Secret No. 13: Even married people need privacy! « Ani Ram’s Relationship Secrets

Ready for your close-up?

Dear Ani Ram:

My husband and I have been married for 2 years now. You can say that we are very comfortable with each other and have already seen each others best/worst. This week, he did something that I think was inappropriate even at this stage in our relationship!

I will try and make this short. It was Saturday morning and he was making breakfast downstairs and I was upstairs getting some work done. I hadn’t taken a shower yet and was rehersing a presentation I needed to give at work on Monday. I hadn’t washed my face yet and was hoping breakfast wouldn’t be ready for another half hour. After some time, he walks in the room laughing and holding our video camera. He tells me that he finished breakfast 15 minutes ago and has been videotaping me from outside the door. He thought it would be funny to later replay me rehearsing my presentation to myself. It made me feel so weird, angry, and violated! I didn’t feel any sorts of presentable and the last thing I needed was to have a video record of me at my very worst. But even more so than that, I felt that my privacy was violated. I know he had no bad intentions and thought we could laugh about it later.

This is still bothering me and I’m wondering what is the best way to talk to him about it to make him understand why he upset me and that he never should have done what he did.

Looking forward to some helpful advice.

Thanks!

- Violated

Dear Violated,

I completely understand why you feel violated and why you got so angry. The truth is, it is never ok to do something like that without permission. Even if you are family. We all do things in our privacy that we may not do in front of other people. Even our husbands. Such as scratching our butts, popping pimples, or worse. It happens. We all do it. What he did was a form of spying and that is never ok. Even married people need privacy!

Now, the hardest part about dealing with this is that to him what he did was not wrong. Unfortunately, and this happens in many situations like this one, is that he will never think that what he did was wrong. Men see things differently and to him this was funny. He wouldn’t care if you did the same to him. Men scratch their butts no matter who’s watching. So it’s quite different from his point of view! Save yourself the energy of trying to “teach” him why what he did was wrong. The only thing you can do is explain why it upset you personally and acknowledge that it may not have been wrong in absolute terms. You should acknowledge that you are not mad at him and that you are aware that his intentions were good. Once you take the blame off he will be more open to listening to how you feel.

What I would tell him is that you appreciate that he loves you and that he can’t get enough of you. This will indirectly remind him that he loves you and that he can’t get enough of you I would then tell him what he did made you feel embarrased because you wouldn’t want him to see you scratching your butt for example. I wouldn’t use too many dramatic adjectives about how you feel because they tend to stress men out. And when they get stressed they tend to tune out! Nicely ask him to not do it again and to always let you know in the future. You can then tell him that you would be more than happy to be on video for him if he gives you some time to prepare yourself That will get him excited and will take the edge off the situation!

Remember, once this is resolved, don’t bring it up again! Men hate that.

I hope this helps and good luck!

Need life advice? Write to Ani Ram: aniram@understandanyman.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Readers' questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.