In yesterday’s comments on being too busy for marriage, IWasThinking.ca‘s Heidi asked a very interesting question:
“what prompted you to think differently, to “man up” as Corey writes on his blog? Have you always been a conscious husband or was there a cosmic 2×4 moment that changed your thinking?”
Great question Heidi. After an hour long discussion of your comment with my wife, here’s my response.
I have certainly not always been a good husband. The first two years of our marriage were really, really difficult. I’m blessed that my wife stuck around long enough for us to get things sorted out. I don’t know that there’s ever been a single moment that woke me up. It’s an accumulation of little things.
There was the advice I got from my bishop – lower your expectations, and talking doesn’t necessarily solve everything. There was talking with my married friends about certain issues. If there was a specific event that I can point to, it is the night when I finally gave in to my wife.
We had been having a pretty bad argument (don’t remember over what) and it had turned to the “I want a divorce” talk. Previously to that night, whenever it went there, I always got really upset, told my wife in no uncertain terms that we were NOT getting a divorce. That night I was so tired and so sick of fighting that I just told her, “Fine. If you want a divorce, that’s your choice.”
It was like a movie moment. Her whole demeanor changed. The way we interacted with each other changed. As it turns out, she didn’t really want a divorce. She wanted to be listened to, and she wanted to feel like she had a choice in what happened to her. It was a revelation to me on how to treat my wife. I don’t have to control, nor should I control, every outcome in our marriage. I have to trust her that she will make decisions that will result in happiness for her, and hopefully for me as well. That’s the scary, risky part about relationships. Fortunately, after you’ve been in a relationship for a while, you tend to trust these choices a little more each day.
Now, the reason that I say this was not a “tipping point” in my marriage was because it wasn’t an instant fix. It helped me, but there was still a lot of work to be done to rebuild burned bridges.
The thing is, and I think this is true for most men, I really always wanted the marriage to work, from before day one. I wanted to be the guy who doted on his wife. I wanted to be the husband all the girls wished they had. I wanted my wife to think I was The Man and that there was no other man with which to compare…but I didn’t know how to do that.
I didn’t have a role model in my home while growing up. What was I to do? I got married so young that I hadn’t yet found the time to learn from someone else. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. Where are men supposed to go to learn to be good husbands and fathers? Other than a few disparate websites, and a few self help books that didn’t make any sense to me, I still don’t know the answer to that question.
So, I went to work, the best that I could. So did she. We can both tell you that it wasn’t just me that needed to change. A marriage is a two way street (or so the cliche goes) and both partners need to be looking at themselves and wondering how to improve. You can read her story on her blog about the Fascinating Womanhood movement.
We had a few more really intense fights. But after another year or so of working at it, learning how to trust each other, and how to get a better hold of ourselves, we found that we now had a relationship worth being happy about.
We are coming up on our sixth wedding anniversary. I can say that we’re just about at the point where there has been about the same amount of happy as there was unhappy time.
So Heidi, this long answer to your question basically comes down to this: there was no single moment, but an ongoing process that makes me wake up a little more each day, realize a little more what I need to do.
What about the rest of you? Was there ever a turning point in your marriages? What were they?
