What To Do When You Don't Like Your Husband 😒
First: this is Normal.
You can love your husband, know you married a good guy, and still have days—or seasons—when you look at him and think, Do I even like this man?
When you do life with someone, there are going to be some rubs. And if you’re anything like me, once the “ick” story gets going, your brain becomes VERY good at finding supporting evidence.
I make a delish, mostly nutritious chicken pot pie... and there’s Kev five minutes later opening the giant mason jar of chocolate-covered almonds. Oh, and now he’s into the kids’ candy. I guess he’ll start eating healthier tomorrow 😂
Then I notice the rowing machine collecting dust. Gahhh!
EXHIBIT B, YOUR HONOR.
Give me 30 seconds and I can turn a handful of chocolate almonds and a dormant rowing machine into a full character assessment. Suddenly I’m not his wife. I’m a detective building a case for why this man is driving me nuts.
And guess what that does for my attraction? Absolutely nothing.
Attraction has a hard time breathing under constant surveillance.
So before you decide the spark is gone, start with YOU.
How’s your self-care? Are you exhausted? Overfunctioning? Taking care of everyone while secretly wondering why nobody is taking care of you?
Sometimes the problem isn’t my husband. Sometimes I’m hungry, overstimulated, haven’t been outside all day, and Kev has the audacity to chew near me. True story.
So before I conduct a full performance review of my husband, I check in with myself. Go for the walk. Call the girlfriend. Get outside. Turn up the music. Buy the bougie drink. NAP. Take a deep breath and give MYSELF a pat on the back. Do something that makes me feel like ME again.
When I start putting energy back into my own life, something interesting happens: I have a whole lot less energy for managing his.
More of your paper. Less of his 🗝️
His food. His exercise. His clothes. His habits. His career. His parenting. Ask me how I know 😬
The more time I spend watching Kev’s paper, the less I enjoy my own life—and usually, the less appealing he becomes. Turns out, supervising a grown man who did not hire me for the position is exhausting.
So imagine gathering up all the energy you’ve been spending over there—the noticing, monitoring, worrying, correcting, reminding, silently judging—and channeling it back into you.
What would make your life feel more fun? More interesting? More peaceful? More YOU?
Go do some of that!
But then there’s the obvious question: Okay Steph... he’s still doing the annoying stuff. How exactly am I supposed to feel attracted to him again?
Fair 💯
Here’s where I think we get to choose where we put the spotlight. When I’m in the ick, my spotlight gets VERY narrow: chocolate almonds, rowing machine, that time he lost his cool with the kids, the way he’s chewing.
And the more I look for evidence that Kev is annoying me, the more evidence I find. I’m looking at a very small piece of a whole person.
So what happens if I widen the lens?
He’s still the guy eating the chocolate almonds. And he’s also funny. He’s a great dad. He’s strong. He knows how to fix approximately 4,782 things that I do not. He can make me laugh when I really don’t want to laugh. There are things about this man that I genuinely like.
Both can be true.
I don’t have to convince myself the rowing machine isn’t collecting dust. I just don’t have to stare at it.
That’s different from pretending. It’s simply noticing when my brain has turned one irritating behavior into the entire story of who my husband is. And maybe attraction isn’t something I need to manufacture. Maybe I just need to stop feeding the story that’s suffocating it.
Give attraction some oxygen.
Take care of yourself. Get back on your paper. Add more sparkle to your own life. And when you catch yourself building the case against him, widen the lens.
What else is true about this man?
Look for that, too. Not because the other stuff isn’t real, but because both can be true—and you get to decide where you put your attention.
You don’t have to force yourself to like your husband.
But you can stop rehearsing all the reasons you don’t 💕
And hey, if you’re stumbling with this one, let’s talk about it.
There's always another layer to explore.
