Don’t love harder.
Every relationship revolves around discipline.
Whether you consider a friend or lover, or a neighbor, you can lose your welcome if you violate what they need. Irritations can grow, objections become obstacles.
When your spouse is tired or frustrated – what they need is respect and discipline from you. They need support in the form of space to refresh and heal, they need support in the form of kept promises and meeting everyday expectations.
A crisis.
A rescue, an extraordinary sacrifice or effort to protect another from injury or mishap, is inappropriate – unless someone needs saved. Because an unwanted intervention, or even a welcome but unnecessary intervention, won’t be recognized. You sacrifice yourself, surrender your respect and self-preservation – for nothing. Done regularly, you lose yourself, and your partner loses respect for your efforts and your judgment.
Because we don’t live in crisis mode. Crises come along rarely – or we have grossly failed to plan and to understand and reduce risks and dangers in our lives.
Flirting with danger got sensationalist Steve Irwin killed, eventually. It happens that way with relationships, too.
The shire filly.
I sold a shire filly (a female horse, of the Shire draft horse breed) a few years back – and almost regretted the sale. The filly was a weanling, maybe 5-6 months old, a common age for young horses to be sold. Through contacts a family bought Susy (the filly). When the family came to pick up the untrained and generally calm filly, I got concerned.
The couple pulled up with their horse trailer, and grabbed the filly’s lead rope. And wondered why she didn’t lead onto their trailer. The filly was untrained – the new owners had been told this but didn’t understand what untrained means. For Susy, this meant that with her calm manner, she put up with more fussing and handling that is usual – before she kicked out or backed out or spun around or tried to run off. Untrained means she had been on a trailer once, with a bunch of other foals, but she didn’t remember getting on, and didn’t understand why she should accept this particular dark and almost-steady construct.
By this time I had led and loaded a few green (untrained) horses, and we got the filly onboard with little fuss, mostly because Susy was so generous and patient. Her new owners were green – I hadn’t realized that when we made the sale.
I mentioned several training books, when the lady scared me. “We have three daughters at home – Susy will get all the loving she needs!” “Ma’am, Susy needs discipline, not loving.” I wonder how they all came out.
Often green owners end up with an unusable “pasture ornament” when they try to start with a green horse. Unless someone gets hurt. But, oddly, some times the mix works.
About as often as after dragging someone home from a bar, you wake up next morning with a solvent, honest and honorable companion for life lying next to you.
Discipline. Respect. Communication.
If you want to strengthen your relationship, the place to start is with respect. Respect for yourself, respect for your partner. That can never make a salvageable relationship worse.
Loving “harder” or “more”, though, is selfish. The payback for loving someone .. is having feelings of love for someone. Love harder, and you feel more intently.
Love is a mix of emotions and beliefs, and varies from moment to moment. The relative proportions of faith, adoration, admiration, affection, sense of belonging to and sense of attachment to will depend on circumstances, experience, and practice.
To love harder is to focus on your own feelings, to act to reinforce yourself. In times of stress and difficulty, the answer is more often going to be teamwork – communication, generosity, respect, honor and honesty. The most important part is to know your partner, to respect your partner’s needs and avoid things that add stress, whatever that might be for your partner – and for you.
Pulling bushes.
Verde at G4s (backyard) Homestead talks about garden planning – after learning that the expected garden space just became unavailable. Part of the response: Clear the front lawn, to put a garden there. Step one: Pull some unwanted bushes.
The story winds up mentioning that the significant other has been away during the denuding of the lawn and dismantling-by-pickup of portions of the sprinkler system. I bit my tongue.
Because this is a case where respect meant – talk to the absent one, that is known to react badly to change. Talk first. Announce the plans before acting. Surprises are badly over-rated, and Verde admits to concern over the fallout as the returning partner discovers the rearrangement. I wanted to shout – “Call him! Tell him what happened. Tell him your plans, don’t let him stumble on the carnage unawares!” This is a time for respect and communication. Honor means that a partner – participates. Each may have their responsibilities, but each deserves to know what is going on.
Consequences.
Will this event end Verde’s relationship? Likely not. Will it add stress, reduce trust and respect? Yep. Will it add closeness, love? No.
Whether the choice to transform the front lawn into a garden is correct – the relationship suffers. Needlessly. Maybe the hurts will heal completely. Certainly the vegetables anticipated from the projected garden will be welcome – but they may or may not overcome the cloud over the surprise awaiting Verde’s partner.
Luck, Verde.
I like this – I particularly like how you say that if you are having lots of crises your life is not organised properly – that explains what went wrong with my marriage. I am quite organised I guess but I married someone who brought frequent crises into my life and the impact they had on every area of the relationship was truly dreadful, yet this man refused to look honestly and see the disparity between words and actions and he absolutely refused to take any personal responsibility for the cascade of crises he inititated regularly.
Most were financial and the impact of financial crises is massive. When you have urgent debts to pay, it means you never have any spare money. No savings and certainly no luxuries – no holidays and nothing new – that was my status quo. I never quite had the words or the understanding that nothing would change. I always thought that I could love all the problems better. But eighteen months ago I realised I couldn’t and that this man I was married to and so devoted to did not care about me or my life. If I stayed with him nothing would ever change and I would not be able to have a child as I would have no support from him.
Each decision made independently is like the lawn. It may only be small things but each crisis and each rescue makes you lose respect for the other person. And start to resent them. And start to wonder if maybe you should really just trust your gut cause ignoring it and working on yourself with relationship books, videos and articles hasn’t helped. And loving harder and better and more wholly hasn’t helped. You start to wonder whether this guy really can be helped or whether he will remain angry and stubborn his whole life. It is a horrible experience to go through none the less. And when you are married to this person and you thought marriage was for life, it is even more of a mind and heart breaker. I wish I had never met him. I am not the person I was – he quenched my light and it is such effort to try to reignite it.
Thanks for your article – I am assuming from the name that perhaps you are a man? If so it is good to know there is at least one man on the planet who is evolved and growing
Kaiako,
I don’t know that I am evolved at all, just had time to think about things. Thanks for the kind words.
It seems to me that the energy you put into your marriage was misdirected.
Let me start, with two points. First, is that we have to decide for ourselves whether an action we contemplate is good for us, because we are the only ones that can and must answer that concern. Second, if we aren’t making someone happy that we care about – we have misunderstood what they need or want.
My father enjoyed watching the variety of birds at his bird feeder. If I had learned taxidermy, stuffing dead animals, and became expert at mounting birds – Dad would have been disappointed at the number of birds no longer alive, enriching his life and sharing that bird feeder. I would have completely missed the point of what Dad loved.
Sober people seldom understand what a drunk enjoys. Perpetual daters seem to enjoy intimacy with others – but someone looking for a home and family will find them unsuitable companions (eventually!).
When he deceived, when he caused disruption and discomfort and disappointment, that was a signal that you wanted something that he didn’t want. Your choice was then to change or leave. If you would be happy to make that change, that is what you likely could have done. From what you write, it appears you were just some years too late in deciding that you didn’t care to meet his needs. That is *not* a criticism of you or of him.
What I would call “loving better” would be to meet his needs. If you aren’t making him happy, then it isn’t “better” for the relationship. If you aren’t happy or content to meet his needs – that is a red flag that you may not have a suitable companion. If his passion is model trains, or drugs, or kiddie p*rn, or fishing, and you are uncomfortable with people bent that way – even the model rairoads entail a lot of time, and attention to non-real-world details – you have to choose. Do you adapt to the presence of that interest in your lives (it always spills over into yours, as your activities always affect him), or do you recognize that he isn’t someone you really care to know?
Call it standards, call it character, call it dedicated and virtuous. You have to be, and have, a dependable and stable person to build a firm foundation for a family or any other long term relationship.
You are so right. I chose poorly after a period of family instability that to be honest I was trying to escape. And I then found it very very hard to leave. It didn’t help that when I finally disclosed to my mother she said things like ‘Oh well you’ll just have to get on with it and sort it out’ or ‘You’re not exactly an easy person to live with’. There was none of the support you talk about in other posts. His family is overseas so they were no help either.
I feel really stupid now – it’s very easy to see that I just should have left after the first let down or the second if I was giving the ‘benefit of the doubt’. Hindsight is a beautiful thing. I just couldn’t see it at the time and the impact on me was terrible. I spiralled down into depression, which of course made it even harder to see a clear path forward.
I have been reading some feminist literature in the past few months and it nicely articulates that the onus to build, sustain and improve relationships is given to women in a million unspoken messages. After all aren’t relationship books and self help books targetted to women in the most part? I grew up with all those unspoken messages that it was my job to ensure my mate was happy – no matter what the sacrifice to me. When I admitted to the priest who married us what was happening – his chosen solution was to have a baby! There was no way I was bringing a child into a relationship like that – it was bad enough I was in it let alone an innocent new life. I guess what I am trying to say in a round about way is – it wasn’t black and white back then. I couldn’t see that leaving was the only sane option. And I kept hoping I could make it better.
I agree wholeheartedly that shared values are critical as is the wish to have family together and follow a fairly similar path through life. This man lied to me about those things though and its easy to say now ‘Well you just should have left’ but it took me a long while to figure out that the problem was his words and actions didn’t match. Right now it is crystal clear but in the hell that was the relationship nothing was clear – I have since read about passive agressive behaviour and realise that is what was going on. Horribly confusing to live through and something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Thanks for your insightful comments – wish I had commented on your page back then though!
Kaiako,
The steps we take through life are what brings us to where we are. In one sense, you found, eventually, the proper time to leave. Any sooner, and you might have misunderstood the lesson that you now understand well. Later – I shudder to wonder what might have happened. I can regret and sympathize your search and pain and difficult times, but I would not be quick to say that anything might have been better “if only”. Today you have know the assurance that you didn’t give up too soon, or didn’t try hard enough. This is a scant blessing, to be sure, but a firmer foundation than self-doubt.
I also hesitate to encourage people to give up too soon. That isn’t a good way to meet problems that might be solvable, or to learn to overcome the obstacles we encounter.
You mention the literature that points out most of the burden of forming and maintaining a relationship falls on the woman. That imbalance, that for the most part women are taught more about relationships, that they are held responsible, is the reason I focus what advice I have on selecting a worthy partner. Because I think that part has been suppressed.
We hear the cultural cliches about marrying rich, a doctor or lawyer, as if mere social status or generous income is enough to assure a happy life. I think there is an unspoken but implied assumption of the Jewish homily at least, that the candidate be a respected member of the Jewish community. Which would imply healthy emotional bonds to friends, to family, to religious leaders. Historically other communities have held similar expectations about family and backgrounds. Today, too many people live isolated from such rich and personally active communities, so they don’t expect and check for the necessary background that might sustain a home and family.
I hope that as your pain and bitterness find resolution, that you find a *trainable* candidate suited to being a mate, to engaging in a community with you, and be apt and skilled to become a co-parent with you.
Blessed be!