Well Lived Society | Intentional Leadership & Growth
Well Lived Society is a podcast for women in leadership and those passionate about personal growth and intentional living. Each episode explores leadership frameworks, mindful leadership, and personal development strategies to help women leaders build a legacy and live with purpose. Join Lemon Price weekly to deepen your awareness and transform your influence into lasting impact in both your life and community.
Well Lived Society | Intentional Leadership & Growth
Why Your Husband Stopped Taking Initiative and How To Fix It
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of The Supported Wife Society, host Lemon Price dives into why husbands often stop taking initiative in relationships. She explains how high-achieving women can unintentionally monopolize the mental load and decision-making processes, leaving no room for their husbands to lead. Lemon offers practical steps to reinstate balance, starting with a mental load audit to identify responsibilities. She emphasizes the importance of pausing to allow husbands space to plan and act, handing over manageable tasks, and refraining from micromanagement and criticism. This episode aims to foster a true partnership in marriage, where both spouses share the load and thrive together.00:00 Welcome to The Supported Wife Society00:42 Understanding the Lack of Initiative03:47 Mental Load Blindness Explained10:38 The Habit of Defaulting to You14:07 Fear of Doing It Wrong15:54 Steps to Fix the Issue21:42 Join the Supported Wife Society
Enjoy the episode, everyone!
How can you be part of the movement to equip women?
1. Share the podcast!
2. Leave a 5-star review!
Here are the best ways for you and me to connect and grow together!
Step 1: Subscribe to the Podcast
Step 2: Download the Mental Load Audit
Step 3: Let's Connect: https://www.lemonprice.co/coffeechat
Thanks for listening!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share this in your stories and tag me! And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
CONNECT WITH LEMON:
Enjoy the episode, everyone!
How can you be part of the movement to equip women?
1. Share the podcast!
2. Leave a 5-star review!
Thanks for listening!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share this in your stories and tag me! And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
CONNECT WITH LEMON:
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Supported Wife Society. I'm your host, Lemon Price, and I am so excited to be here. I got my iPad. We are recording today in the quote unquote library. It's what the kids call it. It's literally just two chairs. There's like a table and a lamp and then bookshelves like in front of me. But the kids call it their library, which I think is so funny. So we're gonna try it today. We're gonna see how being on camera it is. Whether you guys like seeing something visual or whatever you want to do, that's fine. Like, let me know. If you're like I hate this, go back to audio only. That's fine. Um, but today I'm excited because I have a bunch of notes. You guys can see I'm like, I want to stay so focused today. So I want to talk about the fact that your husband probably isn't taking initiative. And so you're like, Lemon, why is he not taking initiative anymore? And here's the thing: you would not have married your husband if he didn't take initiative while you were dating, while you were even engaged, or like when you first got married, I guarantee he probably still took initiative when it was like fresh and it was new. And you're like, where did that guy go? Where did my husband go? Who like took all of the initiative? He made the plans, you know, like he planned date nights, he did all those things. Where did that guy go? I hear it all the time from women who are incredibly ambitious. So, like, where did my husband go? Where did the man that I fell in love with go? And so I want to talk about how you got there and then how we're gonna fix it. So, the problem that we have a lot of times is when we're very high achieving, when we're super ambitious, when we have really big goals, and especially once kids get in the mix, we tend to just take over. We're like, okay, well, I'm the default parent, even as you're moving off the corporate ladder and all these things, like, I don't know, raise your hand if your kids have ever walked straight past your husband to then go ask you a question. Your dad was literally right there. It happens all the time because we've made ourselves the default parent. We have made ourselves like the go-to, the problem solver. And so it's not because your husband doesn't want to take initiative, it's because you literally didn't give him space to take initiative. And I know you're gonna be tempted to turn this off, be like, economy problem, it's my husband. It's also a you problem, right? Because when we don't give him space to lead, when there's no decisions to be made, when he has nothing to do, right? I want you to think about this for a second. Before you get mad at me, I want you to think about this for a nanosecond. How many decisions does your husband have to make for the family currently? Like right now, how many do you let him make? How many things is he solely responsible for? I'm gonna wait for you. You're probably racking your brain, you're like, there's actually not many. Now, how many things are you responsible for? And who decided you were responsible for those? Was it a discussion that you had when you were dating? Probably not. Or did you just decide that you were gonna take over? You know better, your way of doing things is better, and so you're faster, you have a better memory, you're more efficient, whatever, whatever story you've told yourself, you probably took those things on and decided that you were going to be solely responsible for them. That's usually what happens. It's not because your husband's incapable, it's because you decided that you were gonna take over and run everything. And so now there's no space for your husband to make any decisions. When we don't give our husband space to make decisions, he's not going to make the decision because there are no decisions left to be made. Is that all tracked? That makes sense. Okay, so I want to unpack like why we're doing it, and then I want to talk about how we're gonna fix it. We're gonna fix it on this podcast, like today. We're gonna fix it. Okay, so first thing, first reason he doesn't take initiative is there's a mental load blindness. Okay, and I know this is gonna I use this example all the time when it comes to the mental load and like what it is. So, prime example the kids come home from school usually about four o'clock. It's about time they get off the bus, you know, barring like no issues and no after-school activities. So they're home about four. And I know we haven't bought the youngest a laptop yet. It's on my to-do list, probably during prime week. But we haven't bought him a laptop yet, which means he needs my computer to do his homework. So I have to, no matter what, because homework comes before business and everything for me. So I know that anything that I want to get done for my business has to be done before they walk through the door. It should it has to, because he's going to need my computer, which means I also then play my day around that. Like, okay, if he's doing homework on my computer, then I could use that time to prep dinner, to vacuum, to do all the other things that have to get done. But that takes forethought and planning. Or, prime example, and again, I use this all the time, but especially because it's October, like we um, okay, I'll use this one last night. So I'm recording this on Friday. Last night we went to the Georgia National Fair and it's like a two and a half hour drive from us. I bought the tickets in advance, bought them in like August, because my kid wanted to see Shenandoah, which that's like I'm excited that that's what he wanted to do. But anyway, I bought the tickets in advance because I knew it was gonna be crazy. It was opening day for the fair. I also told Glenn when it was so he could take off of work, and then also made sure I text the dog center because we were gonna be gone for over 12 hours and he wants the dog stuck in our crate. So that just didn't seem fair. And then also gave my husband the address to go and drop the dogs off because he's like, I know where it is, but like how to get there is a little fuzzy because it's a bunch of dirt roads and they all look the same. So anyway, that's like mental load stuff. My husband, I love him, but in his world, he was like, Great, I just have to take off and then I get to take the dogs, and then we go to the fair. That is all he had to think about. I took on everything else. I took on all the planning, I made sure worth the notes for school. Like, all those things are things that like I we did. We were like, okay, we've got to plan accordingly, so therefore I need to like make sure all these other things are done. That is mental load stuff. Or it's planning for Thanksgiving well in advance, right? Like, I think I said this last time, just thinking about the fact like how many people are coming for Thanksgiving. So, do I have enough like formal place settings? Do I have enough napkin ring holders? Do I have enough wine glasses? Like, do I have enough of those things? Thinking about my guests, what are they gonna drink? Do I have enough of those things? That is mental load stuff. Okay. And chances are like your husband doesn't see it because you're not talking about it. So, like, if you're if the mental load is invisible, because a lot of it is invisible work, thinking about napkin ring holders, not in the grand scheme of things, do napkin ring holders matter? No. Is my Thanksgiving going to be ruined if I don't have enough napkin ring holders? No. But it's important to me to make sure that it's all uniform and it looks good. I bought new Thanksgiving napkins in July, just so you know, like that's where my head was at. But chances are, like, the the mental load stuff, the things that you're carrying, the things that you're thinking about and planning, you're not sharing that with your spouse. Okay. And so here's the thing: like, if he doesn't see all of the remembering you're doing, like something my husband sent me actually was like a big um, have you seen those smart screen like calendar things where you could put the entire family's calendar on there and like everybody's responsible for putting their own stuff and you're responsible for like checking it. He was like, that would be handy. Like, cause then you're not the one doing all of the remembering and the planning. Like we can all see what's going on, right? Or yeah, mental load blindness is all the planning that goes into it. So again, like we um we shop at the commissary usually for Thanksgiving because it's just cheaper, to be honest. And so, like, we're already thinking about I've been to the commissary the week of Thanksgiving. That is a terrible idea, by the way. It is the absolute worst to go to the commissary the week of Thanksgiving. And so I was like, you know what? Instead of us buying everything right before Thanksgiving, I was like, what are some of the non-perishables that we could buy like right now? Right. I know that I have, I know personally for green bean casserole, I have a ton. I have two cases of green beans, I have cases of corn, but I'm like, I need green corn to make um corn casserole. If you've never had corn casserole, recommend it. Didn't have it until I moved to the south, and it is a game changer. I just want to put that out there. So, like, we're already thinking about it, but he is responsible. And this is where like he takes initiative. So, like, my husband is responsible for the turkey. He makes such a good turkey, he smokes it, and so like he's thinking about the brine, he and he does it days in advance, which means we're taking the turkey out like way in advance to defrost, and then he's got like he handles all that. I literally I have never made a turkey in my life. Never, not a one time have I ever cooked a Thanksgiving turkey, and I'm not going to. Okay, because by the time my husband gets old and passes, he will have already taught the kids how to do it. And so I don't, I will never make a Thanksgiving turkey. It's on my responsibility. So, like, what goes into the brine, the defrosting, all that, not my problem. Not my problem. Making sure we have enough for the smoker so he can smoke it, not my problem. That's a him problem. And then there's a couple of sides that he makes um that are really good, like that he pulled from his family. Not my problem. He knows what's on the list, he knows what he needs to get, he knows when it needs to be prepped and handled. That's on him. I handle the things that I handle. And so it's like very smooth. We we respect each other's spaces. Um, we're not crossing over each other in the kitchen, but it's the same thing. I mean, with everything in our life, that is how we've kind of split it up. Is there I'm not the sole mental load carrier, and it's because I share it with him because we are a partnership, we are a unit, and so therefore, like, and I don't have to, I don't have to police him, I don't have to do any of those things. He's a grown adult who is capable of taking the initiative and doing those things. And it's because I stopped deciding to carry the full mental load. It's because I stopped trying to play like the martyr and who was capable of doing everything. I stopped doing it. And so you have to do the same thing. Okay. So first, the first reason your husband doesn't take initiative is the mental load blindness. The second one is you have a habit of defaulting to you. Everybody has a habit of defaulting to you. And here's the thing: you trained them to do that. Okay. Maybe if you're, if you're, I said this earlier, but if you're really fast at doing something, if you're a little bit more organized, maybe than he is, right? He's then learned to wait for your direction. Same thing with the kids. They have learned to wait for your direction, your insight, your opinion, your thoughts and feelings before moving forward. That is unhealthy. We do not want that. Okay. That is where you unintentionally land in micromanagement mode or mode. And that is not, it's not cute. It's not cute. I want you to think about like people maybe you work with that you constantly have to tell them what to do. Do you have any desire to sleep with them? No, probably not, or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. You just don't. And if you're doing it to your husband, if you constantly have to remind your husband, tell your husband what to do. Guess what? It's not sexy. You don't want to sleep with him then. You can't go from I'm manager and I'm planning everything, I'm taking care of everything, to, oh great, let's have like a wild night. It's not happening. You have to get out of micromanagement mode. Like I said, if I'm gonna use this Thanksgiving example again, right? My husband handles the turkey. I do not tell him what to do. I do not micromanage it. I do not, I'm literally not involved. He sets his own alarm because he's up every hour, um, starting at midnight to make this turkey, injecting it with butter. Guess what? That's on him. I don't handle that. I don't tell him, hey, baby, you need to go out and inject this with butter at three in the morning. That's a him thing. It's not me. And guess what? The end of Thanksgiving, I will never forget. Last year was the first year we hosted Thanksgiving in our new house. And we had a bunch of people here. It was amazing. I mean, we had so many people at our house, um, just like friends who were single parents and didn't have their kids on Thanksgiving, just like randomly popped over. Like we just had like a lot of people, and it was so fun. And so, you know, like, and we had dinner like a decent time, like I think like 3:30, 4 o'clock. And so everybody was out of my house, and my house was clean by like eight. So everybody was gone. My house was completely clean, and Glenn and I just sat here like in the living room. We had a fire going and just looking at each other, like, dang, like that was such a good, it was such a good experience. Like we we just had such an incredible time, and I was more in love with him in that moment. Um, it just made me fall more in love with him and just have a deeper appreciation for him because we stayed in our own lanes. We we divvied up the work, we stayed in our own lanes and then pulled off a really successful holiday. My father-in-law actually said to me, he was like, That's the first time I've ever had a hot side on Thanksgiving. Because you know how it is, you're cooking 12 sides in your oven, so not every side is going to be piping hot when it's time for dinner. All of mine were, because by the way, I pre-planned and I use one of those warming mats, and I put all of our side dishes on warming mats so they're staying warm. It heats it from the bottom. Anyway, I so I'm not micromanaging him. And when I don't micromanage him and he doesn't micromanage me, it makes me love him more. It makes me appreciate him more, it makes me want to be around him more because he is smart and capable and can handle things on his own. You have to do the same thing. You have to stop micromanaging your hubby. That's why he doesn't take initiative. And then, lastly, there's this fear of doing it wrong. That's why he doesn't take initiative because there is a fear of him doing it wrong. So maybe you have been hypercritical of him before. Maybe there has been just like some really harsh words spoken when he does things. And so it makes him actually hesitant. And here's the thing, actually, it may not be just you who did it. So, like maybe his mom was hypercritical when he did things. Maybe a past relationship was hypercritical when he did things. That is something that Glenn and I are constantly working through is I'm like, I'm pretty chill. Like, I trust my husband, you know, like he's in his 40s, he's a grown adult, he knows how to do things. I don't need to micromanage him. I don't have to correct him, like the dishes are still gonna get clean if he doesn't load the dishwasher my way, and vice versa. Like, everybody's fine. And so I his past relationships were not like that. They were very critical. He couldn't do anything right, he was in trouble for hanging out with his friends, like, and not because he was doing anything, but literally because, like, I don't want you to go have fun without me. And so when we first got together, there was a hesitancy to do things because he didn't know how I was gonna react. He didn't know if I was gonna be mad, he didn't know if I was gonna yell at him or name-call him, belittle him any of those things. And so we had to work through that. And so just know, like, it may not be entirely you or you at all. It could just be past relationships and make him hesitant to want to take initiative. And if that's the case, I need you to go like have an actual conversation with him, like about it and be like, hey, like what is coming up for you? Why, why are we kind of like this? What happened to get us here? And you just need to have an honest conversation. So I want to tell you how we're gonna fix it. Okay. I just rambled on as to how we got here, and now I want to tell you how you're gonna fix it. So get out on paper. Okay. The first thing you're gonna do is a mental load on it. I will preach this from the rooftops. It is the best thing you could do for your relationship. I want you to write down everything that's on your plate and have him do the same thing. Have him write down the things that he thinks about that he carries, because for all you know, like we just said, the mental load is invisible. So maybe there's things that he's carrying that you have no idea that he's thinking about. Okay. So I want you both to do a mental load audit. And if you need one, there's one in the show notes, or you can just go to lemonprice.co slash audit. Okay. Go get the audit. Go write down everything that you're thinking and feeling. Because the truth of the matter is, like, until you see it, until you're like looking at it, you don't realize how much you're carrying. And the whole thing is, I don't want you to blame each other. I don't want you to look at this list and be like, I'm doing so much more than you. We're not gonna do that when we look at this list. What we're going to do is be like, wow, okay, here's all the things I'm carrying. No wonder I'm tired. And you just need clarity on the situation because you can't move forward without clarity. Okay. Then the next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna start pausing. As women, we want to jump in, we want to problem solve, we want to fix it. Guess what? We're not gonna do that. Before you jump in with an answer, a solution, some sort of a plan. I want you to pause. Don't say anything. Okay. I want you to give him space to answer first. Give him space to create the plan first, give him space to figure it out first. Don't jump in. And it's gonna feel awkward at first. I just want you to know that. And this is going to feel awkward at first because he's used to you taking the rein. He's used to you taking initiative, he's used to defaulting to your judgment. We already talked about this. You're going to pause. You are not going to say anything, and it's going to feel awkward. And he might be like, babe, like, where's the idea? Be like, I want to hear your ideas first. I want to know what you're thinking first. What you think? How would you handle this? And with kindness and compassion, not with an attitude, not with resentment, you know, like really, like, I am genuinely interested in hearing what you think. And watch watch the gears turn, watch him start to figure out okay, yeah, like I do have some ideas. I just never vocalize them because I'm afraid of doing it wrong, because I'm afraid of being criticized. Because my wife is better, faster, smarter than me, right? Whatever he's kind of thinking, whatever story he's holding his mind. He also wants to feel wanted and appreciated and needed. And you do that by asking him his opinion. And you work through it together. Okay. So you're gonna see and name the mental load, and then you're gonna practice a pause, and then you're gonna let go without creating some chaos. What I don't want you to do is look at your mental load and then be like, F it. You take all of it, handle all of it. I'm not gonna handle this anymore. We're not gonna do that. That's stressful, okay? I want you to hand over one recurring responsibility on that list. What is one thing that is not gonna disrupt your life, that is not going to ruin, you know, like you're not gonna go into financial ruin or something because you handed this over. Find one thing. It could be dinner, it could like one night a week. Like I've said this before. Glenn is phenomenal at making Mexican. He's so good. He grew up in El Paso, he makes really phenomenal Mexican. Anytime we want Mexican, nine times out of ten, he makes it. Okay. If anything has to be baked or whatever, I just know I'm gonna handle that. But for a Mexican, that is my husband, 110%. He gets the ingredients, he does the things. I don't have to think about it. I don't think about it. Tonight he's making dinner. Guess what? He literally sent me a list and asked me to pick it up because I'm home during the day. And I was like, Yeah, that's fine, it's no problem. Instead of him having to stop on the way home, I was like, absolutely no problem. But he created the list, told me exactly what he needed, and I just have to go and mindlessly pick out the things that he asked for. That's how we start to shift the mental load. This didn't take anything from me mentally, didn't drain me mentally. I literally just have to go to the store and pick up a couple that he asked me to get for him. This is not a problem. Okay, so I want you to figure out something small that you can hand over, and then you're not gonna criticize or critique him. Okay. You're just going to let him figure it out. You're gonna let him do it his way. Maybe he does forget a side dish for Thanksgiving. Oh well, guess what? You guys are gonna survive. Maybe he puts the kids to bed a little bit later than you would, or he does the bedtime routine differently than you would. Who cares? It does not matter. This is not a life or death situation. And if it is, call the emergency room. Okay, nothing is that serious. So just let him take over. You're gonna let him do things without criticizing him. And so I want you to know like, this is not about you having like a lower standard. It is not about you losing your voice in this situation. Like, it's not about that. It is literally just about creating space for him to lead and get some things off of your plate. I want you to create a partnership with your husband. That's what we're going for. We're going for true partnership, true like relationship where you guys know your strengths, you know your weaknesses, you pick up the slack for each other and you support each other. That is a partnership. That's partnership, and that's what I want for your marriage is this legitimate partnership. So grab the mental load audit from my show notes, lemonprice.co slash audit, and go start at least that step. Or if you're like, okay, Lemon, I seriously, I need a whole marriage dynamic reset. Like our marriage is off. I've like Google divorce lawyers in my area, but I don't want to get divorced. I would rather fix it. Or maybe you're looking up a coupled therapist right now. Then I want to invite you. To the Supportive Wife Society. I want you to come to my party where we do a deeper dive in these and we reset your marriage dynamic. We literally just dropped on Wednesday our October toolkit, which is just like an extra toolkit that you get every month in addition to live weekly calls. We have training I drop every single week for you to reset your marriage dynamic. And so it's been really fun. I just dropped one on Wednesday for October, and people are already loving it. They're loving what's in this toolkit already. It's really exciting. So if you're like, hey, Lem and I actually might be interested in that, shoot me a DM on Instagram. It's just supported wife society. So find me on Instagram. Shoot me a message. Let's have a conversation. See if this is a good fit for you. If you're like, I need to reset my marriage dynamic. And so I hope you guys have an incredible rest of your week. Hopefully, you go get that audit and you start offloading some things. And I will see you all next week. Tootaloo.
.png)