The delay between posts was a certain, deliberate act on my part. It was intended to solicit a response from my wife to demonstrate the point I’m making about the trait of our marriage.
Let me begin by explaining what I mean by stable in terms of our marriage. For sure, our marriage has had the cliched ups and downs. What I am speaking about when I mention stable is more like an ocean. A calm, serene ocean will have hardly a wave. This is the way my wife prefers our marriage, and this is one of the reasons our marriage has been a success.
My wife tends to internalize problems or things that make her feel put out. She does this for two reasons. The first is due to the fact she sometimes, still, thinks her opinion isn’t as important as others. The second, and this is the one we’re here to talk about today, is due to the fact she likes the calm waters of stability.
Throughout my professional career I’d never been fired. That is to say, I’ve never left a job without it being on my accord. In November of 1998 we finally regained our footing financially and bought our first house. At the time I was transitioning from a consulting position to a position with a media company. It was quite a change for me, but the work allowed more time in our new home.
April of 1999 came around and I was called into the CFO’s office. The long and short of it ended up my being fired. Later that day was my first practice for a baseball team I coached. Not wanting to worry my wife, the new mortgage and all, I waited until she came by practice that day before I told her. She took the news well and we laughed about it, but I knew in her mind she was concerned. Here we were with a new house, a mortgage and the bread winner was out of work. No health insurance.
From that day until I started a new job in July my wife brought stability to our marriage. She never once panicked nor did she pressure me to take anything I could get. She allowed me to freelance, write a book and take contract work when necessary. She internalized her fear, for the most part, and kept us running right along. Calm seas. Stable.
Now, back to the break in the writing. I purposely quit writing about the words of our marriage. I did this as a calculated move to see if my wife would say anything; a test to see if I knew her. My grandiose idea was to see how long she would wait to ask me about the site. Would she ask me promptly? Put it off? Passive aggressive me? If all went as I thought it would, my wife would never mention the site not being updated. She would assume that not saying anything would keep the calm waters. She’d bide her time in the harbor of patience until I ventured out into the ocean again.
Today it happened. I couldn’t wait any longer. Something happened today to demonstrate her desire for stability in our marriage and I had to let the cat out of the bag. She knew all along I quit updating the site, and she confirmed to me the reasons she didn’t say anything. All were related to not wanting to cause the waves.
So there you have it, my wife brings a stable, necessary force to our marriage. It settles, smoothes and ensures that the explosions that happen in some marriages are muffled and extinguished before they can blow up.
Sure, it used to frustrate me, but after 20 years I’ve learned to observe it and love it. For without it who knows which one of those waves would have capsized our marriage.
Today’s Gift: My wife’s efforts to bring stability to marriage makes her tense at times. Tomorrow night I am going to give her a complete body massage in an effort to bring stability back to her body.