You know, by acknowledging that I am making mistakes in my marriage or that I can sometimes treat my husband in a way that I wouldn’t want him to treat me doesn’t mean I am letting him off the hook.
It doesn’t mean I am taking all the blame for our issues.
It just means I am really trying to take a look at the problems I bring to the table. My 50%. The stuff that I have control over.
We’ve gone through a lot in the past couple years. And things have gotten pretty ugly on more than one occasion.
Really ugly.
A couple weeks ago I think we were both ready to just walk away.
It is so easy to fixate on things that have happened in the past. It is so easy to hold a grudge, build up resentments, and then hang on to them for dear life.
It is really easy to forget why the fuck you got married in the first place.
When I married my husband I envisioned having a family. Designing, building, and creating a home together. Spending time with someone who cared about me. Having someone to comfortably sit next to without having to say a single thing.
The potential for all those things was there from the beginning. But it didn’t take long for other shit got in the way.
And before too long, all that stuff I dreamed about was a distant memory.
Instead, I spent most of my time focusing on the kids or on fighting or, more accurately, winning. I completely forgot about the big picture.
That stuff I envisioned in the beginning became unimportant, and making sure my husband realized he was wrong and I was right or refusing to do anything until I got an apology became the goal rather than all that other stuff I pictured on our wedding day.
I love my husband.
And I’m in this marriage for the long haul.
Even though we both may have said otherwise, my husband and I know each other better than anyone else on the planet.
We may not be best friends, but we do know each other best.
My friends know all the great things about me. They see the fun side of me. They see the best parts of me.
But none of them have seen me at my worst like my husband has.
There is a comfort in that.
My husband has seen the worst of me, like THE WORST, and he is still here. He still loves me. And he still wants me.
If I got into a fight with one of my friends, called them a fucking asshole, told them I had no idea why I was ever friends with them to begin with, and then gave them the cold shoulder for a few days, or weeks, maybe even months, I bet they’d wave goodbye and wash their hands of me for good.
But my husband hasn’t. He’s still here.
So maybe he is my best friend. Cause he’s stuck around through a whole bunch of bullshit.
I’ll be honest. There have been some times, especially after some pretty low lows, where I have wondered if it was time for me to go.
Where my husband and I have had gone a full fifteen rounds and where I was just convinced it was over. There was no way we would ever see eye to eye or be on the same page.
And then something happens. Somehow, we manage to make it through.
The other day I was reading an article written by Helen Keller entitled Three Days to See. In it, she writes about how people who have the gift of sight take it for granted.
“...Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. “Nothing in particular,” she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.”
She goes on to describe what she would want to see if she was given the gift of sight for just three days.
I thought about this.
I think it’s so easy to focus on all the things about our spouses that annoy us. The things they don’t do. Because inevitably, there is a pretty long list of things we do that eventually annoys the crap out of our spouses.
And we focus on that, instead of all the good things our spouses bring to the table.
I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Focusing on all those things that annoy me or the things my husband isn’t doing.
What if I only had three days left with my husband? What would I do? What would I miss?
I would miss laughing with him about funny things the kids did that day.
I would miss looking at his face.
I would miss his smell (for the most part).
I would miss his hands, one of my favorite parts of his body, because they are somehow strong, calloused, graceful and gentle all at the same time.
I would miss kissing him.
And I would miss knowing my way around his body and him really knowing his way around mine.
Sometimes we are a little (or a lot) unrealistic in our expectations of what married life will be like.
It is impossible to spend five or ten or twenty years with someone without them completely annoying the shit out of you in one way or another.
But what do you focus on? That annoying shit?
You don’t last very long when you do that. That’s when you call it quits.
But that’s playing the short game. Playing the short game only gets you so far.
There ‘s a good chance it will get you into another relationship and another short game.
That doesn’t interest me. And I’m no quitter. I’ve been focusing on the wrong stuff.
I haven’t even really started to color in the big picture I envisioned back when my husband put that ring on my finger.
It’s time to find some crayons.
I’m playing the long game.
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