A car can only have one driver. What a woman can do if she has been carrying the whole family for years and wants her husband to finally take the wheel.
Is being the family’s leader a life sentence for a woman?
In my consultations I very often meet situations where the wife is the number one in the family. She makes most of the important decisions, carries the bulk of the stress, solves most of the problems, and worries about how to provide for the family financially.
I don’t want to dig into why and how she chose this particular man. That won’t change anything.
If it has already turned out that you are carrying the entire family, there’s no point in scolding yourself for being foolish and naive when you were young.
You have to learn to work with reality as it actually is.
If you want to change this situation and eventually have a strong man and leader beside you, a few thoughts may be useful.
A car can only have one driver. In every happy couple I know, that driver is the man.
Forgive me for such an old-fashioned view, but I believe the man is the head of the family.
If I ever start meeting women who are the number one in their family and are genuinely happy that way, I’ll be the first to tell you honestly.
So how do you get a man to step up?
For a husband to take on the new role of number one, certain conditions have to be created.
1. First, the driver’s seat has to become free. Meaning you, as the woman who has been leading, must consciously press the brake, park the car, let go of the wheel and get out of the driver’s seat.
For a while the car — your marriage — may just sit there. Problems may appear and pile up. The temptation to get back behind the wheel and run everything the familiar way will be enormous.
During this period money may be critically tight. Important health and household matters may go unresolved. Important projects may be put on hold.
And if letting go of the wheel is hard, the next task is harder still. Two stars of difficulty, so to speak.
2. You have to extend your husband a huge line of credit in advance. Start respecting him with no conditions and no expectations. Treat him like the wisest, most courageous man on the planet.
That attitude will come through in your tone, in your eyes, in your words — in everything. You need to start speaking about him to other people as if he were the greatest stroke of luck and blessing in your life.
If the man beside you starts to feel that he is an authority for you and senses your respect, his shoulders will gradually straighten, and he may start thinking about taking care of the woman who treats him this way.
A man comes alive when the woman beside him sees him as a knight, a superhero, a gentleman. If she sees him as a loser, he shows up accordingly.
3. For him to become a leader, it takes the right conditions and time.
It won’t happen in a week, a month or a quarter. Our brain has stable neural pathways, and they take about six months to change.
So you, as a woman, need to stock up on patience and work methodically on your husband’s authority — even while genuinely respecting him is still very hard.
But carrying the family on your own for an entire lifetime is far harder. So it makes sense to give the man the driver’s seat.
When the “family car” finally moves off with a new driver at the wheel, there will be plenty of mistakes. Sometimes you’ll be crawling, sometimes going the wrong way, and there will be minor and major crashes.
Your job, as the woman, is not to snatch the wheel and not to climb back into the driver’s seat.
It takes time for a man to settle into a new role and start driving confidently.
Yes, I fully understand that the scenario I’m describing isn’t fair. In an ideal world a woman wouldn’t have to create any conditions at all for the man beside her to open up and become a leader.
In the real world, a huge share of women carry the family alone, and they have a simple choice: keep suffering in a role that isn’t natural for them, or start doing something about it. I write my texts for the second group — women who aren’t stuck in the childish position of “why am I the one who has to do something? Let him…” but are ready to work with reality.
Do you have a friend who plays the leader in her family and wishes her husband did it instead?
The series continues: The Woman Behind the Wheel of the Family. Part 2 and When the Man Leads the Family. Part 3.