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 The blush barely was off the roses in my wedding bouquet and we had brushed away the last of the rice from our shoulders. Married for almost a year, my husband and I were feeling less like newlyweds and more like weary honeymooners.
Since this was a second marriage for both of us, we definitely were a little older and wiser and certainly wary of any naďve beliefs that we would live happily ever after. We knew relationships take work. Pitfalls are many. With failed marriages between the two of us, we didn’t want to fall into those same pitfalls – or any new ones for that matter. When a friend asked me how I was enjoying married life my response was a candid, “Being single is easier; being married is better.” So, it was true. My husband and I had to make adjustments, some of which were noisy.
The summer winds blew in heated interactions between my husband and me and as we approached our first anniversary, I wondered why we seemed to be at odds. We were so much in love. Why were things becoming so difficult?
Whenever I’m experiencing stress in my life, I seem to handle it in this fashion:
1. Live in darkness until I wake up enough to know there’s a problem;
2. Talk it over with a trusted friend to vent a little and think more clearly;
3. Go within and try to find the solution;
4. Feel helpless and seek help through prayer, mediation, and listening.
With all due respect to those who recommend doing the fourth step first, what can I say? I’m a classic extrovert who too many times reaches out instead of within to find my solutions.
But it was in the midst of this dilemma, when I decided to listen to my Inner Voice (the one that speaks to me quietly, gently, and lovingly), that an interesting exercise came to me through obvious inspiration.
“Write down the top three things in order of their priority that really bug you about your husband,” my own Inner Voice suggested to me.
The first was easy. He always was trying to control me. Do this, don’t’ do that. Why don’t you call so-and-so? And when you do, be sure to say this. He was driving me crazy. Doesn’t he know and appreciate how free a spirit I am? I’m in my fifties; I don’t need a father figure towering over me telling me how to live my life! Writing this down gave me delicious satisfaction. I loved the idea of delineating his faults.
I went through the same exercise with the second and third things that bothered me about my husband and felt a smug satisfaction with all of them.
1. He tries to control me.
2. He dismisses me and my feelings.
3. He makes simple things complex.
That pretty much summed it up.
Then came the interesting twist: “Now, Diana,” my Inner Voice continued, “transpose the pronouns.” This made my list look like this:
1. I try to control him.
2. I dismiss him and his feelings.
3. I make simple things complex.
“Now, Diana, for one whole week, focus on item number 1.” My Inner Voice was gentle but unyielding.
It didn’t take long for all those subtle ways that I tried to control my husband to raise their ugly little heads. While my husband was more overt with his attempts to control me, mine were far more clandestine. Had I not asked to see, I might have missed the show! It was amazing at first, then enlightening, then humbling. My husband wasn’t the cause of my challenges in our marriage, I was!
Then what happened is what I liken to those minor miracles in life that we might miss if we aren’t looking; my husband stopped trying to control me! There were one or two minor attempts here and there, but for the most part, he seemed to ease up. Those times he did attempt to control me, I reacted differently and I had a lot more compassion for him. Our relationship was changing, getting better, and my husband didn’t have to do a thing!
When the second week arrived, I was well into my self-improvement program. I looked for all the ways I tried to dismiss him and his feelings. These infractions were fewer than the first week, but they were there and I tried meticulously to eliminate them.
By the third week, I was very skilled and found even less infractions. That was the wisdom of prioritizing my list. I got the hard stuff out of the way and the rest of the exercise became a lot of fun.
The rewards were fast to come, as well. Not only did I change the dynamics between my husband and me without offering him one suggestion for improvement, but also he seemed to appreciate the change, without fully understanding why. I know this because a little over a week into this three-week exercise, I was walking by my husband’s favorite resting place on the sofa and impulsively plopped myself on his lap and gave him a big hug and a sweet kiss.
“We sure do seem to be getting along a lot better lately!” he said in response to my spontaneous affection.
It was true. We were getting along a lot better. I once had someone advise me that if I wanted to change the dynamics in my marriage, I needed to change myself. It didn’t fully register at the time, but the seed was planted and, obviously, was in full bloom during this self-imposed, self-improvement course.
Now, whenever I see something about my husband that irritates me, I try to take a deep breath, be a little more patient while experiencing the emotion and letting it pass, and then realize he’s only a mirror reflecting my own behavior back at me. Tough lesson. Valuable information!
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