I’d roll my eyes and respond with some caustic comment, but it was getting on my nerves. Jake was changing. He’d raise an eyebrow if I bought takeout instead of cooking, and sigh if I let the laundry pile up because, God forbid, I had my own full-time job.
Then it occurred to me. One night, he returned home with The List.
He sat me down at the kitchen table, unfolded a piece of paper, and passed it to me.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began, his tone condescending, unlike anything I’d heard from him before. “You’re an excellent wife, Lisa. But there is opportunity for improvement.”
My eyebrows rose. “Oh really?”
He nodded, unaware of the hazardous zone he was approaching. “Yeah. Steve made me see that our marriage could be even better if you, you know, stepped up a little.”
I stared at the paper in front of me. It was a schedule… and he’d written “Lisa’s Weekly Routine for Becoming a Better Wife” at the top in bold.
This person had literally sat down and planned out my whole week based on what Steve, a single man with little marital experience, believed I should do to “improve” myself as a wife.
I was meant to get up at 5 a.m. every day to prepare Jake’s gourmet breakfast. Then I would go to the gym for an hour to “stay in shape.”
What happened after that? A nice list of chores: cleaning, laundry, and ironing. And this was all before I went to work. Every evening, I was expected to cook a meal from scratch and prepare gourmet snacks for Jake and his buddies who came over to hang out at our house.
The entire situation was unfair and offensive on so many levels that I didn’t know where to begin. I found myself looking at him, wondering if my husband had lost his mind.
“This will be great for you, and us,” he continued, oblivious.
