Re-Engage Part Two

Yesterday I began posting about the challenges my husband and I have faced throughout our marriage. You can read that post here. I wrote about some negative feelings I was having but didn’t know how to turn those feelings into positive feelings without my husband’s help. For me, the first step in solving that problem was him using words and a tone of voice that showed me he cared I was hurting. On the flip side, I had to be able to let his love in. I had to allow him to love me.

After years of hurt, it was pretty hard to do. I wanted to keep my guard up and not trust his efforts were going to stick. I wanted to protect my heart from future hurt. But I knew that line of thinking would not help my marriage. In fact, that line of thinking was more likely to set my husband up for failure. I wanted him to succeed in his efforts.

It was my job to set him up for success. As long as he was willing to put forth an effort, his success was partially dependent on whether or not I was going to allow allow him to succeed. The only thing that would make my marriage grow was to allow his efforts to heal my pain. All while knowing in my heart that things he had been saying to cause the hurt, was most likely going to happen again.

It wasn’t easy at first. But the more I allowed him to heal my pain, the easier it became. Not only that, but the more I allowed him to to heal my pain, the easier it was for him to put forth the effort.

Did those things that caused the hurt happen again. Yes, they did. But things were beginning to change.

Accusations turned into ownership. Instead of saying, “You are out of control!” We said, “I am reaching my boiling point so I’m going to step away from this situation until I am in a better place to have this conversation.” 

As weeks turned into months, the things that happened to cause the hurt were still happening, but not as often as they had happened before. When they did happen, we’d spend time reflecting together afterwards. He’d ask me at what point in the conversation did I think things got out of control and why I felt it was out of control. He would share with me when he felt things were out of control. It helped us learn about each other’s boiling points. Knowing each other’s boiling points has helped us both keep difficult conversations under control.

Turns out I view stress differently than he does. What does that mean in conflict resolution? This next part might be confusing if you haven’t experienced it. For us, it meant I thought he had reached his boiling point before he was really there. Once I believed he had reached that point, it caused me to react. I thought I was reacting to his stress. It wasn’t his stress I was reacting to. I was reacting to my own fears from past hurt. Of course, that caused my husband to also react to my fears. And that made things escalate at a quick pace. 

Confusing as mud?

Re-Engage

My husband and I started attending a weekly program at our church called Re-Engage. We’ve only gone to three sessions and it looks like it will take about 6 months to complete the course. It’s a program designed to help your marriage grow. We’ve heard lots of good things from the program so we’ve been looking forward to getting started.

My husband has also been blogging about his experiences in our marriage. Between his blogging and joining this course, I’ve been thinking a lot about our marriage, what it was and where it is going. A little over two years ago, our marriage was pretty much over. I was dealing with a lot of negative feelings that I didn’t know how to fix on my own. I no longer felt like the love in our marriage was real. It didn’t feel like I was in love with my husband. I didn’t feel he was in love with me. To me, it felt like we were two people that just happened to live under the same roof and were raising the same children. There were times where my husband would be home, but to me, it felt like he wasn’t there. It was as if he was part of the decoration. To me, our home felt the same whether he was there or not. That wasn’t the kind of marriage I wanted to be in.

I talked to my husband about it. We had been attending counseling sessions at our church and communication was one thing we trying to improve at the time. I remember one night we got into a really big fight that ended with me driving off, not knowing what I was going to do next. I think I drove around for about an hour. I remember coming home and saying these words to my husband:

“I know you might not know how to fix the problem, but the least you could do is use your words to show me you care that I’m hurting, instead of using words to cause more hurt.”

I don’t remember if I worded it exactly like that, but you get the gist. The past two and a half years have been pretty amazing. We still have work that needs to be done. But it isn’t like it used to be. I’m so thankful for our church. I can honestly say I don’t know if we’d still be married today if it we had never stepped through those doors. We still struggle in some areas, but the negative feelings are no longer there and the hurtful words that were once in our relationship are getting to a point where they are almost non-existent.