“I didn’t do a single thing today,” she said simply, “just like you told your friend.” And then she turned back to the television.
This went on for two weeks, with him coming home to a wreck of a house, no dinner, and kids running all over the place. Let’s just say it didn’t take him long to finally figure out what his wife really does throughout the day, and the value of it. She made it look so simple and easy, but really, her job was just as stressful, just as challenging, and just as valuable as his—albeit in a different way. And when they finally sat down to talk about it, she made clear her value: “What I do may not pay bills, but let me tell you what it does do: it gives you peace, good food, a clean house, well-behaved children, and a place to sit your coffee down and read your newspaper without interruption. If you don’t want that, I can stop doing my job altogether. I don’t mind watching these kids tear up this house.”
This is all to say that sometimes you have to get a man’s attention to make him recognize your worth. Maybe going about it the way my friend’s wife did is a bit extreme, but there are ways to help him attach value to what you bring to the relationship. One of the easiest ways to make that happen is to write down your “to-do” list with checks next to all the things you’ve done during the course of the day, and then leave it somewhere where he can see it—on the kitchen table, in the bathroom next to his toothbrush, on his nightstand, next to the remote. This will be a nice subtle way of reminding him to respect your game.
If that doesn’t get his attention, invite him to a sit-down and politely remind him of your value. Ask him if he saw your list, and if he thinks you’re doing a good job. If he’s not a fool, he will wake up and say, “Wow, yeah, what you do around the house is priceless.” Tell him, “You know, I just want to thank you for what you do for this family; we make a fantastic team, right?” I assure you that he will turn around and thank you for a job well done too.
Sometimes you just have to get a man’s attention—pull his coattails a little. We don’t mean any harm, I promise you.
I know plenty of you are reading this with your finger in the back of your throat, trying to make yourselves gag over what I’m telling women they need to do to make a man comfortable in a challenging financial relationship. But I feel the need to remind you: you have a certain set of skills that we do not possess, and you only serve yourself and your relationship with men better when you call on those skills and put them to use. Use your nurturing and communications skills—if you can use that skill set to get what you need and want out of others, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t put them to use with the person you love most, your mate. With good planning and a bit of luck, he’ll eventually be back up on his feet and out of the fog—ego in check and grateful you hung in there and helped him through the storm. The two of you will be stronger and better for it.
12
The Art of the Deal
How to Get What You Want Out of a Man
My mother and father were married for sixty-four years.
There is a simple explanation for the longevity of their marriage.
My dad, Slick Harvey, recognized that he was not in charge and acted accordingly. This kept a smile on my mother’s face, my father reasonably happy, and the marriage intact. Dad instinctively knew that in order to do what he wanted to do, he’d have to give my mother room to do what she wanted to do, say what she wanted to say, go where she wanted to go, and be who she wanted to be. He did this by practicing, subtly and masterfully, the art of negotiation—the art of the deal.
Take the time my mom announced she wanted to go pick up groceries at Southland Shopping Center, the new outlet of stores across town. She’d read about the opening in the paper and had just finished studying the grocery store circular when she decided she just had to have a carton of the Eagle brand eggs they were selling for thirty-nine cents per dozen at that particular chain. She didn’t have to say it but one time, and my father was pulling on his shoes, coat, and hat and grabbing his keys. Her faithful chauffeur, he would drive her to church on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday, as well as take her to the hairdresser when she needed to get her hair done and downtown when she saw a dress she wanted to buy or needed to get us kids some clothes for school. And now, my mother was adding the Southland Shopping Center to her list of shopping haunts.
What my brother and I didn’t understand, at the tender ages of nineteen and eight, respectively, was why in the world my father wasn’t asking what seemed the most obvious of questions: Why would anybody want to drive all the way across town to buy a dozen eggs at thirty-nine cents a dozen when the grocery store right up the street was selling the same carton of Eagle brand eggs for only twenty cents more? It just didn’t make sense to us, though it was my brother who made the very foolish mistake of expressing his thoughts on the subject.
“I want to go to Southland because they have the eggs I want,” my mother responded.
“But that’s a good fifteen minutes out of the way, and you can get eggs for a reasonable price right down the street,” he argued, with me behind him, nodding my head in agreement.
“I don’t want those eggs down the street—I want the eggs over there at Southland,” she insisted, pulling on her coat and walking toward the door. She was ready to go, and clearly was in no mood for arguing.
Now huffing in disbelief, he looked at my father and kept applying the pressure. “Wait, so let me get this straight: you’re going to burn up all that gas running her across town? And spend two hours messing around in that store when you can get the same food down the street for a little bit more money? What kind of sense does that make?”
Finally, my father cut him off. “You through?” he asked, slowly.
My brother quickly shut his mouth and opened his ears.
“I could run her down to the store and let her get the fifty-nine-cent eggs, but that ain’t what your mama wants. She wants to go over there to Southland, and so I’m going to take her to Southland. And if you don’t shut the hell up, you’re going to take her instead of me.”
My father waited for my mother to get herself out the door and settled in the car before he continued. “You don’t know nothing about women,” he said, the bass in his voice taking over. “This isn’t about logic, boy. It’s what your mama wants. What will it hurt me to give her what she wants? I’m trying to go down there to the gas station and play pinochle, so if I want to do that, I’m going to run your mother around all day today, take her everywhere she wants to go so I can go where I want to go tonight.”
The art of the deal.
On that very day, I learned one of the most important lessons my father could have ever taught me: happy wife, happy life. We men have been conditioned to conduct ourselves as if we run things, but the smart man knows it’s really the woman of the house who sets the tone of the relationship and what goes on in the home. Sure, we know that most women don’t have a problem bragging to their friends, “This is my man, he’s the head of the household.” Most of you will even take our last name and defer to us on some decisions. The idea is that if you do these things, on balance, you’ll get most of what your heart desires. A woman will give a man an honorific as long as he puts her on a pedestal and gives her what she wants. No woman is going to sign up to call a man the head of the household if he’s not acting like one—which encompasses making her feel honored, protected, and respected—and giving her, as I like to say, most of what she needs and a lot of what she wants. But guess what? The same is true for men—if anything, even more so.
We understand, respect, and live by the art of the deal. Everything for us is an exchange; I’ll give you something if you give me something back. We’ve been cutting deals since we were little boys. “I like that black marble with the orange eye in it,” a friend would say. “I’ll trade you this green marble with the yellow spots, plus throw in a Hank Aaron baseball card if you give it to me, deal?” Go into any lunchroom in any school, USA, and you’ll hear all kinds of deals
being struck: “You got Pringles? Say man, I’ll give you two dollars and a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup for those Pringles.” The same thing is happening on the playground after school: “I bet you I can shoot twenty baskets faster than you. I’ll even spot you five points. If I win, you have to give me two packs of Hubba Bubba when I see you tomorrow. Ready?”
Striking a deal is standard for us—it fits into our scheme of logic: you give something, you get something in return. That’s the way it goes down for us at work, it’s the way we deal with our siblings and cousins and other family members who consistently tap us for help, and it’s certainly a part of our relationships with our friends. I’m not saying we’re a selfish lot, by any stretch: I think the basic tenet of manhood—particularly for husbands, fathers, and men in committed relationships—is to give without expecting something in return; we provide for and protect our families in ways both big and small because we instinctively know that this is what an honorable man is supposed to do. And we know, too, that often those things will have to be done without expectation of getting anything in return. But I’ll raise my hand high up in the air and cop to this one simple truth: a man is more likely to do things he doesn’t want to do if he’s going to get something out of it.
Just as you can use appreciation to motivate a man to do even more for you and your family (as explained in Chapter 10, “Show Your Appreciation”), you can accomplish the same by recognizing and implementing the principles of deal making in your relationship. It’s very simple: if you want something from your man, offer up something in return. (And no, I’m not talking solely about sex, though you could get most men to wash the dishes, make all the beds, detangle your daughter’s hair, and clean the refrigerator out weekly if they think they’ll get the cookie in return.) Forget asking why you have to wheel and deal to get your husband to do things that women do without prompting. No matter how upset you get about it, no matter how many times you ask for an explanation, it’s the way most of us are hardwired. This is the way men operate. Your job is to exploit this for your own advantage—to figure out how to win within those confines. Trust me on this one: understanding how to negotiate with your man will bring you untold joy. Just ask my wife, Marjorie—the master of the art of the deal in the Harvey household.
Marjorie and I are the parents of seven; she came to our relationship with three of her own and added them to my four. That’s a houseful, no matter how you slice it, no matter how big your heart is, no matter how much time you have on your hands. Being a parent—a good parent—in that situation is daunting sometimes. When I get home, I don’t want to deal with all the household drama, especially within ten minutes of setting foot in the front door. In my mind, I’m screaming, “I get that we need to speak about his grades, which are going in the wrong direction, and I understand that the little one wants to go to a friend’s house for a sleepover and we don’t trust the judgment of the girl’s parents, and I know that the other one wants his friend to come over, which means I’m going to have to have a half-hour conversation with his father, whom I don’t like. But I don’t want to deal with this. I want to sit down, have a cigar, and zone out!” Yet as overwhelmed as I sometimes feel raising these kids, my wife has an even tougher go of it because she’s the caretaker-in-chief of the Harvey household. For every hour I spend out on the road working, she’s making the decisions and calling the shots for everything that goes down in our home. And so if I think caring for the kids is a daunting task, I can barely wrap my head around what it must be like for her, particularly when I’m not around.
Knowing this, however, doesn’t necessarily move me to action when it comes to dealing with the particulars of child rearing. What gets me on the case is Marjorie’s negotiating skills—her special ability to negotiate. She has nary a problem breaking it down: “Babe, if you spend a little time with the kids while I go shopping, I won’t have a problem with you going golfing tomorrow.”
Suddenly, I’m there to do whatever it is she needs, weighing in on every conversation, disciplining every kid.
It’s an exchange. I do something I don’t necessarily want to do, she gets the input and resources she needs, and I get a reward in return. She asks, I fulfill the request, we’re both happy. Here’s another example of how Marjorie works the art of the deal: I don’t like musicals. I mean, I can’t stand them. People are up on the stage yabbing about something I care nothing about and then all of a sudden they bust out into singing and dancing? Nope. This is not my idea of a good time.
Now, most of the time, Marjorie will gather up a few of her girlfriends and they’ll go enjoy a musical together and then go out for dinner and do what they do when they’re fellowshipping as friends. But on occasion, my wife will request that I attend a play or two with her, even though she knows I’d rather lie in a dentist’s chair and have root canals performed simultaneously on all thirty-two of my teeth. And I will go because Marjorie practices the art of the deal: she will coax me into a suit and into the theater and later for a sushi dinner by promising me that she’ll make it worth my while when we get back home. Let me tell you, I hear that offer and I can make it through anything. I can sit through forty songs in a five-hour play if my wife plants in my mind the image of her saying, “Taa daa!” when we get back to our bedroom later that night. I don’t hear any music, and I can’t tell you a single, solitary thing anyone up on that stage is saying; all I’m focused on is the treat Marjorie will have waiting for me back at the house.
And when she shows me—not only with the cookie but with genuine expressions of gratitude—that she’s appreciative of my efforts to enjoy her passions, I know I have equity in the bank to enjoy my own hobbies and what little free time I have. If she gives me a moment to disappear into my office to catch a television show or flip through a magazine or just sit and be quiet, I make a point to free up time for Marjorie so that she can go get her nails done or get her hair fixed or go out for drinks with her girlfriends.
In other words, we’ve used a series of conversations and exchanges to strike deals that make our marriage run more smoothly. I promise you, talking it out and agreeing to make a series of exchanges to get what you want works like a charm but only if you’re willing to have a civil conversation with your partner letting him know exactly what it is that you want. You can’t expect him to intuit what you need, to come in the door and calculate before he’s unknotted his tie that you’ve been in the house with the kids all afternoon, washed two loads of laundry, enrolled Junior in soccer and Missy in ballet, and that you could use, no, you absolutely need some me-time. Have a conversation with your man, tell him what you’re willing to give him in exchange for what you need, strike the deal, and then enjoy the fruits of your labor. The same can be said of two people who come together for more personal, social partnerships. Say, for instance, you and one of your girlfriends decide to throw a little get-together for some of your other friends. Your girlfriend may be better at cooking and organizing the appetizers; you may be the expert at pairing wines with food and mixing up specialty drinks. To have a successful party, each of you has to talk about the kind of party you want to have and whom you’re inviting, and then the two of you have to agree on what you’ll contribute in order for your little get-together to be a success. Now, your girl may not necessarily want to cook all that food by herself, particularly if she’s going to have to do it after a long, hard day’s work. And you may not want to necessarily spend the entire party standing behind the bar, mixing drinks for a bunch of your drunken friends. But you’ll both strike that deal—you’ll provide the drinks if she hooks up the food—because you know that ultimately, your work will contribute to everyone having a fantastic time.
Every time you take your kids to the store, you strike a deal: “If you’re quiet and behave while we’re in the grocery store, I’ll buy you a pack of gum when we get to the checkout.” When you’re at work, you strike deals: “If you gather up the statistics from last year’s report, I’ll plug in the numbers
and do the calculations and together, we can present the new report to our manager.” When you’re on your college campus, with the goal of one day walking across that stage, you strike deals: “I’ll help you research your paper and come up with a sound thesis if you help me figure out a better way to understand these math problems.” When you’re at the hairdresser or getting yourself a manicure or a massage, you’re striking a deal: “Get my hair to look like Halle Berry’s or Meg Ryan’s and I’ll give you a nice, fat tip and pass out a stack of your business cards to every woman I know!”
See, we strike deals all the time—in every little thing we do—with the hope that each partner will leave reasonably satisfied. Why not bring that into your relationship?
We know most of you don’t want to have sex every night and that all the roles you play during the course of the day—employee, wife, homemaker, caretaker, friend, volunteer, chief boo-boo kisser—wear you out. You all know we don’t want to change diapers and do dishes and read bedtime stories and do everything your way. But in the most successful of unions, partners are willing to change and shift and do things they don’t necessarily want to do in order to work toward the greater good of the relationship.
For some of you the approach to a deal is a piece of cake. You are the very picture of diplomacy. But some of you have never been called subtle in your life. Start off the conversation in a way that doesn’t put your man on the defensive. You don’t want to start the conversation with him thinking he’s about to be accused of falling down on the job. No guy is going to want to wheel and deal with you if he feels as if he’s having a foot inserted into his behind. You know the saying “It’s easier to catch bees with honey”? Well, nothing could be more true than when a woman is trying to negotiate with her man; no man wants to be blindsided by accusations about what he is and isn’t doing. Besides, doing that will only make him fight or flee. Instead, kick off your talk by flipping it on him: ask him what it is that you could be doing more of to help him. Let him know that you’re happy he’s your man and that you’re his woman, but admit that you’re not perfect and know you could be doing things that would make him happier. I know, I know—you are perfect. But your man doesn’t think you are. He’s just been afraid to tell you. If, however, you open the door to letting him express his true feelings without thinking he’s going to be attacked for it, he’s going to tick off a list of things he’d love to see more of from you—things that you can use in your negotiations. So stay calm, cool, and collected and be ready to accept whatever answer he gives you without having a knee-jerk reaction. He could be looking for more time to himself, more sex, more money in the savings account, more sex, more time to go golfing on the weekends or play basketball with the fellas, more sex. Whatever it is, listen carefully, and with an open mind.