This line from an Avett Brothers song describes nearly perfectly how I’m feeling about our marriage. Hubs and I recently resolved to work on us, and in spite of still sometimes feeling like I’d like to throw a bag of dog poop at him, this moment is just right. I came home from a weekend of coaching to a sweet and funny text (“Where you at girl?”) and a CLEAN house. The floors vacuumed and mopped (pretty sure Hubs has not mopped our floors a single time since we moved into this house two and a half years ago!), cat boxes scooped, kitchen clean (including countertops), and recycling out in the bin where it belongs!
Coming home and seeing that he had listened to what I needed from him and honored me by making our house clean was the best way for this week to start. I immediately expressed my undying love for both Hubs and the clean house, and we went to bed. Starting out happy with each other not only because it was nice to be together after I had been away but because he had done this wonderful thing, though, has already made a huge difference in our relationship just in the past couple of days. We have been laughing every day on our way to work, enjoyed grocery shopping together, and last night we had a real breakthrough.
In making plans with a friend, I offered to cook dinner Saturday night. I forgot that Hubs is giving a tour to some prospective grad students on Saturday, most likely right up ’til dinner time. He knows that I sometimes get stressed out with having guests when he’s not around to help me prepare, and as we were going to bed, we started to talk about the time for the tour, which he doesn’t know yet. I felt myself get frustrated about the lack of information and planning, but instead of turning it into a big deal, I just decided to go to sleep (which is actually pretty uncharacteristic; I’m more of the turning-things-into-a-big-deal type). This morning, I asked him very calmly whether he thought that we should cancel the plans, but we were able to decide together that it wasn’t necessary to cancel completely, but would probably just be less stressful to go out to eat with our friends instead.
I am proud of us for several reasons: 1. We averted a potential fight. 2. We did so by calmly talking it out and thinking ahead. 3. We did all of this while both of us are under the same amount of stress as we always are! And I am convinced that we were able to accomplish all these wonderful things because of the optimism that we both felt by coming home to each of us being happy on Sunday. I want to live our marriage like this all the time. I want to always feel like we’re anticipating potential problems and handling them in a grown-up way. I want to be able to come home and be joyously happy to see my husband (whether or not he has cleaned the house) because now I know that choosing to feel super-wonderful about us in just one moment makes all the moments that follow amazing, too.
Inviting Joy 