From Anna Matsunaga, Team Momentum, Keller Williams Tacoma 253 353 2662. ( verity mom applicant) www.teammomentumrealestate.com
My husband and I have been married now for 23 years. (never dreamed we would be getting ready to go to his 25th Highschool reunion with a tiny new baby!)
We have been through good and bad times. We have had times where we felt so close and others where we wanted to just kill each other. Mostly I have learned a lot and grown a lot, and frankly have been blessed to have married a really good man. When we got married we had an awful lot going against us. We were from differing cultural, religious, economic and ethnic backgrounds. No one in either of our families wanted us to get married and we were really young ( I like to say, I don't know 9 years old because telling people we have been married for 23+ years and together more than 25 kinda dates me)
I will not tell you we have a perfect relationship. We really really don't and in some ways in fact it really needs help. I will tell you though in many ways it is what others could only hope for and much of that is because of some things I've learned that I would like to share with you.
One of the places I see relationships go wrong is with expectations. You see one person expects something of the other and because of it they are unhappy when it does not happen. I think a big part of the reason I have been happy is that while I have standards ( boundaries) I do my best not to have expectations that will get in the way. I have learned the hard way that when you do, well you miss other stuff that might be even better.
Here is an example. We as women tend to like to "cuddle" or "just be held" more than men. In the evenings I often wanted to sit with my husband and cuddle while we read or watched TV or something like that. Problem my honey never ever wanted to do that then, in fact he needed space at that point. His job was stressful and he needed a lot of time to wind down. Unlike me when he was stressed out being close and being touched just stressed him out more. I was also frustrated since when he was in the mood to touch, he was often just "in the mood". I had expectations that when we were married we would spend lots of time just cuddling and talking and such and I was very very disappointed that between his differences in this area and our very very busy schedules my needs in this area were not being met. I even felt angry at times and some what depressed about it. I had expected it to be so different. Finally I resigned myself to never working this out and most of the time doing with out this need met
Had I known then what I know now about accepting it would not have had to be that way for many years. Finally I came to a place where I had learned to just let go and accept and I had stopped being angry or sad about it and just figured that this was a part of my life. Funny thing is once I came to that place something totally different happened that made me realize it was my expectations that had made me be missing this need being met and it was not my husband at all, in fact he was willing to meet this need, in fact needed to and wanted to as well, just not in the way I expect. My expectations had gotten in the way....
I am an early morning person ( which may be hard to believe when you notice how late I often blog, but it's true. ) My honey, well he really is not. One of the things that irritated me the very most about him was the fact that he would set the alarm clock and then hit snooze continually for sometimes as much as an hour at a time. I have so little time to sleep and I sleep lightly enough that this meant that I lost an hour or more of sleep and this really really made me very angry. I must say for years I was NOT nice about it ( but the word you would use to describe my behavior is not very nice either, so we will not use it ) This went on and again I got more and more angry about it as the years passed, especially once we had kids because you and I both know what that does to you sleep. I EXPECTED that when the alarm went off that one should just get up and get out of the bed and start the day right then. ( remember I am fully awake once the alarm goes off I'm a morning person.) I EXPECTED that he would do the same. When the alarm went off and I missed my precious sleep I was plain and simple, ticked off. I would try for a bit to go back to sleep all the while feeling more and more angry as I began to drift 20 seconds before it went off again. I would often yell at my husband over this and when I contained myself I still started the day seething mad.
Then one morning I just lost it, I had been up most of the night with 2 sick kids, I had a full day of work the day before and it an even fuller day scheduled for the day I was so rudely waking up to. I just wanted the alarm to go off when it was actually the last moment I should be in bed and not a moment earlier. I just totally went off on my poor still sleepy husband who takes longer than me to wake. And then in the midst of my ranting and rampaging he said something that stopped me cold, that brought me to tears and made me realize how expectations and me being blind because I was expecting something to happen a certain way was getting in the way of enjoying something better......
"Anna, I set the alarm an hour early so I can just snooze it and cuddle with you."
All these years I had really needed that from him, and all these years he had actually had an entire hour he WANTED to spend with me doing that very thing, but I had missed it, and instead of being the kind of woman a husband might want to actually snuggle with I had been ( well you know it's a word we won't use in this post and that's would still be a nice way to put it), and through it all my husband had tried and tried to give me what I wanted and because I expected it to happen at a different time of the day I missed out and so did he....all the time with me thinking it was HIS fault and that he was the selfish one.
I began to wonder how many other things made me unhappy because I EXPECTED something to be an exact way and I missed something even more wonderful
I found that there were many instances that were in the way of me being happy....and it was ME an not him that needed to change. For instance I really really wanted my husband to buy me flowers on occasion, and he never did. ( okay he bought me some when I graduated and again when we almost got a divorce and we worked things out and did not...a whole other story and a good one too, that also was mostly bad communication and again mostly on my part) I dwelt on that so much that it really really bothered me. Then when we purchased our first home my husband with his own hands sifted the soil in an area of over 2000 square feet and with his own hands built me beautiful raised bed gardens in our back yard. One by one he removed all the rocks and made a desolate waste area into a beautiful organic garden. ( and not because he is a fan of gardening, but because I always wanted a garden) Then it hit me, he wanted to give me something more lasting and that I would be able to use and enjoy year after year. He wanted to give me something that lived more than a few days. When we moved away he once more built me another one and this time the raised bed was made with cottage stone so he had to transport all of them too. It was even more beautiful than the first one. I came to appreciate the gifts of his hands and heart and not be angry that he and the florist down the street were not on a first name basis. ( yes I would still love flowers from him, but now I don't pine after them and I know he shows love in more lasting and concrete ways.
I guess my point is that instead of focusing on what you don't have in your relationship and instead of having rigid expectations both of you will be happier if you be open to who the other person is and not expect, be open to the surprises in the relationship and look for the beauty in it, because if you are locked into your expectations and focused on what you expected and did not get, you may miss the very thing you wanted or something even better.
I hope this can help some of you and I hope you can make the changes before you miss the joy you could have had. I know I missed too much. I am thankful my honey stuck it out while I figured it out.
--Anna Matsunaga
If you liked this blog you will like what I have in mind for "Friday Date Night" a blog post most Fridays on relationships. This is the type of thing I would like to share every Friday with readers if I am selected to be Verity Mom, if you would like to see this type of content, please comment and also tell me what you would like to know about relationships as well. ( for more information on Verity mom go to www.veritymom.com)
For help with your Real Estate needs call Anna @ 253 353 2662.
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