Dear Eric: I have been married to a wonderful man for 44 years. He has a large following on social media platforms due to his former career.<\/p>\n
For the most part he makes interesting posts and these posts are seen and commented on by many people.<\/p>\n
My complaint is this: My husband seems to (whether intentionally or unintentionally) continuously post extremely unflattering pictures of me on social media. If I comment on an unflattering picture that he has posted, he will rather begrudgingly take the offensive picture down.<\/p>\n
His response to me is that I don\u2019t like having my picture taken, and he\u2019s not wrong. Knowing that my picture, whether flattering or not, is going to be posted (or shared with our family) is extremely daunting. When my husband takes a photograph, he never looks at it. He thinks all of the pictures he takes are perfect with the first take.<\/p>\n
My question for you is, how do I approach his habit of constantly posting unflattering photos with him? Or do I let this be the one minor thing wrong with this otherwise wonderful man?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Photo Shy<\/p>\n
Dear Photo Shy: It\u2019s worth bringing up because it makes you uncomfortable and is, therefore, creating an issue in your marriage.<\/p>\n
Honestly, it\u2019s not unreasonable to say, \u201cPlease don\u2019t post pictures of me on social media at all.\u201d This gets around the issue of debating \u201cwhat is a good photo,\u201d which could just distract you both and isn\u2019t really the point.<\/p>\n
He has a different standard than you do, but it doesn\u2019t matter if he thinks the photo is fine. You don\u2019t want these photos online, especially in front of a large audience.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll be important to point out to him that this is a professional space that has garnered a lot of attention and therefore it has to be held to a different standard. There are ways of using social media as just a private photo album or a diary, but it is designed to be public and for content to spread beyond its context. Remind him that you have a different relationship with his public than he does and ask that he keep photos of you to himself.<\/p>\n
Dear Eric: After doing all chores and maintenance around the house for 40 years I advised my husband he must help. Not sure if it\u2019s a benefit or curse.<\/p>\n
I give instructions as to how things work best, and I swear he purposely refuses to follow through. He\u2019ll run the dishwasher when it\u2019s only a quarter full. He did the laundry, but he stuffed the machine without separating colors. If he vacuums, he never moves anything, just goes around a cat toy or his shoes. Then he has the kazoos to tell me that since he\u2019s taken over things are better.<\/p>\n
One day he said he\u2019d clean the bathroom, I thought that\u2019s nice. Not. He put the toilet bowl cleaner in the toilet and walked out. When I asked about the rest of the toilet, sink, countertop, bathtub, mirror, floor and garbage, he became ugly and said I\u2019m nuts, that it\u2019s not necessary.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s 79 and I\u2019m much younger; the stress of his complacency is overwhelming. He\u2019s become a crabby, stubborn, mean old man. I never understood when grandma would complain, because my grandpa was so nice to me, but now I see how wives become mothers to old husbands and they become stressed, overworked, unhappy spouses.<\/p>\n
How do I fix this?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Messy House<\/p>\n
Dear House: It sounds like you could use a third party here to help diffuse some of the tension. This might be a friend who can help you decide what cleaning tasks are most important to you and can perhaps walk him through modifying the way he does it, or a couple\u2019s therapist who can help you communicate better.<\/p>\n
A lot of the valid frustration you\u2019re feeling is pent up from 40 years of not having your efforts matched by his. So, while it wasn\u2019t fair that you were doing all of the home maintenance, you may want to temper your expectations around him changing immediately.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying this is right or that he can\u2019t change. I\u2019m saying that he should have done this earlier and no amount of dishwasher loading is going to make up for the fact that he hasn\u2019t addressed that imbalance.<\/p>\n
So, I suggest that you talk with him about how you felt and ask him if he understands, then talk about what\u2019s going on with the chores now and ask him his perspective.<\/p>\n
You may find that there are some chores that you\u2019ll never see eye-to-eye on. It\u2019s up to you to decide if you\u2019re happier having it done or having it done the way you do it. But addressing what happened in the past will help you both clean up the present situation.<\/p>\n
Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram @oureric and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Eric: I have been married to a wonderful man for 44 years. He has a large following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[8345,45110,114,139,141,140,109],"class_list":["post-252174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-advice","tag-asking-eric","tag-latest-headlines","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}