Today's post comes from Divine Caroline writer S. Devo.
I met my husband in high school and he graduated a year before me. We got married my senior year and we were madly in love. However, shortly after we began living together, I realized that I did not know him very well. I noticed things about him that I did not notice while were dating. Perhaps I did not notice because I was too young to recognize characteristics of a potential husband at eighteen.
The biggest thing that bothered me about him though was the fact that he could not openly communicate his emotions or feelings with me. Marriage is so difficult, especially when you are just kids trying to figure out the way of the world and marriage at the same time. I wanted and needed to share my thoughts, worries, feelings, concerns, and emotions with him. I wanted to lay in bed at night and talk about our marriage and my struggles in life or just hash things out. He would simply clam up or shut me out.
Eventually, I began to take it personally and I felt that he did not care about me because he would not participate in emotional conversation with me. I started to prod him with questions about his feelings toward me. This made him clam up more than ever. His inability to share and communicate with me was so bad that about six months into our marriage, I contemplated divorcing him. I needed someone to vent my feelings to and I lived far, far away from my friends and family and I felt so alone and depressed. Marriage was not what I thought it would be and I was miserable.
One night I couldn’t sleep and I tiptoed to the living room, found some notebook paper, and began writing down my thoughts. As my hands were writing, my heart was lifting. I went through twenty pages or more in one night. I folded my thoughts and stored them in an old book in a desk drawer. Every time my husband would upset me, or I needed to get something out, instead of venting to him, I would write it all down. After I would write, I would feel relieved; it was like the things that bothered me so badly before were not really that important after I aired them out. I would sometimes go back to my hiding place and re-read some of the pages I had written and nod to myself for overcoming obstacles, or chuckle at how silly some of the things were that upset me so badly. It was very healing for me, and it helped keep my emotions balanced in my life.
One day I was out for a whole day. I remember it was a nice day, I was in a good mood, and I just wanted to go home and be with my husband. My mood totally changed as I opened the door of our house and I saw my husband sitting on the floor, surrounded by my notebook paper with tears streaming down his face. He read every single word that I had written. It was the first time in our life together that he shed his rough and tough exterior and exposed his softer side. In those papers, he learned about my thoughts of divorce, how angry he would make me at times, and my thoughts about him in general. That day was a complete changing point in our lives. Those words not only helped me vent myself, but it finally all became clear to him; he was not there for me like he needed to be.
Our marriage since that point has been great. He listens to me and converses with me about his thoughts and feelings as well. Of course, life is not perfect and we argue, but we are now able get things off our chest and move on with life. That day helped increase the communication in all aspects of our relationship—our love for each other, our sex life, our parenting to our daughter; overall, it made us better spouses. My personal therapy became therapy for my marriage.
Be sure to check out more great stories & articles from Divine Caroline!
Loading ...
Comments are closed.