Interest breeds interest.
Identity Crisis
Sometimes we let ourselves be needed too much, at the cost of who we are. Do you ever feel like your husband is just somebody else to take care of? That’s a sign. Sure, he needs you. Sure, you’re called to be a help meet. But being a help meet does not mean losing your own identity.
Marriage, Motherhood, Life
The days before marriage often instigate the problem. You’re in love, you’re anticipating this great wedding and a new life together, and suddenly everything else becomes secondary. That’s important and appropriate for the time, but then we get so caught up in loving and following ‘the man’ that we forget to keep the woman alive.
Motherhood plays a big role in this problem. A new baby is the most demanding creature in the known world. In the midst of 24/7 care of a yammering infant, it’s tough – to put it mildly – to hold onto your own interest. For a while there, you just have to default to survival mode.
Life itself encourages identity loss. Circumstances, situations: you move, you graduate, you lose your job or he gets a new job, there’s a family crisis, a sick parent, a friend in need, a financial problem. The demands of keeping up with life can become so much that we quit living and just keep trying to survive.
Then One Day You Wake Up…
…and you can’t find yourself anymore. (That’s never good.) You feel robotic. You feel depressed. You feel like your life is defined only in terms of what you do for other people. You get that old, “What do you do for fun?” question, in one of its various incarnations, and you kind of glaze over. You can’t remember what you do for fun.
The Dilemma
What you’re looking for isn’t a pat on the head and a “go take a nice bubble bath until you feel better.” You’re looking for a way to bring yourself back to life. But you don’t want to neglect your work, your home, your husband, your family in order to pursue your own interests. How selfish, you think. I can’t do that. But when the only thing you do is take care of home and family, you lose yourself. (Where did I go? In the diaper genie? Behind the fridge? Under the laundry pile?)
Selflessness Gone Wrong
You dedicate your days to your job and/or your home and your children, then you dedicate your evenings to being with your husband.
Sounds good.
There’s a mistake in our thinking here: with great intentions, we “keep the evening open” so we can accommodate our husbands, spend time together. What that often turns into, however, is that we expect attention and entertainment from our husbands. They sense that pressure from us, and resist. Nobody likes being pressured.
When they resist, we get hurt and upset and feel like the whole evening is ruined, wasted.
Out of the Ruins
You are an interesting person. You just need to have some time and space to bring yourself out into the open again.
Here’s a suggestion: make your own plans for this evening. You can still be with your husband, spending time together. You can still talk and interact. But you don’t need permission to be who you are.
Start tonight.
5-Minute Marriage Check
How do you spend your days and evenings?
What can you change so you have more time for the things that interest you?
What’s wrong with working side by side instead of being entertained side by side?
What’s wrong with you pulling out a project or the remnants of a forgotten hobby and inviting him to join in on your plans? He might not. Maybe he has his own plans, but that will become less and less of a big deal.
The more interested you are in life, the more interesting you become as a person.
5-Minute Action Point
- Get started before the evening begins: have your project, book, whatever out and in progress so it’s easy to pick it back up again.
- TV and computer tend to simply be entertainment devices, distractions but not really interests. Don’t sell yourself short. Do something that is a challenge, that leaves you energized.
- Set a limit on your housework. Give yourself an ending time so you don’t spend the evening on housework details and miss the chance to relax and do something different.
- Get organized. Get your stuff together so it’s easy to jump in.
- Focus. Find one project or hobby to work on at a time.
- It doesn’t have to be something you’re good at, just something you’re interested in. You can always switch to something else.
- What is unfinished in your life? Start finishing it!
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This post is {day 22} of the Build a Better Marriage Challenge.
It’s a 30-day challenge to be deliberate about building a better marriage. We’ll talk about some of the common obstacles to a better marriage (marriage killers) and some of the important habits for a successful marriage (marriage keys). We’ll also work through some of the misconceptions that affect our marriage, faulty thinking we’ve picked up from our culture, our pasts, and maybe even from the church. Each day’s reading will end with a 5-minute marrige check and a 5-minute action point, so you can take it on home.
Join in via the Mr Linky on the challenge page. You can also just read along, but remember that all challenge participants will receive a free copy of the ebook at the end of the challenge.
Here’s to better, stronger, happier marriages!
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