It’s Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage–and then I give you a chance to link up your own marriage posts at the bottom. Today I want to talk about perspective in marriage by being a little vulnerable and telling you about how I blew it this week–and how a birthday party reminded me what was important.
My husband and I have been tired, stressed, and apart quite a bit lately, which is never a good combination. We both have too much on our plates (I’m doing the final edits for 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, and booking four speaking tours, and he’s working hard at the hospital), and Keith has been away at a conference and on call a lot, so we’ve seen each other maybe 3 nights in two weeks. It’s not normal, this too shall pass, but it’s tough. It’s a season of distance in a marriage. It’s inevitable, it’s no one’s fault, but it can impact you.
The root of a lot of my stress is that I’m naturally an extroverted person living an introverted life. An extrovert isn’t just a “people person” who is the life of the party (I’d often rather hang back in large groups); an extrovert is someone who processes things by talking about them, not just by thinking about them. Yet I spend my day making little decision upon little decision, by myself at my computer in my living room. When Keith does get home, I’d love to fill him in, but it would take so much time, and quite frankly I’d rather put it behind me and just be US.
But what that means is that I sometimes feel like there are few people in the world who understand all the things that are on my mind. So it’s a little isolating.
And when you’re feeling isolated, hurts are magnified.
The other night a hurt was magnified. It was an old hurt, and Keith did nothing to magnify it. It was something that happened a long time ago that Keith is sorry for, but that still affects me quite a bit.
It was not even something particularly awful; it was just something that happened that hurt me. And I fixated on it again and couldn’t sleep.
We talked about it (it’s often a bad idea to talk about things late at night; they totally get magnified), and I got overly emotional and it was rather embarrassing looking back now. But at one point Keith in utter frustration said something important. He said:
I just need to know that US matters more than YOU.
He wasn’t trying to get me to see his point of view; he was trying to get me to say OUR point of view. I had a right to be hurt, but I had to stop thinking about what was best for me and start thinking about what was best for us. And he was completely and utterly right. It isn’t about what’s fair; it’s about what brings oneness, and focusing on how Keith loves me now is far more important than looking at a series of hurts that I experienced earlier (of which he was only a part).
That was Incident #1.
Now I’d like to give you Incident #2.
It’s a Friday night, and the banquet room in the restaurant is full of laughter and clinking glasses and loud greetings whenever someone else enters the room. It’s my father-in-law’s seventieth birthday, and certainly family is there, but also friend after friend after friend.
I looked around that room and my mind went back to their twenty-fifth anniversary, just a year or two after Keith and I married. Keith and I had hosted that surprise party and had invited all of their friends, and pretty much everyone in that room had been at that party. In fact, I remembered pretty much everyone in that room from when Keith and I married. My in-laws are loyal friends, and their friends stick around, even twenty years later.
But what really struck me was not that they had all these individual, loyal friends. It was that these friends were all couples.
There were Bob and Sheila, who took my kids fishing one year when we were camping; Jack and Marilyn, who let us borrow their canoe (and Marilyn taught my kids to quilt!); John and Marie who were adopted grandparents for my husband (and I still remember Keith sitting up with Marie one night in the hospital when we almost lost John a few years back); Linda and Karl; Paul and Cheyenne; Willard and Shirley; and the list goes on and on and on. In fact, I can’t think of a single couple friend that I knew twenty years ago who is not still a couple today (except for Tony, who is now remarried, because Claudette, my mother-in-law’s best friend, passed away a few years back. But everyone is so happy for Tony!).
Last week I wrote about The Good News About Marriage; how the divorce rate is not, and never has been, anywhere close to 50%. It’s actually closer to 28%. And looking around that table, it looked close to 0% for these people–these couples who had had euchre parties and done midnight walks for cancer and had been at each other’s kids’ weddings and baby showers for years. And lately, increasingly, they’ve been at the hospital, holding one half of a couple’s hand as they made it through a stressful night after a heart attack or a mini-stroke.
I’m sure those couples had tiffs in the middle of the night, too, especially during inevitable occasional seasons of distance.
But they all learned something important: US is more important than ME.
It’s not even that YOU are more important than ME; it’s that US is more important than ME. We fight for the “us”, so that years later we will still have a best friend, a confidante, a gem.
It’s easy to lose perspective in marriage because it’s so hard to get our eyes off of “me”, especially when you’re tired and stressed. But what good does it do to hold on to ME if you lose US? Us is such a gift, and I will fight for it. Just not necessarily again at one in the morning.
Now, what do you have to share with us today? Just put the URL of a marriage post in the linky below!
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I think this is a lesson we all need to learn at times!
As usual, Sheila, you’re right on. US needs to be the focus in a marriage. One word of caution. Sometimes, there is resentment (I’m sure the devil is at work here) when US should clearly be put before the individual. My wife, for example is going through a real tough time, turning forty, having teens that she wants to socialize with and feels young again “being with them”. I have heard, “I can talk with who I want (i.e. text, Instagram)”, and “I can’t have my whole life defined by being a mother or wife…I have to be me”. I know the saying about letting a bird go free, and it coming home eventually…..or something like that. But, it’s tough out there for some to focus on the US, when the other spouse isn’t willing, or is somehow blinded. Please pray.
Will indeed pray for you Ed! Yeah, it is hard to have an ‘us’ all by yourself. We can pray that your wife will come around — very likely indeed that she will. But our culture is horrible. It feeds the selfishness in all of us and even calls it ‘virtuous’. Confusing to say the least. The teen years are the worst. But the beginning of aging is like being a teen in some ways –except, the reverse. You have to learn to surrender your beauty, your youth, your sexual attractiveness — and to some extent, your health — not completely (obviously) or all at once, but it is, to put it another way, ‘the beginning of the end’ and some of us are more vulnerable to fearing that than others. Some of us panic (subconsciously if not consciously). I think be as patient as you can and as you say — pray. Hard all around!
Ed, it is indeed tough then. I do understand that sort of “mid-life crisis” thing and the urge to still have your youth, but it’s just too bad that people can’t see that aging with someone you love is such a BLESSING! Just said a prayer.
As always, you’re post was spot on! Thank you so much for being willing to transparently share your heart to the benefit of your readers. Such a wise husband you have…”I just need to know that US matters more than YOU.” Definitely words to remember and apply.
~Candy
Sheila, your words are wise!
One of the core lies in my life has been that I don’t matter. My husband, on the other hand, grew up (essentially) as an only child so he knew he mattered. For many years our marriage was too much a dance of Rick matters/Sharon doesn’t. Both of us contributed to that dance. Oooohh, painful to even type those words. Then the Opening Of The Eyes came and we are so much more balanced. But I like the succinctness of your phrase, “US matters.”
My husband and I had a less than admirable moment this morning before work and I am still feeling raw and hurt. I feel God working on me to take this to heart, since this is the third time I have heard this in the last few weeks. My husband said something first, then I heard it in a Youtube show I am watching, Emma Approved (a retelling of Austen’s Emma). Emma encourages her (rather downtrodden) sister to defiantly plan a vacation contrary to her husband’s wishes. Of course it goes badly, and her sister says, “I don’t want to win. If there’s a winner, there’s a loser, and when you have winners and losers in a marriage, everyone loses.” The sisters’ discussion starts at 2:07: http://youtu.be/zFwt9Juf-Js
This is a struggle for both of us.
Dangit, Sheila…
So as the single chick, I read your blog for a head-start, so to speak, but also because usually I wind up learning something about myself and/or about my relationship with God.
What a massive whack with a holy 2×4 it was to realize that in my relationship with Him, I’m generally only ever thinking about me. What do *I* want to happen, what do *I* need from Him, where do *I* want to go, what do *I* want to do, etc. etc., so on and so forth, forever and ever, amen, amen.
It’s not that I treat God as the eternal Santa Claus and continually climb up on his lap and ask for blessing after blessing, quite the contrary. But I’m in a similar situation: I’m an extrovert leading an introverted life at a desk job that keeps me glued to my computer for all 8 hours of the day. Unfortunately, the reality of the rest of my life is that I more or less lead an introverted lifestyle as well: I live in a small town and don’t have a single Christian friend my own age, I’m in my parents’ house for the moment and they don’t lead Christian lives either, and there are no ministries geared towards young, single adults in my church. All things considered, extroverted Hannah is handling this fairly well (and I try to be as involved in community outreach, the worship ministry, the teens, etc. There just isn’t a lot of opportunity for me to actually be *in* relationships with many people because they all have spouses and families). But all of this has led me to give extra attention to my relationship with Him, which seems like a good thing (and it has been, don’t get me wrong). But after reading this, I realized I’ve been more concerned about me than I am about the two of us. Nuts. Thanks for the kick in the rear. 🙂
I appreciate your honesty, especially truths about the imperfect things. Sometimes I get the feeling things are quite perfect in your world, and it’s nice to know you are battling the same obstacles that other married couples have to face and getting through them! I love your work and thank you for your openness. Being vulnerable isn’t easy but it’s the only way to really connect with others in truth and help them!
This very eloquently expresses my heart after the last 18months in my marriage. US is more important than me. Awesome!!
Great thoughts and what a stellar quote from your hubby, Sheila! I’ll be sharing that one on Twitter next! I cannot tell you the amount of couples I’ve counseled and coached over the years that let this one thing tear their marriage apart–“meism.” If they aren’t getting what they want from their partner, they never stop to think that maybe they need to be the one to give. And I’m not talking enabling a spouse or doing for the spouse what they should be doing, but being willing to give 100% 100% of the time! I will pray for you in this time of busyness and distance. Such a hard thing, I’m sure, to navigate. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and I didn’t know you were back to doing linkups again, so I’ll head back with here with my linky in my pocket next! 😉
This post really touched home with me. Me and my husband have recently separated after being married for a very short amount of time. The main reason for this separation is that he has 4 year old daughter from a previous relationship that he has half the time. I never had a problem with the fact that he had a child, but after we were married he made it clear in every way possible that what I wanted was not important when it came down to things that involved her. He never made me feel that way while we were dating. However, he has since told me that she means EVERYTHING to him, that what I want doesn’t matter when she’s there, that all he’s going to focus on while she’s there is her and making her happy, and that if I had a problem with anything that had to do with her that I was free to pack my bags and leave. It hurt so bad when he told me that. I understand that she’s his child and that she’s important, but I feel as if I should at least be equally important and that what I want should matter 7 days a week every week. He also had a problem with me saying that I don’t look at her as if she’s my child yet; I told him that it would take time for me to develop that type of relationship with her especially since I’m not used to children. He says it should be instinctual and that I should love her as my own even though I have no clue what it’s like to love my own child since I have none! The final straw came when I told him that she was not going to sleep in the bed with us. I told him that I wanted that to be just our time and not have a third person in the middle for half the time were together. He flat told me that it would never happen and that if she wanted to sleep in the bed she was going to and that he would not even start trying to slowly transition her into her own bed. I just can’t describe how upset and hurt I am right now. At his request, I moved back into my old house and it’s been three weeks. He has refused to compromise whatsoever saying it’s all because I don’t ” accept” her and that nothing can every be between us if I can’t love her like my own. Even though I’m his wife and he married me promising the rest of our lives would be spent together! I just don’t understand how he can treat me like that but this post has helped me remember that i should try harder to see things from his point of view.