Changing my ways and putting my Husband first...

This past week has been one big rollercoaster; I’ve felt so out of control with everything that has gone on and I’ve been desperately grasping at anything that would give me some feeling of control again. I’m a planner – I have to have a plan in place to function happily and if I feel like there is something unknown I have to do something to try to fix it. A recent discovery regarding my sister and her religious beliefs, or lack thereof, has put my planning gene in hyper drive. I don’t want to wake up in 20+ years and realize that I didn’t do everything I could to ensure my kids grew up the way I wanted them to.

I’ve done a lot of reading this week regarding family, religion, kids, money, etc. and found several things I need to change in my life so my plans for the future will be easier to obtain. After realizing what we needed to do now I had written my husband an email with the some issues I wanted to find solutions for and we could work on them together and get on the same page. When I got home that night I tried to squeeze out of him some answers with no avail. With disgust I went to bed and the next morning someone told me that sometimes we need to just do things ourselves. With this in mind I have been able to see some of my own faults.

The first thing I need to change is putting my husband first. While I always thought I put my husband’s needs first, I did learn a lot of bad habits from my mother regarding how to treat my spouse. I tend to nag and get upset when things are not done when and how I want them done. I’ve rationalized that if my husband really cared he would do it because I want it done. What I failed to realize was while he may not do the task right then I cause more damage to our relationship by complaining about it. I’ve realized there is also a LARGE difference between how men and women think which has in the past been the cause of a lot of upset feelings on my part.

I remember one night a few months ago I was so upset with Mark over something, which I don’t remember what it was now, but I got him mad enough that he actually raised his voice (very rare for him – very common for me). Colleen was in the room and when the argument got loud she began to cry and I felt HORRIBLE – how could I upset her over something that she had no fault in? Growing up I watched my parents fight A LOT and rarely ever saw them nice to each other. I remember being upset because they fought so much and I don’t want my children to ever feel that way. This is one of my big faults, I need to work on keeping my cool in the heat of the moment and if I am still upset about it later I can discuss it with Mark behind closed doors. I don’t want to teach my children how to be mean and hateful, especially to the ones they love.

I tend to have a shared responsibility mentality, again - the difference between men and women, in which I feel like if I am doing everything that it’s not fair and get upset about it. It doesn’t matter that I am more upset that the house is a mess (since I quit doing it since nobody else is) because I live in that moment of anger that nobody is helping. This again is something I need to work on with myself. I cause more damage to myself and my relationship with my husband by not just getting things done myself – I might not enjoy doing the work on my own but it will be short lived rather than dragged out over days because it is sitting there staring me in the face every day.

Recently I have been putting a lot of thought into religion and church and how I want our family to grow spiritually. Not growing up in church has put a lot of questions and uncertainty in this process but I am trying to figure it all out so that my kids won’t feel this way when they get older. This too is something I have been bitter about that I need to train myself to think differently about. Mark, growing up in church, knows what is going on regarding religion whereas I am a lost little puppy. He has no problem helping me with this but there has been a lack of communication and guidance as to how we make this happen so in my eyes, he had put it on the back burner but in his he has been waiting for me (again the difference between men and women). I have now decided that if I want to learn, I need to do it myself. I cannot depend on anyone else to do it for me. We can still grow as a family and do things together but I need to do some extra studying and learning on my own before I can fully be in a position to teach my children the same. With this decision I can also let go of the irritation I had with my husband for not taking charge.

There are so many things that go on in life that I can continue to write for days but the truth of the matter is that when I step back and look at what my expectations are and how I go about having those expectations met, I have a lot of flaws in my methods. After giving up on the thought that Mark was going to help me with my planning and began to do it on my own, Mark had a change of heart and actually began participating in my planning. I was ecstatic (although some of his ideas were not exactly what I was thinking when I began making my list but nonetheless I wrote them down for him). This morning I noticed he hung up Lil Mark’s chore/behavior chart in his room (I had asked him to do this the other night but he said he would do it later so he wouldn’t wake the kids) but I had wanted it in the hallway. My first reaction was “grrr!” so I called Mark to inform him I wanted it in the hall but I tried a different method than I normally would have done. First I thanked him for hanging up the chart then I told him I wanted it in the hall. Normally I would have been hot headed and complained to him about why did he put it in the room and he would have been upset that here he did hang it up but I was still not happy. Rather than anyone being upset he simply said that we could move it – not a problem. The more I thought about it the more it actually made sense to have it in the child’s room and this would also give me the chance to get in there and move out some unnecessary junk. I later told him this and felt so much better about myself and our relationship because I wasn’t angry and didn’t let my knee jerk reaction go too far.

As I was getting ready for work this morning I had another “ahh ha” moment. On Wednesday Mark had gotten into some trouble at school – apparently he found a little girl’s ice cream ticket and erased her name and claimed it as his own. This was one of those times that you sit back and try to grasp why the child would do this when he knew it was wrong. Mark handled it very well and was very fair and hard on Lil Mark regarding the issue and I was very impressed. It was definitely one of those life lesson situations. Anyway, while I was getting ready this morning I was thinking about this and how I know I would not have known what to do had Colleen done the same thing. I realized Mark is very good with the large issues and punishments and not so good with the smaller issues but that was ok because I was good with catching and dealing with the smaller issues and not so sure how to handle the larger ones – we are a good match. Of course when I made this discovery I called Mark to tell him that we were a good match and I could hear the smile in his voice and could almost see his eyes roll as he said “you just figured this out?”