Just be yourself. Sometimes.

Disclaimer: This is long and kind of personal, but not personal in an innapropriate way, just personal in a truthful (yet not too truthful) way that makes for a really long and possibly boring post that reads like some pathetic chic’s diary entry. You might abandon it half way through. If you do, it’s ok. I’ll understand. I just need to get it out and write it down ’cause it’s been a very real issue for way too long and it’s finally being dealt with. Kind of. It’s a start anyway.

*****

Is it ok to change yourself to please someone else, or make a relationship work? I think the answer is yes and no. At the core, we are who we are and shouldn’t have to change it much to make someone like us, or to please the people around us. However, relationships (especially marriage) are complicated things. It’s a two-way street…a game of give and take…it’s full of compromises. It’s kind of like a full time job in that it takes work. A lot of work. And patience. And understanding. Don’t forget patience and understanding. Sometimes it needs a lot of forgiveness too.

Ted and I aren’t perfect. (I know! You’re shocked aren’t you?) We have some issues. Not “deal breaker” issues, but issues just the same. We mainly have trouble communicating with each other. I tend to hold everything in and I HATE (and I do mean HATE) confrontation. I HATE (again with the emphasis) having someone mad at me, or yelling at me. And, of course I HATE yelling and getting mad at someone myself. I dislike it so much that I tend to fool myself into thinking I am fine with things I am not fine with just to avoid having to tell someone how I’m feeling. The things that I shove down get under my skin and fester for a while, causing me to do that annoying thing where you say, “I’m fine.” But really? Not fine, and then my mood sucks, and I didn’t get the issue off my chest. Everybody loses.

Ted also has some trouble letting me know how he’s feeling, but it’s different with him. While he doesn’t yell and fight with me on a regular basis, he does have a tendency to be quick with the bad mood and the crappy remarks. He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it most of the time. He’s stressed due to work, or his health (arthritis mainly) and he snaps at whoever is in the vicinity. Usually me. He’s quick to switch back and forth from crabby to happy too. It’s like a roller coaster sometimes. A roller coaster I never get off of because I’m too busy being upset to realize the ride is over.

Typical male behavior I think (forgive me males, for generalizing). They get annoyed, lash out, get over it, move on to happy…all in the space of 30 minutes or so. I hold onto my annoyance/anger (that I never expressed to begin with) for a whole lot longer. Like a day or more. It makes for one big vicious cycle where somebody is annoyed pretty much all of the time, and both parties are annoyed at least half the time. Suckage.

It came to kind of a head recently. I won’t go into the gory details, but we’ll just say the constant “cold attitude” from me and his not being able to curb the bad tempered remarks made for a not-so-romantic couple. The not-so-romantic trend had been around for way too long already in all honesty, and it was just getting worse. Add to that the understandable stress of parenthood, finances, work and life in general…sigh…and it’s no wonder that after six years of marriage we are finally hitting one of those “ruts” or “bumpy spots” you hear so much about.

The good part is that Ted and I do have an awful lot of positive stuff in common. Love for one another for starters. Respect and also that awesome sense of humor we both seem to have in spades. (Thank the Lord for that.) The “rut” seems to be filling in. For now anyway. We sort of talked about how we don’t really talk (um, yeah…still not good at talking) but most importantly I (me, myself and I) looked inward a bit to figure out just what the hell my (our) problem was.

I decided to try acting a little less like the stressed, annoyed, cold fish of a wife who’s just tired of being, well, annoyed. I also am trying to stop being so damn sensitive every time he gets pissy and directs it toward my area of the room. I am too sensitive. That’s a fact. Truth is, I KNOW that most days when Ted gets grumpy and speaks to me in a less-than-polite way it’s totally nothing personal. (Usually.) A lot of the time I instinctively know that I should leave him alone for short while and I do. Another truth? I probably do the same thing to him sometimes. He just doesn’t get as irritated by it for as long as I do. (Remember that 30 minute vs. a full day thing?)

Another thing I am doing is to be honest about the fact that he’s very physically affectionate. He loves to touch me and to be touched. For some odd reason that stuff doesn’t come as naturally for me. Not that I don’t like my husband, but I’m not a particularly “needy” person when it comes to touch. He is. I’ve been trying to remember that just thinking in my head that I love him, or that he looks cute isn’t the same as actually saying it to him out loud. Likewise, I need to remember to give him a little squeeze or a kiss even if it’s not what I totally crave at the moment. He probably does need it.

This marriage thing is seriously a learning curve. Ted also has attempted to change some of his habits in dealing with me and our life in general. (Just so you don’t think I am the only one doing any work here!) He actually said to me this weekend, “Thanks for being so nice to me lately.” Sounds odd, but it made me really happy. I hadn’t told him my plan to adjust my interactions with him and it was kind of cool to see that he’d noticed it. I told him about how I figured that I could probably do a better job of letting him know I cared, and how I was trying to not get so bent out of shape at every single less-than-happy reaction/comment he had over some dumb thing or another. It’s working for the moment. He’s happier and so he’s not doing the stuff that gets me “bent” as much. We had a pretty awesome weekend as a result.

I’ll keep this up as best I can. Now that he’s onto me, I think he’ll also try to do the same. Hopefully this cycle of “being nice” will trump the other cycle of stress and shit that was spinning around this house. I’m not stupid, I know bad days will come and go. With practice, however, I hope in a few more years the “being nice” stuff will come more naturally to the point where we don’t have to try so hard.

Then again, maybe 10 years from now I’ll have grown so tired of his crap that I’ll have him locked in the garage with a small cot and a toothbrush…surviving off the kindness of neighbor’s leftovers and beer from his buddies while KC and I live luxuriously in the house by ourselves…shoe shopping online and ordering out every night of the week because neither of us can cook for shit.

Just kidding. I think. Thanks for listening.