One of the hardest things about marriage is putting the other person first. Especially when you don’t feel like your own needs or wants are being met. But I learned first hand during my Proverbs 31 experiment that when you decide to focus on what you need to change and less on what your spouse needs to change – a whole lot of change can happen, and for the better.
I love being married. As stressful as it can be sometimes, the good definitely outweighs the bad, and the longer I’m married to my Handsome, the more I feel blessed to call him my husband. God uses this precious relationship called marriage as as an example of what our relationship with Him should look like (see Ephesians 5:25). But the value of marriage today has become diluted. Seriously watered-down. The concepts of commitment and honor and integrity don’t seem to matter as much. Social media hasn’t helped. And Christians aren’t immune. We need to do everything we can to protect our marriages. Off-line and online.
Used with permission from istockphoto.com
One of the toughest situations I hear from women I’ve counseled over the years has been trouble in or the demise of their marriages, and often it’s over social media, particularly those couples in their early twenties. I remember being so devastated as a teenager when my boyfriend at the time broke up with me over the phone. Now it’s not that unusual for a boyfriend, or fiancé, or husband to throw away a marriage in a FB status. It’s shocking, but it’s happening. In fact, a recent article reported that more than a third of divorce filings last year contained the word “Facebook” and more than 80% of U.S. divorce attorneys have seen a rise in the number of cases using the word “social networking.”
What would you say the hardest thing about marriage is? The wedding, or what happens after? As much hard work and preparation goes into the wedding planning – it’s what we do with our marriage after all of the guests have gone home that’s the most important. Just like our cars will fail if we don’t keep them maintained, so will our marriages if we don’t make them priorities.
It isn’t easy, is it? We have jobs and careers to think about, bills and financial pressures. And when children enter the picture, it’s a whole different story. We’re tempted to let our marriages run on auto-pilot while we deal with everything else. Strong marriages don’t happen by accident.
That’s where I was 7 years ago. We were married for almost 7 years at that point, and I was focused on everything else but my husband.
I had a military wife email me through Facebook this past week with a question that I think a lot of us can relate to. Here’s what she asked:
My husband and I are nearing our third month in our deployment as he continues to serve in Iraq. We have been able to communicate fairly regularly with the help of sending emails back and forth to each other just about daily. We recently started using Skype to set up what I like to call “Web Dates.” I thought it would be our time to communicate and have face to face conversations with the help of modern technology.
The only problem is that these little dates are seeming to always be interrupted by everyone else who logs on to want to talk to him. He knows this bothers me because I end up having to “fight” for his time and attention and yet I feel so selfish because I know how much his family and friends want to talk to him too. Because of the time differences there is only one time during the day that he’s able to talk to everyone and it becomes crazy trying to hold these one-on-one conversations.
Any suggestions on how to handle communication dilemna’s like this one? How
were you and your husband able to keep your marriage fresh and intentional with
the distance factor?
Have you had to deal with similar situations? It can be SO hard figuring out how much to include extended family and friends when your time is already so limited and emotions are high. In fact, that’s one of the reasons that today’s prayer for our “This is the Day to Pray Campaign” (see the most recent post) that we’re doing over at Wives of Faith is all about relationships with mother-in-laws. They aren’t always easy! Even when you have a great MIL like I do, when it comes to deployment, the emotions and feelings that can come up when the person is away that all of you love, family and friends included, can be really hard to deal with sometimes, especially when you’re feeling forced to divide time, which can be hard for you and also for your husband who is the one away from everyone.
Here is what I said when I wrote back. Maybe it will help someone else dealing with a similar challenge.
Yes, the communication issue can be so frustrating, especially when dealing with extended family and friends. I’ve been thinking about your question and I think there are two things to look at.
First, and this is the side of the coin that you and I as wives don’t really like, it is important that your husband gets to hear from other family and friends too. In fact, it is really great that other people want to talk and are checking on him, etc. Our SS class at church and our friends were quite the opposite when my husband was deployed, and it made him wonder if anyone even cared. So, that is a bright side to this whole thing.
BUT – the other side of it is that as a couple, you need those precious minutes to connect as much as you can given that you’re physically apart right now. As women especially, we need that emotional connection, we need to know that our husbands still only have eyes, (or in this case ears and eyes
)for us. You need to feel like you have some time that’s just the two of yours… you’re already having to share him with the military; it makes it that much harder when you’re also having to share your conversation time with other people as well.
So here’s my suggestion – since you are getting to talk to him almost daily, why don’t you talk to him about a compromise? Tell him you understand that it’s important he get to talk with his friends and other family but that you really value having time that’s just for the two of you, that it’s important to you. Ask him if there would be a way that he could designate one day during the week that would be to talk with friends and family, and then maybe you stay off Skype for that day and let him deal with all the one-on-one multiple conversations. Then you get him the rest of the week. I haven’t used Skype enough to know if there are certain tools you can use to ignore or avoid interrupting im’s or calls (Cliff’s location and his situation didn’t allow it), but maybe if your husband sends an email out and lets people know that he can
talk on this day, but the rest of the time, even if he appears online, he will be busy with other things, something like that, maybe that would help. Just an idea.Or maybe instead of skype, if you can’t get well-meaning people to take a hint, then you guys agree to talk by regular phone (if he can) a couple of days a week and that is your one on one time. The most important thing is that you guys talk this out and find a solution you’ll both be happy with, and remember that your marriage will last a whole lot longer than this deployment will.
What are some of the ways you have handled communication issues during deployment? I hope to start a series on Monday talking about this very thing. Come join us!
Ten years ago today, my life changed for the better when I walked down the aisle to marry my husband. We had no idea what God had in store for us; just that He had brought us together. It has been a wild ride so far, that’s for sure, but one that has never been boring! There have been a few rough patches along the way but we have always gotten through them with God’s help and have come out stronger on the other side. Cliff has been my steady rock, my protector and my best friend. I’m actually very grateful for the deployment we went through last year, because it was a huge reminder of what is really important: not what kind of house or car or bank account you have, but that you have each other.
We won’t officially celebrate our anniversary until next weekend since (of course) he has drill this weekend. But I’m looking forward to spending a couple of days with him, just the two of us, laughing, talking and celebrating this special milestone.
Cliff’s parents will be celebrating 40 years of marriage in August… I pray that we continue to keep our love burning bright just like they have.
Happy Anniversary honey!
Living on love.
That’s what my husband said we’re doing yesterday and I have to agree. Maybe it’s a corny sentiment, but it’s pretty accurate in our case.
Since he got home, I have embraced, savored and enjoyed our family time. And I haven’t wanted to do anything else.
If you’ve known me for a while, this is a little, ok, really, unusual. I’m a “doer.” I like to “go get ‘em” and multi-tasking and juggling numerous projects is my lifestyle, er, work style. So for me to simply be content to sit on the couch reading a book cuddling with my little boy while he watches an episode of one his many favorite Disney shows, or sitting on the floor with my husband counting change saved up for the last year for our upcoming vacation, well, it’s a little unusual. A lot slower paced. And I really like it.
Yet that doesn’t stop me from feeling slightly guilty, feeling like I’m ignoring other responsibilities like my Wives of Faith ladies, or my writing, or my neighbors and family and friends. I confess, I haven’t answered the phone much. I have checked email but not really replied a whole lot. So if you’ve tried contacting me, don’t worry. I haven’t fallen off the earth. I have just enjoyed being with my family on a little island I’m calling Home.
I think this all stems in part from the way things were before this deployment. Before my husband took off for the other side of the world and took on the role of war hero along with the hundreds of thousands of others who have left their families to serve the greater good. Before, when he was “just” a marketing director at a local radio station, and we were paying bills and hanging out with friends and wishing for what we didn’t have and trying to appreciate what we did but not always being very successful at that. Following life one day at a time. I confess I often saw our family time as an interruption to my other goals, my other passions, my other pursuits. I’ve always wanted to make a difference for God. To turn the world upside down for Him. But in my dogged determination to run a ministry marathon, keeping up with the other ministry marathoners, little things like my husband walking over and calling for a thirty-second hug would actually get on my nerves. I saw it as slowing me down. How wrong I was.
My initial desire for “family time” lasted all of about one week. Cliff came home, we enjoyed those first days as a second honeymoon of sorts and when I saw that he really hasn’t changed a whole lot, that he’s still the same loveable laid-back easygoing guy who left me at the beginning of this year, I convinced myself we could go ahead and get back to “normal.” Normal meaning I would get back on the mouse wheel, throw myself back into the office, start making plans and checking off to do lists.
So that plan lasted exactly one day, and then our son broke his arm and all bets were off on “normalcy” returning to the Horn household anytime soon. And as much as I hate that my little boy has had to go through the pain of a broken arm, the family time we’ve had because of it has been some of the best we’ve had as a family. We’ve laughed and joked and talked and cuddled and played with no schedule, no distractions and I see what we would have missed if things had gone my way.
Of course, eventually, we have to come back to earth. After all, bills do have to be paid. After our trip to Orlando to see Shamu and Mickey, my husband will go back to work, Caleb will go back to school with the addition of a bright neon-orange cast on his arm, and I will resume all of the things I’m involved in with hopefully a different sense of self, sense of family, sense of balance and priority, sense of letting God lead and making every effort to stay behind Him instead of running out ahead as I’m so often prone to doing.
And yet, I hope we don’t stop the living on love part. Because, when it comes down to it, love is the basis of our entire existence. It’s what keeps us going and what drives us forward. It’s what enabled our Savior to lay down His life for us all. It’s the foundation of everything we do and when there are cracks within that foundation, whether in our spiritual life, our family life, or other relationships, that’s when the entire building can start crumbling. I’ll admit my foundation isn’t perfect. I’ve allowed some cracks to form over the last few years. But thank goodness remodeling and renovating is always possible.
How thankful I am for love. Love of a wonderful husband, love of a wonderful son, love of a wonderful Savior who doesn’t give up.
