I have always been a very independent person. Never relying on anyone else to help me out. My family understands this perfectly well and knows when to let me be and when to help me out. But this is not something everyone can understand and I learned that the hard way after I got married!
My husband Nishant tried helping me out with groceries, household chores, schedules, etc., but every time he did, I would tweak it around, basically never accepting his opinions and decisions as they were!! Obviously, I didn’t have any ill intentions but Nishant felt much belittled by my actions. He started feeling that he had no say in our decisions. So, he started reserving his opinions. For a long time, the only answer I got from him was, “you decide” or “see how you want to do it”. This would frustrate me no end. In my head, I was thinking he was lazy! And he was thinking I’m a tyrant! However, none of us discussed this with each other, and the tension in our relationship was mounting rapidly.
One day I had colleagues from Mumbai visit my office. Since we are a startup, we have a small close-knit team. I told Nishant that I would be bringing them back home for drinks before heading out for a client dinner. My helper was very well trained by me and I had given her all the required directions for the drinks in the evening. Since I was out for meetings the whole day, I didn’t notice the missed calls from my helper. I and my colleagues reached home for drinks only to realise that there was no ice. When I asked my helper how come she didn’t call my husband if she couldn't reach me, she said, “Ma’am, all the decisions are made by you and I felt it would be useless to ask sir”. My helper thought that I would not even let Nishant decide where to get the ice from!
This small remark by my helper made me realise that my streak for perfection was being mistakenly looked at as me being a control freak. We of course sorted out the issue of the missing ice but this made me dig deeper. I sat Nishant down and had a frank chat with him. He confessed that he felt useless around our home as I would never accept his decisions as they were. Imagine! And all this while I thought he was lazy!! I told Nishant that my only intention was to make the best decision for us. To which he made a simple remark “So do I Rachna, So do I “. I realized that both of us as husband and wife have an equal right to make decisions and we should respect that. It's okay if we make a mistake, marriage is made of 2 people who have an equal right to make decisions involving both of them. After that day We accept and respect each other’s opinions, not without a healthy discussion though.
