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I just read a blog that seems to be going viral right now, reposted on WP and FB by several friends. The blog is titled “Marriage Isn’t For You”, written by a young man who wants to share the advice given to him by his father as that young man struggled with the questions any one has while engaged — is marriage for me? The advice, in a nutshell, was that marriage (and love) is best when it is about the other person.
I and a lot of people can’t help but agree. In principle I do wholeheartedly agree. And it was good advice at the time it was given.
As usual, I couldn’t help but throw my two cents in. My comment:
The advice you received is good advice to build a marriage on, in my mind a restore point that you can come back to at any place along the marriage continuum. I have been married 21 years, with two kids, and experience has taught me that the only way to be in it for the long haul is to learn to put self aside. That seems to really be what you were told. Put self aside. Not an easy thing to do, especially since there will be times when it feels like that is all you are doing.
So you need to learn to say to yourself that it’s OK for marriage and fatherhood to be about you now and then. It really does need to be. The advice you received is only part of the picture. You also got married because you found someone who you know wants your marriage to be about you. You know her well enough already that you know she has learned that, that she will be able to come back to that point you are at now.
What I just said may be difficult to understand for those who don’t have the experience. Trust me. It’s true.
It doesn’t take much knowledge about me to understand my reasoning in the comment. For years I have struggled to accept not being a priority, the concept of marriage being about the other weighted too much in the direction of my spouse. While I understand and even relish the role of provider/husband/father, I have come to the point where it just needs to be about me now and then. That is not selfish. No one can exist without reward.
Why do I have a vision of myself guarding a red stapler right now?
Sometimes you have to reward yourself. After 22 years of marriage, advice my own father gave to me becomes more and more true each day — “Son, if she isn’t going to make it about you at all — and she doesn’t in my opinion — then you have to just make it about yourself. Find ways to make yourself happy. Do your own thing.”
This past weekend was an example of what I have learned — sometimes it’s OK to reward yourself. In a marriage where my own thing isn’t always acceptable, even viewed as a sin, I just need to do what I want to do. Go out with the guys. Have that beer now and then. Ride my bike. Go somewhere without my wife or family. This weekend I went on a trip five hours away to southern Indiana for a mountain biking trip with two friends, Jim and Jon. We had an absolute blast. It was my last hurrah, my surgery postponed until the middle of November so I could take the trip. We did what we wanted to do, which was ride our bikes off road five and a half hours on Saturday, five hours on Sunday. Boy, did I need that.
And trips like that is what may help my marriage to survive another 22 years. My wife has had to learn to encourage me to do things like I did last weekend, have my own time, accept it. Years ago I would have spent the weekend and the days leading up to it living a guilt trip before I even packed my bags. I came home to perhaps might be the first time in quite a while where I felt this whole thing might just be about me too. I need that. Every husband, every wife, needs that. Do we need to reciprocate? You bet. But if we’re not getting it back, even the strongest won’t survive.
shenrydafrankmann 
Well. The beauty of it is, if you make it about your wife, and she makes it about you, then your needs and wants about it being about you are met. Daily.
We all fail. Which is why we need that instruction book, the Bible.
If only our spouses could read.
There is an old hymn, a favorite of my dad because he used to request it every time my family used to gather around the piano in our living room to sing together (yes, we did that), call “In The Garden”. The chorus is “And He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own”. Sometimes I really wish that were literally true. God talks to me through His word, the Bible, but I sure wish sometimes that He would literally walk with me around the block and talk with me, maybe just tell me how to have that ideal relationship with my wife that is a mutual give.
What Sandy said …
And yes, when that doesn’t work the way it should … you have to make it about yourself on a regular basis. I totally agree!
I do think however that the blog you mentioned (and which I reblogged 😉 ) was meant for young(er) couples who get married thinking the world and marriage is all about them … and then step out of the marriage after a few years (if it lasts that long) when their needs are not met the way they want to. It seems to be a trend nowadays.
I hear it from my young colleague who, in the last seven years I have worked with her, went through five relationships, living together and all, and all ended because she didn’t get what she wanted or he didn’t. When I asked her what she did to make him happy I was met with a blank stare … “Let him first take care of me and then …”
Maybe I should send her that blog 😉
I doubt your colleague will get it. Either that or she will pull from that blog what she relates to, like I did!
Last night, my stats showed that someone read a blog I wrote earlier this year called “Sex Talk”. It was about staying with my spouse even when I don’t feel like my needs are not being met. I probably shouldn’t say this about something I wrote, but it was good for me to read it again!
That’s what I do too, every now and then. Just re-read what I have written in the past. Aren’t we sometimes surprised by our own wisdom sometimes? 😉
My colleague will probably never get it. There’s more I tried to explain to her in these last years concerning her attitude toward those in management but she just doesn’t get that either. At age thirty she knows it all. Sigh …
Remember when turning 30 felt like old age?
Hihihi, I do! I thought I would be ancient after 30.
Brilliant comment, I will agree absolutely. It is imperative to make life a little bit about ourselves. If nothing else, just to feed our soul and happiness a bit now and then. I also think it’s incredibly healthy to take a break from each other now and then, go do things away from the family. My husband and I have an agreement, if at any time either of us feels the need to get away for a weekend we do it and encourage it. I kicked him out around my birthday just so I could have a “me day” and he went out drinking with the guys, had a great time. It keeps us sane and helps us to appreciate each other, not falling into conformity and tolerance.
I remember the first time I took a bicycle tour without my wife, just the guys. It was a pain!
Once upon a time there was an obnoxious in-law in our midst who I suspected would be less of a raging bitch if she a) got out once in awhile and 2) went out with the girls and enjoyed herself. So I invited her out to one of my best times on the town, with just the girls, even a sober cab, and she said, “No thanks, (husband) and I never go out until it is together…”
????????????????????????
Well, she sure didn’t take him along when she was having an affair and getting pregnant…
Well, looks like the going out rule applied to her boyfriend also!!!
See now that’s the kind of person that just wastes oxygen.
Sandy wastes methane.
I keep telling Karma that!
As for you, Steve, we both know that you don’t think methane expulsion is a waste. Plenty a good story comes out of that.
Stories flame eternal.