be a better wife

I checked out an old-school, serve-your-man type book, “Light His Fire” from the library. I was defensive before I read it, but it was pretty interesting, and I can take some of the advice. I would recommend it, but taking it with a grain of salt, and not expecting it to be the answer to everything. I have an amazing, wonderful husband, and he’s my partner. However, sometimes I interpret “partner” to mean that when he comes home complaining about work or something, I should give helpful, well-intentioned advice. I know what I’m talking about, I mean well, and most of the time, I’m 100% right. But he doesn’t want to come home and get advice from me, he wants me to just say, “Man, that sucks” It’s simple things like that for which I needed a little reminder.

I get better, then something comes up and I close off and don’t communicate and screw it all up. But at least I recognize it and am trying to get better.

Things have just really clicked with us for the last few weeks. I’m more aware lately of how much I appreciate him. He’s fantastic. What a great dad, step-dad, and husband. I was talking to my friend at work about this man at work who is old enough to be our grandfathers, and I was talking about how he’s so kind, and fun, and full of energy, and so full of love and joy that it radiates from him, and I said, “I just love older guys like that” and my friend said, ‘[Husband] is like that, you’re going to have a great old-man husband when you guys get old” she was so right. 29 year old women are going to gush over my husband when he’s 75, seriously. He’s amazing.

Every time I run into guys who are total jerks, it makes me appreciate my husband so much more. He is kind, sexy, funny, the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, adventurous, inspiring, he challenges me all the time to grow and be a better person. I admire him, and as 1945 as it sounds, I feel like I owe it to him to do everything I can to please him. He’s totally worth it.

I know Sunday’s not over, but we only fight in the morning, anyway. Not today! Normally we fight while we get ready for church (because I’m tired/grumpy and he never sees me in the morning and this is pretty much how I ALWAYS am until I’ve had time to wake up, eat breakfast, etc) drive to church in silence, sit there in silence until one of us grabs the other persons hand and then we silently make up and put our arms around each other for prayer. Today we got to skip all the silent parts and enjoy the entire service. Every week I have been blaming him, but now that I have accepted control of whether or not we fight, I see it’s 100% ME. He’s his normal happy self and I’m a grumpy little toad in the mornings. He just doesn’t see it because Sunday is the only morning we have together. So I can control or mask the grumpiness once a week, and easily eliminate 80% of the discord.

I’ve gone two Sundays in a row without fighting with him. The first was easy; we were on vacation. Yesterday was a little trickier. I saw EXACTLY where the Sunday fight was going to start, and I was able to stop it. Quite frankly, I think this one would have been his fault, but it didn’t matter. I started into the same pattern, he criticized me for something I said (frequent Sunday complaint is that I’m cold and mean, when really I’m just tired and quiet), I was steppping into the bathroom to get ready for church and was pissed off, and closing the door when I remembered my goal. So I opened the door and stepped back out and said, “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be cold to you. That’s not how I’m feeling toward you, and if I’m acting that way, I’m sorry for it.” and I gave him a kiss and things were fine. He was in the wrong this time, and I could have let it turn into a fight, but I’d rather have a happy day than an argument. We’ve had so many Sunday fights about the same thing over and over that I have to break the pattern. He expects me to be mean and cold, I expect him to be over-sensitive and pick fights, so we play out the same thing. I need to ditch my pride long enough that Sunday is just like any other day in our house, happy and warm and loving. He is an AMAZING husband, and he puts up with so much; I can work harder at not being such a grump on Sunday mornings.

We fight every Sunday morning. It’s nearly always my fault, I wake up grouchy and take offense to everything. He is the kindest, most decent man I’ve ever met, and I snap at him and get every week, like clockwork.
So, my sub-goal is not to fight for the next four Sundays, no matter what. We’re going out of town this weekend, so it should be easy this week, but the next three will be different.

How are you ladies keeping track of your progress? Are there specific behaviors you are trying to add or eliminate? It’s one of my goals, but I don’t have any good ideas to monitor my progress.