Marital Talk

I generally feel guilty when I indulge in myself.  By indulge I mean spend money on myself in a way that is not beneficial to my entire family.  I’m not sure why I feel this way, but my mom never took time for herself and rarely bought things for herself so I guess I took after her. 

The thing is, when we owned the daycare, I rarely felt like I needed to have "time" away, or that I needed "speciality care".  But, when I have my 3 year old with me all day and he and I just battle one another all day long, I have to have some time to myself.  And, I generally feel guilty for anything I do for myself. 

Today we went to therapy and we had to carry the boys with us due to sitter issues.  So, we had our two boys with us when we went to therapy where we talked about those little cherubs.  Disciple was a big topic during this session, more so than any of our others. 

Then, after a 3-year-old meltdown, we headed to dinner.  When dinner was almost over, my husband suggested that he would take one kid and go get lumber prices for our new deck if I would take the other.  I quickly said, "I was thinking you would take them both and I would go get a pedicure".  And, immediately the guilt set in.

I did go get my pedicure but I also checked with my husband several times because I felt like a bad person for leaving him to deal with both kids.  It isn’t that the boys are that difficult, but I did leave him to handle bedtime alone. 

I know I know, it didn’t hurt anything, but mommy guilt is serious business.

Discuss.

This time I’m going to focus on the actual people who are suppose to be in that bed.  The husband and the wife.  Studies show that Caucasian women involved in marital strife will experience sleep problems.  This study isn’t the bottom line and it isn’t necessarily true of women outside he Caucasian woman.  As most of you know, sleep deprivation is a horrible issue.  And, many times women function with sleep deprivation when newborns arrive simply by the fact that men don’t see it is their responsibility. 

And, women will tell you that performing every day tasks while sleep deprived makes even the most simple task of folding laundry impossible.  Well, according to this study authored by Wendy M Troxel, PhD of the University of Pittsburgh, a multi-site study of mid-life women, with an average age of 46 years, 51% Caucasian, 20% African American, 9% Hispanic, 9% Chinese, and 11% Japanese, the subjects reported their marital happiness, sleep quality and frequency of difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep and early morning awakenings.

The results show that higher levels of marital happiness were associated with lesser risk of having multiple sleep complaints but only among the Caucasian women. 

Happily married women had less difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, fewer early morning awakenings, and more restful sleep as compared to unhappily married women.

and

“Divorced individuals tend to have more sleep problems than those who are married; however, among the married, we know very little about how differences in marital quality may be linked with sleep,” said Dr. Troxel. “The present results show that happily married women have fewer sleep problems than unhappily married women.”

As I said above, sleep deprivation is a horrible thing, and sleep plays a vital role in health and well-being.  So, if you want to keep our wife healthy by allowing her to get the sleep she needs, then make sure she is happy in her marriage.  Sounds simple enough?

I am one of the few people who can honestly say that an onslaught of stress doesn’t effect me at the time it is occurring.  Death’s in the family, accidents by family members, children going extreme on their behavior or simply time crunches just don’t bother me.  Right then.  I don’t mind running from one activity to another.  Although, as I’ve aged, I like it less and less because I’ve found I love a good afternoon nap.  Basically what happens is I do just fine in the moment, then in a few weeks, usually 10 days or so, I have a break down.  I hit bottom and have to work my way back out of the funk.

My husband is directly the opposite.  He likes running from one activity to another, as long as they are his kind of activities and the kids aren’t acting up.  But, for the most part, the kind of dodging of bullets that we do with our time, he gets irritated.  He prefers to just quit doing any of it and not bother with even trying.  Now, that, that I can’t handle even in the moment.  I need someone to carry 50% of load or none of it.  Just helping 75% doesn’t do me any good because I don’t know when the help is coming.

When we owned the daycare, we didn’t necessarily argue but we jabbed at one another the whole weekend.  We would go about daycare work and just border on being rude to one another.  Stress will make you say and do things you wouldn’t necessarily do otherwise.

Well, I told you all that to say, this past weekend was wonderful.  We just gelled as a couple.  Lazy Friday night with take-out, he laid around all morning Saturday, I slept 9:30 or so and then ran some errands.  He put the boys down for a nap and then napped himself.  When I arrived home, the boys were awake and he happily took back the child care duties and allowed me a nap.  Then, we hit the local fair, you can read more about that here.    Then, Sunday, I slept til 11, he got the boys dressed for church and then snoozed himself.  We had lunch together with no children and then home for another nap.  The boys returned home from a day with the Nanny and the rest of the night just smoothly sailed right into bedtime.  The two of us then sat on the sofa, surfed and watched TV.

Now, weekends like this, we have a little more difficulty in making decisions on what to do and when to do it, having too much time on your hands is just not something we are accustom to.  But, really, there was no rude remarks or jabs at one another for something silly. 

It was nice to have a stress free weekend with my husband, my kids and just breeze through, only doing what we wanted to do.  Yes, my grass is 3 feet tall but it was raining yesterday so, what can you do?  Yes, my laundry is piled a mile high but I can do that today while I work.  So, what does that leave?  It leaves everyone refreshed and ready for a new week. 

I sure hope this becomes a routine because I sure to like just being calm, doing simple things and letting life happen around us. 

And you?  What happened over your weekend?  Relax?  Work?  Your Spouse?  Children?

I certainly do not wish to alienate anyone and this is not a male bashing post.  What I am interested in learning is how to prepare my two young boys as they grow and learn to cope with the outside world.  The fact of the matter is this, my husband depends on me for a great deal of the family responsibility.  No, he works, he his the bread winner but he has no clue how the money is spent.  A few months back I insisted that he take charge of the checkbook and the bills and see if he could manage any better than I could.

Thus far, he is slowly slipping out of the responsibility and I am taking over once again.  I know that part of that is related straight to our personality types.  I am a type A perfectionist, he is more laid back and is a horrible at time management.  He was in the army where he had to be responsible for himself so I know he can do it.  When he returned from the army, he had to get a job and find a place to live, etc and he did just fine. 

Later he married and he let his first wife handle all things that related to the responsibility factor while he merely sat around and let her work it out at her own discretion.  And, here now, 10 years later and he is doing the same thing. 

As it is right now I make his doctor’s appointments, I take care that his blood pressure medication and ADD medication are filled and refilled at the right time and as it stands, I’m back to handling the finances.  I make the decisions on the children’s health, dental, school and schedules even.

So, what I’m wondering is this, how do I foster a sense of independence and responsibility in my two sons as they grow so that I do not have a son who can’t even remember when to take his own medication?  I know that my father is the reason I have the attitude that I have but he isn’t around for me to ask and who knows, he might not have a clue what to do with my wee tots in this generation.  So, I come to you, any suggestions?

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Being a part of team isn’t always.  I’ve been part of athletic teams, academic teams, employee teams and I’ve attempted the marital team 3 times prior to this final fourth marital team.  I’m not sure what makes this marital team work so much better than any before, but we really do work well. 

I’m not real sure I believe in the whole "one and only soul mate" because I’ve connected with many people over the years.  I guess my first real connection was with the two girls that I’ve been friends with since we were 14 years old. 

We were all born  in the 1968.  Cheryl in March, e in September and Connie in October.  Thus, if you do the math, this is the year we all turn 40.  Another connection is one I had with a guy in high school.  We barely spoke to one another the first 2 years of high school.  But, as class sizes decreased, friendships with the your classmates increased.  This guy and I eventually became really good friends.

From there, it is hard to say that I had a real soul mate kind of connection again.  That’s why I say I don’t buy into the "one and only soul mate" theory.  Alas, my husband and I now aren’t what I would deem as "soul mates".  We are a team, we work together really well and both of us are happy.

This week has brought about the team work in our marriage more than usual I think.  Basically, my husband normally rises at 4:30 or 5 to go to work.  So, the very fact that he has slept til 7 or 7:30 when the boys get up means that he has slept-in.  That’s important because for me, sleeping in means 9 or even 10.  But, since the boys usually rise by 7:30, he is up with them, he has had the opportunity to sleep late and so have I.

From there it is a series of team work that would get us all dressed, beach supplies gathered, pool supplies, towels, reading material, cameras, phones, keys, etc.  But, we managed it like old pros. 

Once on the beach, I manned the kids when they were playing in the sand, he took over once they stepped near the oceans edge.  Then, once we moved to the pool, we would share the duties of getting all the gear to the shower, I would hand it to him as he rinsed it off.  I kept it separated and then we would head for the pool.

Part of the time we both got in the pool, others Wayne got in with them alone.  Either way, it seemed to fit both of our personalities to do what we had to do and everyone was happy. 

Back in the room was much the same, I stripped the boys down, he ran them some warm water to rinse off with while I gathered their clothes.  One of us would pick up the mess while the other helped the youngest get dressed. 

There’s no reason to keep up with all the examples, I’m just proud to say that we work well together.  We may not be what some people would considered "one and only soul mates" but we are most definitely a marital team.