Anyone else wonder why their husband/partner is so useless and can’t do anything and then build up a huge amount of resentment that makes you wonder if you should even be together only to realise that, when you really, really think about it, it’s a you problem and not a them problem because there’s a teeny-tiny chance you might be a massive control freak?

Just me?

Ok then.

It took hours of therapy for me to get there. Hours of my therapist gently leading me away from a place of defensiveness and denial to a place of recognition. I didn’t want to see it. It was much easier to lay the blame at his feet but, as my therapist rightly pointed out, that wasn’t my role. My role wasn’t to make him see something or understand something; my role was to focus on what I could see and what I understood.

So reluctantly, as we tried to piece our marriage back together I had to admit that my need to control everything had perhaps skewed itself into the fantasy that my husband actually couldn't do anything helpful or supportive.

‘Oh god,’ I thought. ‘I’m a nightmare to be married to. I’m just like my mum.’

Obviously this is the worst realisation we, as women can come to: that we did, as was always going to be the case, turn out just like our mums. Sure it’s subconscious but it doesn’t matter. Avoiding that has to be a conscious and active decision but to get there, you have to first recognise that you have, in fact, become a replica of your own mother. It’s painful but I knew I’d inherited all the traits I didn’t like in my own mother - not just as a mum but also as a wife.

I had to let some shit go. I had to recognise that I couldn’t lambast him for not helping and then criticise all he does to help. I had to not mock his attempts, or roll my eyes when I saw him vacuuming as if he was mowing the lawn (slowly and in stripes up and down the carpet) and recognise that he was, in fact vacuuming. I couldn’t passive aggressively complain that he did nothing and was useless - that’s not inspiring is it? That doesn’t say, ‘teamwork’, does it?

So, I let go. I relaxed. I released the clenched fist in my chest and let him do some shit his own way. Was it hard? Oh yes but I would ask him to do something and leave him to it. I struggled if he didn’t do it my way; I bristled when I came back and it wasn’t perfect but I started to realise that even a half clean kitchen is easier for me to perfect than a fully dirty kitchen. He was helping and it was starting to lighten the load. So I started saying thank you. I started telling him how much I appreciated it and the mood changed.

We became a team. I picked up his slack and I began to recognise that he picked up mine. I had to learn to trust him.

I still don’t let him touch the laundry though.