This blog is for all my friends, who have been married for twenty-five years or more. Now that we have time to look back, we can compliment ourselves for being resilient, for coping up with life’s ups and downs, for navigating through our partner’s idiosyncrasies, and for enjoying the marital life. Ladies, when I say partner, don’t forget you too are one of the partners in the relationship!
Most of us have been unhappy about some or the other peculiar characteristic of our better half, over the years we did try to change them, make them see our point of view, raved and ranted, threatened, and cajoled, but didn’t succeed.
I myself have enjoyed almost 30 years of marital life, and Whoaaa what a journey it has been. Any long-term relationship is a roller coaster ride. Each of us has his/her good points and bad points, it is in our interest to accept our partner’s negative traits/ quirky habits and appreciate the goodness.
By now, I have made peace with myself or should I say I have come to terms with the flaws because I do want to stay in the relationship, nurture it and enjoy it.
An extremely close, longtime friend of mine told me how her husband would never appreciate her cooking and her housekeeping skills, while everyone in their social circle considered her to be an excellent homemaker. Quite frequently, she would feel disappointed, dejected, and even suffered an inferiority complex. Things went quite bad when she started harboring grudges against her spouse as she felt that he was intentionally putting her down in front of his friends.
Another thought that tormented her since she was tolerating this bad behavior, “maybe I am being judged as a weak person with no self-respect, no confidence”, she feared even her own children may lose respect for her.
Over the years, many times she explained to her husband, how this habit of his was hurting her. For a few days after an argument, things would become better, but the same problem would crop up yet again.
Now she has realized that her spouse is unable to control his odd behavior and it’s not her responsibility to change him. After much deliberation, she understood that keeping a cool response was the only way to deal with it and it was in her own hands.
She just freed herself from the negative feelings she used to experience, she took charge of her own emotions, refused to feel victimized…. she emerged a victor. Very smartly she shifted the onus of correcting her husband’s distasteful habit back to him!
Friends, the mantra is….
Just your happiness key in your own hands,
Renuka.