Now we enter Part 2 of the book and get into the meat of some specific issues Hal calls “The Fires of Marital Commitment”. This chapter focuses on time…..I loved the “ball and chain” t-shirt. So crazy that he saw 2 guys wearing it in the same airport!
To be honest, I see so many women fall into this trap in the suburbia area where we live. Their men are like office working, money making robots and the wives run the whole dang schedule of their lives! “Honey can I….?” It’s pathetic. Those men are not running their households (at least in public settings) and are so meek and sitting back and watching and not even engaging so much in conversation. I imagine this probably carries over to the financial management as well because these “control freak” wives also do all the checkbook balancing. It makes me cringe!
In my first marriage, my ex husband ended up quitting his job when our son was born 10 weeks premature and we were in no way putting that tiny baby in daycare. He was a substitute teacher trying to settle into a permanent career but I was already established in mine so financially it made sense. However it quickly just brought to light what had been happening all along anyhow. I had a lot of anxiety in my twenties and being a “control freak” wife helped me be less anxietous. So much so that it finally because apparent to me that he never participated emotionally or even as a partner decision maker in our relationship. I was making all the decisions about finances, vacations, what was best for Jackson, house cleaning schedules, etc. And he’d turned into the grown up teenage son still living at home. Watching movies all day and heading out the door to play softball or volleyball as soon as I got home from work to take over with our son.
I had never felt more lonely or disconnected in my whole life. Now of course there were signs I should have paid attention to from the beginning and I truly never felt like we connected at more than a roommate / friends with benefits level, mostly because I found someone I could control and keep my world nice and safe.
That is wrong on so many levels.
So this is something I am ultra sensitive to in my marriage now. I never want to be back in that place where I feel like my partner is not there for me. And my husband Dan is such a strong provider and caregiver and feels so accountable for taking care of our family. It’s so amazing compared to where I was.
But still we struggle. With 4 kids and our schedules, we fell into the trap that the second couple Mike and Allison were in. Mike was asking Allison permission to do things. I think a lot of this is because Dan leaves the house for 24 / 48 hours at a time and our life goes on with out schedule. And at work, it’s pretty much do what the bell tells you. The Marine Corps was the same way. So he has had very few parts of his life where he’s had to be responsible for planning his own time. To be honest, I hate it. It’s extra pressure on me. I’ve got enough to keep track of myself that I don’t want the pressure of having to help him decide if he can do things or not. We are working on this and getting better but it’s another prime example of what Hal is talking about.
On the other hand, our personalities are so different when it comes to time management. I am so guilty of not building in a time margin like he says on Page 104. Because if everything goes according to my plan, that’s how we can fit in the most activities, efficiency, etc. But then there is bad traffic. And boom. We’re all thrown off. I’d seriously rather gamble on bad traffic than be 20 minutes early and stuck in a car with nothing to do while we wait. I know. That’s terrible. Dan is exactly the opposite!
You all know the fire service brings a whole new level of complexity to this time topic.
- so much time away from each other
- unexpected calls and OT
- irregular schedules from the “normal” world requiring holiday and weekend work
I so struggled to deal with this when we were first married. I tried to manage it into my master control freak calendar and it just didn’t go. So I said shove it. Me and the kids school and work on a M-F schedule and we’ll deal with the fire service impact as needed. That actually took a huge ton of bricks of my shoulders and brought some relief. It’s definitely not the only way to deal with it but cleared my head a bit.
Here are some thoughtful questions for our discussion this week. Same routine. Pick one or some or all and answer below in the comments. This is completely private and only viewable by those who are in the Fire Wife Sisterhood.
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This is a tough one for me…partly because my first marriage was EXACTLY like you described Lori…I did EVERYTHING and as a result…I grew this great resentment that he was a spectator in our family.
I may be completely blind, but I no longer see many issues with time scheduling in our relationship. Early on, we had some issues…and being a blended family makes it that much harder. My FF works 10 days a month and has 50/50 custody of his boys. So, there are 5 days a month that we could “potentially” (if we are lucky) not have any children. When we were first together, he would just whip together some type of calendar and send it to his ex and she would agree to it…seemingly without much thought. We soon realized, together, that I should create the time sharing calendar. So, I start by highlighting his duty days as “her days” with the boys. I then layer in my time sharing schedule (I have every Mon/Tues and I alternate weekends with my ex). It takes a lot of work, but I always try to score us at least one “pink day” (just a color I picked for our days with no kids) a week. In the early days, he would take OT only on “pink days”…and it would drive me insane. I would begrudingly agree because at the time, we hadn’t combined finances and I think he felt like he “needed” the extra money.
But, fact of the matter is, we don’t need him to take OT. I told him that I felt like I played third fiddle to everything else in his life and that building our relationship (we had a VERY quick and hasty courtship/engagement). We then agreed that he didn’t NEED to take OT…but, that if he did accept it, he could not compromise our pink days. He has only taken OT once since then…and it was a day we were supposed to have only his kids…so, we asked his mom (who is local and BEGS to take his boys all the time) to help us out. It worked wonderfully…he got to take the OT and she got to see the kids…and our pink days weren’t compromised.
That is a great schedule!! Right now my husband is on 24, goes to paramedic school, and work PT at a local hospital. This has always been a big issue for me because I felt like I was doing all the planning/hard work for us to have a “pink” day. I realized after time that that is my gift and I let it go and often I have to help him stay balanced and carve out time for himself!! We try to keep Fridays free for us during the school years since I am off on Friday.
This is a mixture of answering questions 3 and 5.
Time has been a pretty big issue for us in the past. I expected him to constantly make up the time he was missing when he was on shift, and I would freak out if he scheduled to do something without me on his days off. Thankfully we have always had really good communication so we talked through this issue and it is soooo much better than where we started. I still have a lot of work to do though. I think our issues with time are mostly caused by me and my expectations. It’s not fair for me to expect him to only go to work and be home with me. He wants and needs a life outside of that and I need to support that. I get to nurture my family relationships and friendships when he is on shift, but in order for him to do the same I am going to have to be willing to support him when he wants to spend time away from me during our free time together. I have learned to stop taking it personally because it really is nothing against me, it doesn’t mean he’s tired of me or he’d rather spend that time with someone else. It’s just that sometimes he needs to do things without me. I still struggle with this but he is so supportive and patient with me so I know we will continue to get a lot better. My biggest problem with him is that he is really spontaneous and I can’t handle that because I’m a control freak. He did work on that and now he does his best to plan stuff ahead of time when he can so I can adjust my schedule accordingly.
Today is the perfect example of this. If this was a few years ago, or even last year, we would be in the middle of a huge fight, both feeling angry and hurt. Today is his first day back on shift since July 6 because he split his finger open while doing yardwork for my grandpa and had to get stitches. We loved the extra unexpected time together and took full advantage of it. So he went back to work and we got three “surprises”. He told me about the first one when I was on my lunch break, he has to go take a test Friday night about an hour away from where we live. The test will only take half an hour and he will get paid OT to do this. The old me would have immediately rejected this and would have given him an earful and blamed him for not knowing sooner and not scheduling it to a more convenient time. But this time I just thanked him for telling me, and he offered to take me with him so we could make a date night out of it after his test. I loved that he took the initiative to do that so I was pretty happy after that, and he was feeling good as well. The second surprise came an hour later when he told me that his Kelley day that was scheduled for Tuesday isn’t going to happen because he forgot about a trade he made to get time off for our backpacking trip in October. Again, the old me would have freaked out and blamed him and made him feel bad. Instead I just told him no big deal since we didn’t have anything planned anyway and it’s just a Tuesday so it doesn’t really affect our schedule too much. Then, my least favorite surprise in the world came right after that when he told me that there’s scheduled OT for Sunday and he’s up. Uggghhhh. I HATE 48 hour shifts in general, but I particularly loathe 48s that happen to fall on a Saturday and Sunday. Instead of freaking out on him though I just thanked him for working so hard and told him it’s good timing since we just had all that extra time together, and the extra money will be nice so we can buy our backpacking gear without worrying about how much it will cost. He kept apologizing and saying he’s really not trying to make things so hard and it made me feel so bad that he felt like he needed to do that. I know he was probably scared to tell me because he was dreading my reaction, so I was really happy I was able to stay so calm. I even thanked God for blessing me with the peace and patience to deal with all of these surprises with somewhat of a good attitude. And I know that it made my husband feel better too. He even thanked me for being so cool about it and told me how much he loved me.
This might seem like common sense to some of you, but this is a huge deal for me and I’m so happy right now! Not only did we avoid fighting, but I feel like we are even closer now.
WOW!!! I am reading this with a smile and tears in my eyes. i could have written this very post. I have matured over the years and realized that I don’t have to spend every minute with my husband that he is off from work and that things come up…just like your situations. IT REALLY IS TRUE THAT WHEN YOU CALM DOWN….YOU GROW CLOSER TO YOUR SPOUSE! I am so proud of you for the way you handled the situations. I love this study and I love seeing marriages change and grow!
Thank you! It can be painful to take an honest look at yourself and see areas where you need to improve, but I’m so glad I’m going through this process with so much support from this group!
This is awesome…I too have tears in my eyes. I love seeing us all grow through this process.
Thank you Heather!
TIME!! What is that!? You are right. WE wake up early each day. He takes care of the turkeys, chickens, and gardens, then gets everything ready for sealcoating for the day. (In the summer) Aftr he gets home, he usually has to go to the fire department for training, or to teach, or some meeting. He usually gets Fridays and the weekends off from there unless it is on call weekend, which is from Friday to sunday night. about once a month. otherwise he is sealcoating. After dinner, if we eat together, he goes back out bBefore, and do the outside stuff again. CHckens, harvesting, ect.. He usually comes inside anywhere from 6-8 and then back out for an hour before bed. something always needs done out there. fences fixed, copes repaired… bla bla. All while I sit around and eat bon bons! :)! Then after the kid are in bed between 830m nd good Lord, 11, we sit on the couch and fold flyers for advertising for our company, or wash veggies or can or whatever, while we watch a little tv or hang out on line. He spends time with the kids when he can.but thre is no normal schedule to that. This is a HGE reaone I am so hanful for my easy going ways. If I was a person who needed a chedule I would go nut. I never plan anthing. Though my parents LOVE all of my kids a frequently take them on Fridays. Tey have always done that for us. About half the time it works our Micah is around and we go out to dinner, or see a movie. We try to look out for one another and give the person extra TLC if they need it. LIke a quickie in the shower for him, lol, or a few hours to go the grocery store by myself.
After talking to his parents and telling them everything, and him helping me realize I have been seriously moving out of fear and anger of my kids viewing me as his mom or me turning into his mom, I am so grateful to him. He saw me freaking out up north about it. You see, the boys have been spending a lot of time away from home this summer. They are getting to the age when that happen I guess. Tim at friends and at both grandparent, and now camping with them. ANd since reading this chaper, I have been sort of looking for thing to work on? Unconsciously? It was late, and I was very tired, and they sort of tricked us into spending the day with the in laws at camp,. They had the kids, and said they would leave when we got there. BUT we were late, LOL as usual, and they stayed. I pretty much spent te while evening on the balcony. You see, I heard my 7 year old tell Nana, that they were so happy to have coe up north, because Mom and Dad had been sort f mean , yelling a lot the past few days. UGHHH HEART BREAK. AS if I can handle anything else right??? So We were finally alone, and instead of just putting a wall up and shutting down, like normal, I started to cry. Then I surprised myself with how upset this made me I had no idea I had been sort of thinking about this for a while now. It started because I have been yelling too much at the kids, and do not like it, no it isn’t me, or the me I’d lke to be for them, and for me. lol. me me me. That I felt like they had been having so much fun away from us and the stress, and the yelling, at school, at friends,…that now they were going to know, how much I really did suck. Or how nice it was to be treated that way. and it is too late. all they will remember is the mean “you listen to me now or else!” I don’t care that they know I am not perfect, but I want them to remember me for me. The loving mom who adores her kids. Not this ball f tress, who wantd to hide under a rock. That I was mad at everyone for stealing that away from them , especially myself, for finally giving into my immature whims. I had no idea I was so wound up over this subject. I have nerv in my life had this happen. I have asthma and this was no asthma attack. I started talking so fast, and then I srarted chking on my words. Next, I felt like my lungs were suctioned closed and I couldn’t breathe. all the air was being sucked right out of me and I early passed out. THen something amazing happened. Micah grabbed me by my arms stopping me from what I sure was me spinning, and said, “Babe, You are not going to turn into my Mom. I won’t let you. ( OH MY GOD THANK YOU! I am crying now typing this again, so I know this was a milestone, a humongous wall being knocked down.) Our kids are not going to feel about you as I do about my Mom.” H grabbed my chin and pulled it up from whatever darkness I was staring at. ‘Look at me. I promise.” That felt so good. H thanked me for what I said about his brother to his parents. about the specifc events that made it obvious she favors the other , that we have both bore the scars for this long. How hard that it was for me to do, but how much how appreciated it. How much he loved how I stood up for us. Man, I feel like he reached down into the depths of hell to save me, with just that one sentence. You are not going to end up like my Mom.
Isn’t it great how our husbands can calm us down in an instant, no matter what is going on inside of us? I love that feeling and I’m so glad you got to experience it.
Let me tell you, I went through a phase with my mom where I thought she was a terrible mom and I told her that. It seemed like all she did was yell, scream and nag me, my brothers and my dad. It’s been about 4 years since I’ve moved out of my parents house and during that time I’ve realized that she was never a terrible mom. She was just incredibly frustrated and tired. She always wanted the best for us and she was so protective of us, she actually still is. We are closer now than we ever have been. So even though I have a lot of memories of her yelling at us, I also remember the good times. All the times she was there for me whenever I needed her. The special trips she would plan for us. Baking in the kitchen with her. The endless hours she spent shopping with me for the perfect dress. No matter how much I hurt her by telling her I thought she was a terrible mom, she was still always there for me.
The point is that I don’t think you have to worry about scarring your kids or anything. I’m sure they have good memories of fun times you’ve had with them. I don’t have kids so I don’t know what you’re going through, but I just wanted to provide an example from my life that hopefully makes you feel a little better about things.
Thanks or saying that! I do apologize, and I think it is good for them to see a parent growing and learning still. To be able to admit when you are wrong. But I really didn’t want the negative to over shadow the positives I try so hard at. So glad to hear you re able to look past the imperfections and see her heart. Hope mine do too! C <3! It sounds like you are a great daughter, btw. I told my Mom I hated her whwen I was 16, and I hated that I did it. I have said sorry for it too. LOL.
AND I am the same way about being late. I feel like it is my time. It is precious. I don’t wanna lose sleep either. Also precious lol. I’d rather have 15 minutes of sleep than be 15 minutes early. Of course that Micah is the opposite!!!!
It is taking me FOREVER to get time to get on here and be a part of these conversations! Lol!
1. Is there a pattern concerning time that is particularly troublesome to you?
Well, before the love dare, I would have said no, but one of the things that came out during that was that Adam feels like I am very disrespectful of other people’s time. I do have a tendency to not leave any kind of margin. I look at my to-do list, determine how much time I think each activity should take and attack it with a vengeance. The problem is that I don’t schedule in the time to kiss boo boos, deal with breakdowns, switch the laundry one last time, stop wrestling matches, find the toy before we get in the car, traffic, etc. I’m also a sleep till the last minute kinda girl, and he will get up to get up at 5:45 to be at the firehouse by 7:10 for a shift that starts at 7:30. That would never happen to me. Lol! I haven’t really figured out a way to make it better yet, except I do try to be totally prepared the night before for the day ahead. Leaves me feeling like I got a jump start on the to-do list!
3. Do you think you and your spouse have a balance between alone and together time?
We are really “re-figuring” this out right now. He just dropped to part time at one of his two jobs in May, so now that we actually see him EvER, we are trying to figure out that balance. Before we were just never together!
4. How would you grade yourselves on how often you have dates? (A-F) If you scored below a B, what can you do to make it happen?
Probably C or D. Not enough! Trying to make that better now to with the change of job situation. We don’t take full enough advantage of the time we are home together after kids go to bed. We tend to veg out on our separate couches, watching TV or on FB or whatever. We should use that for more creative dates!
That’s funny Cori-my husband gets to work at 6:15 for a 7:00 shift. He likes to eat breakfast when he gets there. I am a sleep to the last minute person too but trying to get better! I’m glad you found the time to go through the book! Work on a date night soon!
It’s taking me forever to find time to get on here too, so I apologize for my late response. 🙂
2. What are you doing not only to contribute to the tension surrounding time accountability but also to making it worse?
I guess I’m one of those control freak kinda wives because I have to schedule everything out and make sure that all of our schedules fit together. But this week is a good example of why I feel like I have to do that. Seth won’t look at a calendar at all. I told him three weeks ago that I had to go on an overnight trip for work (I’m sitting in the hotel room right now) and last night I reminded him that he had to drop our daughter off in the morning on his way to work. His response was, “I didn’t know you were going to Ruidoso tomorrow.” Aaarrggghh, really?!? I don’t want to be that wife that controls the schedule, but what else am I to do? I can’t do everything on my own. I suggested to him that once we switch cell providers in September we should get two of the same phone, link our calendars, and hopefully he can commit to paying better attention to our time management issues.
4. How would you grade yourselves on how often you have dates? (A-F) If you scored below a B, what can you do to make it happen?
I would probably have to give us a D. We rarely have dates. Since we don’t have family in town, I hate to ask other people for help. Occasionally it’ll work out where our daughter will go over to a friends house to spend the night and then we get an opportunity, but we don’t put that specifically into our schedule. I need to find a reliable babysitter and I guess start putting that into our schedule. He is generally pretty good about little things too, like on occasional days when he has a free day, he’ll stop by my work and take me out for lunch if I’m not out in the field.
5. What do you do when confronted with scheduling conflicts between you and your spouse?
We are getting better about this. Generally we are pretty good at talking about what we need to do, and it helps that I plan everything out a month ahead, so he can see it. But occasionally there will be conflicts with his work schedule and sometimes I end up having to take time off, but when I need him to do the same for me, he’s willing to do that too. Even just with one child, it’s amazing how much we have to juggle sometimes, but with practice and rational discussion, and me learning that things will work out without me being a control freak, it’s gotten better over time.