It’s Renovation Time

We have been doing some work on our home, and mostly things have gone well, but…there have been a few things that have gone wrong.

Just like any marriage.

Sometimes it’s renovation time. Time to change things a little. These times happen, in my opinion like this.

1. You get engaged, buy a dress, have a wedding day, full of love, music, dancing, speeches, and away you go.
2. Then the marriage really begins, and you have to renovate your life, rearrange, share decisions, make compromises in this new life, new way of living.
3. Next it’s kids. That’s a big renovation, a whole new set of rules. Really it’s like building a new house. Who does what, when and how? Managing, well just about everything, find out how to negotiate the housework, the budget, the discipline, I could go on, but you get my meaning.
4. Then just like that, the kids are gone, grown up, finding their own way, and as much as you’d like to renovate their lives so it’s perfect, that never works. As the Fleetwood Mac song says “You can go your own way”.
5. Now it’s back to being just the two of us. What do we do now? We renovate, downsize, find each other again. Remember that no matter what, the marriage is more important than anything. Yes, you think you love your kids more than anyone, but the truth as I see it, is you must always love your husband or wife first, because through all of the renovations, big, small, and everything in between, that’s how you keep a marriage strong.
6. Grandchildren come, and fill your heart, your family grows and grows, ours certainly has, but come the end of the day, and no matter what else is going on, you have each other.
7. Parents die, and who can comfort you more than anyone else? The one you married all those years ago.
8. At the end of the day, you are left with each other, to nurture, love, and occasionally renovate

So, you see just as we do a little renovate on our home, we are always renovating our marriages.

Have a wonderful day

Dominique xoxo

Watch Henry Fonda explain the true meaning of LOVE

In the movie Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) Henry Fonda’s character explains to his step-daughter, the true meaning of love…watch this clip, it’s fantastic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVg55U7Ux84

Be There

Gosh, it’s been a really hard month.
Here’s the thing, my husband has my back and that’s the BEST thing he can do for me.
He stands by me, believes in me, listens to me as I vent about, well, everything, tells me when I need to forgive, or ask for forgiveness.
Our marriage is nowhere near perfect, but looking after each other is what we do best.
So, for today, support each other, share with each other, see each others needs, but mostly…be there.

Hard For Me To Say “I’m Sorry”

I’ve had a realisation in the last few days that I’ve been very angry since my Dad died last Christmas. I’m told it’s one of the steps of grief, but that doesn’t really help. Knowing that is not the answer, I need to learn how to deal with the anger.

Sadly the one who is at the other side of my anger is my husband. It’s caused me to jump on him for things that normally wouldn’t bother me, and I have found myself saying the meanest things

My husband is a forgiving man, he’s just built that way, but my anger has caused us to have some of the worse fights we’ve had in a very long time.

So what can I do about this anger? Truthfully I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules or are there really any answers? I know counting to 10 is supposed to help, but if I get angry too quickly, that 10 second countdown is long missed. I think talking to a trusted friend is a really good way to cope, but I’m not always good at that either, so I’ve found that writing it down is the most helpful for me. This is something I do regularly, not in the midst of an argument, but when I am quiet and can put into words, that only I need to understand, my feelings about everything that’s going on, because it’s not only about my Dad dying, it’s also about my illness and loneliness, and therefore my inability to do everything for myself, hard for someone who is normally pretty capable, if I do say myself. I’m obviously a slow learner, but I’m getting there.

Being grateful definitely makes a huge difference, but it doesn’t make me perfect.

The most important thing of all is to say sorry, it doesn’t mean I’m always wrong, but I have to apologise for the way I say things.

My husband is not always the best at saying sorry, he just moves on, but he’s learning too. He sure is forgiving though.

Marriage Magic?

It’s bad news. There’s no such thing.

Certainly you can meet someone and fall in love, my husband fell in love with me through a door, when he heard me sing, my Dad saw my Mum from across the street and said “I’m going to marry that woman”.

Right then might feel like magic, and those first day, weeks or even months might feel like magic, but it’s what happens next, in the years to come that create a long lasting marriage with lifelong love.

You have to make the magic happen and unfortunately this story doesn’t come with a magical Oz behind the curtain making it all happen, but then how did that work out? It was all lies and deception. Am I getting your attention?

When we get a new car we wash it all the time, have the routine services, as time goes on and a little scratch turns up here and there (those supermarket trolleys are the worse), and we care for it a little less with each advancing year BUT we do fill it up with petrol, and we do continue those routine services, because without these we’d be going nowhere, and that’s the same with marriage.

Once the bouquet has been thrown, and you’ve been on the honeymoon, you have to unpack the bags and do the washing, now that’s the first scratch on the car. Who is going to do this task?

And so it goes on.

Who cooks?

Who cleans?

Who does the grocery shopping?

Who pays the bills?

Who does the gutters?

Who makes the big decisions? Actually you have to work out how to do this one together.

Who puts out the bin?

Who is going to take the kids to school?

Who, who, who or is that whom?

“In this day of liberation” as the song goes, it can’t be assumed that these are male or female chores anymore, so we have to figure out what works in our homes, for better or worse.

In all relationships compromises must be made, but you have to figure out which things you’re happy to compromise on and which ones you can’t, and even then, sometimes you just might have to back down.

Some will say they do all of these things together, good luck to them, I’m absolutely certain in my observations that this is not true. We still tend to go toward the traditional roles, but why? There is no need to continue in this way, do what works for you.

Argue kindly, be true to yourself, be vulnerable, be real, don’t point the finger, don’t be accusing, remember why you love in the first place.

Then through the years and the trouble and the toil, you’ll find your own kind of magic.

It’s simply called love.

 

 

It’s not always easy, but never too hard

“It’s not always easy, but never too hard”, that’s a lyric from a song I wrote years ago, and for some reason it’s been spinning around in my head for the last few days. The original song is about family, friends and life in general, but let’s see how to apply it to marriage.

 

Clearly, it’s not always easy. Gosh there are a million country songs written about ‘ me wife done burnt the dinner” or how “me husband drunk too much whiskey”. Thankfully, these are not my experience, mainly because my husband doesn’t drink whiskey, actually he drinks very little at all, and it’s been a while since I burnt dinner, but like any couple we have our difficulties. I mean seriously, why can’t you put the bowl in the dishwasher rather than the sink, it’s simple geography. On the whole they’re pretty small things, but it’s the small things that drive you crazy, get under your skin and blow up into big things. Really big things, and that’s where the anger turns from an underlying hum to a full blown volcano.

 

I’ve been there. I’ve done. Don’t think for a minute we got to 37 years without a few major blowouts.

 

The trouble is, when it gets to the stage of being a blowout, and you say, or even worse yell and scream, all the things you’ve kept inside, you say things you can’t take back. It’s incredibly easy to be so fired up in the moment that losing control almost seems inevitable.

 

I’ve been there too.

 

So what’s the answer? Who knows? I don’t have all of the answers, in fact I have very few and some have taken me a long time to figure out. For example if I want something done around the house or garden that I can’t (or won’t) do myself, there is no point saying “can you cut back the trees?”, no, my husband works better when he has an idea of a deadline otherwise it sits in the back of his mind until I’ve asked 10 times and then I become the very nagging wife I loathe. So, now when I want those trees cut back I say “Do you think you could please cut back the trees this weekend?” Now, here’s the thing, I’m still asking which gives him permission to say no, but I’ve given him an idea of my expectations. Most of the time he will do the chores I ask for, occasionally, he will say “Can it wait till next weeK”, well of course, now we have agreement and all is good.

 

That’s where the “never too hard” part of my lyric comes in, at least for me. You see once you figure out some of these roadblocks you can overcome them in simple ways. I found years ago that saying things like “can you just chuck your laundry in that basket that would really help me?” were useful ways of asking for what I wanted.

 

Something else I feel compelled to share, we had 3 kids by the time I was 24 and my husband was 28, and it has taken us a lot of bumps in the road, both literal and metaphorical, to come this far. It’s possible to get through the dark, stormy days, without a storm, you’ll never see a rainbow.

 

One last thing…

No begging, no nagging, just loving kindness

Love

Dominique xoxo

Humility and the Love of a Good Man

I don’t write as much on the Marriage Files as much as I feel I should, or even as I would like to, mainly because I’ve been quite unwell and as a result typing is difficult, so I must get one of those voice recognition thingy’s…like that? That’s the technical name.

Anyway, enough about me I want to talk about us, well mainly him. Last year began a particularly bad year with my health (there I go again talking about me), and as I discussed in a previous post titled “In Sickness”, my husband has, not just stepped up, he’s run a marathon, and then some, like the 72 steps to the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you know the ones? Rocky ran up, and cheered for himself when he got to the top. Well my husband never cheers for himself.

He never complains that he has to iron his own shirts.

He never complains that his lunches are made in bulk, all the same, and frozen.

He never complains that the vacuuming, dusting or let’s face it, any house work isn’t done.

He never complains (this is a big one) that he has to do the grocery shopping on the way home from a long day at work.

He never complains that he has to have a second job because I can’t even have one job.

He never complains that I only cook ever 2-3 weeks when I’m feeling okay and freeze a heap of meals, so he can have microwave dinners.

When I thank him, he just says “it’s my job and I love you so much”, why and how did I get so lucky?

The truth is, I don’t know. I do the best I can with what I can do. We laugh a lot, I do see the funny side of pretty much everything in life, and that keeps him amused. We live in our own little world these days. We see our kids and grandkids when we can, sadly it’s not often enough, but he says he’s happy to be at home with me.

This past year has shown me what true humility looks like, and it looks like my husband.

 

Grief

It’s a really hard way to start the new year, but here we go. In the past 1½ years we have both lost our fathers. Yes, they were both in there 80’s, his well into his 80’s, and mine just ticked over, but their age doesn’t matter because the grief is just the same. It doesn’t matter how long they may have been sick, whether their passing was expected or not. It hurts.

Support is key. My grief is still so raw, as my father only passed a few short weeks ago, and I feel so incredibly numb. My husband isn’t feeling it as badly anymore, but he is still feeling it, and with the passing of my Dad it’s brought it all up again.

So what can we do for each other? Not much really, not in a practical sense. We can listen to each other as we reminisce, hold each other as tears fall, be tolerant when anger rises in those moments when really what we feel is fury over our loss, but above all, just love each other as we navigate our grief. There’s no rule book, no specific directions for the way it should go, just love.

“In Sickness”

I haven’t written anything on the Marriage Files for a really long time, and I apologise for that. The truth is I’ve been quite unwell, and just haven’t had the energy to put words together to tell you my thoughts on marriage.

I’ve decided to talk about “in sickness”, because that’s where we’re at right now.

I’ve lived with dreadful migraines since I was a young girl, and as I’ve gotten older, they’ve gotten worse. Since April of this year I haven’t had 1 day without pain, and to add insult to injury, I’ve had a thing called Transient Global Amnesia (TGA).

 

Ok, so you think I’m talking about me? No, this is where real love comes in. My husband, of 37 years has been absolutely amazing. He is comforting, kind, loving, encouraging, speaks softly to me when I’m down, and never for one minute has he given up on me, during what has been a genuinely difficult time. Not once has he complained that the house isn’t as clean as usual, or that I don’t want to go anywhere, or that on his way home from a long day at work he has to do the grocery shopping (let’s face it how many men do that?), then walks our dog. He puts the dishwasher on and unloads it because he knows that it hurts my head, and when I cry he holds me and tells me I’m beautiful.

All of the medication and therapy in the world (and I’ve tried it all) doesn’t help as much as his kind, loving words, the way he holds me and strokes my head, and all of the other things he does to make my world as comfortable as possible.

He is truly living up to the vow “in sickness”.

I hope you are healthy and happy today.

Dominique x

What’s Your Vision?

Do you even have one? When we got married I didn’t even know what vision was, I was barely thinking a day ahead. I knew I loved this guy, I felt butterflies in my tummy even when I thought about him, but looking ahead, having a plan, or a vision for our life, no, I did not. But as the years went on, and I…we…matured and got through some pretty tough times, a vision started to emerge. At the time I didn’t really know what it was, but as time went on I learnt what it was and how important it really was.

So what was the vision for us? It’s quite simple really, that we always talk, and that we always, always, always put us before everything and everyone else. I know it may sound selfish given that we have 3 children, but it’s imperative. Why? Because they eventually leave and we will be left with each other.

So here we are 2 weeks away from our 36^th wedding anniversary, the kids are all grown up and married themselves, and we are doing well, actually better than that, we’re doing great.

What’s your vision? Do you have a dream for your marriage? Maybe it’s time to have one. Don’t over complicate it, keep it simple.