Picked up a random poetry book From the crowded shelf. Quick easy hour read: Delight and wonder. Then, Found…
Pride and Marriage
Once my husband and I had a fight about him not eating a piece of fried chicken my aunt had made for us at our family cabin. I thought he should be polite and eat it. He wasn’t hungry so he didn’t want to eat it. I hadn’t considered not eating something even if I wasn’t hungry, especially when someone specially made me dinner.
After that time, we would call our little fights “chicken fights.” Inevitably, these little fights occurred more often and we each built up our own internal hurts from the other that we did not know how to heal.
Kyle Benson, in a blog on thegottmaninstitute.com, shares:
“As John Gottman’s research has shown, it’s not what you fight about that matters, but how you repair when your inevitable differences in personality, perspective, and needs collide.
If you don’t process these conflicts, then you may both find yourselves feeling disrespected, lonely, and neglected—drifting away from each other like two ships without anchors.”
What I have since found out is that these ongoing conflicts, even those from when we were not together, fester in our hearts until we sometimes just boil over. Sometimes, a little conflict turns into something huge, and one says or does something extreme to the other. Sometimes this seems unexcusable. Sometimes the partner chooses to walk away. This happened to us. I chose to stay. We found that we both needed healing on our own to make our relationship work. We both went to different counselors who taught us strategies for improving our communication. We finally were able to process our past hurts and find solutions for how to move forward together. It seems that underneath it all, our past hurts and our current pride gets in the way, even today.Â
In my book, Married to an Atheist A Love Story from Idaho, I reflect on my own pride interfering with our communication on pages 376-377,Â
I suspect that our individual pride gets in the way of our communication. When I do not hear or understand something you are telling me, I do not want to admit it to you. The best example for this is the time so many years ago when you got mad at me for turning the air conditioner back on in the pickup while we were driving up the steep Lewiston grade. I did not know then that the air conditioning is bad for the transmission when climbing up high grades. I did not want you to know about my ignorance so I played it off as a joke. There have been many of these moments in our relationships when I do not want you to know how stupid I feel.Â
In our present, pride is something on which we are both working. This goes along with what I am working on in my individual counseling sessions. I realize I usually feel stupid or I do not feel accepted. My naivety, and my constant struggle to find hope seem to counterbalance with you more than I would like. Now that I am aware of this fault, and understand what is happening within my own mind, I see you are not criticizing me for simple mistakes; you are more patient with me than I am with myself.Â
At the end of the day, I reflect on how well we interact each day. I try to discuss this with him, but realistically, we do not always get a chance between nightly routines with the kids and other factors. Nonetheless, I see how important it is to keep our communication going. It helps to try to understand those moments when we are upset with each other and be honest with how we are feeling so that we may grow more positively in our relationship together. Hopefully, the more honest we are the less we can blow up at each other. I know it is okay to be angry but we do not need to react hurtfully.Â
Marriage, partnership, whatever you are in, is all about communication. Do not let your hangups, like pride, get in the way of being open with your significant other.Â
Check out Benson’s article to find what he offers as five helpful tools for overcoming miscommunication with your partner.Â
Check out more specifics for how we learned to improve our communication in my book, Married to an Atheist A Love Story from Idaho, available now on Amazon. Please read and review it on Amazon!
I am working on an audiobook version to be out soon.
Blessings to you!
References:Â
Benson, Kyle. “How We Used the Aftermath of a Fight to Repair Our Relationship.” The Gottman Institute, 2019. https://www.gottman.com/blog/how-we-used-the-aftermath-of-a-fight-to-repair-our-relationship/.
Stear, Janelle. Married to an Atheist A Love Story from Idaho. Amazon, 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Married-Atheist-Love-Story-Idaho.