sometimes...

sometimes love is letting them love you.

When Zach and I were first married and I was expecting Ben, he sent me flowers while I was at work.
An older lady noticed my flowers and gave me a bit of advice through telling me a story.

She proceeded to tell me how when she and her husband were very first married and didn't have much money, her husband sent her some flowers and she got very mad at him. "We don't have that kind of money" she said. "don't waste it on flowers!" Sadly, she reported after 40+ years of marriage he had yet to send another bouquet.

Her getting upset did not serve him or her.

Her story taught me a quite a few things. I learned to keep my mouth shut and ask myself if I wanted him to never ever do that thing again. If the answer was no then I didn't say anything. If the answer was yes then I would take a deep breath and then talk to him about it. But honestly, I don't think the answer has ever been yes.

Here is an example. After we had our stillborn baby I wanted to be left alone quite often. One night I was typing a blog post for our family blog that was quite journal like. He saw me crying, came and sat by me and started rubbing my back. It made me mad and I wanted to turn to him and say "leave me alone!". Then this question came to my mind. "So, when you are crying you never want him to come offer comfort?" I kept my mouth shut and later that week I talked to him about needing to be left alone sometimes and not wanting to make him feel bad in the moment he is offering kindness. We decided on a code that he would just understand that I needed some time. No one had hurt feelings and both our needs were met. (his need was being able to follow his own intuition w/out being shot down by me and mine was to be able to communicate my needs w/out hurting his feelings)

In a marriage relationship, neither one is a parent to the other. It is a partnership. We all need to learn the art of working together and not telling each other what to do. Really it comes down to identifying the problem (not the person that is the problem) and working together to find a solution we can both be happy with.
At the risk of making this post still longer I will add one thing I read in Stephen R. Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. He and his wife had a method if they couldn't agree on a solution they could both be happy with. They would then use the "on a scale from 1 - 10 how important is this to you" method. This might come in handy sometime. I know it has for me.

Sometimes all we can do is let them love us and then later when we are able to think clearly; we can appreciate them and what they were trying to do. Aw, love. It really is good.