Coach Brenda

The Restored Wife

“He’s so young!” my sweet grandma said when she met my future husband. I was less than two years older, but my life experience and his baby face made it feel like a ten-year gap at times. The differences weren’t always blatantly obvious. When we were together I felt happy and cared for and any doubts seemed inconsequential. Questioning things too much made me spin in anxiety and indecision, and I wanted to be married.

Time, I reasoned, would cure all.

Conversely, the vexation I had hoped to grow out of became more pronounced. We were married less than a month when I felt a crushing sense of loneliness and disillusionment.

My expectation to be intimately and effortlessly understood by my husband was not my reality. He didn’t seem to know or understand me very well at all. This became a theme song that started to play quietly in the back of my mind. As a result, I was often defensive and easily agitated by things he said or did. This man did not know where I was coming from or what I needed to thrive in our relationship.

I became silent and distant whenever I felt misunderstood. Sometimes I saw my husband more like an annoying little brother than the man I had hoped to marry.

I felt guilty of a big mistake.

Communication, we understood, was vital to a solid relationship, but when I was disgruntled and defensive I couldn’t figure out a way to communicate much that wasn’t harsh criticism, blame and annoyance. My default was to smolder in resentment, question our whole relationship and stay silent.

Often I found reprieve with time to think things through on my own, but the spiraling thought process was painful and recognizing that need for solitude took years. Occasionally I “communicated” what I was really thinking, initiating a conversation that was both harmful and helpful. My husband, never faltering in expressing his love for me, always drew me back out of my cave of regret. Having a husband who loved well left me feeling guilty expressing discontent.

I was often exhausted and lonely at home living in a state that felt like a foreign country. He went to work every day. I felt responsible for everything else: the kids, budget, meals, vacations, schoolwork, taxes and appointments. He wasn’t used to handling such things, so the burden of being “the responsible one” fell to me.

After our second baby was born, I was overwhelmed by the finances and finally asked for help. We made some positive adjustments and I did my part to sacrifice and cut back. He didn’t seem to view our plan quite the same. Surprise purchases and a slow-growing savings account were cause for alarm. He was also at work a lot, which was interspersed with playing ping pong and video games and going out to lunch every day.

I was at home with young children and felt like I rarely got a break. I was jealous. To me, taking all four days at the hospital each time I had one of our children via C-section was like a vacation!

We had a good marriage, but part of me still struggled. Floating along was nice, but I wanted more of the relationship I had envisioned from the beginning.

When I heard about the book now entitled The Empowered Wife, I read it out of curiosity. The women who recommended it claimed to have overcome insurmountable challenges to their marriages. At the very least it seemed to have the potential to provide good preventative medicine.

What I got instead was a complete paradigm shift in my own marriage and the tools that brought my relationship to the level I had only longed for previously. The immediate validation I received about the choice I had made to marry my husband was priceless. The doubts that had hurt our ability to connect became a fading memory.

Right away, I saw a difference in the way I viewed my husband and myself. The next time he said something that sent me down the old familiar path of annoyance, I paused, realized where I was headed and decided not to go there. It made me smile as the tension I felt flew out the window. He noticed the strange shift too, and we laughed and shared a hug instead of a miscommunication error.

Even my rough experimentation with the Six Intimacy Skills™ from the book had produced instant results. But it was the overall sense of hope and encouragement I received that made the biggest impact.

A few years later I had an opportunity to experiment more intentionally with each Skill. I was inspired by other women who had experienced huge shifts in their marriages, yet I knew I was holding back, still a little skeptical of fully diving in. I feared losing our progress. It wasn’t until I learned to be vulnerable and trust my husband that I had my biggest marriage breakthroughs.

We were on a walk recently when my husband brought up our family being complete. I felt defensive. I’m “high risk” now and I wanted to argue against it. I decided to practice an Intimacy Skill instead and listen. He began expressing his thoughts about what he would do if anything ever happened to me. As I took in his tender words, I was aware I would not be hearing them or receiving them in the same way if I had not been practicing these Skills.

The old theme song had played, but it wasn’t true for me anymore. The kind of deep connection I craved was becoming my reality.

Not only am I hearing things for which I had longed, I can communicate in a way that leaves me feeling good afterwards. Conversations that would end in frustration are moments of mutual affection now. Major decisions bring us together and I have the kind of partnership in parenting that I had given up on.

I have so much help and support now!

Where there was agitation, there is now fun. Where there was annoyance, now peace. My vision has truly become my reality.