My husband said to me, “I don’t know how to handle it when you are emotional.”
I said, “So learn.”
He made that statement with the feeling that if I tell her that I can’t handle this then I will just be off the hook to handle it.
Just because you don’t know how to handle something doesn’t stop the world from putting you in front of it. You don’t get to PASS.
We are not born knowing how to HANDLE anything stressful very well. Just dropping a binky will put a baby into an emotional meltdown. But over time we learn that the binky comes back from these nice people that are hovering over us all the time. Soon it becomes fun to drop the binky just so the big people will pick it up.
Stating to your spouse that you can’t handle something means that it’s time to do some homework.
My emotions are not just going to dissappear because he doesn’t know how to be around them. In fact it makes me more emotional that I get rejected just when I really need love.
Let me give you a hint, husbands. Women are designed to laugh when they’re happy and cry when they are hurting. I know that men do not get the luxury of feeling a variety of emotions like women do. Men basically get happy, indifferent or mad and they get to cry when some they love dies.
Where women get a multitude of emotions to choose from, joy, sadness, frustration, irritation, elated, worried, and on and on, sometimes several times in a day. We are allowed to cry for any reason whatsoever. TV, kids, stress, love, anything.
So I empathize for the men, I really do.
That still doesn’t mean you get a hard PASS when you have come across a relationship speed bump and you don’t know how to get over it.
It used to frustrate me so much about 20 years ago when I would talk to my parents about things that I was aware of that were not from their generation and they would just act like what I was speaking was a foreign language.
For instance, I knew that taking antacids for long term causes digestion issues and that usually we need more stomach acid instead of less because our food wasn’t moving down the track properly. I know this because they had put me on antacids when I was a teenager and had been on them for years. When I discovered in my 20’s that I was having a lot of digestion problems. The after doing a crap ton of research online and talking to naturopaths and Chinese medicine practitioners, I clearly knew taking antacids were dangerous for your digestion, but my parents who have been taking them for years and years would just shake off my warning like an unwanted mosquito. Meanwhile the years go by and they both have more and more food intolerance's each year. I had to let it go because I knew that they were not on the internet researching digestive health. They didn’t have smart phones either.
But now, I reeeeally get frustrated when I know something that they don’t know and then they blow me off when I try to educate them I say, JUST ASK SIRI!
We have access to more information then we could take in in a lifetime. There is really no excuse for people just burying their heads about any subject that needs attention without being able to, at the very least, Google it.
When you are in a relationship, it’s each person's responsibility to continue to educate yourself on how to grow up and be a better partner, better friend, better listener, better lover. Most people that I know had terrible role models for a healthy marriage, so how do you think your going to be any good at it?
DO YOUR RESEARCH!
Google it, Read a book, go to the library, talk to people and ask them what makes them feel good when they are with their spouse.
If that doesn’t help, hire someone to tell you how to handle things.
After my husband made that feeble attempt to never have to deal with my emotions again. And continued on with an explanation about how Artificial Intelligence will be able to talk to me when I’m stressed so that he won’t have to.
I explained to him that he can’t buy a computer program to give me love and comfort when I am hurting. The oxytocin I need in the moment comes from the physical touch that you provide to me with a hug. More then that, I have learned to self sooth about as much as I care to. We choose to be married and that means we have someone here that not only gets to see our joys, but will be there to hold us when we're down.
At this stage in my life, hunny, I take care of my emotions myself about 99% of the time, with a prayer, a nap, a pill or just power through, but when I reach out because the pain is too much for me to manage within myself, on that 1%, I need you step up and learn to be empathetic, compassionate and hold me when I cry. Without letting your discomfort overshadow being there for me.
I was not born knowing how to be married to a bi-polar, but I sure had to learn. If I wanted to stay married. I had to dig into a world of research that seemed to be endless. The hands on learning was like emotional bootcamp, but I did it. I had to learn how to meet him where he was at to give him the safety to heal.
I think we have gone to far with independence. I know that we all have to have our own identities, our own way to be happy. I know that we have to be able to enjoy ourselves with or without our spouse. I know we need to be able to stay on track even when our partner is being a bummer.
I know women especially need to have social outlets with her friends that don’t include her spouse.
Ok, done, so now what?
What if we actually had no attachment as to what our partner was feeling on a bad day and just went on with our day and just knew that they would figure it out and they can get thier comfort from God?
Wouldn’t that just be an ideal world for a selfish asshole to live in? (too far?)
Look, I know the truth of truths is that God does take care of it all. And God is the greatest source of comfort that we have. However, isolation is also the greatest form of torture that we use to punish people. There are some incidences when the people have become isolated, they the have found their greatest spiritual, emotional and mental strength, but do we really need to put ourselves through a prison like experience to feel closest to God?
You can create your own boundaries with money or being taken down with someone or whatever, but when you have a spiritual commitment to another person, go that extra step that you would not have thought of going through for a stranger.
Actually many people are willing to give a hand up to a stranger without knowing anything about how they got there. Our brain creates oxytocin when we give, comfort or joy to anyone no matter who they are or what they have done. So clearly there is a built in reward system inside us for giving love for a reason. To get us to do it!
How about instead we show up for the people we love the most. Give them the love and support they so desperately need in the moment without judgement. Loyalty is part of the gig with marriage and family. I’m not talking about monogamy. I’m talking about, divine assignment, life defining, you're going through some real shit, kind of loyalty.
Being co-dependent can also mean that you might be spiritually strong enough to hold someone up right now. Just like someone else did for you that time.
Think outside the labels.
Stay Conscious.