I am far from being a relationship expert and I’m no where near as knowledgeable or as skilled as a therapist in this area, but there are things that I have come to realize throughout my own long-term relationship. My husband and I started dating at 18, we got married at 25, and now, here we are 22 years since the start of our relationship with a house, three kids, a human sized dog, and all of the adult stuff that gets glossed over in movies and books. You know what I mean. No romantic comedy shows a couple cleaning different parts of the house on a Saturday morning, paying bills, doing taxes, dealing with car issues and house issues, and just all of the things that put stress into our lives. Those are the moments, though, that you begin to find out what it really takes and what a long-term relationship really is–what it means to build a life together.
Like most hopeless romantics out there, I would dream about the guy I would marry someday and envision the life that we would have together. Naturally, in those fantasies, we were always care-free and sickeningly in love with each other. Things would be easy, effortless. Now, though, I realize that falling in love is something that happens to you. Staying in love is something you choose. Let me explain how I see it. Falling in love is really just a chemical cascade that happens in our bodies so that we’ll be inclined to perpetuate the human race. We can romanticize it all we want, but realistically, it’s purpose is to make us want to have sex so that our species can continue. That’s part of why love and lust are often confused for one another, in my opinion. They’re closely related, for sure, but as humans, we’ve come to place certain ideals, expectations, and societal constructs over what it means to actually be in love with someone.
When I was in the early 20’s, my parents started working with an organization called Marriage Encounter. In a nutshell, Marriage Encounter is a Christian organization that welcomes couples of all faiths to dedicate a weekend to their marriage. The goal, is that by the end of the weekend, you’ve covered some tough topics and gained skills for successful communication. Many couples who attend are going through a rough time in their marriages, but that doesn’t have to be the case for you to attend. We would often discuss the topics and themes that were discussed in meetings and workshops. One of the ideas presented to me was that we chose to love someone everyday–and some days, that choice is easier to make than others. I believe that to be true.
When the chaos of wedding planning is gone and the honeymoon is over, what you have left is real life. You’ve finally hit where rubber meets the road. I understand why some people become disillusioned with it. Who is going to make dinner? Pay the bills? Do the laundry? Clean the house? What do our finances look like? Is it going to be an Olive Garden date night, or are we eating Ramen noodles again? What’s a budget and do we have one, or several of those? In the beginning, maybe those things don’t seem too hard to figure out. You find your flow and you go with it. Then, you starting adding things into the mix–pets, kids, family, and life becomes exponentially more complicated. It becomes much easier to resent each other than it does to sit down and have a conversation.
For example, I remember after having my first baby, feeling like I was doing everything. I was the one up all night with him, I was the one literally producing his food, I was the one going to work on 3 hours of sleep, and I was our primary income. I also did most of the housework. I would see my husband going out for game night with friends, or hitting up a bar with coworkers on a Friday evening after work, and I would seethe with anger. I was also drowning in a severe post-partum depression that no one knew about because I didn’t talk to anyone about it. Welp, you can only push emotions like that down for so long. I realized that I needed professional help, but I also needed to start advocating for myself. I needed to point out what needed to be done or what I wanted him to do. Make a list! Lord, would I resent those lists sometimes! As a woman, you just want to scream, “open your eyes and look around! Pick something that needs to be done and do it!” You want your partner to be as intuitive as you are, not feeling like you’re taking care of another child because they can’t figure out that kids need to eat dinner every night or that piles of laundry means there’s laundry to do. In those months after having our baby, I had to make a choice everyday to love my husband. I will be the first to tell you, that choice was not easy to make. I considered walking away more than once, but I had an epiphany one day that helped keep me grounded.
My husband was making the choice to love me everyday, too, and I know that I wasn’t easy to live with. I was angry, frustrated, exhausted, and withdrawn. I felt justified in those feelings, but I wasn’t taking any steps to rectify them, either. I made a bubble of myself and my son and I was content to keep my husband on the outside of it. The result of clinical depression with a healthy dose of stubbornness, I wasn’t trying. I was hiding, and in doing so, breaking the contract that we promised to each other on our wedding day. Though sickness and health; in good times and bad. Here we were–I was mentally ill and we were definitely in the bad. Given that I had post-partum depression, I knew that I needed medical and therapeutic help and I’m beyond grateful that I pulled myself up enough to admit that and seek it out. In talking with my psychologist, though, I was also able to accept that I was someone who let things fester. I would take upsetting things in and hold onto them in the vein hope that one day, my husband would realize that I was hurt or angry and try to make amends. When I finally hit the point where I couldn’t push things down anymore, I would erupt, not only about the present situation that was upsetting, but sometimes with months worth of situations and scenarios that I was still upset about.
This wasn’t exactly shocking news. I had spent years watching my parents do the same thing to each other. What I came to realize, though, was that my husband did know when I was upset. He would ask me what was wrong in the moment and I would say “nothing” or “I’m fine.” I needed to stop that. It wasn’t fair that I was storing things away for later instead of taking the opportunity that he was giving me. So, I started to take it, and another learning process ensued. I learned that my husband likes to know about issues and address them right away. For me, I need time to process my feelings. My ADHD brain has BIG feelings and I need to sort through them before I can talk about them. So, eventually, we developed a system. If he asked me what was wrong, I would give a brief synopsis, “I’m upset about (insert item here).” I would then say, “I’m not ready to talk about it yet.” I also learned that where I could ruminate over my thoughts for hours, or days, my husband needed to have things ironed out in a much shorter time frame. So, to expedite the process, he would take over whatever I was doing–folding laundry, feeding the baby, etc. and I would go take a shower or something and process. Then, when we finally did sit down to talk, a more constructive conversation could take place.
I think the art of an argument is a facet of marriage that’s often overlooked. You could boil it down and say that you need to learn how to communicate with each other and that’s a process that should be taking place while you’re dating and you would be correct. However, when stress levels are high, sleep hours are low, and you’re partner hits one of your buttons….well, let’s just say you’re more likely to detonate than simply spark an argument. One of the most important things that I learned, again, a concept that my parents introduced to me from marriage encounter, is that the problem with most arguments is that you spend your time pointing fingers at one another; blaming each other. “Well, maybe I wouldn’t have said THIS, if you wouldn’t have done THAT!” Couples out there, you know what I’m saying. We’ve all done this–you know, I know it, so let’s just admit it! Own up to it, people! We’re blamers! In the spirit of self-preservation, it’s much easier to say that a situation went sideways because of what THEY did than it is to admit that we might hold some blame ourselves. But, alas, admit it what we must do, and what I learned is that if, during my processing time, I took a minute to look at my behavior, review my words, my actions, I would realize that I wasn’t without fault.
I feel like it’s important to pause here and take a minute and discuss the exceptions. We live in a society where gaslighting is more prevalent than ever and narcissism is favored over maturity, so I feel the need to say this. I am not talking about instances of abuse here. If you are being physically or mentally abused, if you’re partner is an addict of some kind, that isn’t your fault and I don’t want you to blame yourself or figure out ways that you can make it better. Don’t let words of wisdom become fodder for enablement. Get yourself to safety, then get yourself to therapy. Your partner will have to find their own way out. When circumstances are that extreme, the offender will not change until he/she/they decide to change themselves. The best thing that you can do is to be honest about your situation, ask for the help that you need, and step away. Easier said, then done, I realize, but nonetheless important.
Now that we have that clear, what I’m saying is that sometimes you have to take that finger that you’re pointing at someone else and turn it back on yourself. It’s unlikely that both of you demonstrated 5 star behavior in the heat of the moment. When you acknowledge that, it’s much easier to give and receive grace, and ultimately resolve the situation. We’re all human and we’re all going to make mistakes, pretending that you’re above that isn’t constructive….or correct for that matter. Even in the best of unions, you can’t spend that much time with a person and have life go swimmingly all of the time. It would be stupendous if it worked that way, but it doesn’t, and after years together you’ll realize that even little, inconsequential things can drive you nuts. How you fold the bath towels, how you load the dishwasher, where you put dirty laundry, buying name brand versus generic potato chips. Then, you have the big things, too. What if you don’t agree on parenting styles? Can the styles that each of you have co-exist? What if you disagree about how to parent through a particularly difficult situation like poor academic performance or your kid being bullied at school? Sometimes, without you realizing it, you’re building up a stack of little annoyances and then you try to prop a big annoyance on top of the stack and the whole thing comes crumbling down.
One of the best things that I ever read about relationships came from Randy Pausch. He was a professor at CMU who passed away from cancer, but before he went, he wrote a book called The Last Lecture. In it, he talks a bit about how life changed after his diagnosis. One of the examples that he gives is that he would leave dirty, or only semi-dirty laundry on the floor in their bedroom. This drove his wife nuts, but they decided that they didn’t want to spend the time that they had left together arguing about laundry piles. So, his wife would just kick the pile into a corner and move on with her day. That kind of perspective is a gift. After reading that, I decided that if I asked my husband to do something, I would not complain about how he did it. Did the task get done? Yes. So, does it matter exactly how that happened? Typically, no. Like Dr. Pausch, my husband also has a sweet spot of clothing–on our bedroom floor–that’s not quite dirty, not quite clean. That pile drives me crazy! But now, I kick it into a smaller, neater pile and move on with my day. Life is short and it’s precious, I don’t want to waste energy or brain cells going nuts over some laundry. Letting go of some of those little things makes choosing to love your partner a lot easier on any given day.
Again, don’t get on your high horse thinking that you don’t have any quirks or behaviors that annoy your partner. You definitely do. We’re all annoying in one aspect or another. When choosing your life partner, you have to look at which annoyances you can live with and which you can’t. If too many stack up in the “can’t” column, it might be time to move on. Choosing to love that person through the tough days might be more than you can do. Loving another person in any capacity, even our friendships or our kids, is never easy–or at least not easy all of the time. I think that we can all agree, though, that when you find your person or your people, they’re worth the effort to hang onto. So, admit how you feel, talk about how you feel, and be ready to receive how they feel. Choose love…and while you’re at it, make sure to throw a little love for yourself in there, too. Wishing you all the best~Lorie