One of my favourite blogs to read at the moment is Mummy’s Undeserved Blessings. I recently read a blog post Lisa wrote a called “The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants“. I won’t go into what she said because you can go and read it (tell her I said “Hi” 🙂 ), but at the end Lisa asked for people to comment and share tips on how to keep a marriage strong. I started thinking over all of the great marriage advice we’ve gotten over the years, and what we’ve put into practice. I’ve blogged about some before, such as the “1:5” ratio we learnt about at a marriage course hubby and I went to. I have also half-written some drafts about others.
One of the other things that stuck with me at that course, and is some of the best advice I think we’ve been given, was our need to study our spouses. We should always be ‘students of our spouse’. It was suggested that we should be creating (whether on paper, on our computer/phone or mentally in our heads) what they called a “Love Map”. This is pretty much a guide to everything we have learnt as we study our spouse. This should be added to and updated over time, as you learn more about your partner and/or they grow and change, as people do over a lifetime. I LOVE this concept.
If we are to actively love our spouse (and I’m not talking about ‘love’ as the mushy feelings, I’m talking about love as a verb – a ‘doing’ word), then we need to really KNOW our spouse. We need to know what they like, dislike and what makes them tick. It also has to be current. Their favourite hobby that helped them relax five years ago may now be something that causes stress. I got a wake-up call recently when asked what my husband’s favourite type of birthday cake was and after nine years of marriage I couldn’t say!
He loves Japanese Curry Chicken.
He’ll smile for a photo on occasion, but he prefers to enjoy the moment without the camera.
When we order Chinese, he likes Lemon Chicken. Don’t bother offering him sushi.
Is a teacher at heart. Loves teaching our boys, teens and anyone about what he’s learnt and what the Bible says.
Once he decides to go to bed, that’s it. He’ll be asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.
After he gets home from a meeting, he’s used enough words…. it’s not the time to chat.
Don’t ask him to cook/prepare something fancy. Food is for eating, not creating a masterpiece. He’d rather takeaway.
If I need housework done, he’s happy to help, but he likes to be told. He doesn’t see it the same way that I do.
When hubby needs an ‘escape’ after a huge week, he likes to go to the movies.
Perhaps in the next week, intentionally observe and listen to your spouse. Try to listen to the things they don’t say and see what you learn. It’s an interesting lesson, and hopefully one that will grow your marriage/relationship even stronger.
What other areas/observations would you include on your ‘love map’ of your spouse???
P.S. If you try this, I’d love to hear about what you learn and if this helps you to understand your spouse more and deepen your relationship!
P.P. S By the way, I checked with hubby later and he said the reason I wouldn’t know his favourite type of birthday cake is because he doesn’t have one because “food isn’t a big deal” for him (I knew that). He did say he’d been thinking of cheese cake recently, so I’ve ordered the caramel cheesecake in the kindy pie drive. Yum!
Think of one of those mornings when you are trying to get yourself (and the kids) out the door by a specific time, and things are not going well. This story is about one of those mornings.
As well as my four year old (“B1”) and two year old (“B2”) boys who have been waking during the night, I have a two month old baby (“Bubba Girl”) who feeds in the night. I’m sleep deprived. I’d had an emotional few days. Bubba girl was crying from being over-tired, and despite my best efforts the boys were not getting ready. My stress levels were rising. I was trying to settle the baby, get all of us dressed, pack the lunchboxes I hadn’t gotten around to the previous night and B2 decided now is the time to sit himself on the toilet… I was so close to giving up and staying home, but was so close to getting out the door that I didn’t want all the effort to go to waste. We were so close, and we’d all have a better morning once mummy got her cup of tea we got there.
I was walking through the entry of our house to the lounge room to pick up crying Bubba Girl when it happened. There was an unexpected knock on the wooden door.
I got a fright and screamed. I burst into tears.
I opened the door, tears streaming down my face, to the Australia Post parcel delivery lady.
We’d just been to the doctors and discovered B2 had tonsillitis, so went next door to get his antibiotics from the Pharmacy. When I am concerned about losing B2 or him running away (eg. in shops, carparks etc), I often get the boys to hold hands whilst walking and they usually do it quite well. So they walked together into the pharmacy whilst I followed behind pushing the pram. Whilst we waited, I chatted a bit with another two ladies waiting for their medication.
Have you ever noticed how many things there are to touch on the counter? If you have kids, surely you have! There were cars, lip balms, wallets, watches and all kinds of gifts, not to mention all the chocolates, lollies and musli bars just at the perfect height for kids to touch. So touch them B2 did. Over and over again. Each time I would lean over and gently hold his hand, and ask him not to touch please. After I don’t know how many times doing this (8-10 at a guess?), I crouched down to his level, and explained that these things were not ours, we do not own them, and therefore we cannot touch them. I got smiles from the ladies.
The boys then played and hugged each other laughing for a while, whilst I chatted to the ladies some more. It came up in conversation how my boys are “like chalk and cheese… one likes to follow and enforce the rules, the other likes to break them. Can you guess which one is which?” and we all had a laugh. They knew!
As I was paying, B2 tried touching a few more things. I pointed to the carpet next to the pram and quietly told B2 to sit and wait there. I reckon there was about a 50% likelihood of him doing what I’d asked, but to my surprise he did. And he stayed there (win!).
As we went to leave, I asked the boys to hold hands again. B2 refused, and made both hands into a fist. He put his head down and shook it. I could hear the two ladies, another who had walked up, as well as the two pharmacy assistants having a giggle at how cute he was. I got down onto my knees and gently explained that we would wait right here until he was ready to hold hands. And we waited, completely calm and patiently. After about a minute they held hands. They walked out and I followed behind with the pram.
As I drove home, I couldn’t get the contrast between these two moments out of my mind, and the fact that both extremes had occurred on the same day. In the first moment I looked in desperate need of parenting classes and a good sleep, yet in the second I appeared like mother-of-the-year (I wish!).
If asked how my day was, I’d probably think of the morning chaos and dismiss the afternoon successes. How many times have I dismissed the good job that I’m doing, only to focus on the negatives?? I concluded that I was being way too harsh on myself this morning. I should not define my days or my parenting ability by a few bad moments, but rather should be encouraged by the ‘success’ moments and look at the big picture.
You may have noticed it’s been just over a year since I’ve blogged. I’ve had a few people ask me in person about it, and a few people message me online to check I’m okay. Yes, I’m okay! So what happened? I didn’t really plan for it to happen…. I only meant to take a few days off…..
Hubby went overseas for a few weeks, our housemate moved out…. and I begun the process I called “reverse-nesting”. I reclaimed the extra space we now had, moving around furniture, cleaning, tidying…. I was in a bit of a frenzy. I put the computer I used to blog, which had been in the make-shift ‘office’ in our living room, into our new spare room. And I turned it OFF. Just for a day or two…. which became three or four….
Instead of having the computer on constantly, it was switched off. So when I’d normally sit down to type a quick blog or email etc, I would think “It’s not worth turning the computer on for, I’ll do it later”. I would do something more productive around the house (yay!).
I also was no longer able to blog in our living room whilst the kids played around me, as the computer was in the spare room. Goodbye to daytime blogging.
I’ve had some minor health problems as well, so about the same time I tried to cut out some night activities so I could get to sleep earlier and hopefully see an improvement in my health. Goodbye to nighttime blogging.
My 18month old had also stopped breastfeeding, so goodbye blogging whilst breastfeeding.
In the time off, I lost my blogging confidence. Lost my ‘mojo’. A few times I sat down to start again, and had half-written drafts (like this one I actually started 9 months ago – a few months after stopping blogging), but lost the words to say. I lost the ability to click ‘publish’. I begun debating again about the blog name, blog direction and what I wanted to write about, but thats a whole other story for another day.
I’ve been challenged a few times over the past year (and again this week) about picking up blogging again. I’m thinking about it, probably just blogging a little less often. I love to write and get my thoughts out and record things that happen. I now have another newborn, so am back in the breastfeeding stage again, and thus more time to think and write (in theory!).