by Gladys Diaz
When does asking turn into nagging?
I often invite my husband to speak to the ladies who attend my training sessions, just so that he can share what it’s like to be in a relationship on the receiving end of the principles that I teach. About 99% of the time you can count on someone asking him, “What can I do to get my husband to help me?”
His answer: “Don’t nag him about it.”
I think it’s tempting to think that if we remind a man about what we said we wanted or needed, what he said he’d do, and the promises we made him make that he will somehow, suddenly, be inspired to do it. What I’ve found, however, is that you’d be hard-pressed to find a single man on this planet who has ever been inspired to do something because he was nagged to do it.
Now, this doesn’t mean that men won’t give in, just so that the nagging will stop. Many will. Why? Well, another golden nugget of information my husband has shared is this:
Men don’t like drama. Mostly, they just want to have peace – peace of mind, peace in their homes, and peace in their relationships. They’ll do it, not because the nagging was effective, but because they are more interested in having the nagging stop than they are to having to sit there and listen to it again. What this does is it cheats us out of having him do something because he wants to, instead of because he feels he has to in order to avoid the nagging and bickering.
So, how can we let our men know what we want and would like, instead of nagging them to death?
- Be clear about what you want (or don’t want). Unless you know what you want, it’s hard to express that to someone else. So, rather than focusing on what you think he should do, just focus on the end result. For example, if what you’d like is to go out, instead of staying home, rather than nagging him about never taking you out by saying something like, “I’d really like to go out this weekend.” Instead of nagging him to paint the living room again, say something like, “I’d really like to finish redecorating the living room.”
- Stay focused on you not on what you want him to do. Use statements that begin with the phrases, “I want…,” “I don’t want…,” “I prefer…” For example, you could say things like, “I want to cook my favorite desert, but I don’t want to wash the dishes” or, “I want to go dancing, but I don’t want to stay out too late. “ Each of these statements keep you focused on you, rather than on what you want him to do.
- Remember that men love to please women. Almost nothing makes a man as happy as know that he has something to do with how happy the woman he loves is. If you can remember that men love to please women, then you can present what you’d like as an invitation, instead of an obligation. In other words, if you express what you’d like purely, free from expectations or judgments about how and by when it must be done, he’ll be more inclined to want to help you because you haven’t treated him like a child or given him orders about what he needs to do.
When we remember to focus on what we want, and express that desire in a way that invites him to help and please us, he gets the pleasure of not being nagged all the time and we get the pleasure of having our desires fulfilled! Sounds like a win-win to me!
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