Sometimes, I Hate My Husband

And other unspoken truths about marriage and parenthood.

“She talks to you that way because you talk to her that way, you know,” my husband said to me during our post-dinner family walk, in which my six year old daughter sassy-pantsed her way down no fewer than three city blocks. The argument (that she didn’t want to be out walking, wishing instead to clock in another hour of Roblox time) wasn’t going her way, and she reacted as she usually did — with sass. It’s a constant battle, her desire for more online time, just like the war we constantly wage against her never-ending ‘tude when she doesn’t get her way.

Did we spoil her, maybe? Or was she just predisposed to be an assertive tyrant? I don’t know, but I do know that it wasn’t her who had gotten under my skin at this particular sassy moment in time — it was my husband. Or rather, my husband’s perfectly logical, infuriating comment about my parenting.

And he was right. About the whole thing.

I hate that.

After babies, it’s no secret that relationships tend to change. Friends, for instance, mostly drift into non-existence, unless they, too, have kids, and you then continue your friendship by yelling at each other over the noise of your collective children at play dates, while secretly feeling smug about the superiority of your own children over theirs (hey, don’t pretend you don’t unintentionally do this, too.)

You’ll probably end up seeing your family more, too, not because they suddenly care more about you, but because they want to see the cute little copies of yourself you created, and to simultaneously hold your children’s bad behaviour over your head in a silent “it’s your turn to suffer what I suffered” gesture. Or maybe that was just my mother, and that’s not a universal thing…?

Anyway, the relationship that might change the least is still the one that surprises you the most, and that’s the one with your husband. The man who once rocked your world in all respects, who wooed you and made you silly with love and infatuation in the early days of your marriage, is the one person on the planet who will irritate you to the high heavens with a single, snippy, infuriatingly CORRECT, criticism or passing comment.

In marriage, and this is probably especially true after you have kids, you will, quite simply, want to punch your husband square in the centre of his stupid face. From time to time, anyway. And that’s a perfectly normal feeling that, honestly, just comes down to science. Probably.

It’s completely unjustified, of course, and I certainly do not advise that you literally use throat-punching your spouse as a means of communication — I don’t care how much you want to, it’s not recommended. Also, I’m fairly certain it’s illegal.

This feeling, however subtle it may or may not be, is an often unspoken reality that takes place in damned near every couple with kids. If you don’t sometimes hate your husband then I honestly don’t know what magical unicorn you married, because men of this world are just insufferable.

…well, sometimes, but especially when they’re right; oh, the insufferableness.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband, and all good men, while I’m at it. Good, strong-willed, respectable men who are loving husbands and exemplary fathers are a force to behold, and my own husband actually is one such man. Yes, I am one of the lucky ones, but that doesn’t prevent me from wanting to jab the pointy tines of my fork into his left eyeball every now and then.

(Again…not literally. Please don’t read this article and think it’s a-okay to maim your spouse.)

This propensity to periodically hate our husbands is just not what we expected, when we stood up in front of our friends and family, draped in sparkling white, our hair molded into a perfect helmet of hairspray, and our glued on lashes making our eyes water as we muddled through our vows. Irritation isn’t what we had in mind while we were marrying the man we’d personally and continuously chosen to spend our lives with and have children with. It’s just something that happens, like a switch, and for me I think it subtly flipped sometime between our honeymoon and the time I found out I was pregnant with my first baby.

Oh, that’s a good story, by the way: there I am, freshly psyched out from reading the two little lines indicating to me that my life (and waistline) would be forever changed, standing in front of my husband with hope and awe, and his answer is one for the books:

Me: “I’m pregnant!” *glee*

*crickets chirp somewhere in the distance*

Him: “…well that f*cking figures.” *non-glee*

(And then the fight started.)

To be fair, it was a shock to him and he didn’t even know he had said it; it just came out. Was he ready for fatherhood? I guess not, but I promise, he adjusted. Fatherhood changes men, too, if they are worthy of the insurmountable task of the thing in the first place. And he was.

Anyway, we had that baby, and then another, and now we have this beautiful, loving, adorable nuclear family, and in general, I’m as happy as a pig in shit.

Have you ever seen a pig in shit, by the way? Those guys are bright and chipper little swine, so I’m in good company.

All that happiness, however, doesn’t detract from my husband’s incredible ability to push my otherwise well hidden “rage” button, especially when dealing with parental difficulties.

The saying, “don’t poke the bear” should be amended to read, “don’t poke mama bear.” We’re much more dangerous, in my opinion.

My husband agrees.

I know what it is, of course, this ability he has to make me flip out before I know it’s even happened. It’s that he’s right. The complete and total ass is right. I do talk to my daughter with a fair dosage of sass — something that I unfortunately discovered one day after she, my six year old daughter, replayed a video that she’d secretly recorded of me during a particularly stressful day with a newborn baby and a kid in lockdown. Yeah that’s right: apparently I birthed Harriet the Spy, but that’s not the point — the point is, I saw what my family sees all too often, and did not like it one iota.

Suffice it to say, I have a temper with my kids sometimes, and it comes out with a decent volume of sarcasm and sass (I’m a writer, it’s what I do.) And, if I can’t take it, I shouldn’t dish it out, right? What can I say: I never expected any sass to actually come from my own, generally sweet and well behaved kids. That took me by surprise.

When you’re a new mom, and you look into your beautiful baby’s eyes — you know, before they start to talk — and think about the future, you don’t envision a Roblox fiend who rolls those beautiful eyes right back at you when tell her to take a pee break. It’s yet another life expectation that is dashed over and over again as time unravels.

Full disclosure: my expectations for motherhood were Lorelei and Rory Gilmore, okay, and no, I don’t want to hear about how television and life are not the same thing.

When it comes to marital and familial expectations, there’s so much that can go wrong over the many years you will have together, that you’re generally better off not building any of it up in the first place. For example: I love my daughter, obviously. She is sweet and kind and I created her, so I’m a wee bit fond of the girl. When I had her, I assumed that I, like bright and happy Joy from the greatest kid’s movie ever, Inside Out, would be thrilled to listen to my daughter’s lengthy, tangent-rich stories forever.

In reality, I cannot. My real-life Joy manager is obviously on sabbatical or something, and Anger is happily running the show, with Sadness and Disgust offering advice on their lunch break.

Anyway, I LOVE that girl, I do, but her stories are so long winded and boring and sans-plot, that when we’re walking her to school in the morning, I sometimes find myself zoning out and staring off into space, missing the climax to her tale about the search for the perfect hair bow to match her outfit of the day.

(Spoiler: the climax to said tale was that the bow was the wrong colour of blue, and the other blue bow had stars, and she wanted unicorns. I think you catch my drift, here.)

And, while I love my little boy and was desperate for him to utter those beautiful syllables, “mama,” when he finally did, I realized it was always followed by incessant whining for something or other, and now, I associate hearing it with refilling sippy cups. Or, recovering the thrown bunny lovey for the millionth time.

All of these minor irritations, of course, fizzle away when I tuck my babies in each night and instantly miss them, wanting nothing more than to hold them and breathe them in (little kids always smell like clean laundry drying in the sun, I have no idea why.)

Also, none of those minor irritations come close to the frustration I feel for my husband at times. It’s not entirely his fault, I grant you — like I said, his admittedly gentle criticism is done out of genuine love and a desire for a happy, functional family, but gosh I hate it when he’s right. Parenting also doesn’t leave much room for healthy husband and wife time, either, and let’s face it: discussing the oddities of your son’s poop doesn’t lend itself to any kind of romance.

Marriage, as I’m sure you know, is hard. I think that’s why so many marriages fail, as simple as that theory sounds. Maybe the feeling of your love changing into a more comfortable, relaxed companionship is what drives so many couples to question their feelings, especially when they have one of those fork-in-the-eye moments. And I get it — it’s hard to feel like you love your husband when you simultaneously hate him.

Those feelings, by the way, always fade quickly enough. They diminish the moment I watch him chase my toddler around the living room while my son squeals with unimaginable delight, or when I sneak a peek at him reading a bedtime story to my girl. Marriage, and love in general, is a tough thing to define, sometimes, but when you’ve got it, it’s a lot easier to swallow your own pride, and to allow the other side to be right.

Sometimes.

When I married my husband, I told him that of all the people in the world who annoyed me, he annoyed me the least. It’s still true, somehow, and like Chris Rock once said, “only married people can understand how you can be miserable and happy at the same time.”

That’s a good quote. I think I’ll print it and hang it up over the toilet.