so what did we learn from all this?

first I wrote about how my husband saved our marriage
then he told you his side of the story
now, what we learned:

LOVE DELIBERATELY:
Love is a choice we make over and over again. Feelings might “just happen” but relationships don’t. When you decide to get married you are going to have to decide to love each other many times when the feelings aren’t so loving. Now I heard that at church so many times but I didn’t get it.

Nothing coasts uphill – you have to exert some effort to reach higher ground. Work at it.

LOVE WELL:
People won’t know you love them if you don’t love them the way they need to be loved. We tend to do for others what we’d like done for us but that might not be what they need. When I ask Patrick what he needs he always says “you’re doing a great job” and while I appreciate the thought, I want to get even better. So I asked him, when you were unhappy in a relationship, what were you upset about not receiving? This made it much easier – we all know what upsets us.

People won’t know how you need to be loved if you don’t let them know. You can’t tell them if you don’t know yourself. I’ve always been pretty self-analytical (one ex told me “you think too much”) so this one is easy for me but if it’s not for you, then ask yourself what I ask him.

No matter how “silly” you think something is, if it’s important to them, it needs to be important to you. For instance, I can be insecure (hello?!? two failed marriages here!!) but instead of telling me that’s stupid or silly, show me you love me and are there for me.

(OK, I know some of y’all are thinking “but what if he wants me to …” about something sexual – well, sex is NOT what I’m talking about here but I will mention it briefly later.)

SELFLESSNESS:
This goes along with the first two: Put your mate first! I think most divorces are the result of putting your needs and wants first. Selflessness permeates the successful marriages I know and is a very predominant theme. Selfishness creates an environment of a test of wills. There is great satisfaction in knowing what your spouse wants and providing it to the best of your abilities.

EVEN IF SHE/HE DOESN’T:
Okay, I know that both partners should work on the marriage. But I also know sometimes that doesn’t happen. Even in good relationships, there will be days when somebody just isn’t trying very much. In bad relationships, there may not be many days when anybody is trying.

But you try because you decided to, not because s/he is trying. You do it because you committed to it. Sometimes you’ll wear them down with your love like Patrick did and they’ll start trying too. Sometimes you’ll try and nothing will happen. Then after you’ve tried you might try something else like professional help.

(OK, let me be clear here – I am not saying to keep on loving a jerk who hits you – again I have some pretty strong opinions about this and they are mainly YOU DO NOT DESERVE THIS and YOU SHOULD NOT ALLOW THIS to happen to you. Even more so if there are children around to see it. And in cases of infidelity, if you want to work things out then definitely both people need to be working and it would probably be a very good idea to have outside help. I’m talking about the normal ins & outs, ups & downs of relationships.)

GUYS, LET YOUR WIFE KNOW YOU WANT HER:
Remember how much you desired her before you were married, and during the honeymoon. Let her know her know how desirable you think she still is, believe me there are a lot of benefits in it for you too.

LADIES, LET YOUR HUSBAND KNOW YOU WANT HIM:
You must have wanted him before you married him ~ why marry someone if you don't want them?  Be sure you let him know you still do. And if you don’t still want him, then do something about it!

THE OTHER STUFF IN LIFE:
Life’s other problems are easier with a good relationship; the good things in life aren’t very enjoyable with a bad relationship. Put your marriage first and everything else kind of falls into place. Not saying there won’t be incredibly difficult times in your life; just saying your perspective will change.

****************

Okay - we're done with this series.  Phew! Boy, it's tricky to be so brutally open, yet we often think we're alone cuz nobody speaks up and says, "oh yeah, been there, done that!!"  Especially about our shortcomings.  I am so grateful to Patrick for doing this with me.  And proud of him for going outside his comfort zone. 

Please let us know what you think or if you want to discuss something more. 

Next week I'll be running some repeats from my other blog about change and fear.

and now in his words

photo courtesy of Katelyn Swanson

Last time, I wrote about how my husband saved our marriage - today I'll let him tell the story:

I don’t know if I single handedly saved our marriage, because it takes two to do that. I do however know that I made a conscious decision one day to try to improve all things in our marriage.

Sherry was absolutely correct that we had let things slip in all aspects of our relationship and we were essentially roommates living our own lives. I was not happy with the situation or finding any satisfaction in my life. Sherry and I have always had a good relationship. However, I hate to admit that I never really was totally committed to it. I had never thought seriously about what Sherry needed from a husband or what she needed on all levels of her life (though as you know she isn't bashful about telling you). I know that was a big part of the problem because I had never totally invested in her and our relationship.

At this very same time I was in some accountability groups with other men in our church and I began to really understand the biblical view of a family where it is the husband’s responsibility to set the tone for the entire family especially his wife. The Bible is very clear on this point in Ephesians 6:25-28 and I began to see that if I don’t show my wife that she is loved more than any other thing in my life, how is she to respond to anything else?

So I made a decision to try to show Sherry that she is the most important thing in my life. It took a big examination of my own life to understand where I was falling short. I didn’t like what I saw, a self-centered, half-committed moron that was concerned more about trivial things than my marriage.

I deliberately did not tell Sherry about what I was doing because I didn’t want to make a big deal about it because, first, if I wasn't able to pull it off nobody would know and, second, I wanted to approach this with as much selflessness as I could and see if she noticed. I knew I had a lot of mending to do so I was prepared to be in this for the long haul.

The first thing I did was try to do as much for her as I possibly could. If you know her at all, you know that Sherry has never been a fan of housework while I don’t mind doing household chores. So I knew if I helped there it would help out on a lot of fronts. Also, having a diet coke ready for her when she got out of bed was a cheap but effective way to get her attention. Sherry was incredibly skeptical at first, wanting to know what my angle was but my sole purpose was to give her some relief so she would be able to focus more on her artwork ~ I wanted her to have the opportunity to spend her days doing what she loves.

The other thing I concentrated on was finding out what else was important to Sherry. I never really understood the importance of knowing until I really concentrated on it. And I got a wonderful benefit, I found out who my wife is, that I was in love with who she is and that she is more important than anything in the world; I was falling deeper in love with her the more I understood her. My love continues to grow each day; the more I am around her the more it grows.

To say the least, Sherry saw a profound change in my life and she began to embrace it and have confidence that this was permanent. This meant wonderful things to our marriage because as the love grew, the intimacy began to grow which just reinforces everything else and makes the love grow more. (Not to mention it smoothes over many potential potholes.)

Looking back on it, this is one of the prouder moments in my life; that I was actually able to change its outcome. And I found out that I was married to the most beautiful, creative, intelligent, desirable women in the world for me. I just didn’t have part in saving my marriage, I made my life.

Next time - the lessons we learned from this

How My Husband Saved Our Marriage

my handsome architect

“Your mom and I are in hell right now and the bottom line is marriage is hard. It’s really bleeping hard. It’s just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing — it’s a bleeping marathon, okay? So sometimes, you know, you’re together so long you stop seeing the other person...” (by Stuart Blumberg & Lisa Cholodenko except using real f-bombs, not bleeping ;-p)

Being married IS hard. I’ve said that before (though maybe not as bleeping eloquently as Julianne Moore in the movie THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT) and I’ve said before that the hard work is so so so worth it.

So I think now would be a good time to tell you the story about how my husband saved our marriage.

About five years ago we let things get a little too comfortable between us. No, comfortable isn’t adequate – we let ourselves grow complacent. And like the character in the movie, I didn’t feel like I was being seen which to me translates as “you don’t love me”. Like so many of us, I need to feel understood, accepted and wanted in order to KNOW that I’m loved; for goodness sake, pay attention to me!!

Heck, I make it pretty easy to know me – it’s pretty evident from this young blog that I’m not exactly the type to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself – so you also know that there was no way my husband could claim he didn’t know that I was unhappy. But still, nothing changed and we were soon just co-occupants of the same house. I was starting to not care that he wasn’t paying attention which meant we were going down a very dangerous path. I think complacency causes the death of more marriages than anything else – probably because a lot of the “anything else” is done because of the complacency.

Then I few months later, I realized something HAD changed. But cynic that I am, I immediately assumed he was only paying attention to me because I lost some weight. Naturally I accused him of that but he just said no and wouldn’t fight with me about it.

Instead he kept paying attention to me, showing me I was wanted and doing sweet things for me. Little things that meant a LOT to ME. I mean, diet cokes before getting out of bed? Heaven!! It took a little while but his love wore thru the shell I’d started to build and our marriage was back on track. Almost without me realizing what was happening.

And then one day I woke up and saw how different everything was. He loved me!! We were closer than ever before, even closer than that initial period when you think you love each other desperately. Closer because we knew each other more fully and still loved each other more. People even started commenting on our relationship.

The close, good relationship had crept up on me just like the boring, bad one had. Only, while we had coasted downhill, someone had to work hard to push us back up hill. And I figured since it wasn’t me, it must have been him (I’m pretty smart, in case you didn’t know).

And being me, I just flat out asked him what changed.

a truly happy couple

He told me he decided that loving me was the most important thing he could do. Then he decided that he needed to love me the way I needed to be loved.

And he did.
Patiently.
Despite me not seeing.
Despite my accusations.
Until.
And still.


next time: what he has to say about all this and after that: the lessons we learned