In my last post, I wrote about how I never felt super-inspired to level the playing field by ‘getting him back’ or ‘getting even’.
But I did level one playing field–it was the field where my husband would look at other women. Now I want to be clear, he wasn’t a complete cad about it. In fact, he rarely knew he was doing it; nevertheless, it hurt.
I’ve always felt a little irked that men didn’t seem bothered by their women looking at other men. It’s as if they were thinking, “I don’t mind when she looks, so why does she freak out when I look? Plus, if she looks, then that means I get to look more!”
At first I tried to get my husband to understand what it felt like by saying, “Imagine if I took a picture of ___, to the bathroom and….” (You get the picture.) The thing was, it didn’t seem to bother him, much. At least, not to the same extent.
LEVELING THE CREATIVE WAY
Then I figured out a way to help him understand what it felt like:
“Imagine if all men walked around with their incomes written across the chest. Or imagine if men wore signs displaying how romantic they were, or how well they would treat me in the bedroom. Or imagine if it was customary for healthy, fit men 22-years and older to go about life in their speedos. Or the well-endowed.
And imagined if I didn’t keep myself from looking at whichever group made you feel the least like a man. What would that be like for you?”
He got the picture. And after he got the picture, we were finally able to talk about how I felt when he looked at other women. (Ahhh, success!)
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NOTE: This didn’t work because the size of a man’s wallet, etc., mattered to me. There was one man I wanted to be with, and I was married to him–and my husband knew it. The reason it worked was because I finally spoke in terms of what mattered to my husband.