_________________________________________
I consider myself a fan. I enjoy their show, learning about their family, watching their kids grow, watching their dynamic. I support them in their endeavor to raise their children in a Christian environment and to give them as many positive life experiences as possible. As the world watched their one-hour special on TLC tonight, my husband, daughter, and I were all watching with them. My heart broke for them a little, a family I don't know, because of what they are trying to do for their kids, for what they have done, and for what Jon & Kate haven't been able to do for one another. I know many people out there are all to ready to criticize both Kate & Jon. All I can do is try to be their advocate in conversation because in all honesty, I see myself and Husband in them. I am a very structured, controlling, person. I like things done the way I like them to be done. I have a plan for every single day and I will say, when that plan doesn't go my way, I have a hard time adjusting. I will own those personality traits and I will try not to make excuses for them. Husband, well, Husband isextremely passive. He isn't a planner nor is he very structured. He also isn't very quick with communicating, he is the strong, silent type. We both exhibit these traits to a fault. Tonight, watching that episode of Jon & Kate...it brought tears to my eyes. I don't want us to get to that point but I definitely see it happening if we continue on the path we are already on. This may be too much information for a public blog, but I'm willing to put this out there because I want people to stop being so quick to judge a relationship, and the dynamic that exists between two people in a relationship. Many women I know really despise Kate and I quietly think to myself "Then how could you possibly be my friend?" - and the answer is simple, there is the person you are as a friend, mother, sister, daughter, etc. - and then there is the you that is a spouse. I think for Husband, it is the same. Husband as a friend, father, brother, and son is entirely different from - Husband. No matter how well you think you know two people (and I find it quite amusing that people have such harsh opinions about those who they have never met) you never really know what exists inside their marriage. You aren't meant to know. That is why marriage exists between two, not 3 or 4 or hundreds or thousands. While I don't know for sure what the chain of events was that lead to the dissolvement of their marriage, I know how Husband and I have gotten to the point we're at. At some point in a life, in a relationship, there comes a moment when the situation calls for a leader. Some marriages are great at sharing this role between the two individuals, flip-flopping as necessary, and some aren't. When one person is prone to taking charge and one has struggled with that type of role their entire life, a pattern forms. After months and then years of each person falling into a predictable pattern it becomes comfortable. Because it becomes comfortable, any shift in that situation, any call for a person to change their role can really cause upset, I think this is true when two people perform in such polar opposite ways. Not only is each individual having to perform differently, it is change - particularly for Husband and me, change is difficult. To top it all off, when one person is an over-communicator (me) and one has to be coaxed to speak (Husband) a resentment can form (both ways). The communicator resents the non-communicator because it seems as though the communicator is trying to carry the responsbility for making the relationship work. The non-communicator resents the communicator for not allowing time to breath, time for quiet reflection on how to improve. For any of you who have watched Jon & Kate and thought "How do people live this way?" let me just say...you don't. You don't do a whole lot of living. You do a lot of fighting, a lot of crying, and ultimately, in those precious moments when you've found a truce, some discussion of where to go from here. "How do we move forward?"
________________________________________
Before any of you out there who are our friends start deciding who gets who in the divorce - don't, we aren't giving in to these demons. I started this blog to give a glimpse into our life. The truth is, we love each other deeply, we are best friends. We also have a lot of work to do. We have skills we need to aquire so that we can live more of the happy, content moments and fewer of the angry, mean ones. This year will mark the 9th that we've been together (4 dating, and 5 married) and we are only 24 & 25 years old. In some ways we made it harder on ourselves for getting married at a young age. In some ways, we made it easier by removing the temptations that young people often succumb to. In our cases college and the Navy might have made us two unrecognizable people if we hadn't had each other through it all. We made vows to each other for life, whether we like it all or not. While we were cuddling on the couch tonight, watching the end of a relationship play out on our television...we both told each other that we weren't going to let this happen to us. For what it is worth, two people that I don't know have helped us to see how sad of an ending we could have and it was a reminder of all that we have to do, and all that we can look forward to when we succeed at changing, a little bit at a time, for each other, and for the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment