Us Against the World

Marriage is not a 50 / 50 proposition. The weight of responsibility in marriage will vary unevenly between husband and wife from day to day. But what do we do when the load is not balanced for a long time or when we both don’t have much left to give each other?

Don’t Ever Keep Score

Nick: One suggestion is that keeping score against each other needs to be kept off the table. This isn’t easy when you’re both tapped. Last week was a huge week at work for me, with a lot of long hours. The week was just as busy for Jen at work.

One night I arrived home wiped out and could tell Jen was as well. We could have played rock-paper-scissors for who would start making dinner first, but instead I offered to get started. Jen countered by offering to make dinner if I could take care of some phone calls that neither one of us wanted to make. It was a lose-lose for two wiped out people. But I found that in choosing just to be open to help each other and not take out a scorecard, neither of us had to pile new stress on top of the stresses of the day.

Instead of keeping score against each other, we kept score as a team – us against the world last week. It may be that we’re down 0 to 1, but at least our team is giving it all we can.

Keep Your Eye on the Prize

Jen: Another suggestion is to keep your eye on the prize. By the end of last week I was a bundle of stress from work. So of course, one more thing piled on – Friday our youngest son woke up snuffly. Nick had already left for work, so I made the executive decision to have our son stay home from school.

Communicating only over text throughout the day about the situation resulted in a misunderstanding about what we each thought was the right way to handle things. With both of us already worn out from work, it would have been easy to let our stresses feed the misunderstanding and turn it into a full-blown argument. I was feeling justified and could easily have talked myself into lashing out at Nick.

But knowing that I need our relationship to be the one sane thing in a crazy world helped me instead to open up and share how I had been feeling. It also helped me listen better so I understood where Nick was coming from. What could have potentially been a sour ending to an already taxing week ended with us hugging and leaning on each other for support instead of trying to regroup individually.

One Team

Balancing responsibilities and getting through tough days can be challenging and may seem impossible at times. But challenges are easier to face when you remember that the two of you as a team are stronger and better able to face the world when you do it as a united front.