What Happened When I Stopped Being the Guy Who Does Everything Around the House

What Happened When I Stopped Being the Guy Who Does Everything Around the House

— For most of my forties, I believed that a good husband and father was the guy who could fix anything. Cabinet doors that wouldn’t close. The leaky outdoor spigot. The exterior trim that needed scraping every few years. I was raised by a man who never paid for what he could do himself, and I inherited that philosophy without examining it. It took me a long time to realize that philosophy was costing me something I valued far more than money. Th…