Having a Kinder Marriage is a Lot of WORK!
So. I was all ready to start working on a kinder marriage the other day. And the first time I was tested, I was a major fail.
Tim’s training for the marathon, right? So he runs after school three days a week. Those days, it’s my job to take Penny out for a walk, and on nice days like today (It finally feels like fall!!), I like to take her on about 3.5-mile walks to tire her out because otherwise she has so much energy and is totally annoying all night. Lucky for us active-types, there are 20-something miles of path that start just outside of our apartment building, so Tim and I run and walk, respectively, on that path when the weather permits.
You can imagine that when I take Penny out after school and he runs after school, sometimes we run into each other. Literally.
Now, Penny loves me. I know she does. She loves nothing better than to cuddle with me when she gets tired at night. She loves our long walks and she loves it when I sit there and pet her. But she LOVES Tim. I’ve never seen anything like it. When she sees him, she bolts towards him and there’s no stopping her. Lots of times, if she’s on the leash, she can detach herself from it or overpower me enough to get to him. This only happens when I say something like “That’s Tim!” and he sees her and gets all excited, too. Otherwise, she’ll sniff him and usually take a second look as he runs past, but it’s almost like she never saw him.
Today, we were both on opposite sides of the very busy street we have to cross to get to the pretty part of the path that goes through the forest preserve. By “very busy street,” I mean five lanes of traffic meeting five lanes of traffic at one intersection. We’re both waiting to cross, coming at each other from opposite directions, and I wave. He waves, and then he crouches down and gets an excited look on his face and shouts, “Hi, Penny!”
Guess what she did.
Thank goodness I saw it coming, because I was able to take her leash near her collar and hold her in place until I could lead her across the street before she was able to break away or run at him or overpower me. I glared at him as we crossed the street, then struggled with her for thirty extra minutes because she refused to keep walking with me after she saw him.
So what did I do when he walked in the door 30 minutes after I did? Did I ignore the fact that he did that? Did I calmly talk with him about how that may not have been the most responsible choice he could have made at that moment? Did I take a deep breath and let him know how worried I was about Penny at that moment?
No. I did not.
I yelled. I yelled about how that was the stupidest thing I had ever seen him do and what if she had gotten off her leash and ran out in front of a bunch of cars and got hit and OMG HOW ARE WE EVER SUPPOSED TO HAVE CHILDREN IF HE IS GOING TO JUST ENDANGER THEIR LIVES?! (Which is how you know I lost it completely, because I don’t even really want children at this point, but I use them as leverage when I’m yelling at Tim for some reason…) And you know what’s even worse than losing it over this incident? The fact that I seethed about it for a good hour before he came in, and still thought yelling was the best course of action to take.
So, OK, I have some work to do. Even though I think what he did was wrong, and he clearly didn’t think about the implications before he did it, seething and yelling was definitely not the right course of action in order to fix the situation. Even though he apologized profusely about the whole thing and is now making dinner to allow me to write this post, it’s not really a “Yay! Tim is making dinner!” It’s more of a “Damn right he’s making dinner, the jerk,” and that isn’t the best way to spend a beautiful, fall evening together.
So, I’m going to muster up all my strength, apologize like I mean it, and eat the best tuna salad sandwich I’ve ever tasted. After that, I’m going to make a cup of tea and relax on the couch with my husband, who will understand why I got angry, and accept my apology.
It’s not perfect, and I have a lot of work to do, but it’s a start, right?