Could he help me to resolve my marital problems?
Matthew Fray, a blogger from Cleveland and a father of two children, wrote an agonizing blog post about his divorce in 2016. It featured his painful experience with the dissolution.
It was a regrettable cri d’ coeur written between crying on his couch in pajamas during meetings at work where he works as a digital content strategist for an auto parts company.
Fray discovered too late that almost all the household chores had been left to his wife. Fray divorced his wife in 2013 after he realized that he had left almost all of the household chores to his wife.
He wrote that “She didn’t want to become my mother.” She wanted to be my partner and to use all of my intelligences and learning abilities to manage our household and lives. I wish I could recall what seemed so absurd to me at that time.
It wasn’t all about the glass. He recalled, “It felt like I was saying, ‘Not taking 4 seconds to place my glass in the dishwasher, is more important to you than it is to me,'”
Fray’s post, which he uses as a pseudonym to keep his ex-wife anonymous and his young son anonymous, quickly went viral. It was viewed 4 million times on Fray’s blog, Must be This Tall to Ride, as well as several million times on sites such The Huffington Post.
I was working on my book, “How Not To Hate your Husband After Kids,” about invisible labor. My husband Tom and I had already dealt with most of the larger issues. However, we remained at odds over Tom’s habit of leaving behind evidence of everything he did around our home.
He often said, “What’s all the fuss?” “In the grand scheme, who cares about if I leave things around?”
In desperate times, I counted 50 items that he had left for me to organize in one day. “That’s 350 items per week that you take off my plate and put on mine,” he said to me, feeling both angry and completely absurd.
Many couples have to fight over minor but significant issues. This is especially true when we are all under quarantine. Over 17 years of marriage, Danielle Silverstein and Adam Silverstein, Manalapan (N.J.), hosts the podcast Marriage & Martinis.
He prefers to do his laundry in a separate load so that it doesn’t get mixed up with the clothes of their children. Danielle explained to me that he does his laundry and not. He does 25 percent. He will put his laundry in the washer and forget about it.
He countered, “I never do that.”
She yelled, “Oh my God!” You forgot to dry your laundry on Monday. Adam, it was literally put in the dryer on Monday.
This continued for several minutes.
My husband was irritated by my use of plates, but it wasn’t the dishwashing. Research has shown that women spend more time on child-care and more on housework each day than men. A Gallup survey found that older couples were less likely to share most household chores than those aged 18 to 34.
Fray sees the disparity in this way with painful hindsight.
He claimed he’d heard many times that his post had saved a marriage. After the third woman begged him to talk with her husband, he decided to offer coaching services last year to help men in troubled marriages.
Sessions cost $175 and last approximately an hour and a quarter. They are typically conducted every other week, often at night, or weekends, since Fray keeps his day job. His clients usually find him via Google searches (“Why does he hate me?” “Why doesn’t my wife respect ?”),” which led them to his position.
Fray, 41 years old, describes himself as an “average guy”. He is friendly and self-effacing. Fray insists repeatedly that he isn’t a psychotherapist (“I don’t have a Ph.D.”) and that his services are not meant to replace counseling.
They shouldn’t. Jodie Eisner, a New York-based clinical psychotherapist, has a doctoral degree. However, it is not meant to replace couples therapy which is still the gold standard.
Fray stated that his coaching is all about encouragement, support, and motivation. Fray said that he doesn’t believe the average man wearing a college football sweatshirt, drinking canned Bud Light and watching his children play in the yard while his wife works hard to keep the household running is going to be able to read ‘The Five Love Languages.’
Fray’s affable personality and willingness to share his story makes people feel that they are not being judged. He said, “I am not preaching from behind the podium or at the desk.” He said, “Instead, my role is that of a translator.” He has so far worked with 60 clients, some for several sessions, and some for an ongoing basis. Some are still in the process of completing their counseling via videoconference or phone. Others can be as far as Singapore. His message was clear: Don’t be like me.
Fray and his wife, then 25, met at college. They were both 25 when they married. Four years later, they had their son. He said that she suffered from postpartum depression as well as the death of her father while they were married. “I passively allowed her to handle housework, our schedules, and the logistics of caring to our son,” he stated. “I call this accidental sexism. Where you say, “Of course, I’m disgusted at inequality, but I’m not sexist.”
His inertia eventually led to a breakdown of their relationship. In 2013, they divorced. They have civil relations now. They share a home and attend the school functions of their son. She is in a long-term relationship and he is casually dating.
Fray’s unusual approach was fascinating. Tom, my husband asked me if he would be open to trying a session. Couples counseling had helped us to resolve most of our bigger issues. Fray might be able to confront my husband’s tendency of putting things down instead of moving on.
Fray started by sending Tom a questionnaire. It asked questions like: What’s your biggest struggle or source for frustration? Fray spoke to Tom as a friend during their phone conversation, which Tom recorded and I listened too. He made jokes. He sometimes wore out. He listened to Tom’s version of the arguments about dishes, which ended with Tom saying “She tends to overreact.”
Fray stated, “I did exactly the same thing.” “But when she would tell me that she was reacting too strongly to something, it became all about me — my perception of her reaction. “I couldn’t see how my approval or consent was not required or requested.”
He suggested to me that Tom practice not judging my requests first. Fray stated that instead of listening to their partner and taking in the information, and then caring about their feelings, men invest their energy in three ways. They disagree with their partner’s story; they agree with it but feel their partner is reacting too strongly; or defend their actions and explain why. His partner’s feelings in all three cases are invalid.
He and Tom did exercises on noticing and stopping invisible labor during their hour-and-a-half session. The running theme was: How do you see this issue from the perspective of your wife? Fray asked Tom what he could do to help with family logistics such as meals. You know what dinner should look like every night so you can prepare it. It shouldn’t be a surprise, right? Are there visual reminders that you can use to remind yourself to clean up after dinner? What can you do to help your partner without being asked? He said “I got this” to his partner.
Tom stated that he was able to see the value in their session. He said that it was similar to the conversations one has at a bar or while watching your children’s soccer games or something. He said that Fray’s stories of crying for months following his divorce were even more powerful than his telling them.
Fray stated, “I tell guys, “Dude, I don’t know if you’ve checked the calendar lately but it’s no longer 1960.” He said, “Step up and Show Up.” He will continue spreading his message one client at a. He said that he told his story “so other people don’t get divorcéed like me.”
Jancee Dunn is the author of “How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids.”
