. Made to feel like a child who needed permission to have a drink or spend money on something he enjoyed. I knew it came across that way.

Ladies, we have all done it. We have made jokes and harmless comments about our husbands needing to ask us for permission to do things. We may have even used the daddy daycare line before. We’ve made belittling comments in the name of teasing or just joking around. I know I have done it. When we left there I apologized to my husband for all of those comments I may have ever said to him. Hearing it from an outsider I could see just how disrespectful it was. And if my husband felt disrespected by a comment from a guy he didn’t even know, how much more disrespected did he feel hearing a comment like that from his own wife?

I know we live in a time where society tells us that we need to encourage women, empower women and fight for equality for women. I love strong, empowered and confident women. I would like to think that I am one. Does that mean that I should be so empowered that my husband should have no power and not be able to make a decision on his own? Does that mean I am so strong and so important that my husband needs daycare while I handle business? Absolutely not!  But that is the message that society is sending. While lifting up women, it is emasculating men.

That man was trying to be funny and make a joke but I highly doubt he came up with it all on his own. My guess is that the men that come into the facility make comments about how their wife won’t let them spend any money, or their wife won’t let them play another game. Or maybe he hears the wives in there making comments about dropping their husbands off at Daddy Daycare. Perhaps he has been in a relationship where he was treated so disrespectfully by a woman. I don’t know.

The bottom line is, we can be strong, empowered and successful women and we can also look to our husbands as the leaders of our family. We can speak respectfully to our husbands and speak respectfully about them to other people. Fight for the men they are. They are designed to lead. They are designed to solve problems and be manly. Let them. Our husbands are adults. They don’t need daycare. Our husbands are on our team. We should be planning out finances together by doing monthly budgets together and talking about financial goals. Then you can trust that your husbands is making decisions with finances that fit into the budget and into the goals of the family. He doesn’t need an “allowance” from his wife. And you don’t need an “allowance” from your husband. You decide these things together.

Its time that we stand up for our husbands. Society is trying to make them seem incompetent while making women the dominant one in the home. Its time we start living out Ephesians 5:33 (ESV) “However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

If you want to know more about what this looks like for your marriage please look into Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires. The Respect He Desperately Needs. 

Let me know your thoughts on this encounter we had with the worker and his comments. And let me know your thoughts on how society is trying to depict women and men. Leave your comments below.