Is it Worth it?

I have been thinking a lot lately about what is “worth it” What fights am I willing to fight, which hurdles are worth the strain to jump, particularly as it applies to my marriage.

There was a time when I would fight it all, I wanted my way, and I wanted it now and there was no compromise, no matter how small. Early in my marriage, that was a big problem. My husband had this way of just bending my every whim, until he didn’t, and it was infuriating. One minute we would be rolling along just fine, him agreeing with every thing that came out of my mouth, and then, when the time came to implement my scheme, he was all freak outs and skid marks.

I didn’t understand, I still don’t completely. Steve is the kind of guy who just wants everyone to be happy, at least in theory. He gets really freaked out by change, by the possibility of giving up this idea of how his life should be, free wheeling, simple, uncomplicated, and when his tendency to agree with everything anyone wants comes into conflict with his need for simplicity, terrible things happen.

It took about 3 years for me to understand this, it was so confusing, one moment he is totally on board with having another baby, buying a house, doing all those suburban things everyone who can, does, when they can. The next minute he is shaking and yelling that we will never, EVER be able to afford anything, ANYTHING and that working 40 hours a week to support his family sounds like his idea of hell, and them I’m crying, he’s crying, it’s a whole big mess. The last fight like this that we had, he almost left us, and I nearly let him. He seemed so unhappy, so unwilling to compromise, so disappointed by his life. I thought it would be easier to raise Lily on my own than to have to constantly make up for a father who only begrudgingly participates in everyday life.

After much talking and more crying we came to a realization. It isn’t that he hates his life, or his family, or his job (though he does) he’s afraid. He hears me say all these things I want, babies, a house, vacations, running cars, (notice I said running, not nice, just running) a motor home, etc. etc. and in his mind, the mind that genuinely wants to give me what I want, is calculating the cost of this life I want, and adding in the debt we currently have, and adding in our current salaries, and expecting to make it happen tomorrow, and, quite understandably, freaking out. Every time I would cite some new thing I wanted or dream I wanted to realize, he thought that I wanted it bought and or realized today, tomorrow, at the very latest “soon”. Which was not the case. I like to muse, I like to dream, I like to say things out loud, roll them around in my mouth and see how they taste to me. If I say it out loud, it seems somehow more possible, though my idea is typically several years in the future, or in some cases, just a pipe dream to begin with.

Once this fact was realized, we started to feel a little better and began to hit on some other truths.

1) I have a need to always be moving forward, looking for the next step, the next piece of the puzzle that is my life. When I got pregnant, I wanted Lily born, when she was born, I wanted to plan our next kid. When we moved in to an apartment, I wanted to plan on buying a house, when we went on a cruise, I wanted to talk about the next cruise we should go on, etc. etc. This does 2 things, first, it prevents me from living in the moment and enjoying that time of my life. I barely remember high school because I was so busy preparing for college. My husband however is the exact opposite, he likes to go with the flow, revel in the here and now, something that drove me insane for the first 3 years of our marriage but now, I have come to realize, I could use a little more of.

2) Its not worth it. In the grand scheme of things, a happy family and a happy marriage is more important that instant gratification. That was a REALLY hard one for me, as I tend to be very “gratification” oriented. Forcing my husband to constantly “keep moving forward” while fantastic in my book, does nothing for him but make him miserable. We decided that taking time to figure things out, and try to be happy in the status quo was a lot easier than fighting constantly, feeling stressed and pressured to always move on, to always find something better. This was, admittedly, a larger concession on my part than on his, but to his credit, he agreed to start telling me how he actually felt about issues, rather than absently agreeing with me and flipping out later on, or, saying NO outright, without allowing time for circumstance and so on to change.

So, what this has lead to is the decision that my husband will quit his job, and stay home to be with Lil during her first year of kindergarten, and figure out what he wants to do with his life. He is going to do some menial part time work for extra money, but mostly, he is just going to try and enjoy his daughter and do the house husband thing. I can say that I’m not entirely comfortable with this, but as I mentioned before, I’m learning to pick my battles. I know this will be one of the hardest times in our marriage, excluding the first year in which we had a baby, moved, saw my dad get sick, and then pass on, I don’t know if anything can really be harder than that first year (Well, 2 years really)

I can’t say I have the answers, but I am getting some perspective. Not everything is so damn urgent, life is not a race, and sometimes, letting things be tight for awhile makes life a little nicer in the long run.