5 Ways to Capitalize on Your Husband's Forgetfulness

I'm taking a quick break from pretending I know stuff about being a mom to demonstrate that I really know stuff about being a wife.

You see, as a general rule, men are forgetful. It can be annoying. More than annoying, really. Basically, the only way to avoid the desire to punch your husband in the face every time he forgets something, is to capitalize on that sh*t.

I suppose if your wife is forgetful, one could use the following ideas on one's wife. But, if you are a man with a forgetful wife, chances are you're actually just a man who forgot that his wife has a great memory.

Now, the degree to which you can practice the following is directly tied to just how forgetful your husband is. I do all of these things nearly every day.

Also, you really have to sell it every time, or else he will start to get suspicious. Unless he's oblivious in addition to forgetful.

If you do it right, you can enjoy the following life improvements almost immediately:

1. Never again watch a movie you don't want to see.

Just tell him you've already seen it. This works particularly well for us, because we don't have cable and our antenna only gets one channel, so we watch the hell out of Netflix.

The key to success with this one is mixing it up. Here are some responses that have worked for me:

Simply and definitively, We've seen that already.

I think we've seen that one... What was it about? (Pause to let him read just a few words.) Emphatically, Oh yea. Yup.

That sounds familiar, who's in it? (Pause to let him name an actor.) I'm pretty sure we've seen that one. (This works best when there's a well-known actor in it.)

Oh we watched that one awhile ago, it was alright, but not good enough to watch again.

Oh that one was stupid, I think you were asleep.

You have to know your husband to know how often you can get away with this. I do it all the time because Ryan very frequently really does suggest titles we've seen already. Since it's often legitimate, sometimes his memory sparks, and he realizes it. So, he'd really never think to question me. I mean, he's even come home from the grocery store all excited to watch a movie that we've already gotten from Red Box. Seriously. The Campaign with Zack Galifinakis and Will Ferrell? How do you forget you saw that?

2. Never hear another long-winded story from his past.

Does your husband do this, too? Tells you stories from his glory days, usually at least seven times? Or is it just because mine is 12 years older than me and feels like he needs to justify his age with tales of excitement from long, long ago? The thing is that a lot of them are interesting the first time. A 720-POUND TUNA?? But, everyone knows that the third time you tell a story, you inescapably make it boring. I know you caught a 720-pound tuna, Ryan. I caught a fish once, too.

At a certain point in your marriage, you have officially heard all the interesting stories. And then there are the ones that might be new, but aren't even close to interesting. So, you'd rather just not hear any stories, to be honest. It's okay, your husband can't hear what you're thinking. This is a safe place. So let's get to work.

Managing this requires some finesse. You have to lay the groundwork when he starts telling a story you've actually already heard. You have to develop a consistent reaction every time he begins a familiar tale, I had the best mac and cheese ever in Aspen... I'd finish my runs for the day and go to this restaurant at the bottom-- (I've heard about Aspen's mac and cheese like nine times, which sounds like an exaggeration, but if anything, is an understatement.)

I have this look, it's like a frozen half-eye-roll. He got the message quickly, and started asking, Oh, have I told you this already? So, then I'd say yes, and recite back a few details. Eventually, I started making the same expression when I really wasn't quite sure whether I had heard the story he was about to tell or one that was close enough that I just didn't want to listen, at which point I simply dropped the detail recitation.

But, it's important to still let him tell a few stories here and there. I try to let this happen whenever I have something that I've been meaning to think about and figure out, because I find that my "thinking" facial expression looks a lot like my "interested" facial expression, as long as I make sure to keep eye contact. If you let the eye contact go, it's all over. He will know you're not listening.

In any event, I'm sure one day Ryan will start to catch on and start to tell me a fake story, so I try to pay particular attention to any glimmer in his eye that might indicate he's trying to trick me. I don't know how crafty your husband is, but you should probably look out for that, too.

3. Never get blamed for dropping the ball.

Forget to tell your husband that you guys have to drive two hours tomorrow to go have lunch with your grandmother? No you didn't! He simply forgot that you already told him.

I'm sure you've already tried this. I mean, it's so obvious. But, if it didn't work, either your husband's memory isn't bad enough, and I don't feel bad for you, or, possibly, you just need to try a little harder.

First, make sure you also "forget" to tell him good news on occasion. It's triple pay check month? I told you three times already! You were supposed to decide how you want to celebrate! Get it?

Second, act like he already gave you grief for it. Well if I didn't tell you last Wednesday, why did you huff about it? You get it.

4. Get what you want for dinner. (Kind of.)

This one really only works if what you want is burritos, and your husband is almost always subconsciously craving burritos.

What should we do for dinner?

I thought you said you felt like burritos.

Oh yeah! Let's get burritos.

That may never be useful to you, but I pull that one out at least once or twice a month.

5. Trick him into agreeing with you on almost any subject.

This one is fairly amazing, but I would caution that it shouldn't be used as frequently as some of the above tactics.

All you do is back off completely and pretend that you agree with him. Then later, say, I know we think (insert whatever you pretended to agree on), but, like you said before, (insert something that supports your point), and the more I think about it, maybe (insert whatever you thought in the first place).

Nope, he never said that thing you said he said. But he doesn't know that. He forgot.

And, now that it came from "him" and not you, he won't argue with it.

I know we said we should get racks on the Jeep before getting a new camera, but like you said before, Fin's growing fast and we'll want good pictures of every stage, and the more I think about it, maybe we really should get the camera first.

Yes, now, on the Casper family list of upcoming major purchases, a Canon EOS Rebel T4i does come before the Jeep rack system Ryan wants.

The important skill here is in knowing for how long you need to pretend to agree with him. Sometimes, you have to wait days. Yes, you have to pretend he's right when you know he's wrong, for days. Hopefully your disagreement isn't over a time-sensitive topic, because sometimes that's an unworkable situation. But, when I'm in a pinch, if I'm feeling lucky, and Ryan's been particularly forgetful, and I know that he truly knows less than nothing on the issue, I'll go for the retroactive, Well, I think it's like what you said last week...

I say that this works on almost any subject, because this is destined to fail with whatever subject(s) your husband is really an expert on. Ryan, for example, has a few deep skill sets: surfing, fishing, mostly all ocean-related things really, emergency medicine, carpentry, cars. Now, I'm no marriage counselor (as you can probably tell), but it's very important to acknowledge when your partner knows more than you do.

There you have it. I hope this saves some other husbands from face punches as it has saved mine. XO.

3 PostPartum Spousal Battles to Avoid

It's amazing how trivial all our married life arguments seemed as soon as we had a newborn. At the time, like most married folks, we really thought we were limiting our battles to the important stuff. Like, before we got a pet gate to secure the dogs in the back of the Jeep, Tiki used to nose her way into the front seat, where there was nowhere for her 60-pound body to go but 78% on my lap and 22% in Ryan's face. Ryan did nothing to discourage her as he drove along and her happy little tail whacked me repeatedly in the face.

You can't pet her when she does this!

I know...

You have to yell at her!

It doesn't work.

You have to do it anyway, and you have to push her into the back!

You know I can't do that! She was abused! THEY LOCKED HER IN A BATHROOM.

It's DANGEROUS. You even said this is why you rear-ended that Volvo when we first started dating.

That was a minor accident! I'm a safe driver, I COULD DRIVE RACE CARS.

We're still paying higher insurance because of it!! AND YOU GOT A BURRITO FOR LUNCH WITHOUT ME ON TUESDAY!

Those were the days. Because even though I've read a lot of good stuff about communication and productive argument and all that, it never seems to work when we're a collective mix of stressed and sensitive.

Finley's a relatively easy enough baby. But he's not one of those miracle super low maintenance babies. And what that means is that while we've never had any complaints in the sleep department, I don't have much time to contribute to chores. While I think that staying on top of laundry should earn me some kind of medal, Ryan gets frustrated with how much that leaves for him to do on particularly long or hard workdays.

There's no avoiding that pickle for us right now. But there are pickles we can avoid. And so these are some important battles I've learned to avoid:

1. Stop touching my breast milk!

I vented to my friend Shauna about this. Apparently Ryan isn't the only husband who likes to play a role in milk management. Her husband loves to freeze milk and prep bottles. But Bryan must not be as forgetful as Ryan is, because she has yet to send me an iMessage with 7 purple angry face emoticons at the end of it.

I come home from work each day with four full bottles that attach to my pump funnels. But, because they can be used post-milk-storage, we use mason jars for storing milk in the freezer. (On a scale of Emily Post to, say, Honey Boo Boo's mom, how inappropriate would it be to use said mason jars for our homemade Christmas gifts next year?)

Ryan tries to help me by transferring the milk and packing my pump bag. Well, I pumped into a canteen the other day. That day, he forgot to pack the bottles, which was not as catastrophic as the day he forgot to pack the little yellow pieces that facilitate suction.

But when I just said that Ryan likes "to help me", that was basically almost entirely false. He doesn't like to leave it until the morning for one of us to do for some reason that I don't care much about. I'm fine doing it in the morning, but I just don't want to do it at night. But he does. He does that instead of cleaning up the crumbs he manages to strew over every surface in the kitchen, instead of picking up the socks and clothing layers he sheds as he walks around the house, instead of returning empty seltzer cans and tea cups (he's a fancy carpenter) to the kitchen. Those things he leaves for me to do in the morning.

If I sound ungrateful, it's only because I had to walk from Downtown Crossing to the waterfront to borrow Shauna's pump while leaking through my shirt, and accidentally made eye contact with three young men from the Ukraine (or who knows where, there are a lot of accents I'm unfamiliar with), who demanded that I take their picture (four times) at the Boston Massacre Memorial, which is a circle of old bricks on the sidewalk, which, no, you could not see in the picture. At all.

Anyway, I could try to convince Ryan to take care of his sh*t, and let me take care of mine, or I could just make a checklist for myself to run through in the morning. Guess which is easier.

2. You're not the thing I like most about you!

Wha? I know. I'll explain.

One of the best things about Ryan is that there is, literally, no one I'd rather have by my side in an emergency or disaster. Well, maybe I'd want an expert in handling whatever specific emergency or disaster were to occur; but, for the general unknown, my husband is the best.

He trained as an EMT and graduated from the fire academy when he lived in south Florida, which is, if you'll recall, where people eat people's faces. He's been 20 miles out in 16 foot seas, and has even had to dive into the ocean in the middle of the night with a knife in his mouth to cut something or other from the anchor line so the boat wouldn't sink.

But, when I say that my baby's ear is slightly pinker than normal, he is in no way qualified to tell me not to worry, even if Finley had just been laying on that side of his head for 3 hours.

You see what I'm getting at. Sometimes I'm wrong. I have to remember that I don't always recognize that in a timely fashion.

3. Stop being such a little b*tch!

I think this is the dumbest of all the fights we almost have. I think most people know that nothing good can come from comparing pain. And yet, I find it so hard to resist doing.

Ryan had kidney stones a couple years ago. Four of them. His doctor told him he had zero kidney stones. Kidney stones hurt, apparently, and Ryan kept complaining about the pain. I insisted for one month straight that he get the name of his friend's urologist. I wish I could say that the reason was because I felt so bad that he was in pain. That was probably true for the first week or so. But then it was like, you aren't even trying to fix this, and now I just want you to stop b*tching. Fast forward some amount of time I don't quite recall, Ryan undergoes a couple stone-blasting procedures and has been fine since. Also, Ryan has a new doctor.

Fast forward a little further, to my third trimester. One morning, Ryan says, "There's nothing I can do to beat you if you give birth without drugs. You'll wear the tough pants in the family." This was the first and last time he's acknowledged my pain tolerance in comparison to his. Did I actually think he was going to give me a medal? I guess not. But would a piece of foil on a chain of paperclips really be too much to ask for?

But, no matter how hard I wish, there is no way that we can actually compare one another's pain tolerance levels and declare a winner.

What I can tell you is that when Ryan gets a stuffy nose, I get a status update every hour until it's gone. "I think I'm coming down with something." "I'm definitely coming down with something." "I wonder if this is a cold or allergies." "I think I have allergies." "I think I have a cold." "I wonder if I have the flu." "Don't let me breathe on you, I think I have the flu." And so on.

Me, on the other hand. They have this thing called the 5-1-1 rule to tell you at what point during labor you should go to the hospital. (Or, in our case, to the birth center.) I met the requirements at about 8am, but my midwife sent me home because it didn't hurt bad enough. Four hours later, I was pretty darn sure it hurt bad enough, and I told Ryan it was time to go back. He calmly replied, I don't know, I don't think it's bad enough yet. What I wanted to say was, I know it seems that way, but that's because I'm not a b*tch like you. What I did say was, It's bad enough. What the midwife said was, It's bad enough. Finley arrived five hours later.

So, I often want to say, Stop being such a b*tch! But, I have to remind myself that unless I want another sense of the word to describe me, I just have to let him be one.

So, those are the lessons I've learned.

1. Go with the easy option.
2. Know that you might be wrong.
3. Don't be a b*tch.