My Wife Is Way Tougher Than Me
I probably should have known this already, but I'm slow to learn things
As a man, I feel it is my job to be somewhat tough. It is manly to be tough, and I feel it’s probably good to be somewhat manly. As I’ve spoken about before, I’ve fell short of this goal in numerous occasions, but I still held onto the delusion that maybe, just maybe, I had some toughness in me. But now, stick a fork in my toughness—it should go in quite easy—because I’m done. My wife is the undisputed champion of toughness in my family.
This became apparent when my son got sick recently, and his sleep schedule became a mess. He was waking up once or sometimes twice in the middle of the night, and as I rested peacefully in my bed, my wife trudged out and took care of him to soothe him back to sleep while ruining her own.
This was a lot like breastfeeding in that I would have been willing to get up in the middle of the night to help, but I didn’t have what the little man wanted. Back then, it was boobs, but now it’s a comfort that he can only get from Mommy. If I go in there, he’s screaming his face off as he tells me he “needs” Mommy. So, instead of ramping him up, I just let Mommy go in and calm him down.
For the most part, I was just waking up an hour early in relief, although one day, I woke up at 2:30 and was able to give my wife a little extra rest. Now, it was good to let my wife go back to bed and get a few hours of sleep, but it was absolute hell on me. I was in an unhappy fog for the entire day as all I wanted to do was shirk my parental responsibilities and go down and rest.
This was one time, and I felt like it was the end of my world. Meanwhile, my wife did it for over a week straight and put on a braver face than me on each and every one of those days. It’s clear that she is significantly tougher than me.
I probably should have realized that my wife was tougher than me due to, you know, the whole giving birth thing. That and the fact that when I had a kidney stone, I thought I was going to die, and then wallowed in pain for a week. Meanwhile, she came home on very little sleep and immediately took lead on taking care of our child. I’m a little slow on learning things.
But I still don’t understand how she was doing it. She seemed unfazed by a total lack of sleep, and when I had one night that was significantly off, it destroyed me. Still, she just kept plowing forward for her little man while I was a sack of crap on the outside that was whimpering on the inside. I wanted to be more helfpul, but my mind and body were yelling at me not to. It’s because I’m soft, and I need to get comfortable with the fact that if you’re looking for the tough one in the house, don’t even glance my way, because I’m a tender piece of fat at nuzzled into wagyu, while my wife is tougher than $2 steak.
And I say that in the most loving way possible.