3. If you want your wife to treat you like a man, you have to act like a man. Your wife did not marry you in order to raise you. She does not live to wash your dishes, pick up your socks or put the kids to bed by herself while you watch the game for “just five more minutes.” (Although she will happily do all of those things once in a while just because she can.) You are not her project or responsibility. There is nothing sexually appealing about a person that means more work, more worry and less freedom.
Your wife married you because she decided her life would be richer and more meaningful with you as a partner. Stop trying to prove her wrong. You are her ally in adventure, tedium, fear, joy, laundry, dishes, children, lack and plenty. There is no such thing as women’s work or men’s work. There is only your life’s work together and she needs you to roll up your sleeves and dig in right alongside her. Cook dinner, change diapers and kiss bruised knees. You will be amazed at how much more happily (eagerly!) a woman will share her body when she knows you are there to share all the big and small parts of her life.
Side note: If I hear one more of you say you are “babysitting the kids” while your wife is gone, I will start handing out copies of The Feminine Mystique. (And nobody wants that.) They are your kids as thoroughly as they are hers. You aren’t babysitting, you are parenting. When she leaves don’t make her feel guilty, don’t ask her to take the baby with her (she will if she wants to) and don’t text or call to ask when she is coming home. They are just children, for heaven’s sake. I think you can handle it.
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