The Honey-Do List Standoff
How do you get your husband to do the household jobs you really care about? How to do you get your wife to stop nagging and micromanaging?
These are questions to which almost every couple across the globe can relate; the never completed ‘To Do list’ wives prepare for their ‘honey’ on the weekend.
We often recount the story (source unknown), of a busy executive having breakfast on the first day of his retirement. His wife slides her extensive ‘honey-do list’ in front of him.
He studies it carefully as she bustles in the kitchen. Then taking a pen he writes, ‘approved’, signs it and hands it back to her.
The vignette so perfectly captures the tension. She’s been waiting for years for him to attend to the dozens of ‘fix-its’ that accumulate around the home.
Meanwhile, he’s spent his working life managing logistics, allocating the ‘fix-its’ and solving other people’s problems. His retirement is supposed to be about rest, not just a change in venue for the same soulless dynamic.
What to do with the Honey-Do List standoff?
The wife’s experience
From the wife’s perspective, she’s been noble and patient. She’s felt frustrated and alone for years, carrying the larger part of the burden of the home and child raising, a mental load that he doesn’t fully understand.
He’s been a steady provider, a decent dad, and she’s grateful for that. But his focus on provision means that his attention and energy is all outside the home. There’s often not much of his energy left over for her.
So, she feels emotionally malnourished, disconnected from his heart, and that makes her uneasy; is she still his one and only?
Subconsciously, she looks for signs of engagement, for evidence of his continued fidelity. Nagging, managing, probing, prompting become her standard – and unhelpful – bids for attention and connection.
The husband’s reaction
Husband’s loath the Honey-Do List. It implies criticism, that he’s somehow inadequate and failing as a husband. He wants to be her hero, the source of her happiness and contentment.
Yet he senses her anxiety, so he doubles down on the work outside the home that makes the money. More money, more security. If he can’t do those fix-its, he can afford to pay someone else.
But she’s not looking for someone else. She’s yearning for connection with his heart, and outsourcing the Honey-Do List doesn’t meet her true need.
Sure, the leaking tap, the blown light bulb, the broken latch on the gate are annoying and she’d like them fixed. But mostly what she wants is evidence that he’s invested in co-creating a home with her.
The home is the physical representation of their shared life; the space in which they grow a family and create memories together. The home is a refuge from a harsh world, and they both desire it to be a place of beauty and peace.
Yet often, the Honey-Do List turns their home into a battle ground of competing needs – something neither of them wants.
A better share
So how do they move forward to a more productive interaction – one that meets the needs of both?
The starting point is to approach it in the mindset of making it easier for the other. That means looking past the clumsy requests and defensive reactions for the deeper needs that animate them.
Husbands – we urge you to recognise the Honey-Do List as a plea for connection. Instead of taking offense, lean into it as an opportunity to demonstrate your devotion.
Wives – keep the Honey-Do List reasonable. Don’t put three months of backlog chores on it – put only what is urgent or can be done in a couple of hours. And don’t micromanage – let him solve the challenge in his own way.
Finally, keep it playful and build in romance as one of your priority tasks. The Honey-Do List is not a unilateral transaction – its agenda is relationship. So, make the link clear: Honey-Do equals Honey-Done!
