Marriage Monday – Growing?

Over the weekend through very stressful circumstances that were beyond our control we had a breakdown in communication. That’s never good. Basically I was very tired and emotionally needy. I wanted my husband to be right beside me, even though there was really nothing he could do at the moment. I wanted him to “feel” how sad I was (and truthfully, I probably wanted him to “make it better”). Mostly I just wanted to tangibly, physically supported. Was he doing that? Overall, yes. Did he know that I wanted that, that exact moment? No, I hadn’t told him.  I just wanted him to know.  


By the time he actually got to me, I had thought the thought, “Jody you didn’t tell him what you wanted so how could he know.” Now just thinking that did not stop me from pouting a bit BUT it did slow me down enough to be able to talk with him, pretty reasonably. (I had a very emotional weekend overall, so some tears came anyway.)  He responded with little defense, realizing that there were two sides to every story. He told me a bit more about what kept him from me then we moved on to how can we avoid this in the future. Guess what? It’s all about honest communication. I had not clearly told him what I wanted or needed. He assumed because I knew where he was I was okay with it. We set a goal to be clear about what we expect, especially in emotional situations.  End result? We’re fine and actually, we both feel pretty good about the way we handled this. In the past, I would have stuffed my hurt and discontent with his actions and eventually it would have “exploded” all over both of us causing much more difficulty.
I think we’ve “grown up a bit.”  How about you? Do you see signs of growing in your relationship?