Small Strokes Big Oaks

Why I love my Mommy: She will always gently remind me when I border on the too-selfish while NEVER telling me I’m a bad wife if I tend too much to myself and not enough to my husband.  There are many, many other reasons, but I have felt so glad over the past few months that I can actually talk to my mom about some of the problems that have arisen between Tim and me without worrying that I’ll feel blamed or attacked or told that it’s up to me to fix the problem.  I know people in situations who feel they can’t talk to their moms for fear of being blamed, and I don’t know how they can navigate a marriage without fair advice from their moms.

So when my mom read my latest post on striking the balance between selfishness and selflessness in a marriage and discussed it with me, I thought it was really great that she could remind me how big of a part supporting your partner when they accomplish something big in their lives really plays in the selfish/selfless balance.  It isn’t enough to “let” them do what they want to do and do what you want to do, she reminded me.  You also have to support them and celebrate their accomplishments.  Tim does this for me times 100, and he has shown a thousand times over that his selflessness includes both encouraging me to pursue my passions and celebrating my accomplishments.  But do I do that for him?

I can say, honestly, that I’ve tried.  But I haven’t been that supportive about this marathon-running thing.  In fact, I’ve been a bit of a selfish, whiny… well, you finish that sentence.  And that kind of selfishness is not the good kind of selfishness in a relationship.  I suppose we could sit here and explore why the actual date of our anniversary is so important to me and why this particular marathon this particular year is so important to him and all that jazz, but the fact of the matter is that both celebrating a year of marriage and running a first marathon are both important to both of us in different ways.  It doesn’t really matter why, only that they are.  And what more fitting of a way to celebrate the biggest day of our lives with another really big thing?  And who the heck says we have to be married to celebrating our anniversary on that exact day, anyway?  Oh, gross, that was a really bad pun.  Enough said.

This is really the only thing thus far that Tim has said he really wants to do just for him, and he’s been talking about it before we even met.  I need to be (and am, really I am) supportive of that.  Just like he’s supportive of all of my harebrained schemes.

It’s the doing things for yourself and supporting your partner when he or she does the same that is the true balance between selfishness and selflessness that needs to be negotiated, not just the “letting” and the “prohibiting,” or the “giving” and the “taking”.  I’ll tell you what, though.  It’s a sharp learning curve, and thank god for people wiser than you to gently put you back on the right path.