Yvonne Battle-Felton

When I got married almost ten years ago, it was with out preconceived notions-or so I thought-of happily ever after and till death do us part. As far as I was concerned, I didn't have many gender role expectations or limitations for my husband-to-be or for myself. I didn't know much about marriage. I was from a single-family household and the lives of the married people I knew were not ones to be emulated: the married people I knew were not happy and if nothing else, I knew I wanted to be happy. To be honest, I didn't give marriage nearly enough thought; if I had I would have done some things differently. Not the ceremony but the engagement. I would have talked with my fiancé more, or at all, about his expectations and given some true thought to my own. I also would have talked and listened to the couples around me. I would have asked the women in my life the question I ask us all to consider now: Are we sabotaging our own marriages?

Today I think if only someone had warned me... and I have to stop myself, that's not fair. There is no shortage of both solicited and unsolicited advice in books and magazines, on screen, in music and more importantly through friends and an often-overlooked resource: family. I can vaguely remember someone saying, "Marriage takes a lot of work" and reading something about the necessity of communicating to make a marriage work. They weren't talking about me-I thought-and to be honest, I just wasn't paying attention. So while I didn't take on the title Mrs. Sylvester Felton (I hyphenated), I did take on a new role: the Super Wife. I became my own worst enemy, my own nemesis. The day I got married, I unconsciously began sabotaging my marriage and eventually my own happiness.

You see, when I said, "I do" I was saying yes to raising a family, working a full-time job, putting my own needs second, and maintaining a household while being a loving, caring, supportive, understanding and forgiving wife. That's a lot of pressure and I have to say honestly it was self-imposed. My husband never said, "honey after you get off work can you cook dinner, help the kids with homework, clean the house, wash the dishes, do the laundry, put the kids to bed and then spend some time with me?" But I heard, or rather felt this undeniable pull, this necessity to do everything. At first, when he asked, "do you need help with anything?" I heard: "since you can't take care of it, I'll step in and take care of it." So my answer was always, "no, I'll take care of it." Meaning: "I can handle it." Over the years he stopped asking, anticipating my response, which unbeknownst to him was changing to: "can't you see I need help!" Instead of saying the words-and why should I have to, I thought-I began resenting him. I resented his stress-free day, his distance from child rearing, his assurance that the children and everything else was taken care of. But I didn't say a word until it was too late. When it started bothering me, I should have said something. By the time I said something, it had gone so far that I couldn't take any more. He couldn't recognize the magnitude of the problem and instead felt I had done things quite efficiently, so efficiently that he felt I no longer needed him. The problem is that by then, so did I.

With our marriage deteriorating seemingly beyond repair, we separated. That was actually the best thing for us to do. Over the course of our on again off again separation I have learned to say the things I usually held back, the words which I found were hardest to say: I need help. My story is not as unique as I once thought. Statistics say American marriages are in trouble; more importantly American women are in trouble. Some of us are forgetting that a marriage is a partnership. Which means we are not in it alone. At this point in my life it may not be as important to consider how or when I lost sight of this, as it is to figure out how to fix it. But since I am raising children I should at least pause to briefly reflect on the causes. According to Gamble and Gamble's book "The Gendered Communication Connection", the family is the primary source of what they gender socialization: "the family provides the most significant context for our learning about sex and gender (193). According to this theory the roles women adopt are based on roles we have seen enacted by our own parents or primary caregivers. It appears that we internalize and categorize behaviors as acceptable and unacceptable based on our experiences or perhaps based on reactions to those experiences. This does not mean that we necessarily emulate gender roles as they are, but rather as we would either expect or want them to be. Meaning I may not necessarily communicate with my husband based on my parent's communication patterns but in spite of them. Still we are impacted by our experiences and perceptions.

According to research compiled in his essay, Communication between the Sexes: Male Gender-Role Orientation and Confirmation/Disconfirmation in Marital Dyads, Thomas Veenendall agrees that parents are the primary source for gender role conceptions and expectations: "Acquisition of sex roles and gender roles and the identities that result from the acquisition process seems to be the product of several forces in combination" (63). Veenendall goes on to explain that the process of gender-role development may be well under way by the time the child is in preschool: "the preschool child has already distinguished sex-related standards of appropriate behavior and begins to exhibit appropriate behaviors," (64). Therefore the family, according to Veenendall's research, is responsible for a complex parental/familial socialization process that creates "sex-role and gender-role identities [that] become strong foundations for belief, attitude and value structures which strongly influence behavior patterns," (65). So when you look in the mirror and think you see your mother, you may be right.

But according to Gamble and Gamble we can't just blame mom. Women are also socialized and molded by society and are stereotypically cast in the role of caregiver. According to Gamble and Gamble: even when both parents work "research still reveals that mothers regularly spend significantly more time caring for children than fathers do," (203). Besides caring for children and working, women are still largely responsible for domestic tasks perpetuating the myth of the super woman. According to Gamble and Gamble, these expectations are reinforced through experiences outside the family. School, work, sports, culture and messages obtained through the media also conspire to form our gender expectations and actions. In short, our past may be sabotaging our futures.
All is not lost. According to Veenendall, "since sex roles are learned, they also can be unlearned and redefined," (68). Keep in mind when things are not working out it may be necessary to reevaluate how you communicate your needs. It may be as easy as acknowledging your role in your current situation, deciding you want a change and communicating your needs with your partner. If so, this is natural. According to research compiled for J. Lyn Rhoden's essay Marital Cohesion, Flexibility, and Communication in the Marriages of Nontraditional and Traditional Women: "when nontraditional women elect to marry, they may need to negotiate power sharing, changing needs, balance between their work and family lives," (248). As Rhoden explains, this renegotiation need not be negative and is not necessarily indicative of a marital impasse: "...processes like bargaining and negotiation do not create conflict but rather are an acknowledgment of and attempt at resolution of the conflict of interests and needs," (254). Effectively communicating your needs may increase your marital satisfaction, but Rhoden is quick to point out that "low marital stability, however, does not necessarily precede dissolution of the marriage, and degree of marital quality does not always correspond to a comparable degree of marital stability," (249). Rhoden's research shows "in both nontraditional and traditional marriages, effective communication is important to the cocreation of the marital culture through interaction of partners by exchanging perceptions and negotiating differences," (253). It appears that the first step in fixing a problem is acknowledging it and after that, you have to communicate to your spouse rather than hoping they will read your mind and change on their own. Unfortunately some spouses will resist change.

According to Nadya Klinetob and David Smith's study on the demand-withdraw syndrome-what she describes as "communication during which one partner attempts to engage the other in discussing an issue by criticizing, complaining, or suggesting change while the other partner attempts to end the discussion or avoid the topic..."-"the spouse with the most to gain by maintaining the status quo is likely to withdraw, and the discontented spouse demands the change. Insofar as the status quo in marriage generally tends to favor men, men will appear most frequently as withdrawers," (Demand). Further analysis of the Klinetob/Smith study leads her to the conclusion that communication may be the key to couple satisfaction: "a final explanation may be that healthier couples demonstrate greater flexibility in their communication styles than maladjusted couples," (Demand). Granted, positive change does not happen when one person acknowledges the need to change and the other denies it or refuses to consider it. In those cases communication may need to occur differently, through counseling. But still, experts and laymen seem to agree that communication is an effective step to changing behaviors.

So what do you do when you realize you need help? Now that you have trained him to think you don't need help and can handle it all, how do you get the man who used to offer to help, to offer now? According to relationship expert Dr. Susan Campbell, you ask him. According to Campbell, some women may have a hard time asking for what they want: "some people are uncomfortable expressing wants because they imagine they'll appear demanding or controlling," (Speak up). According to Campbell, asking for help when we need it is a healthy and positive necessity that can possibly bring couples closer, not farther, away by expressing vulnerability-which is not necessarily a bad thing. By not asking our husbands for help, some of us actually unconsciously set them up for failure by not allowing them to meet our expectations. Campbell explains that some of us have difficulty asking for what we want because we expect others to deny our requests: "when you operate as if this were true, you don't ask for very much, so you don't have to hear no very often," (Speak up). Don't let this stop you from asking for the help you want and need, advises Campbell.

Whether to avoid the trap of playing super woman all together or to change established patterns and redistribute responsibility allowing both of you to flourish, Dr. Brenda Shoshanna advises women to be careful of "communicating with double messages," (Pitfalls). While she focuses on the problem of saying one thing and doing another, I would stress that we avoid saying one thing and meaning another. When your husband offers to help and you need help, accept it. Or if he does not offer and you need help, ask for it. Struggling to do everything yourself will undoubtedly leave you feeling stress and resentment, and face it something or someone is bound to suffer. In her article Solutions to Your Top Two Communication Problems, Dr. Shoshanna stresses the importance of communicating our wants, needs and desires: "without effective communication, no relationship stands a chance." She reminds us that effective communication involves listening as well as talking: "each person can only truly 'hear' what is being said if they are willing to put aside their own point of view and really be available to know the heart and mind of the other," (Solutions). So while you are asking for what you want, be prepared for your partner to share some requests or concerns.

Asking your partner for help empowers both of you to positively affect your marriage and the success of your relationship. Communicating effectively may be difficult, you may be dealing with cultural gender role expectations which may limit your ability to ask for help and your partner's ability to see you need help, but transcending the limitations of culture and recognizing your needs as an individual opens your relationship up for success. It's 2006, women of today can (and are expected to) do everything from raising children, working full time, completing higher education, contributing to the household economy, caring for parents and sometimes grandchildren: we are all things to everybody. But it is time we do something for ourselves. From one strong woman to another, my advice to you is when you need help, ask for it-before it's too late.

###As appears on AC