I turned on the television today and Marriage Boot Camp was on. For those of you unfamiliar with the premise of the show, they take couples who were previously on the show Bridezillas and allow us to peek into their marriage (because, let's be honest...we all want to know how many of these horrifically portrayed couples actually stay married). What struck me was just how many of these people had been married less than one year and how much their struggles were due to a history of misunderstanding and hurt. I experienced this struggle myself in my marriage, especially during the first year.
For those of you who know me and my husband, you know that we communicate very differently. If you ask me a question, you should be prepared and have time for an in-depth response. Seriously. I'll take you from A - Z to make sure you understand me. At the other end of the spectrum is my husband. If you ask him a question, you better be specific or have a follow up question prepared. He will answer exactly what you asked him. So there I was, in my first year of marriage, knowing that my husband isn't a talker - he's a listener. Every day that he came home from work, I asked him how his day was. And every day, his answer was the same - fine. That's it. No more, no less. I'd ask follow up questions and I'd get one word answers. After about three months of this, even though I knew that this was exactly who I married, I lost it. I woke up one Saturday morning, sat in the silence, looked over at my sleeping husband, and started bawling. I mean, bawling - big, nasty, runny nose tears. I took it to the bathroom so as not to wake my husband and have to give answers for a situation I barely understood... I could barely verbalize why I was so upset. As I sat crying in my ever melodramatic state, I envisioned that this silence epitomized the years to come - years in which the only voice I heard would be my own because my husband didn't talk to me. Stimulating conversation is like air to me - it keeps me alive. Couple his silence with my trust issues & melodrama and we had a ticking time bomb on our hands. If I may be completely honest, where there was silence, I managed to fill in the blanks of what his thoughts simply must have been... definitely not conducive to a healthy relationship. Well, when the soap opera melodrama that is my mind calmed down a bit, I thought logically through the whole thing. I figured that if he knew just how much this really bothered me and could understand why it bothered me, he'd be open to any suggestion I threw out to make it better.
The next day, I sat him down and told him that his silence made me feel like I was married to a stranger. I felt like I never knew what he was thinking and I simply came up with thoughts that I imagined must have been his. My words were met by confusion and hurt that I simply did not understand at first. Apparently, he thought he talked to me a lot! His perspective was completely different from mine! This was something I never imagined (which in hindsight was silly). I thought that he simply had to know how silent he really was and that he was just being who he always was when, in reality, he was making an effort to share with me more than he'd ever shared with anyone! My speech diminished his efforts and showed a lack of appreciation for them (meanwhile, I was thinking, how can I appreciate something I don't know I'm getting?). {I also later understood that I was asking him to be someone he never was, which ultimately can make someone feel like you don't really love them as they are, but neither of us discussed that at that moment.} After we got past the hurt and talked for a while, we discussed that he was accustomed to writing more than talking. I asked him if he'd be open to carrying a pocket sized notebook and jotting down thoughts to share with me in the evenings. That way, I could read them if he didn't feel like talking and he could remember them if he did feel like talking. He was open to the idea and so we tried it.
I'd love to wrap this post up by saying that idea solved all of our communication problems and we lived happily ever after, but we all know that nothing is that simple. Communication starts with understanding your spouse's perspective and committing to love them for who they are, but it continues with knowing what, how, and when to share to avoid much much bigger issues than this minor situation and that was something we were still learning. We'll save that for another post though.
Getting back to Marriage Boot Camp, it became clear to me that these people were so overwhelmed with months and years of feeling misunderstood and the hurt that accompanies it, that they were unwilling/unable to understand their spouse's perspective, which just created more misunderstanding and hurt. After spending many evenings feeling like my husband didn't/couldn't understand me, being hurt that he "didn't want to share his thoughts with me", getting sad, angry, frustrated, scared, etc. I decided to share all of these feelings. His (merciful) ability to listen through his own hurt kept that situation from degenerating into something far worse (that day anyway, lol).
~*CAT8*~
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
The Beginning of Forever...
I remember April 9th, 2007 - the day of my husband's (very untraditional) marriage proposal - like it was yesterday. We returned from Atlanta the week before and were now celebrating my first day at my new job. We were sitting in The Cheesecake Factory and I had a steaming plate of creamy mashed potatoes, tender pork chops with apple chutney, and broccoli sitting in front of me. We were having a conversation about people's mental states and whether or not it's ever truly possible to know someone if they want to keep something about themselves from you.
Let me give a little background here: I was in a very transitional emotional and mental head space, finally giving myself time to heal and grow after living through a hellish string of emotionally abusive and damaging relationships dating back to 2002. I had told myself on New Year's Day of 2007 that I would not get serious about anyone for a long time and that I'd let God be in control when I did. Cue the entry of this educated, compassionate, respectful, tall, gorgeous, Barry White voiced man with locs, a Queens swagger, and a slight Mississippi drawl a little over a week later. I immediately made it clear to him that I wasn't interested in a relationship and that marriage was even further from my mind. In fact, I told him that even if I started thinking about marriage, I'd accept nothing short of a 2 year engagement period.
Fast forward to April and here we were discussing how easily people hide their true selves from others. I believed that it was only under stress that people revealed their true selves to others. To emphasize just how deeply I believed what I was saying, I told him that, even though I was deeply attracted to him physically, mentally, and emotionally, and even if we dated for my requisite time period, I'd never marry him unless I saw him under extreme situations, specifically, crying, extremely angry, incredibly ecstatic, etc.. To this, he chuckled, as he often did when he knew he was about to render me speechless. He said, "So if I asked you to marry me right now, you'd say no?" {insert long pause coupled with dumbfounded look} Let me reiterate that I had convinced myself that I didn't want to be married ever; yet, my heart skipped a beat as I quickly realized that, not only did I want to be married, but that I wanted to be married to
thisman - he was my soulmate.
Fast forward 7 years and my husband and I have been married for a little less than 6 years. Soulmate or not, we have certainly had our ups and downs, our hardships and trials, our joys, successes, and failures. Few people had really talked to me in detail about the kind of struggles that most marriages inevitably face. Sure everyone said that we'd fight because of communication, money, and/or sex. But no one told me what to do, in a very real way, when you're so angry with the person you love more than anyone else that you can barely think. I thought I was all alone in my marital struggles and, of course, everyone had advised me not to share my troubles with anyone. So what was I supposed to do? I felt alone. Thankfully I had a handful of very trusted people I could talk to, but few of them were ever married. While they offered me the advice they thought best, it's hard to advise someone on something you've never experienced. My husband and I could have really benefitted from the advice of other married couples. In fact, had we known that the feelings we felt and the experiences we had weren't that uncommon, we would have both felt a lot less stress. My hope is that, with this blog, others can share their stories, anonymously or publicly, and how they got through the things that have the ability to make your soulmate into a thorn in your side and rip marriages apart. All I ask is that the stories and feelings be real. Perhaps this blog can help someone else who might be going through something.
Let the journey begin...
~*CAT8*~
Let me give a little background here: I was in a very transitional emotional and mental head space, finally giving myself time to heal and grow after living through a hellish string of emotionally abusive and damaging relationships dating back to 2002. I had told myself on New Year's Day of 2007 that I would not get serious about anyone for a long time and that I'd let God be in control when I did. Cue the entry of this educated, compassionate, respectful, tall, gorgeous, Barry White voiced man with locs, a Queens swagger, and a slight Mississippi drawl a little over a week later. I immediately made it clear to him that I wasn't interested in a relationship and that marriage was even further from my mind. In fact, I told him that even if I started thinking about marriage, I'd accept nothing short of a 2 year engagement period.
Fast forward to April and here we were discussing how easily people hide their true selves from others. I believed that it was only under stress that people revealed their true selves to others. To emphasize just how deeply I believed what I was saying, I told him that, even though I was deeply attracted to him physically, mentally, and emotionally, and even if we dated for my requisite time period, I'd never marry him unless I saw him under extreme situations, specifically, crying, extremely angry, incredibly ecstatic, etc.. To this, he chuckled, as he often did when he knew he was about to render me speechless. He said, "So if I asked you to marry me right now, you'd say no?" {insert long pause coupled with dumbfounded look} Let me reiterate that I had convinced myself that I didn't want to be married ever; yet, my heart skipped a beat as I quickly realized that, not only did I want to be married, but that I wanted to be married to
thisman - he was my soulmate.
Fast forward 7 years and my husband and I have been married for a little less than 6 years. Soulmate or not, we have certainly had our ups and downs, our hardships and trials, our joys, successes, and failures. Few people had really talked to me in detail about the kind of struggles that most marriages inevitably face. Sure everyone said that we'd fight because of communication, money, and/or sex. But no one told me what to do, in a very real way, when you're so angry with the person you love more than anyone else that you can barely think. I thought I was all alone in my marital struggles and, of course, everyone had advised me not to share my troubles with anyone. So what was I supposed to do? I felt alone. Thankfully I had a handful of very trusted people I could talk to, but few of them were ever married. While they offered me the advice they thought best, it's hard to advise someone on something you've never experienced. My husband and I could have really benefitted from the advice of other married couples. In fact, had we known that the feelings we felt and the experiences we had weren't that uncommon, we would have both felt a lot less stress. My hope is that, with this blog, others can share their stories, anonymously or publicly, and how they got through the things that have the ability to make your soulmate into a thorn in your side and rip marriages apart. All I ask is that the stories and feelings be real. Perhaps this blog can help someone else who might be going through something.
Let the journey begin...
~*CAT8*~
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