“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
The Marriage Files 