Working On a Kinder Marriage

Tim and I have been fighting this week. If you read this blog regularly or know me even a little bit, you are probably not surprised. Why ever would we be fighting? Whatever could we have to fight about?

It was the first week where we were both back in school full time.

Yup, that’s right. This past week was the back-to-school-fighting week. It is similar in many ways to the first-week-of-summer-fighting week, where we pretty much yell about anything and everything. Well, I yell about pretty much anything and everything while he mutters snide comments that he thinks I can’t hear under his breath. (As my students will tell you, I hear everything. And if you think I didn’t hear you, it means I was ignoring you.) While the first-week-of-summer-fighting week is due to both of us being stir-crazy in a small living space and seeing too much of each other or constantly bumping in to each other or waking each other up or switching the channel on the television without permission, the back-to-school-fighting week is all about how we don’t see enough of each other or about how one of us (Tim) is always working while the other (me) is always cooking or cleaning and doesn’t have time to write like she wants to. It’s about, “Seriously, you can’t put your grading down for half an hour to talk to me about your day?!” And then, you know, once we renegotiate our schedules and get used to each other again, it’ll be time for the coaching-schedule-fighting week, where we’re both working late nights at extra curricular activities because our seasons line up to the day and we forget we’re even married for three months.

While I clearly think that having a good fight every once in a while is necessary to a good relationship,  these fights are getting to be routine, and have been since well before we got married. We have a week of fighting when summer starts, then when school starts, then when coaching starts. Every. Single. Year. Seriously, it’s getting to the point where the fights aren’t even exciting and stimulating anymore. They just are.

If we keep going this way, eventually y’all will be able to set your watches by our fights.

In my reading this week, I caught on to this post from The Mama Bird Diaries about having a kinder, gentler marriage.

We have been so drained by the demanding needs of our four young children that there have been mornings we don’t even kiss goodbye. Or speak nicely. Or say I love you nearly enough.

So we decided to change it.

And this amazing thing happens when you start being kinder to someone. The edginess starts to disappear. They return the kindness. You stop resenting the person for finishing the last cup of coffee or leaving the dishes because he or she was too tired. You cut each other more slack. You laugh more. You’re more compassionate. You’re quicker to say I’m sorry. You run back into the house, even if it means the kids will be a few minutes late for school, to give that kiss goodbye.

Imagine my surprise when I read this. Shock and awe, people. It’s that easy to stop fighting in your marriage?! Of course it is. It’s the same principle I decided to use with my students this year: Don’t sweat the small stuff, don’t get angry with them when they’re angry with you, keep your cool, kill ’em with kindness, find a solution and execute it immediately. And guess how many troubles I’ve had with my students this year? Zero. (Well, one, but that was with a student I had last year who didn’t note my change in attitude.) This time last year? More than I can count, because I was frustrated, cranky, and didn’t have much follow-through because I had no time to do so.

Here’s the thing: I can kick and scream and throw a tantrum all I want about how I don’t have enough time to write or the dirty dishes have been sitting in the sink for, literally, DAYS. But when it comes down to it, whose fault is it that I don’t have time to write? Is it really because I had to take 10 minutes to walk the dog while Tim ran for his marathon training? Or is it because I’ve been exhausted this week because I’m still adjusting to a full-time schedule? Probably the latter. And am I probably using cleaning the dishes as an excuse not to write because I’m too intellectually exhausted to come up with anything to write about? Um, yes. Because, believe it or not, life will go on if the dishes are dirty in the sink for another day.

We have a decision to make when we find ourselves at these crossroads. We can fight it out, or we can cut each other – and, more importantly I think, ourselves – some slack and realize that molding young minds is exhausting work, and in the first 10 days of school, it’s probably normal to fall asleep on the couch by 8PM without having done half the things you said you were going to do.

These fights end up being about how we don’t support each other’s pursuits. But the truth of the matter is that we do, and blaming the other partner for not doing what we originally wanted to do is effectively creating a scapegoat and relieving ourselves of the guilt we feel for not meeting our goals the first week back at school.

Something’s gotta give when summer ends and school begins. 100% clean dishes? Yea, that can go. Dust-free surfaces? Sure, that can wait. A perfectly made bed? Puh-lease. I’m just getting back in it when I get home from work anyway. Doing something that fulfills you? No way. Spending quality time (read: not yelling) with the love of your life? Never.

But, you know, someone should probably remind me of this again next September.

7 replies on “Working On a Kinder Marriage”

  1. Well worth remembering. We’re kicking into back-to-life mode at the end of summer in my house, too.

    On another note: would it be difficult to change your posting settings so it doesn’t truncate in RSS? You have a beautiful page, but I have vision problems, and I’m able to do more reliable text size adjustments in my RSS reader than I am when I have to go to the main site for all the blogs I love to read.

  2. Carrie on

    Great post.

    Due to personal issues I have with anger, I told my husband early on in our relationship that yelling as a means of communication would not fly with me. When someone yells at me, I shut down — I can’t engage in that kind of communication. So, as a rule, we just don’t do it. That’s not to say that we never fight — of course we do, everyone does — but we work hard to express upset feelings in productive ways. It’s really challenging sometimes, but it makes a world of difference. And that idea of a “kinder marriage” is so true. Over time, we’ve gotten MUCH better at apologizing after one of us snaps at the other, or taking deep breaths and calming down before accidentally saying something hurtful. It can be hard, but it feels so good.

  3. I came from Feministe, and, without wanting to criticize your marriage or decisions-how do you deal with the fact that it’s always that are supposed to do this? That women are supposed to sacrifice for the relationship?