In the comments section of an earlier post, BSharp wrote this:
I just wanted to mention that my therapist said, Blame is the noise your brain makes when you are not getting your needs met. It’s not always accurate or completely meaningful (though with the mouthwash, omg it sure can be!), the same way suicidal thoughts are the noise your brain makes to ask for help in treating depression. It needs to be addressed! But the topic of the thoughts may not lead to the outcome that actually fixes things and meets your needs.
For example, if you are a sleepdeprived new mom who thinks “My husband needs to do more!!!” that may be true, or it may simply be true that you need to do less, or to get more help elsewhere, or to sleep more and have time unburdened and make sure you belly laugh once a week. Possibly your partner needs to do more! But DEFINITELY you need to get your needs met.
and SquirrelBait responded with this:
This is exactly the kind of thing my therapist says too! And then I say that I can’t meet my own needs and then she tells me all the ways that I can and often she’s right…
And I have found those two comments SO EXTREMELY USEFUL, and so much better than letting my brain cycle endlessly in the things my spouse does / doesn’t do / should do / etc. category. This lets my brain get off that spinner and think about something more interesting, like identifying which needs might not be getting met, and are there ways that those COULD be met. I have a fair amount of time when my mind can chew on things, and it’s been really great to have something better to chew on than what I WAS chewing on.
A friend of mine who went to therapy with her husband said she found it useful when the therapist said something about how the goal of their sessions was to improve the relationship, whether that meant improving the marriage or whether it meant working on amicable and respectful divorce/co-parenting: either way, the goal was to improve communication and behavior. My friend said this took a lot of pressure off the sessions: they were no longer necessarily trying to SAVE THEIR MARRIAGE!!! (which she felt at the time could not be saved), but instead were two people trying to have a more pleasant and effective way of interacting. It shifted what she felt like they were trying to do, and made it feel achievable: like, even if they split (which is what she wanted at the time), the sessions wouldn’t be time wasted.
What I was wondering is if any of you have encountered other such useful concepts about marriage, in therapy or from a book or from a friend or from a page-a-day calendar or otherwise, just anything you find helpful in that recentering/redirecting kind of way, and if you would like to add them to the Chew On This pile.
I sometimes struggle to decide if these are helpful thoughts or enabling thoughts, but I read once about how marriage is hardest in your 40s but then becomes something to be grateful for again in your 50s. I’m 38, so this shouldn’t be comforting…but it still kind of is. And there’s also Jonathan Rauch’s book the Happiness Curve, which isn’t about marriage specifically but is about how happiness tends to increase after 50.
Oh! And also an article I read somewhere along the way about the value of coming to look at the sunset (or a bird, or a funny meme, or whatever it is) when your spouse wants you to. It’s such a small thing, but having someone to share with makes humans happier.
Yes! That second point is called “bids for attention” and is discussed in detail in this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/happily-ever-after/372573/. Not going to lie, I find it really helpful sometimes when my partner brings up esoteric details of his hobby, or my MIL texts me about something I’m completely uninterested in.
Agree on the “bids for attention.” And it’s not about turning towards your partner every time, just turning towards more often than you turn away. It also helped me understand why I found certain habits of my husbands’ deeply infuriating. Noise-cancelling headphones: I cannot even make a subtle bid; I’d have to be intrusive and leave no opening for a subtle rain-check signal and I’m almost certain to be rejected. Similarly, video games that cannot be paused for long stretches of time.
This is making me think about a couple of divorces/separations of famous people that happened when the couples split in their 50s/60s. Which is not to say that anyone’s divorce is right around the corner and people should despair, but I think it’s helpful to know that it’s never too late (to restructure your relationship, to decide the relationship is no longer meeting the participants’ needs, to change the definition of a happy ending . . . )
I know a couple that split in their late 50s after the husband had retired and their youngest daughter left home for university. I knew the husband because he was my boss in one of my first real, full time, adult jobs. After a year or so his high school sweetheart who had moved to California from where they grew up in Canada hired a private investigator to track him down because she’d never stopped thinking about him. They are now blissfully happy, married and living in New England. They have horses. He’s on the board of the local Habitat for Humanity. They run an online English pudding business.
I have always loved the story of his journey, because his entire life was upended, but he found a new one, and is now living his version of happily ever after. It’s never too late to start over, if that’s where life takes you.
And it doesn’t have to come about because of a conscious choice: my father in-law was widowed after more than 40 years of marriage. He ended up getting together with my mother and they were together for 15 years – married for 11 of them – before he passed this spring just shy of his 83rd birthday. And honestly, he was happier in his new life with her, living the retirement he’d always dreamed of when he was in the suburbs with his first wife: he was in the country with a devoted wife who was a fantastic cook and baker, he got a dog, a tractor, a chainsaw, an ATV and a truck, and wore plaid flannel shirts. They tapped trees and made maple syrup every spring. They had several interesting breeds of chickens. He lived his best life.
I’m 46, and have been with my husband for 27 years, and I think we are both of the opinion that almost 100% of any conflict we have is driven by the differences in how we communicate. For example, I am a far more precise communicator, so his more sloppy style can sometimes leave me hurt or frustrated if I don’t run what he says through an internal “translator”. On the flip side, because I’m so focused on language, I’ll go down some rabbit hole around rhetoric and lose sight of the underlying conflict, which makes him think I care more about “winning” the discussion than resolving the conflict. I think that context / understanding has been helpful to both of us, and we both try to correct for it in our discussions and in our reactions.
*Nodding in agreement*
Having different communication styles presents Some Challenges in marriage. On a good day, I remember that my spouse speaks in hyperbole when excited or stressed or talking about Important Political Issues, and that I shouldn’t take him literally. I am more neutral in my tone and weigh options when talking through a problem. It can come across as uninterested or dismissive. Sometimes our mismatch in styles causes us to feel worlds apart, even when we agree.
As of August I will have been married 31 years. Have they all been blissful? HHAAHAHAHAHHAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAA no. But when our youngest went off to college a couple of years ago, I found myself looking forward to having an empty nest with him. We are enjoying life together, and there were several points along the way where I thought that would be impossible.
My greatest piece of marital advice is this: go away together. Take a vacation, no matter how inexpensive or close to home it may need to be. Do it as often as you can possibly afford. Date nights are good, weekends away are fine, but there is nothing like a whole week alone together to make you remember why you ever liked this person in the first place, to talk about the big things you just can’t tackle on a date night at the movies or when the kids are in the hotel room with you, and to make new memories that sustain you when you’re tempted to poison his coffee.
“We can’t afford a vacation!” I would argue that most married couples can’t afford NOT to. Marriage can be so tough, daily life just grinds you down until all you ever talk about are the kids and the bills and all you ever see are the wet towels and the paper sack set on top of the garbage bin because HE CANNOT FIGURE OUT HOW TO PUT IN A NEW BAG, OMG WHY, IT IS NOT HARD.
*cough* Get a credit card that gives travel points and use it for groceries and gas until you have enough for plane tickets. Trawl Expedia and Skyscanner for off-season deals. Have a staycation in your own home where you send the kids to a parent’s or friend’s house, vow to do ZERO home maintenance that week, and treat your hometown like a vacation destination where you try new restaurants and museums.
At best, it will recharge you for a while. At worst, it will make your next steps more clear. Either way it’s money well-spent.
This sounds so smart, but it makes me a little sad. It’s not that we can’t afford the monetary cost; it’s that I have no idea who could possibly take my kids for that long. A long weekend is about all I can realistically ask for.
I’m in that boat too.
Cara, my husband and I take a week off together when the kids are in school or camp. It’s not the same as having 24 hours a day with only each other, but it allows us to hang out during the day together without kids and doesn’t require additional childcare.
So what does it say that my husband and I fight on vacation? Well, more precisely, I think we have different vacation styles, I annoy him and he gets cranky and rude. So I don’t try anymore. I should really try to find a different kind of vacation, with his and hers activities :)
After my husband & I’s first trip together after the kids were born ended with a giant blow out fight and me walking back to the hotel alone, my mom told me that sometimes couples’ trips are a chance to have the arguments you can’t have in front of the kids, and that’s ok too. Which doesn’t sound like it’s exactly your situation, but maybe that’s part of it. (Different vacation styles is also a thing. I let him sleep in now so I can do my wandering around and getting lost in the mornings without annoying him.)
After my husband & I’s first trip together after the kids were born ended with a giant blow out fight and me walking back to the hotel alone, my mom told me that sometimes couples’ trips are a chance to have the arguments you can’t have in front of the kids, and that’s ok too. Which doesn’t sound like it’s exactly your situation, but maybe that’s part of it. (Different vacation styles is also a thing. I let him sleep in now so I can do my wandering around and getting lost in the mornings without annoying him.)
If you’re a human being in any kind of relationship, even if it’s just one with yourself, then seek out the work of the therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab. I highly recommend checking out both her book and Instagram (not sponsored, don’t know her, just think she’s brilliant). If you can get your hands on her book, great, but either way, I highly recommend checking out her Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/nedratawwab/
She posts regularly with small snippets, bullet lists, and short videos with all kinds of therapist advice about relationships, boundary setting, and how to respond to real-life situations. It feels like just the right amount for my brain to, as you said, chew on in a productive way.
Oooh, I like this!
After 31 years, you’d think I’d be chock full of wisdom. Sadly, I am not. But the one thing that I am trying really hard to work on is remembering that he cannot read my mind [although, honestly? After 31 years, you’d think he could have learned this skill by now! ;-) ] and that it’s not fair of me to get mad if I haven’t articulated what I need/want from him.
Ooh that’s a good one.
Things I try to remember:
Studies have shown that the years with children living at home are the hardest on marriage.
If he is my best friend than that is how I should treat him.
His purpose is not to meet my every need, as mine is not to meet his.
The small things that make me crazy, sometimes have silly solutions. I didn’t like sharing the bathroom hand towel with my husband, but it wasn’t until my kids were teens until I realized that we can each have our own.
This post reminded me of the “Can This Marriage Be Saved” column in the Ladies Home Journal magazine
I’ve been divorced a long time so sadly cannot offer any advice.
When my husband and I first moved in together, I complained to my mom that he didn’t fold his clothes. He had a laundry basket for dirty clothes and another for clean. My mom said “it doesn’t bother him. So, you have a choice, let it go or do it yourself. Right now, you’re the only one that cares.” This has been so critical. He always kept the babies safe and cared for, so it wasn’t my business how he packed the diaper bag to take them out unless he asked for my opinion. He doesn’t care if the dishes sit in the sink overnight. So, I can choose to leave them until morning, at which point he washes them, or I can wash them. He’s under no obligation to do things the way I like them, and vice versa. (There are things he will clean before they bother me, too. We have different pain points in the house.) After decades together, we do know each other’s preferences and often will accommodate them, but it really helps to remember that the other person doesn’t have to care about what you care about.
The one caveat here is my husband would comfortably invite guests in at the drop of a hat without once thinking about cleaning up . I explained to him, as unfair as it is, most people still subconsciously or otherwise judge the woman for the messy house. It reflects poorly on me, not us. He understood my point and will now ask if it’s okay to have people over and/or what needs to be done, because he honestly doesn’t see it.
I can very much relate to this, Cara, that it might actually balance out okay (He cares more about tables/counters, I care more about floors. He cares more about the kitchen, I care more about the bathroom. etc…) were it not for the uneven gendered expectations.
It got really bad for the 7 years that his parents (very kindly and lovingly and wonderfully!) did part-time childcare for us 5 days per week because I was constantly working to a standard above my own and he never had to even meet his own standard.
Learning about attachment styles and working harder on myself to move towards healthy attachment has helped me the most. If both people have unhealthy attachment, it really does take two to create problems. I have learned that I can control my reaction which in turn has helped me be less critical. Oddly, when I’m less critical, I get more of what I want. At first I thought it was enabling but as long as I state my boundaries, it isn’t. Therapy has really helped me practice this in a safe space.
I am so glad to hear it was helpful. I named my second child after that therapist.
Bids for attention has been incredibly helpful for us too, and you can read more about them by looking up John and Julie Gottman. They are also the reason we consciously avoid contempt for each other.
There’s also the Relationship Handbook (linked in my name as my website) that has deeply shifted how often we fight, and how we fight. The key is recognizing when one of us is in a low mood, and consciously waiting it out rather than trying to address things then. It’s so tempting to try to discuss things right when we notice the issue, but that backfires for us. The problem will wait; the solution will not be found right now anyway. Ideally, the calm person has compassion on the miserable person, which can help them pull themselves out of the rough mood. Or, just put the fight on hold for a day. It’s not going anywhere! And we can come back to it when we’re on the same team again, at which point it’s a problem-solving session instead of a fight.
This sounds like good advice for dealing with issues with teens, too. I found it by trial and (much) error.
The thing that helps me the most is a line from a Money magazine article about the finances of a couple that had four kids, the youngest triplets. He went to the office every day and she felt as though she was drowning, so eventually they hired help with the justification that going into debt for a while would still be cheaper than divorce.
It might not apply to your situation, but a watershed moment for me was when I realized that I cannot control him in any way. The only person I can control is me.
We had been having the same fight for years and once I realized that my wanting him to change wasn’t going to solve anything, it shifted my perspective onto myself and what I could do. At the time I thought that meant leaving the marriage, but that shift in my perspective helped ease tension and we’ve since (mostly) worked through that particular issue. Maybe this is sort of the same thing as meeting your own needs.
When I need to recenter I’ll listen to a random Feeling Good podcast (David Burns and Rhonda something).
Not specifically marriage-related, but perhaps relevant nonetheless: My mom always gives the advice of “do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy.” I struggle with it, bc I *really really do* want to be right, but I think it makes a good point that sometimes it’s better to let go of being right and instead find a way that will make you happy.
Here’s an article about a book that seems to get at the heart of it for me. What if the little things are really the big things? https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/marriage-problems-fight-dishes/629526/
I don’t know if you always had some degree of these issues in your old house, but the new house seems to have turned up the heat. You negotiated for a housekeeper in agreeing to buy it, then the housekeeper stole from you. I know you had talked about the disequilibrium of that before, but I wonder if that is something you are still struggling to get over and no one is trying to make that better for you. More of a slow burn than a roaring fire, if you will. Forgive me if it’s an overreach, but when I chewed on this it’s where I landed.
This is a really good point! We don’t have a cleaner but I’ve been daydreaming about it for years. If I did decide to go for it and then that got taken away…I would be so upset.
Honestly, I have been working on boundaries in my marriage, and I don’t have any great knowledge to share about that except to say that I didn’t realize I was allowed to have boundaries with people I loved until fairly recently, and while setting them up is F#$%ing hard, it’s been so so so so so worthwhile.
I don’t have any marriage-specific advice. But I did do therapy, and something she would say was “You’re not responsible for other people’s feelings”. It took me a long time to really understand what that meant but, basically, to me, it means you don’t have to twist yourself in knots to make someone else happy. (I had parents with boundary issues.) You can just be who you are and, if they don’t like that, that’s their problem. But then that also means that they aren’t responsible for your feelings either. This relates to what other commenters have said too.
SAME. Once I understood (through therapy) that I was not responsible for managing my mom’s anger, I felt so much more free.
I don’t know how applicable this is to you but I think you will greatly enjoy this article: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/05/desire-paths-the-illicit-trails-that-defy-the-urban-planners
I weirdly apply this philosophy to my kids and adhd husband–when I am tearing my hair out that WILL NOT DO the thing that I want them to do (like not leave the couch blankets all over the floor/leave shoes in a messy pile) I try to think of a way to make it easier/more tolerable. They want to throw all the blankets in a messy pile so I put decorative basket on the floor in the entry and they throw the shoes in the shoe basket. It’s kinda gross and I don’t put MY shoes in there (I keep mine in my closet on a nice rack), but at least I’m not tripping over them every time I want to leave the house.
I know that this is a mental energy task but somehow I am less resentful when I think about as creating a desire path for the kids and their shoes rather than succumbing to other people’s slobbishness.
Magical article!
I love the article and the concept. It’s brilliant to see it as an analogy for dealing with your family’s annoying ways. This is definitely going in my ‘Useful Reframings’ toolbox.
I’m a social worker and one of our practice skills is to hold clients in ‘unconditional positive regard’. Basically, this means separating their actions from their worth as a human being and responding in an accepting, loving way when they make choices we wouldn’t make. If a client comes to me and tells me they have fallen out of sobriety, unconditional positive regard means seeing the pain they are in, the difficulty of staying sober, and the efforts they have made to get to this point, rather than beating them up about their mistakes or seeing them as failures. It doesn’t mean condoning a person’s actions if they are wrong but it does allow us to respond lovingly to them.
I realised at some point that I could do this with my clients but I wasn’t giving my partner the same grace. At some point in our marriage I started to see his actions and choices for how they impacted me rather than as complex decisions made by an individual. I had to make a conscious decision to hold him in positive regard (assume that his intentions were good).
Upr is mighty helpful when parenting teens. There are articles on the subject for teachers that are worth a look. I haven’t researched it in marriage. Maybe it isn’t recommended, I don’t know. This is purely my own experience and it worked for me. Our marriage was in a difficult place and counselling, change in both sides and a significant shift in my perspective made a difference.
I should say also, for any readers. This isn’t a safe strategy in an abusive relationship. A person impacted by coercive control or other types of family abuse would NOT be safe to apply unconditional positive regard and should NOT attempt to do so under any circumstances. If this is your situation, reader please seek advice from a helpline applicable in your country and I wish you well.
This has been so helpful to me this week. I have a family member in a mental health crisis right now, and this framing is getting me through.
Wow. This is all good advice. My husband and I are about to celebrate 26 years of marriage. I’m sure I have some sound advice, but I can’t think of any at the moment. We have 6 kids, and sometimes we are just two ships passing as we shuttle people around and clean up after them. It does feel different when we are able to go away together, almost like OH, I REMEMBER YOU AND I REMEMBER WHY I LIKE YOU.
My in laws have been our biggest difficulty over the years. My husband now sees that it was unhealthy to tell me not to speak up when they offended me. I don’t like to bottle stuff up. Otherwise, I think we’ve grown in many ways. Our youngest is starting high school, so it’ll be interesting to see how things shift when it is just the two of us.
I love that feeling, “oh, you, I REMEMBER YOU!”
I am not married and have no marriage advice, but I am just here to say that I would ABSOLUTELY pay GOOD MONEY for a Swistle blog excerpt page-a-day calendar!
A friend who has extremely high emotional intelligence was so frustrated by her husband’s coldness and lack of emotional engagement that she was contemplating divorce. They sought counseling and he was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. She learned to ask for what she needed, and he developed skills to cope with his neurodivegence. They’re now one of the happiest couples I know.
I’m not saying that Paul is on the spectrum, but….maybe seeking a counselor who has experience treating adults with low emotional intelligence would be helpful?
I am reminded of David Finch and his Journal of Best Practices (which has been reported on on NPR and is available on Libby)
I have chewed on this post since it first went up and decided to come back and read the very excellent advice of your readers. I have been married/cohabiting for a combined 18 years. It took me 16 years to see that we both had a real problem with our expectations of each other. We struggled with our monthly expenses because we both ate out for lunch during work because neither of us made food or prioritized grocery shopping, and then would have nothing at home for dinner either. After a long period of unhappiness and then a lot of shame on my part, I decided that the answer must be that I take on the burden of cooking and shopping. And now we have two kids and I’m a SAHM and I still do those things. If I had better boundaries back then I would have said that we both were responsible for cooking and shopping. I have always been a feminist and believed I should be treated equally and there should be division of labor in our relationship, but my shame over disappointing him was too strong a feeling for me to ignore at the time. I’ve been in therapy now for 5 years and I FINALLY am making connections about those past decisions that have really entrenched our issues. I’m getting better at delegating. I’m getting better at pursuing my own interests and taking a day or two to be independent (I call them writing retreats), where I buy the food I want to eat and don’t cook for anyone and don’t do dishes or change diapers or do laundry. My kids are 7 and 3, and it’s a challenge for him to solo parent for a day or two, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility to ask so I can focus on meeting my own needs.
So my advice to chew on is to pick one thing you feel like causes the most resentment and pull on the threads to find out why and how, and see if you can come up with a new way of dealing with the problem. I was annoyed at being the laundry collector and doer on top of the cook and shopper and never ending list of SAHM tasks. I got rid of multiple hampers throughout the house. Now there’s one set up next to the washer with four sorters, and the kids know to put dirty stuff there after baths. I don’t fold alone, I put the basket on the couch for my husband and 7 year old to help me with when we watch a show. I don’t care how badly my kid folds, he will get better with practice. If my husband wants his clothes to fit in the drawer, he attempts to fold neatly. If my husband’s clothes are on the floor, I ignore them. When he has nothing to wear he picks them up. When he wants something done quicker than I’m getting it to him, I tell him to start it on his own. I am still the primary laundry person because I do care more (I still believe in sorting) and my kids aren’t old enough to do it on their own, but I feel a lot less resentful because I put up some boundaries.
I feel like lately I’m surrounded by women who are trying, without success, to convince their male partners/spouses to do even the most basic household tasks or participate in conversations about equitable labor or just listen to them and pay attention when they say that they are frustrated/upset/tired. This, plus the fact that I am a woman in America who, y’know, reads the news, has left me with little time or patience for brainstorming strategies to get men to care about the women and children in their lives. *harumph*
At some point so much of this goes beyond laundry or dishes or “preferences” for how towels are folded. “Men can’t read our minds” is true but it isn’t mind reading to sit with your partner and come up with a plan for household tasks and actually listen and follow through on clearly communicated needs. Women who do the majority of home upkeep aren’t out of control for wanting to live in relatively clean, relatively orderly homes. What is out of control is the expectation that so many men have that they will get this labor for free without ever doing any of the work, physical or emotional. *double harumph*
I have a cousin who is a “nice guy” but who repeatedly and for years left his wife with their four children under 5 to fend for themselves at home. Our whole family was witness to him “forgetting” to do dishes or “not realizing” that the baby needed a diaper change. When his wife finally left and him and was successfully granted full custody of their children none of us were surprised except for him. His mother, my aunt, thought his ex was insane for leaving him until she visited his house and realized that after his wife had left him (but he still had shared custody his kids) they had all been sleeping on bare mattresses and wearing the same clothes all week because his “preference” was to not use sheets or pajamas which just created more laundry, in addition to other things that he thought were totally fine. My aunt ended up caring for the kids until the custody hearing and she never complained about his ex again.
Sorry, you asked for strategies not a gripe and a family horror story. I just feel like I’ve had this conversation so many times lately and I’m reaching primal scream levels of frustration.
Ok, actually useful advice: find time and space that is yours alone. Make space for yourself where you are the only one whose needs must be considered and just bathe in the lack of pressure and responsibility. You can only control yourself and your choices so choose some things in your life that are only for you. Time to myself is what recharges my battery and makes it possible for me to return to my family and do things like presume positive intentions or have difficult conversations with my spouse or have patience with my toddler. Going away with your spouse is great but going away for yourself, with or without friends, is even better in my opinion.
WHAT CASEY SAID.
“‘Men can’t read our minds’ is true but it isn’t mind reading to sit with your partner and come up with a plan for household tasks and actually listen and follow through on clearly communicated needs. Women who do the majority of home upkeep aren’t out of control for wanting to live in relatively clean, relatively orderly homes. What is out of control is the expectation that so many men have that they will get this labor for free without ever doing any of the work, physical or emotional.”
The best thing I ever did for my marriage was confess to my husband that I was fantasizing about divorce. I grew up in a culture of “divorce is not an option unless there is abuse or infidelity” and while consciously I didn’t ascribe to that idea, it was still embedded somewhere in my psyche . Like many couples my husband and I drifted emotionally as the daily stresses of work and kids took over our lives. I stuffed down the small hurts and injustices of our relationship for years because it felt like there was nothing I could do after I asked for what I needed and still nothing changed. Those small things added up over the years and eventually living in a family where it felt like I didn’t matter, and my only role was to take care of everyone else felt intolerable. Lest you think this was a case of me expecting my husband to read my mind all those years, we had had COUNTLESS discussions and arguments where we both asked for different things from each other. Things would get better temporarily but we always ended up falling back into bad patterns. When I finally reached my limit and was truly honest with my husband about where I was emotionally, it finally triggered us to get counseling.
Please know that I am NOT saying you should give your partner an ultimatum or threaten divorce try to “scare them straight”. I am saying that in many cases there is no amount of “positive thinking” that is going to change the situation. Especially if, once again, only one person is making an effort. In my case we had drifted apart emotionally and the annoyances I had over “small” infractions like household duties, was just a symptom of the bigger problem. Reframing and giving my partner the benefit of the doubt was helpful in keeping the peace but it didn’t get to the root of the problem that needed fixing. We needed a counselor to help us communicate better and help us break bad habits that had become ingrained over the years.
I was lucky in that my husband was willing to go to counseling and that it worked for us, I know not everyone is so lucky. However, even if we hadn’t worked things out and we decided on divorce, counseling was the key for us to figure that out too. Life is too short, and also life is long! It’s worth it to talk with someone and try to make things better.
Here is a quick article on signs that your relationship needs counseling:
https://www.gottman.com/blog/when-is-it-a-good-time-to-seek-counseling/#:~:text=%20When%20Is%20It%20A%20Good%20Time%20To,Gottman%20Institute%2C%20the%20creator%20of%20a…%20More%20
This is great perspective. I have realized that I always want to be right. I reflect on situations rationally, trying to consider all perspectives. But I also realized my husband didn’t take well to that focus.
So now I write up narratives in a FB post with “only me” as an audience. I can let off steam in this way. (I have also used a journal, but there is a chance those could be discovered and read.) This allows me to feel I’m “letting go” of the issue a bit, while also having the space to privately rant. Bonus, if I ever did need to go back to what I felt in the moment, I have a record of it.
Sometimes when my marriage is getting me down and I am playing the blame game, I spend my time thinking about things that just make ME happy. The list includes, for me, going to the gym with friends, walking in the woods by myself or with my friends, coffee dates with friends, taking a class to learn to paint, book club, etc.
Sometimes just having the list and thinking about ways to add to it is good enough. Other times, actively seeking ways to check off items on the list is important. Either way, the list is important because it is just about prioritizing my needs. I try to spend at least an hour a day on an activity just for me. I also try for that activity to be outside of my home. This gives me the space and ability to give my husband what he needs and give him grace when everything he does is annoying.
One other thing I do is protect my need for my time by saying “I am going” instead of asking for permission. It is a small change of language but an important one. I give lots of lead time by not saying it without any warning at a poor time of day but I insist on having my time. I usually bring up the week’s schedule on Sunday night and say, “I have meetings here and here, and I have classes booked at the gym on these days at these times”. Then he can do the same and we are both happy.
This is a Very Late Comment but I think about this post and comment thread all the time and I just read something so helpful so I’m going to tack it on here:
I subscribe to a newsletter called Culture Study with Anne Helen Petersen and she recently interviewed Kate Mangino about her book “Equal Partners”. The interview was FASCINATING and I am super keen to read the book. What really struck me was her labeling the role that many women take on in their homes as “The Noticer”, the person who makes the living environment more comfortable and inviting. Just having a label for that was so helpful for me when I think about the intangibles of domestic labor and marriage.
Here’s the link to the whole newsletter issue: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email