Thursday, January 2, 2014

Start as you mean to go on?

Mom-101 had an intriguing post about the false hopes of new years resolutions. While I agree that there isn't anything magical about the calendar turning over that will suddenly transform you into a new person, I do find merit in the ritual of taking stock and making plans on a regular basis. I've tried doing resolutions on my birthday, or at the start of the academic year, but it just seems easiest to go with the crowd and do this in late December.

I think the problem people have with "resolutions" is that the word itself indicates an absolute commitment. And when that commitment isn't met, there is a sense of failure and then giving up. This tends to happen early on, because new habits are not formed instantaneously at 12:01 on January 1st. They form in fits and starts, with stumbling and getting back up again, and maybe maybe they will stick by March, or June, or October.

I'm thinking about this because, despite my resolve to "lighten up" and nurture my marriage, and be open to new things, this New Year's Eve and day were the worst I can remember in my life. And the reasons boil down to the same old same old issues I have with unspoken expectations, lack of communication, and a whole lot of inertia.

I thought we'd have a nice romantic date night in on NYE. Some wine, some food, some time to discuss our plans for the New Year and simply connect. But of course I never mentioned that to G. He wanted to watch a movie. I thought we could watch a shorter TV show and then talk. Instead we ended up watching 3 episodes of the show and neither of us got what we wanted. I went to bed at 11 because I was tired, and he stayed down to finally watch his movie. But when I got up to bed, I couldn't sleep. I was lonely and disappointed. I started reading a book, but what with weeks of suppressed emotion and the bringing to the surface of said emotions by reading a skillfully written story on the wonder of first  love, I was sobbing. Then L started getting up and wailing every 10 minutes and I finally brought him into bed and we fell asleep before G ever came up.

New years day was...OK. I had wanted us to plan something big for the kids, like the children's museum, or a new park, but G said he was tired and coming down with something, and wanted to get stuff done in the house. We all got up a bit late (for us, 7:30), got ready, and went to the parade our city does on NY day. The kids lasted about 30 minutes, so back home we went. We played for a while, I put away all the Christmas stuff, we had lunch and I took L up to nap on me (the only way he'll nap anymore) while I finished my book. After a short nap, I brought him back downstairs and basically took over kid duty while G worked on patching dry wall in our bathroom for 5 hours.

I was bored, annoyed, and incredibly inpatient. After vowing 3 weeks ago not to yell at the kids anymore (because I feel like an ass and it simply doesn't work), I was shrieking like a banshee at both my little boys because the incessant "mommy mommy mommy" and tugging at me were driving me insane. Eventually we got the kids to bed and G and I planned to enjoy some wine and fancy cheeses he had picked up.  I thought we could finally talk now.

Well this was doomed from the start. When we went to get the cheese, that G had set out on the table to warm up a bit, one was gone. The dog (who has NEVER taken food from the table before) had gnawed through the wrapper and consumed most of it. G was pissed, and then he mentioned he was exhausted and feeling sick and just wanted to relax. So we stuffed our faces with cheese and gulped wine while watching a show. I asked him to come upstairs and come to bed after that because he'd been up so late last night and because I was tired of going to bed alone. Miraculously, he didn't argue or roll his eyes, but said "OK" and came up.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, we proceeded to have the ugliest, nastiest fight I have ever had in my life. I won't go into the details, it was the same old issues as always, but there was yelling and name-calling, and door slamming of the sort that had never been seen in our home. At the end we were both broken down and finally finally finally able to be honest with each other. We both feel lonely, neither of us are good at communicating emotions, but in completely different ways, we both take the easy and selfish path of ignoring the issues and going our own way. We love each other and care about our relationship, but at the end of the day there is often nothing left to give. So we get the worst of each other. The dregs that are left after work, and kids, and friends, and every single other thing in life take all our energy and patience and creativity and kindness. We talked about all this, and we vowed to do better, to try to put each other higher on our list of priorities, to compromise more (maybe I can watch a movie with him once in a while; maybe he can come up to bed with me more often so we can chat) and to be more open.

I'd like to think things will change but also feel that its incredible naive to expect that when we have no concrete plans for how to implement change. I know there are a few things I need to do myself, and while I've made and broken these promises too many times to count, I am realizing that I am running out of time to "fix it later". There isn't always a later. January 2nd is a good time to start.

27 comments:

  1. ugh, i'm so sorry. although by the end i felt a little hopeful - sometimes a meltdown is good in that it forces you to finally get out what you are holding in. (we had a similar incident last week. i actually BROKE our baby gate trying to jump over it in my current state to run upstairs. yeah.).

    trying to come up with practical things to help - can you agree on some movies you'd like to see together? (and then plan to get through a really non ambitious number - like one a month?). josh has become much more sympathetic to my inability to finish a whole one (i fall asleep) so we'll watch over 2 nights - decent compromise.

    AND i still think you need a planned WEEKLY babysitter on saturdays (or sundays, or both) to take the kids for a few hours and give you some alone and couples time. it won't be easy at first and i'm sure the kids will protest, but if you find someone good eventually it will work. and whatever it costs ($50-100/week, depending how much you do) i really think it will be SO worth it.

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    1. is it bad that I feel much better knowing that you guys fight sometimes, too? I don't know about you, but I don't talk to anyone IRL about marriage troubles, so its hard to know what is and isn't "normal".
      Yes, I need to work on a "movies to see" list...any suggestions? I don't mind watching movies (over one or two nights, depending) but our entire collection is full of stuff that G likes (action/adventure/westerns/thrillers/horror...i.e. NOTHING I would EVER want to watch. so then we end up browsing netflix for something and waste the night away doing that.

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    2. i tend to peruse rotten tomatoes and pick movies with high ratings. recently we saw 'the way way back' (liked a lot) and 'before midnight' (3rd in "before sunrise" series - interesting). josh tends to like a much wider variety - he likes action/adventure but i generally HATE them so most of the time he watches those on his own. (fine w me).

      we usually just get them from OnDemand (through our satellite - we have direct TV b/c cable here is not very good).

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  2. 1. I agree with Sarah about hiring a weekend babysitter. Seriously, Ana, just do it. Have the person make you dinner or do your laundry too.

    2. I like Sarah's suggestion of splitting the movie over 2 days. We also never have time to watch a full movie together, but this alternative works (when we can find a movie we actually want to watch).

    3. I totally empathize with the fighting. We did not have a great start to NYD because we were both getting cabin fever, my husband was dreading his return to work, and I was antsy to finish up some work. This seems to be a common problem for us, and I have yet to find a solution to the problem.

    I also am having trouble coming up with concrete suggestions. My husband and I are also lonely, but have been having trouble getting out of this rut for years. I don't know that we ever will.

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    1. its this part "when we can find a movie we actually want to watch" that gets us. We have extremely different taste in movies. When we do watch movies lately, we settle for something unoffensive and usually both fall asleep because we've compromised to the point of neither of us enjoying it. I need to make a list of movies I want to see that we can choose from.
      I'm still looking into #1, haven't found anyone yet.

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    2. Are you a member of the [my part of town] list serv? Nannies and babysitters (and people looking for the above) post there all the time. Email me if you're interested.

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    3. I don't think I've seen a full length movie in one sitting since DC2 was born. I don't have the patience, and neither does she. Sometimes I'll watch stuff with the captions on 4x speed... that makes me feel more virtuous.

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    4. I'm definitely on "my part of town" listserv and I've seen the posts come up, but the few leads I tried didn't work out (they wanted weekdays, etc...)
      To be honest, while I did toy around with this idea, I'm not really into it for reasons I probably need to work out...maybe because my kids are older? B talks all week about being excited to spend the weekend with us and all the things we will do...it kind of breaks my heart.

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    5. you can do a LOT of things all weekend long and still fit in a 2-3 hr break for yourself to spend with G. i promise!

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  3. I had a meh to that mom-101 post. Even though we don't do new year's resolutions (we tend to do beginning of the school year resolutions instead!). I guess enough of her readers hadn't read that sentiment before for it to be novel to them. (My guess is there's one of those NY resolution maverick posts for every 20 regular NY resolutions post, and one post on the science of NY resolutions for every 30-50 resolutions posts. I like the science-y ones. And the regular ones too. :) )

    Since folks are offering suggestions... My suggestion is to try therapy again, but with a different therapist. It can take several tries to find one that's a good fit. And you do still get something out of each attempt, even if it's just better knowing what you want.

    Good luck!

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    1. Yeah, I actually love NY resolutions posts (i've got several coming up).
      I brought up the therapist again with G and he is really really hesitant to go. I see where he is coming from (the therapist basically took my side from the get-go, and it was really awkward even for me)

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    2. Yeah, that was not a good therapist. Maybe there's some way he can be more in charge of picking a therapist or cutting loose right away with a bad therapist that would make him more comfortable. It really does often take several tries to get a therapist that works well even with just one person, much less a couple. But when it works, it is amazing and worth all the missed steps. (So say both my blogging partner and I.) My blogging partner recommends interviewing therapists before signing up with them, but it helps to know what you want, which one doesn't when one is just starting off. It's a lot like dating or like buying a house.

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    3. hahahaha! "he can be more in charge..." The only way he said he'd try it again is if I did all the work, met with the person, and was 100% sure it was a good fit, before he goes again. I am having trouble mustering up the energy myself to go through the process. As with everything else, it'd be great if someone could just tell me who to go to...but I don't know anyone that was used someone that is convenient to our work/home.

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    4. I'm sorry to hear that he is not being helpful.

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    5. He's just really against the idea of couples therapy for some reason. I do plan to broach it again but to give it a few months. I think he's just not into talking about "feelings". He insisted he was happy and had no feelings until the end of the big fight---it took that level of breakdown to get any emotion out of him.

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  4. I am looking for a sitter too, but it is soooooo difficult, because I do not know where to start, and what to look for. I have to think about that and decide what we want and need, and I am just too spent to do that right now.
    What my husband and I do is we set two nights a week when we get together and just talk after the children are asleep. Talk is a very comprehensive notion. Wink. But as much as possible, even when we don't feel like (as in I, he is always up for a 'talk'), I make myself not find any excuse to postpone it for another night, and I must say, I never regret that. Spending time with him is great, and then when we cuddle and just talk, is even greater, because it is. It was so awkward in the beginning, I felt weird to set a schedule and you know, keep up with it, but this is how a habit starts, right? Repeating until it get to be a reflex. Especially with time and energy black holes,aka small children, with various degrees of spiritedness, it must be a concious effort in the beginning. But it needs to be an effort from both partners. And one needs to enjoy it, the entire range of the talking comprehensiveness, otherwise it is just a chore.

    Best of luck, dear friend. I hope things look up soon, and you get what you want out of life.

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    1. Mina, this is EXACTLY the idea I just had---he keeps saying he "forgets" that I want us to talk (and I do mean talk, no winks) regularly or that if we want to "talk" (wink) it needs to be started prior to 11pm. So maybe he can just put it on his calendar so he won't "forget". (the quotes are because this makes absolutely no sense to me, yet he claims it to be true---he was SHOUTING it to me at the top of his lungs---so he feels strongly about clinging to "forget")

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    2. It does seem that your husband is having very hard time with your expectations. From reading your blog, it appears that you should give him more freedom and stop your demands. Just let him be, really, it upsets you both when you insist on "talking" . You may find yourself less clingy and needy if you try anti-depressants just for a short while. Help yourself reach a better place first.

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  5. Thank your for this brave and beautiful post. Like you said in a reply, we need to share these things because we're all going through them, and it's so easy to forget how very common it is. I think of all the things I got from my therapy time, the most valuable was getting me to agree to ask my husband to do a weekly date night for FIVE MONTHS. It really made a difference. Which is not to say ALL IS AWESOME. No. We've totally fallen off the sex wagon again--I blame perpetual sickness, but really it's me being lazy... However, it did wonders for the simmering resentment... It might also help with the movie conundrum. If that's all he wants to do when you're at home and you don't have the same taste, totally a recipe for conflict. I tried care.com for sitters. I signed up and then unsigned up after I found a few. I restricted it to students at my university, just to reduce the number of options, because it was overwhelming. I found some good ones!

    In any case, assivce aside, keep on doing whatever your gut tells you will work.

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    1. See, we tried to set a weekly date night and it just....never happened (sickness, traveling, and then just giving up).

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    2. just wanted to say i also used care.com. we found our nanny that way and one babysitter that we love. also found some less amazing (but still safe and ok) ones, too. it's all about interviews AND especially getting real, reliable references.

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    3. I've also had friends with great success with care.com. What's the worst that can happen?

      Maybe this making the relationship better thing is kind of like quitting smoking. You just have to keep trying until it sticks (and trying and trying and trying).

      I also wanted to third the sentiment that reading that this happens to other couples is helpful to me as well. Not because I want bad things for other people, but because it makes me feel less alone.

      Hang in there. I hear you with the husband digging in the heels (oh do I ever), but you just gotta keep working at these things.

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  6. Watching TV together is better than going on social media/facebook separately!

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  7. Oh Ana, I'm so sorry the start of the year has been a busy. That fight sounds awful. I'm sorry you both had to go through that.

    Any advice I would give has been given before and I don't really feel I can give much advice when we are going though the same shit as you two. I swear, I felt like I could have (or maybe already have) written sentences/paragraphs/that whole post myself. So I guess all I can offer is empathy and understanding.

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  8. I'm so sorry, but like Sarah I felt like you guys got somewhere in the end. I can't remember if you're still doing individual therapy but if you find someone you like, it might just help for yourself and you can tackle the couples' thing together later?

    In our house, if I want a "big night" or "big day" I need to plan it myself. It is frustrating, but that is just not one of hubby's strengths. (Sort of like i hate doing yardwork and get a pass from him, though it frustrates HIM). Not sure if that works for you guys or if your hubby would bail last-minute even if you did have plans, but just a suggestion that maybe it's worth the hassle to get what you want out of holidays,dates, etc.

    We found our AMAZING sitter through a free posting board at the career site at our local Christian college. What about a regular sitter time late night during the week either close to or after the kids' bedtimes? Or even on weekends, but late? This would probably help with the kids not feeling like they're "missing out".

    Anyway, just wanted to say I'm thinking of you. One of the John Gottman books might have some concrete suggestions too.

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  9. A little late coming back to this post, but read it earlier and wanted to send a little hand squeeze in solidarity. I have no magical words of insight, really, only that I deeply identify with that down-to-the-dregs feeling on those really hard, long days. We have had some of our most intense discussions since Audie's birth, and I have found that I need to pointedly tell N what I need from him. Sometimes it's something as seemingly trivial as, "I need you to answer my texts. When I do not hear back from you, I feel alone and unsupported." (But it's not trivial, because I am texting him when I am feeling overwhelmed or inadequate about parenting and need someone to ground me a little, specifically my partner in parenting.) I feel like I am continually un-training myself to expect him to read my mind. Because even though we have been together for almost half our lives at this point, we seriously do not always understand the other person's needs. So, all that to say that I found a bit pressure valve release by being more explicit in my needs to him (and he to me for his). He has also been open and direct with me in this way, too, and it takes some practice to be direct with each other without hurting feelings, but we're managing pretty well so far. Just my experience...

    I hope you guys are able to carve out time for yourselves. Sounds like everyone else has some great suggestions/encouragement about child care. Good luck, mama.

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  10. I'm coming to the table a little bit late, and don't have much to add to what the pp's have said. But I did want to send love and support, and say that we had pretty much the same NYE. And I think we are pretty much the same person- I have issues of my own to work on. I get bored and impatient and take it out on those I love. And I have broken promises a thousand times over, too. Let's hope 2014 offers us both the opportunity to make some changes.

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