You’re Both Working & You Still Want A Life
You already know that finding time for each other is your biggest challenge. But celebrate the good news. You are beginning to look for help. In taking a moment to find this web site, you probably have retreated from a moment of marital disarray. You are seeking to understand how other couples do it. The answer is: they do it with skills and resources that you didn’t learn in high school. Feeling guilty about spending a little time together will not help. Promising to be home early tomorrow will probably be met with skepticism by your wife. Action makes the difference.
Invigorating a time-starved relationship requires work but the rewards are unbelievable. Maintaining a sense of mutuality and strong affirmation will require the very best of your adult skills. Guarding your love for each other is not for sissies. Setting boundaries around safe guarding your time together requires aggressive measures. Yet, research has established that a good relationship leads to longevity, especially for men.
Dual career couples that take these issues seriously treat their moments together as precious. When you give your relationship a top priority you make sure you have prime time committed on the calendar. When your best customer comes into town, you both make sure an alternative time is scheduled. Giving up something precedes new commitments to a community activity like coaching your kid’s baseball team. Making sure your partner is on board with the plan before signing on will insure that you have not stayed in denial about the activity’s impact on your schedule together.
Remember: time spent nursing your hurt and disappointment eats up your morale and isolates you from your most natural companion and cheerleader. Even though you see each other at some of your worst moments in the day, give it your best shot to stay warm and affirming. If your partner is your best friend, your treating her like one will go a long way.
Working many hours often leads to a feeling of entitlement. Only by honoring your partner’s yearning to feel entitled as well, will you survive a week of working too long and too hard. Some couples actually declare a no fight zone on such times. When you recognize that you will probably be reactive to almost anything, agree to discuss things over the weekend. Hopefully by then, you will have caught up enough with sleep to listen.
Stress siphons off your ability to see things in shades of gray. If you find yourself grumpy and impatient, ask your partner for some time to re-center yourself and to become free to have someone express needs to you. Of course, when kids are involved, this means someone must stay in charge. A cartoon in the New Yorker shows a couple playing doubles tennis with a baby crawling down the center court line. Each yells, “Yours.” Clear assignments of “who’s responsible when” saves a lot of disappointment.
Most men tend to say, “Well, just get someone to take over.” Most women know intuitively that while this may work at the office, finding someone to be on duty is about as easy as writing a novel.
So what else will work? You need to be rigid and intentional about securing your emotional and physical health. Get enough sleep. Eat healthy. Exercise at least 3 times a week. You know the drill. But are you clear that doing so will automatically enhance your relationship and save time.
Stressed, tired people feel hurt and disappointed with their relationship. Unfortunately, they blame their partner for the small things as if those are things causing unhappiness. “If only you had picked up my suits at the cleaner, I would not be yelling at you like this.” Don’t believe it.
Most couple-fights center around little things that have become big things. Seen through the prism of exhaustion, leaving towels on the floor can be seen as the only thing that matters. It will be viewed as total proof that you don’t care about her. The freedom to honor the reality of the mistake and appreciate the disappointment can go a long way. Only when you’re feeling defensive, you may have to bite your tongue, and take ten deep breaths before you muster the freedom to acknowledge your failing to live up to something agreed upon.
Do not collect blue stamps. Each time you nurse a wound when your partner has forgotten to call, you develop plenty of justification for distancing and giving up. Couples, who care about each other, recognize that they need time to air grievances. Of course, you each must have enough serenity to show up for these conversations. Couples in time-starved relationships need to place catching up and comparing notes high on the list.
Sharing your feelings does not mean that you have to blame and rage. Rather treat the moment as if your best friend had asked you to share some of your joys and concerns. Letting go of the righteous indignation goes a long way.
You will find that feeling heard and understood counts. You don’t want to hear your partner coming back at you with “why you are really the problem.” You will relax and feel more connected when your partner indicates that he understands how this might have upset you. A sense that your partner cares about your hurt restores your faith in the relationship.
But guess what? Your partner feels the same way. Follow a simple rule of thumb: the partner who feels the strongest yields the floor to the person who feels most vulnerable. Agreeing to listen all the way through until your partner feels understood will take the sting out of her upset. If you summarize what you have heard, you and your partner will stay in a mode of problem solving rather than playing the “who’s to blame game.”
Then and only then, will you have gained the right to have the floor to be heard as well. This saves an enormous amount of time even though at first you may find it tedious. Making sure that your partner knows that you want to hear what is bugging them and that you are willing to do something about it, puts the equilibrium back into this relationship.
Remember: you need this partner as a cheerleader and a soul friend. Your long life depends upon it. Agreeing to make the most of your time together can help both of you feel great. Your concentration at work will increase. Your sense of living the good life will heighten your sense of the value of your relationship.
If in seeking to apply ideas such as this, you find things still not improving, seek some counseling. Research shows that most couples wait seven years from when they have identified a problem before they reach out for help. Often by then, one or both partners have felt too much hurt makes reconciling almost impossible. A few sessions of help early on can make all of the difference between a life of quiet desperation and a life of knowing the joy of true companionship.
