My husband Jason and I have been through the gamut of relationship issues. From infidelity to premature babies to lost jobs to a six month split up to my having and beating cancer, we have pretty much faced every obstacle that a couple can possible be faced with and here we are closing in on our 8th year together. We’re great. Actually, we’re better than great. We’re a normal, regular, happy couple. We rarely argue and we rarely yell at each other. It’s few and far between that we even have a disagreement.
It’s not always been easy, but we’ve set a few ground rules along the way. I sometimes see other couples and just shake my head at some of their antics, and wonder how two normal, cool people could end up as bickering, whining, control freaks that seem more interested in commandeering their partner’s every move, instead of just loving them and enjoying them, or worse yet, spend all their free time nitpicking and cutting each other down and then wondering where the spark in their relationship could’ve gotten off to.
With that in mind, I’d like to toss out a few suggestions – not really rules, more like thoughts to keep in mind as you maneuver through your love life. These are all things that my husband and I believe keep our marriage and our relationship strong.
1) Remove the Option to Leave
If you completely remove the option to leave the relationship, all that’s left is working on it and fixing the wrongs to make them right. This has worked beautifully for us. We’ve suffered infidelity in our relationship, which most couples really just can’t get through. Instead of just calling it a day after we went through that, we just decided we’d work on it. We have three beautiful little boys. And, neither of us could ever imagine raising them without the other. That has always been very important to us. And that is where this rule was born. We are a partnership. Even if we screw up. Even if we make mistakes. And, after a while and after those first mistakes are made, I can honestly say that neither of us have any want or desire to make those mistakes again. We learned from the hurt that it caused and honestly became educated with lessons of love in the most dire of circumstances.
***Note here: There are a few things we’d both leave for. If one of us went nuts and physically abused the other, we’d for sure call it a day. If one of us took advantage of this rule and just kept intentionally hurting the other – again, buh-bye. This rule is to be used with common sense. If you’re being taken advantage of – talk it through. If you keep being taken advantage of, get the heck out of there.
2) If You Don’t Have Something Nice To Say: SHUT UP.
One thing that Jason and I do to keep the peace is to try to be nice. Even when you’d rather get out your cast iron skillet and whack him a good one with it…don’t. We don’t name call, we don’t yell, and we rarely even argue. Instead, we discuss. And we do so respectfully.
I tend to get highly irritated that he won’t argue with me. I’m by nature a debater. I like to argue, and occasionally have a nice, heated argument. His version of an argument sounds a lot like: “Whatever Shan.” End of argument.
It’s actually a really nice balance that he flat refuses to argue with me. When he whatever’s me, I go off and stew about whatever I’m mad at, and then I come back and say “We need to talk.” And, we do. Nine out of ten times, talking about it calmly gets the results we’re looking for, which is usually a compromise of some sort that makes us both happy.
3) You Cannot Control Another Person, So…Quit Trying.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a friend or acquaintance say something to the effect of, “He won’t let me (fill in the blank)”, or “She told me I had to (fill in the blank).”
If we wanted to live with someone telling us what we can and can’t do, we’d go home and live with our beloved parents. Since we’re all adults, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we make our own decisions for ourselves.
What I mean is, trust your mate to make decisions that are responsible and suitable for them, that will also be mindful of your needs and feelings. And, if they screw up, talk about it, and be nice. Explain the way their actions made you feel, and talk about how to avoid it in the future. Just leave out phrases like “How could you be so dumb?!” and “You only care about yourself!”
It goes back to #2. Talk about it and be nice. And if they’re not being nice, call them on it. Nicely – but do call them on it.
4) There’s No I in Team!
To go hand in hand with suggestion #3, remember it’s not just you anymore. Every action has a consequence. Whether it’s good or not depends on the decision made. If you opt to buy that new $500 dollar Coach handbag if you’re tight on money and you know darn skippy that he’s been fretting about getting the lawn mower fixed, he’s probably going to be pretty upset – and rightly so. You’re not taking his needs or wants into consideration.
We always strive for balance. We work on making sure that the other has what they need to get their goals accomplished. By doing so, we rarely get out of whack in our relationship because we always know that we have each other’s back.
Looking back on when we bought Molly – that could’ve been a train wreck from hell. Molly is our English Bulldog. English Bulldogs are ridiculously expensive. I have always wanted an English Bulldog. With Jas – he’s always whining about the amount of animals we already have. He thinks we have WAY too many animals, and he was not remotely interested in adding to the mix. So, we talked about it. I let him know how I felt – that I really wanted one.
So began the discussions and negotiations. He agreed that he also wanted to have a bulldog and while it took some time to come to this decision, it was made together and we both were ecstatic about it.
Had I just bought the dog and had the breeder fly her here, this would’ve been bad. When you spend thousands of dollars on something (or anything over $50 bucks is our actual limit), it’s really best if both partners are involved in the decision, and if the other isn’t happy about it – find something else that will make both of you happy.
5) When all else fails, LAUGH!
When you’ve had as much as you can take, and there’s no compromise on the horizon, and you aren’t making any headway whatsoever, figure out what is comical through the situation, and then laugh about it until you can’t laugh anymore. The most important part is that you don’t intentionally hurt each other while you work to figure it out.
Last weekend, my 4 year old and my bulldog partnered up to create catastrophe. I’d love to tell you this is abnormal, but they are frequent cohorts in crime. My son wears extremely expensive glasses for some pretty serious eye issues he has. (Strabismus and Amblyopia ). He hates wearing glasses. So, as everyone was getting ready to leave for a family Thanksgiving feast at my Grandmother’s house, being the resourceful little guy that he is, my son took that opportunity to feed his glasses to the dog, as a toy, and of course she was all too willing to play along. By the time we were all showered, dressed and ready to go and the obvious question of “Logan, where’s your glasses?” was asked, they had been already been transformed to a sharp, squiggly mess of metal and the lenses were gouged so deeply there was no way of repairing them.
My husband’s first instinct was to freak. My first instinct was to cry. But, there was nothing we could do about it on a Sunday morning. So, we got in the car and went to Grandma’s. There, we cracked jokes about Logan buying a week off from his glasses, and that Christmas this year will be positioned on Logan’s nose because of the horrible expense of replacing them.
We got to a place where this became intensely funny to us, and by Monday morning when I called the Pediatric Ophthalmologist’s office and learned that I apparently had purchased insurance and the replacement was only going to cost me 50 bucks – neither of us were mad and we were very pleased with the way we had handled it.
The point to all of this is just love each other through it all. We live by a No Matter What sort of love. NMW. If you love each other NMW, there are no other options. You just work on balancing the load, laughing when life happens, and learning together constantly and continuously.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
This is all great advice and it especially helps that you were so open about weathering major storms in your relationship… not just “so-and-so won’t take out the trash,” but big-deal stuff like infidelity and serious illness. It goes to show that (although I don’t think all relationships are worth saving just for the sake of saving them… naturally this becomes much more complicated and serious when kids are involved), it is possible–if the relationship is worth it–to work through really terrible things that society tells us must be absolute dealbreakers.
It sounds like you have a great marriage and I appreciate your sharing some of what makes it great.
Thank you Jen! I think we can get through anything if we set our minds to it. My Aunt Robin gave me a highly sound piece of advice several years ago. She said “You can change men, and likewise you will change problems. Every relationship has problems. So, you can work on the ones you have, or you can get a whole new set and work on those. Either way, you’re going to be working on problems – so pick the problems you’re willing to work on and stick with them.”