HOW TO NOT LEAVE YOUR HUSBAND

Every wife needs to know how not to leave her husband. Every marriage has rocky points and so many are smashed to smithereens every day. Please note, you will never hear me advising an abused woman (abuse in any of it’s forms) to stay. This blog is not that. This article is for the passionate, the intense, the drama queens. It’s for the door slammers who yell and march out of rooms and drive home to their mom’s house. It’s for the over-reactors, the cussers, the blow it out of proportion-ists. Girls, if you identify with any one of those labels, this article is for you. Gentlemen, if you thought of your wife when you read that last sentence,  DO NOT SEND THIS ARTICLE TO HER. (For the same type of reasons I outline in HOW TO TELL IF SHE HAS PMS). Send it to her friend and get her friend to send it to her. 🙂

You and I made quaint promises with starry eyed, under-informed intentions on our wedding days.That’s why they say love is blind, ladies. Chemicals and charm are in full force and in the beginning, we can hardly even tell each other HAS faults. It has to be this way or we would never agree to such a ludicrous union. But three months in, when your own ridiculous hurt feelings butt up against your husband’s ignorance and unbudging-ness and you lose your ever-loving mind and scream and run out of the apartment and drive away like a bat out of hell (that was autobiographical), you may wonder how things could have taken such a dramatic turn for the psycho.

If you are a) an external processor b) intensely feely c) super selfish and prone to fits of rage, you are likely unprepared for what marriage will pull out of you in the way of yucky responses. If you are paired with an  a) internal processor b) intensely logical c) super selfish and unnaturally patient/stubborn kind of man you can never prepare for the poop-storm that will occur.

This blog is for the girls  like me, who need to learn how to manage their extreme reaction tendencies, in order to quit leaving their husbands. When I say leaving, I mean walking out, slamming doors, yelling cuss-words and driving off with screeching tires.

I have a history of trying to control an escalating situation (really, I was the only one escalating) by vacating. It definitely put a nice finishing touch on an argument and it made me feel like the winner when I could decide who had the last word…me. More often than not I was fueled by hormones, but the whole thing would feel as real and justified as a murder trial. That’s not an excuse, it’s just a fact. Marriage is hard and hormones can make girls legit crazy.

Years ago, one exit strategy I employed went horribly awry. To this day, I consider it a pivot point. It was the night that I realized that maybe God didn’t approve of my jumping ship every time I got overwhelmed. We had just had a sweet older friend over to our house to try and help us through an issue we were having. The friend did his best to facilitate communication but we were both so committed to our respective sides of things that we did not make much progress. The friend left and Barry and I tried to continue the conversation on our own. He said something that tipped my scales to rage level and I left. I just turned on my heels, grabbed my keys, jumped in my car and left him standing there in the yard. I just started driving as fast as I could. It felt powerful to my angry heart to leave him standing there in the dust. In my frenzy, I had no idea where I was going, I was just going. I got five minutes down the road and it started to snow. Like blizzard style. No problem, I knew how to drive in snow, I would carry on with my escape quest. Then it started coming down so thick that I couldn’t see even two yards in front of the car. That’s ok, it might just slow down my get-away.  I drove in a blinding blizzard for about twenty minutes. The sun went down and even though I was unsure of my ultimate destination, I was determined to get outta dodge. All of a sudden, in the middle of the blizzard, on a back mountain road, something snapped inside the engine. Some belt that made it possible to drive any faster than ten miles an hour gave way and I slowed to even more pathetic crawl. I decided to pull over into a tourist parking lot to get my bearings. I pulled out my cell phone and whaddaya know, no service. I checked my gas gauge and there was only about another half hour of driving left in it. So there I was, escaping. I sat in that chilly car and pondered my options. 1) sit there in the car until the gas ran out and die of hypothermia in the blizzard 2) go home.

I truly believe that some angelic being snapped that belt inside my car. That drive home was the longest, most agonizing drive I have ever made. Practically, it was really difficult because the car would hardly move and visibility was nil. Emotionally it was hard because I knew I was going to have to eat crow over my botched escape attempt. I knew that the heavens, the weather and the automotive sabotage angel were all conspiring to give me an opportunity to put an end to this weird fleeing behavior I was indulging in. I just knew it. It wasn’t ok. As trite as my promises were all of those years ago, I was breaking one continually by bolting when things got overwhelming for me. Barry hadn’t broken any promises and he never up and left when things were bad. This was a form of fit throwing and I needed to stop doing it. I finally pulled into the yard at a crawl about 25 minutes later. I trudged up to the door and apologized for leaving. When Barry heard the story of the blizzard and the snapping belt, he was glad I was ok but he did smirk a little.

Girls, grow up. Guys, grow up. Fit throwing and fleeing is not a form of problem solving. It’s a bid for control and it breaks connection every single time. It’s totally ok to take a breather and go to your separate corners for a bit. It’s appropriate to wait to speak until you can speak without venom. It’s totally not ok to bail on your ancient promise to “have and to hold” your spouse. If I “have” Barry, that means that I “have” him even when I’m furious with him and vice versa. I don’t get to abandon things that are mine. He’s still mine, even when an issue we’re having makes me want to cuss and spit. Slamming a door, walking out and driving away is using the threat of abandonment as a weapon and it’s wrong. Even if it’s a bluff, it is manipulation at it’s finest and it is totally uncool and damaging.

I haven’t curbed my dramatic tendencies with 100% success. Self-mastery is a lifelong process and a unique challenge for passionate, outward folks like myself. Marriage is a gift, a journey and the hardest thing most of us have ever done. Take it from me, a master fit-thrower, it isn’t worth it to continue to allow yourself to behave this way. It builds nothing. It connects no one.  Many of us grow up with few communication tools in our belts. We don’t know how to process ANY intense feelings, let alone anger and hurt. Get help. Find a counselor. Even if you have been throwing fits for years, you can stop. You can change. You can grow up, grab ahold of some more effective tools and build the promises you made into something real and lasting. But first you gotta stop leaving.

P.S. My friend Alan Smith is a powerful communicator on the subject of relationships and how to do them well. If you want to make some lasting changes, start by checking out his “Freedom From Blame and Control” post.