Redefining Relationship Roles

I’m reading a really great book entitled “Committed” by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love,” which I still haven’t read.  I chose to read her latest book because it deals with her apprehension with getting married a second time.  It’s a great read for anyone who wants to be married or is married for the first, second, third or umpteenth time.  Many of the lessons she imparts are certainly ones I’ve learned in my soon-to-be 10 years of marriage but I believe many of these things are not taught or passed on from others who have happy marriages.  I also think people hide behind the facade of a happy marriage when something drastic is really missing from it.  I highly suggest this read for anyone who wants to understand where their marriage is, has gone wrong or to prevent any misfortune including divorce.  It also gives a nice perspective on how devastating divorce is and reminded me of a previously referenced article on how it’s not all that great for the parties involved.  

I have found it has helped me articulate my own changing definition of marriage and the relationship I maintain with it and how it influences the relationship with my husband.  I certainly do not define it in the same way as I did when I got married and even as recently as a few months ago.  What has stuck with me most of all is something that I had already had conversations about in the past:  marriage, until quite recently, has never been something we choose out of love.  It was often something that chose us due to our familial affiliation, cultural role or functional purpose due to our gender.  

To ask of our spouse to be our confidant, our best friend, our lover, our love and our partner in life is a big responsibility for any one person to live up to.  It is no wonder divorce has prevailed in half of all marriages.  Many of us married under incorrect assumptions of what our marriage should be.  I’m not saying marriage becomes this cold, loveless union but quite the opposite.  It becomes a loving, tender, caring, supportive bond with another individual.   One should consider what love is versus what being in love is.  Love is caring for someone when illness steals away any memories of your spouse knowing who you are.  Love is carrying a frail body from the bathtub to the bed.  Love is reteaching someone to walk or to talk.  It is always supporting, always loving (without conditions) and always being willing to give up some prideful ego in the process.  Love transcends time, location, age, race, sexual orientation and human error.  So when two people marry, somehow they mistake being “in love” as love and when that fades (which it will), they think they can’t be married any longer.  This is why gay marriage is no different than straight marriage.  Marriage has nothing to do with religion, making babies or being in love but it has everything to do with partnership and love.

Proper Communication Skills: It Takes Two

As I’ve gone through life, my marriage and have heard the relationship woes of others I’ve come to the conclusion that many people are not as good at communicating as they think they are.  There are a lot of assumptions made by all of us that amass into unnecessary difficulty and stress.  Two skills all of us can never perfect but easily improve are active listening and clearly communicating what we feel.  

Active listening is not just about hearing what someone says, nodding your head and then talking to make the other person listen to you.  Actively listening is just that; listening and actively reiterating what it was the other person said.  It is neither saying what you think they should have said nor twisting what they said, but acknowledging what it is they just said.  Sometimes, we say things to mean one thing but they are misinterpreted as another because we weren’t listening actively.  Then a disagreement begins.  

The second part of communication requires you to know yourself well.  It consists of communicating what it is you want to say in a manner that conveys what it is you mean.  I know that sounds really simple but it can be quite difficult if you are not in tune with your feelings.  Being able to express your feelings takes work as is communicating them with someone who will actively listening to you.  

I’ll tell a story to demonstrate.  Let’s say we’re dealing with a couple where the husband works and the wife is responsible for all domestic matters.  She takes and receives their two kids from school, cooks, cleans, volunteers at the school and also takes responsibility for some of their children’s classmates when their parents are stuck at work.  To say her days are busy is an understatement.  Between the activities their kids are involved in and her time helping out at the school, her days fly by.  

Her husband leaves for work shortly before she takes the kids to school.  He often comes home after 10 hours at work tired and a bit cranky because he hasn’t been able to run as much as he used to.  He wants to be able to come home, change, run and then grab dinner, but the kids look forward to time with their dad as soon as he is through the door.  He hasn’t expressed his desire to run to his wife but often complains that the dinners she is making are too early in the evening for him and often says he’s not hungry.  She finds this to be odd, considering the kids need to eat before they do their homework, play and then go to bed.  She knows he knows she can’t make dinner later and is frustrated with him.  He is using her making dinner too early as a cover for his real desire to run when he gets home.  If he could express to his wife that he really wants to come home, take a 30 minute run and then join the family for dinner he would feel less stressed and available to spend time with her and the kids.  If she can truly hear his request as a way for him to relax and unwind so that he can really enjoy his family, this should not be something that would upset her.  Since they usually eat within 30-45 minutes after he comes home anyway, it would not interfere with their evening routine.  If he can’t communicate his desires to her, she’s going to become upset with him, he’s going to feel misunderstood and some type of longer term hurt and frustration will result and ultimately manifest itself as other problems within the relationship.

When you feel something, express it for what it is.  Do not try to cover it with another complaint, or describe it in a way that leaves what you say up for interpretation.  When someone is expressing what they feel to you, hear the words for what they are and do not try to misinterpret them.  It takes these two tools to have productive, healthy and meaningful conversations and relationships with others.

Part Three: Fundamentals for Maintaining a Merry Marriage

Part’s One and Two of this series can be found in earlier posts.   There you will find that my definition of marriage is not just for the traditional husband and wife but for anyone in a committed relationship.  

With January coming to a close, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.  I feel the need to write about a simple fundamental that applies not only to this day but to the rest of the year.  Do not have so many expectations!  I hate hearing stories of the woman who expected to be proposed to on Valentine’s, the man who was expecting his long, lost love to magically reappear, people expecting roses, gifts, candy, cards, romantic dinners and champagne by the fire. What’s wrong with all of this is that you are expecting something and maybe even too much.  If you find Valentine’s Day and the rest of your life filled with wishful thinking, ask yourself these questions:  Do you go through your life with an expectation or do you just enjoy it for what it is?  Do you ever feel pleasantly surprised by your partner or are you constantly disappointed because your expectations aren’t being met?  Many people find themselves in the latter group but think the other person is to blame.  This is incorrect.  Do not expect everything and you’ll be grateful for each and every thing you receive.  

Are You in Love with Not Getting What You Want?

In your relationships, do you give in, concede and just let things be even though you know you don’t want to?  After you agree to something with your partner do you feel exhausted?  Do you ever desire to receive something (sometimes anything!) from your partner but feel that it’s just impossible?  

If any of these sound familiar, you may be in love with not getting what you want.  

When we’re in love with not getting what we want we sacrifice ourselves, sometimes unknowingly, in order to maintain peace and happiness within the relationship.  This may make your partner happy but it’s unlikely to be making you happy.  If you’re not feeling it now, you will eventually.  You will wake up one day and realize your pain.  You’ll find that the attempts to please someone else have been making you miserable.  

This is going to be a tough day but one you can get through.  You’ll be forced to evaluate the relationship and most importantly, your behavior.  You will decide if you want to make yourself in love with getting what you want.  You will decide if you want to remain in the relationship.  You will come to a conclusion that is best for you now, not what’s best for the you who was in love with not getting what you wanted.  

Stopping Your Revolving Door

I hear this a lot from both friends and clients when they’re telling me about an unfortunate situation, “This always happens to me.”  

Why does a situation always happen to someone?  Do they just have bad luck?  Is the world out to get them?  Is there any chance this can be stopped?

Everyone has a difference of opinion on this but I will say that a repeating pattern in your life is the result of you and the circumstances you attract.  You either continue to surround yourself with the people or situations which create the reoccurring event, or react to a behavior in the same manner every time.  You’re bound to end with the same result and question of “why does this keep happening to me?”

I’ll make this really simple.  If I desire a salad for lunch but instead I buy bread, peanut butter and jelly, I’m pretty likely to end up with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of a salad, right?   Our revolving patterns are the same thing!   We ultimately choose what we want.  We have to obtain the tools to create what it is we want.

To make this a bit more life-like, I’ll use an example.  Let’s say when I am hurt by what someone said, I want to listen, talk calmly and express my feelings in a very deliberate, caring way.  However, when I become hurt maybe I walk out of a room at the sound of conflict or shout to get my point across.   I’m choosing to make that PB&J when I really wanted the salad.  Over time, it not only gets tiring for those I'm in conflict with but I get tired of it, too.  When we’re just not sure how to stop falling into the same habits and patterns, we need a nudge out of them.  Some of us are able to do this on our own and some of us just need a little guidance and support to change revolving patterns.

Part Two: Fundamentals for Creating a Merry "Marriage"

So, the first part of my series on a Merry Marriage was focused on dealing with holiday stress.  That is such a small portion of the year, I wanted to provide you with tips on how to maintain happiness in your marriage or really, in any romantic relationship you may find yourself in.  If you exhibit great behaviors while you’re dating, it only helps success in your relationship and marriage as it grows.  Being married is not the time to become a responsible partner.

I’ve always thought about a romantic relationship as a seed.  You choose to put it in the ground together and care for it from there.  With proper care, it grows, blossoms and matures.  Some people pull the seed out of the ground before it even had a chance to become anything and others improperly care for it because they’re not sure what to do.  Like it or not, our parents were our relationship role models and sometimes, we learned some things that aren't very productive.  

Some relationships start with the seed in the wrong soil (e.g. getting married or hooking up for the wrong reasons) or by planting it in the wrong season (e.g. advancing a relationship too quickly).  This does not mean the relationship is a total failure.  Failure is not having any success at all.  I have never heard anyone come out of a relationship and not be able to recall at least one good thing about the relationship, at any point.  Even if it’s only one good thing that you carry with you, that is perfectly okay.  We tend to be quite hard on ourselves when it comes to relationship successes and failures.  

For many, success means perfection all of the time and failure means, something, even just one thing, sucks.

There is a huge middle ground there that gets missed.  We cannot expect perfection all of the time nor should one error be cause for relationship dissolution.  However, we often see these types of situations play out.  One argument causes a relationship to falter.  

There is a lot of give and take in a relationship and sometimes one person may be giving or taking more than the other and likely one day, the other person will do the same.  Now, knowing when that balance is exhausted and the relationship is 

one-sided can be a tricky circumstance to navigate on your own but know you don’t have to because I am here to navigate it with you.

Experience Keeping the Merry in Marriage Part One: During the holidays

The holidays are always a stressful time for many couples, whether you’re married or not.  It starts with “where do we go first?” or “which family do we visit this year?”  It’s a monetary and physical strain when you find yourself packing up into a car or plane to your destination.  Gifts wrapped and sent?  Check.  Packed clothing for the colder/warmer weather?  Check.  Pet sitter?  Check.  Holiday cards sent?  Check.  House secure and neighbors notified?  Check.  Thermostat?  Timers?  Alarm?  Old food discarded?  Check, check, check, check.  There’s a lot of stress in leaving for the holidays before you even go anywhere!

You find yourself fighting crowds while trying to relax so you can prepare to spend the holidays busy with family.  You’re also trying to rest up and recharge in order to return to work refreshed and avoid getting the seasonal cold or worse, a flu.  How can this all be possible?  I think about the many times my family would see me and my mom would say, “You (or your husband) look so tired.”  Of course we did!  We just drove 14 hours to get  here, or got up at 4:00 a.m. to be at the airport and we’ve been working like mad just one day before getting here.  So, we started to look at the amount of “stress induced” versus the “stress reduced”.

This is why my husband and I stopped traveling for holidays.  We found it was draining the same energy we were trying to recharge while away from work.  We love our families but after the total cost, even when frequent flier miles could be used, the stress of taking care of all of the details, in addition to having to rush home to get set for work again was far more draining than satisfying.  

We have never been believers in using one day of the year to celebrate anything, be it a birthday, an anniversary, or a holi-day.  It just doesn’t make financial sense for us to pay to add an extra layer of stress into our lives.  We agreed to discontinue on a path that wasn’t making us feel satisfied, when it was supposed to.  We’ve come to spend most of the major holidays with friends and try not to travel for more than one holiday or occasion per year.   Just yesterday, we debating driving 33 hours or so to family for Christmas.  Using the rule of “stress induced” versus “stress reduced” made us realize staying home this year is just fine.  

Many people are rushing around during the holidays but if you’re finding less than satisfactory fulfillment in your life during this time, take some time to think about why.