My wife and I are now married 10 years, which is something that we are both very proud of. We’ve definitely learned a lot over these 10 years of marriage, but one area that we have consistently struggled with is communication. This may not be much of a surprise to you if you’re also married. In fact, I believe that communication is probably one of the top issues for marriages today.
Men and women communicate very differently. I’ve heard it explained before that men’s brains are like a waffle (think straight lines that are organized, clear, and linear), while women’s brains are like the spaghetti (think winding, weaving, intertwined, and crisscrossing all over).
Well, my wife and I are no different. Often, my wife will start a story halfway through and I’ll need to ask her to start back at the beginning. I, on the other hand, am very slow and methodical with my linear thinking and talking, which causes my wife to just about fry a circuit since it takes me so long to get the the point as I build layer upon layer upon layer while telling a story or trying to make a point.
Needless to say, communication has been a challenge for us, and it may likely be a challenge for your marriage too. Now, I don’t have all the answers or solutions, but my wife and I have come up with one solution or trick that has helped to reduce some of the miscommunication between us. This solution is…The Honey-Do List.
You might say, “I’ve heard of the honey-do list…this isn’t a new thing”, and you’d be right. The honey-do list is definitely not new, and it’s something that my wife and I truly always knew existed. But the key for us was figuring out how to effectively implement the honey-do list in our marriage and in a way that worked well for both of us.
You see, this is how we used to try and implement the honey-do list. My wife would ask me to fix, replace, or do something around the house, let’s say touch up paint scratches from our kids around the house. And I, as a well-meaning and good husband, would say “okay hun, sure I’d be happy to do that for you”, and that’s just about as far as it would go. I had every intention of completing the task which I was assigned, but for some reason other things (most likely our 4 kids) crept up into my day and I completely forgot about touching up the paint around the house. From my wife’s perspective, I was not doing what I said I would do and this caused her to become frustrated and to believe that she couldn’t rely on me to get things done around the house…somewhat a fair point, but not entirely. She would then kindly remind me about the paint, and I would again say “okay hun, I’d be happy to do that for you”, only to forget again and the cycle would continue until it reached a boiling point between my wife and I.
You may be thinking – goodness Nick, just do what you say you’re going to do and this problem would be solved. And you might be right, but if you’re a husband and dad like me, it’s difficult to juggle all of the many responsibilities that you have in your head and it helps to have these things written down. So, one solution we came up with was to have my wife write down a list on physical paper and then keep it on a desk by our kitchen so that I could check it regularly. However, this didn’t work for us because my wife never built the habit of going to the list and writing it down. Plus, the desk gets somewhat cluttered with kids’ papers, mail, and other items, so it became lost in the shuffle pretty easily.
The honey-do list solution that we eventually came up with, and which has worked pretty well for us is to create a shared list on our phones. We use Google phones, and there’s a note taking app called Google Keep that allows us to share notes together. My wife if more prone to adding the tasks that she’d like me to do on this list since she always has her phone with her and it’s easy for her to just add a note when she sees something that needs to be done around the house. To make sure I don’t forget to check the list, I put a repeating weekly reminder on my phone calendar called ‘check the honey-do list’ every Thursday and then I can plan out my weekend to complete some (or all) of the tasks on the list. If you don’t have a Google phone, then I’m sure other phone providers have a similar note sharing option available.
This system isn’t perfect or foolproof, but it is definitely better than what we were doing before, and I truly believe it has saved my wife and I from some unpleasant conversations too. So, if you’ve been struggling to communicate well and follow through on your honey-do list, then I hope that implementing this strategy will help your marriage.