Our Perfect Little Marriage!
My wife Robin and I have been together a long time. We were high school sweethearts at just 16 and 15. I remember teaching her how to drive. How many of you men can say that? In only two short weeks out of high school we were married at 19 and 18! And even then, I knew someday we would be sitting on our porch watching the proverbial sunset and die holding hands…(sniff sniff) Wow! my life is as romantic as that movie The Notebook.
The truth is it hasn’t always been quite romantic. Sometimes our marriage felt a little more Stephen King than Nicholas Sparks. Let me share the other side of the story.
Married but living on different planets!
Well from “the good ol’ days” of our first driving lesson to now we have seen many years of happiness sprinkled with times of feeling like I must have married someone from a different planet. I thought I knew my wife, but it turns out marriage takes way more than just a couple of driving lessons to last a lifetime. Of course the happy days are easy, it’s the struggles that seemed insurmountable at times. I had to learn to how to deal with disagreements and misunderstandings and miscommunications. And they seemed to come when I least expected.
When struggles come in your marriage, and they do, how do you handle them? What’s your primary concern in the “heat of battle”? Who will win? Do I care? Will she stay? Is our marriage worth holding on to?
It is impossible to dodge hard events in your marriage but how you learn to resolve conflict will be what separates your marriage from all the other statistics out there. If you are at odds with your spouse nothing in life seems good. When things are not going as you had planned are you going to bail or will you strive to reconcile for the betterment of the relationship?
A few tips for getting past the conflict I’ve picked up these past 4 decades that have helped me and my wife have a long lasting, healthy marriage:
- The “crisis” is rarely the emergency it seems to be in the moment.
- I need to take 24 hours to think through the dilemma before responding poorly.
- I always need to ask myself if I’m being selfish (it’s usually the same answer)
- I have to check myself to see if I’m fighting just to win or if I’m trying to find a resolution
- I never let myself start thinking divorce. I made a covenant.
- I never should use threats… or else!!!
- I need to ask myself if I’m really in it to win it.
- I have to think… “You might win the battle, but you are going to lose the war.”
