# love and marriage



## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

what does it take to make a marriage work?

when i was young, i happened on an idea that has stuck with me all my life. it was a simple idea, but i had no idea how complex the process would be to carry out this idea.

the idea was about love. what is love? that's the question i asked myself so many times when i was growing up. i couldn't define it. when i looked for definitions, i found many meanings for it. there were twelve meanings for the word love in the first dictionary i read. each one of them defined it as a feeling. but, when i read my bible, it gave me another definition. in the bible, i got the idea that love is something that we do. i also looked at the word and tried to define it in terms of grammar. well, its both a verb and a noun. i can feel love, and i love somebody or something. so, i can feel it or i can do it. both are correct. 

so i thought about the times when i felt love. i thought about the times i had loved. i came to realize that in order to feel love, somebody has to DO love. they have to actively love me if i am going to feel it. that also means that i can make people feel love by simply DOING it. that was my turning point. when i realized the importance of this, i joined the army. i was in a relationship where i was loving somebody else, but she was not showing love to me. i wanted to move on with my life, learn to love me, because it seemed that i had to at least love me before i could understand how to love someone else. and, i really wanted to love someone else. i wanted the knowledge that i can be both the object of somebodies affection and the reason for it. and that's where my journey started... with the girl i married and learned to love.

i met my wife online, yahoo personals. i had a few shots of liquor with a buddy of mine and we thought it would be a good idea to make a profile. i got a few responses, but only one took an interest in what my perspective on life was. she became my wife. she showed the one quality that i was looking for at the time. she was actually the only one who showed the one quality i was looking for. she showed me that she was willing to listen to what i had to say, and take it to heart. that was all i needed to know. i decided after meeting her for the first time that this was the person i was going to love. i gotta say, i got lucky with her. at first, she had a LOT of apprehensions... rightly so. within the first few weeks, i was doing things for her that nobody had ever done. when her car was about to be repossessed, i paid her car payment. if i remember correctly, it was somewhere around 650 dollars... now, i'm not sure what she was thinking at the time, but i was trying to hook her. i was courting her, i wanted to marry her. she made the decision to allow me to love her, so i was bound and determined to catch her. i completely ignored all of her faults as if they didn't exist. i recognized them, i just didn't factor them into my decision because my end goal was to prove to myself and to her that love is a decision that can transcend anything. so, when she got kicked out of her house a few weeks later, i offered to marry her. i was in the army, so marrying her would mean that the army would help me take care of her. seemed like something that i could use to appeal to her logical senses. even if it didn't work out, we both had the understanding that we could get a divorce. so, she agreed. and that's when i REALLY started my work...

now, i would love to tell you that it was all easy from then. truth is though, loving somebody despite their faults is HARD. i really had no idea how to do it. my wife had faults, and i had faults. one of the first things i had to learn was that i have to work on my own faults before i can expect my wife to work on hers. my biggest fault at the time was my willingness to let my boundaries be crossed without consequences.. i had a lot to learn about her, and i had a LOT to learn about me. we got married after just a few weeks of meeting, so we really didn't know each other. the one thing i kept in mind at the time was my initial goal... to love this woman i had chosen to spend the rest of my life with. a lot of difficulties presented themselves to me.

im not really sure what the first issue that we ran into was, but communication was definitely one of the early ones. we pretty much sucked at it. of course, that is to be expected when you marry someone you don't really know, so i decided to make that an early target. i wanted to know what she needed from me to feel loved, and, of course, i wanted to feel love from her. i started realizing early on that it was much easier to do things to make her happy if i had a positive feeling that i could focus on, so i started telling her how she could make me happy. now, this is where i give my wife credit... despite the fact that she barely knew me, she tried REALLY hard to make me happy. it was in her nature. she was a very giving person. she wasn't very good at telling me what she wanted for herself though. unfortunately, you can only give for so long before you start to lose hope that the person you are giving to will give back...

now, i was fully willing to give my wife what she needed, but she was deathly afraid of telling me what that actually was. as it turned out, she had been told all her life that her needs were not important. she was told that she was not good enough the way she was. now, this doesn't mean that the people telling her these things knew that they were telling her that, but that's how she saw it. its not her fault, and its not the fault of the people who gave her the wrong idea. they didn't know how she was receiving their messages. regardless, i had to learn how to deal with it if i was going to make her happy. i learned early on that getting her to tell me her personal boundaries and needs was extremely important.

before long, we had our first child. this is where things got rocky, and it is where i first started to learn about the merits of loving myself. we were better at communication than we were on day one, but she still had a problem telling me the things that she needed from me. usually, she would bottle things up inside until exploding on me, randomly. it wasn't until i saw her around her family that i understood why. this was how her family operated. her family was full of stress. i'm not going to go into details, but i will say this... her mother and father took on a task that VERY few families in america would be able to handle. her mother raised seven children, five of them not her own. she worked her butt off to help provide for the family. unfortunately, this did not allow for much time to communicate. so, they would keep their gripes to themselves in the interest of not sparking disputes during the precious little time the had together. of course, what happens when you bottle things in? you end up exploding later on... they had good excellent intentions, but human nature still prevails. i couldn't change that, and i couldn't change my wife, so i decided to change myself. that i COULD do.

that's when i started to realize my own issues. with my initial goal in mind, thought about ways i could make her tell me what she needed from me. after seeing her family dynamics, it seemed that she was not comfortable telling me what she needed because she was insecure about it. telling somebody a need in her family only happened during an explosive argument. i tried for quite a while to get her to tell me, but the idea caused her so much discomfort that she couldn't. she actually wanted to, but even when she built up enough courage to tell me, she wavered from the fear. it actually started building resentment between us, so i decided to change my game plan. i started to realize what the problem was from watching her and paying close attention to her actions and subtle cues. so, i did the hard thing... i told her how i feel. yep, that was hard for me. i told her how i perceive things that she does. i started telling her how i emotionally respond to her. it was hard for me because i had no idea how she would respond. i didn't want be rejected, and i had made the decision to tell her the bad AND the good. i made it a conscious effort to inform her of just how my mind works. i credit to my wife again, she used that knowledge to make me happier. she did things for me that she i had told her i would appreciate. she provided the emotional motivation i needed to keep from getting burned out. and, the best part, it made it easier for her to tell me because she started to feel more safe opening up.

its not like we didn't have our disputes. one of them, as i remember, was caring for our daughter. when i got home from work, she would often want to take a break from caring for her. she would ask me to change her diapers, feed her, etc. as an infantryman, i can tell you that there were many days were i would come home completely exhausted and would get pretty pissy about the fact that i couldn't just go to bed. chores was another one. she had a certain way she wanted to do them, i had a different way in mind. neither of us were wrong, but when i came home after a full day or week of having people screaming at me and physically pushing myself to my absolute physical limits, i was not in the mood have somebody tell me how to do a menial task. so, for a little while, i staunchly refused to do ANYTHING around the house. well, that didn't work at all. it just ended in screaming matches. i had to suck up my pride and realize that the fifteen extra minutes of work i had to do was necessary for my wife to feel like i was contributing to the marriage. the fact that i was working extremely hard to provide for the family was important, of course, but it didn't help her FEEL like i was contributing. fifteen minutes of work at the end of the day did. that was the bare minimum, so i decided to start doing at least that much until i could get some rest from the constant training that comes with being an infantryman in the united states army.

after a while, my training schedule slowed down and i had time to think about us. i started thinking a lot about what had improved and what hadn't, and i realized that the times when i had gone against my very nature were the times that had actually led to and improvement in our marriage. basically, me standing up for myself and placing limits on the things that i did not like. my nature was just the opposite. i was a nice guy. i prided myself in bearing any burden and going to any lengths to make someone happy. problem is, i realized early on in my marriage that i was REALLY bad at it. i would try in a whole lot of ways to win her affection, and then would get frustrated by the fact that it wasn't working. i started to realize that my whole outlook on love could be wrong. by not telling my wife what my boundaries were, i was letting resentment build up inside me. that led to arguments where i would say a whole lot of hurtful things. since i had a working schedule, it meant that i was ruining the time i did spend with her by these explosive arguments. so, i made the decision that i will no longer get into these arguments. i already knew that i had a problem, so that was the first thing i could think of to help solve that problem. i would refuse to argue until we both calmed down. after my wife was no longer angry at me, i would talk. now, this did help a little. at least we were able to communicate... but it wasn't ideal. in order for us to tell each other what was really on our minds, i had to undergo a berating from my wife that i didn't deserve, and my wife would go through a couple of hours a night feeling like nothing she said was getting through. it didn't exactly leave us in the best mood. 

i had a problem, and i didn't know how to fix it. when she started arguing with me, i expected that feeling of anxiety to wash over me. unless i got angry, i couldn't respond verbally. its like i was paralyzed by despair. the feeling of complete powerlessness would wash over me, and i was incapable of the simplest thoughts. i realized that i was using anger to push myself out of that feeling, but of course, anger doesn't work. the whole point of anger is to punish, and my overall goal had nothing to do with punishing my wife. i desperately needed a way to be able to address her in those moments when she was causing me strife and make her fully aware of how she was making me feel. one night, i hit on just such a method. i laughed in her face. i realized that she had no idea how i wanted to treat her, what my intentions were, and looked at the whole situation as comical. here we were, man and wife, sharing a house together, but neither one of us has any clue what the other is thinking or feeling... that was the golden ticket for me. as it turns out, laughter is contagious. it didn't take long at all before my wife would start laughing too. i think she came to realize the same things i did, that the whole situation was ****ing nuts!

after this, arguments didn't cause us so much grief. i mean, getting into an argument meant that we were both going to end up laughing our asses off at ourselves. it meant that it was ok to argue. it didn't take long before we went into arguments with the laughter in mind, so we stopped feeling the tension and the anxiety, so we both felt free to just say what was on our minds. it was about that time, when i started telling my wife what i was OK with and what i wasn't, that i started to notice that she was becoming more attracted to me. and let me tell you, sex was an excellent motivator for me to keep my head in the game. my goal hadn't changed... it was still to love her and to fall in love with her. but, she couldn't become a woman i could passionately love if she didn't know how. and if i wasn't telling her exactly how to become that woman, then it would be impossible for me to achieve my goal. i made a decision... from that moment forward, i was going to tell her everything, all the time. i would hold nothing back. then i got deployed to iraq...

while i was in iraq, i practiced the changes that i figured i needed to make in myself. i needed to be assertive, and i wasn't. so, i practiced it until it was a habit. of course, it was a great place to practice assertiveness... my leadership saw it and quickly put me into a position of authority and promoted me. the fact that i was in a war zone made it easy, since i KNEW i wasn't doing anyone any favors by trying to maintain the peace instead of calling people on their deficiencies on the spot. if a piece of equipment was not kept up to standard, i said something about it and i hounded whoever was at fault until it was right. if they wouldn't do it, i would tell their team leader about it and sometimes do it myself. now, i still wasn't coming across as confident, because i really wasn't, but hey... at least i was trying. it caused me a lot of anxiety, but i looked at that as all part of the process, and i had to start somewhere. baby steps. you know, crawl walk run. by the time i came back from iraq, it was enough of a habit that i was able to call my wife on things when she was out of line. now, it still wasn't comfortable, but by that time i had learned to fake the confidence to a large degree. 

after about a year, i actually became confident. when i started calling my wife on stuff, it opened the door for her to call me on my crap. and call me on it she did. one of the things that i learned was that the avoidance i practiced before had been pushing her away. confronting her on issues actually made me more sexy to her. i really didn't need any more motivation than that. seeing the positive change was a huge part for me in losing the anxiety and actually becoming a confident individual.

now, this is where i started turning into counselor... i had looked back at my own past and saw that i actually dealt with an issue of mine... the anxiety in confrontational situations. it wasn't just that i had changed my behavior. i actually changed how i felt. i had successfully started to transform myself from a beta into an alpha. the biggest thing i noticed was that i was free to be as productive as i could possibly want. so... if it was possible for me to do it, then it was possible for my wife to do it too. at least, that's what i thought at the time. she could change the way she felt just the same way i did, and thereby deal with her own demons. she may even be able to deal with her depression and her agoraphobia by the same model. now, my goal was to fall in love with her. so, having a wife that could handle social situations with me, without breaking down, helps with that. i see her as more a more powerful woman, so i see her as sexy. seeing her as sexy makes me WANT from and for her. i looked at the depression in the same way. if i really wanted to feel a passion for her, i had to find ways to help her overcome her depression, since it was holding us back. now, my wife loved me by this point, no doubt about that, but i recognized at the time that she was in the same boat i was just a year before. she had difficulties that she didn't know how to solve. the only thing that led me to believe that her difficulties were not completely set in stone was the fact that i had managed to overcome just one of my own difficulties. so, i started looking at WHY i was able to overcome my issues with confrontation to begin with...

one of the things i remembered was that during confrontation, the brain floods itself with cortisol. apparently, this hormone makes it difficult to think but prepares you for split second decisions. it also makes you feel anxious. so, i went back and did some reading and found out that chronic exposure to cortisol can pretty much leave behind chronic deficiencies in logic. it causes the part of the brain that controls logic to be chronically impaired, which eventually leads to that part of the brain becoming sluggish and weak. i also learned that all the different parts of the brain get stronger with use, so exercising any given part of the brain makes it stronger. this means that every time i felt anxious, i strengthened the part of my brain that caused me to feel anxious. every time i actively practiced NOT feeling the anxiety, i strengthened the neural pathways that helped me to not feel anxiety. to me, that meant that all i really had to do was find a way to practice not feeling anxious. so, i decided to try and see if i could put myself in a situation where i could feel anxiety, but focus on not actually feeling anxiety. when i hit on something that worked, i would practice that coping mechanism until i felt that i could effectively eliminate the anxiety at will. 

the first practice was to imagine a situation where i would normally feel anxiety. for me, the easiest one i could think of was the promotion board. logically, i know i shouldn't feel any anxiety. all they are doing is asking me questions to see if i am knowledgeable enough and confident enough to lead at the next higher level. i knew that i only needed a majority vote to get promoted, but looking at it logically was not enough to help me stop feeling anxious. so, i imagined myself sitting in front of a board. i pictured all the first sergeants in front of me, asking me questions and writing down notes about my performance. i imagined the situations when i didn't know the answer, and i practiced not feeling anxious. i did that by focusing on how i would conduct myself when i did not know the answer to a question. i came up with a simple response... just say that i don't know the answer. if i have no idea, its pretty senseless to just spout one off, unless i had an idea of what the answer is. in the model i created in my head, i had the first sergeants ask me questions i knew that i did not know the answer to. just thinking about it made me anxious, so it was a good model for me to practice ways to feel something other than anxiety. before long, i felt confident just admitting that i didn't know the answer. now, does this help me at the board? who knows. i really don't. my goal wasn't to win a board, my goal was to find a way to beat the anxiety, so that's what i focused on. to help me feel more confident, i spent a lot of time studying the topics i knew the least about. simply put, i felt empowered when i KNEW the answer... so i studied as much as i could so that i could feel like i had properly prepared for it. that alone helped a lot with the anxiety. for instance, i read AR 670-1. its the regulation that deals with proper wear and appearance of the military uniform. after i read it, i felt like i could answer just about any question about it, and that helped me feel less anxious about it. i started reading every regulation that i might be asked about so that i could feel the same level of confidence.

now, the whole goal was to learn how i could beat the anxiety within myself. i really wanted to help my wife with her own anxiety and fears, but i really had no idea how to do that since i had never done it myself. i didn't know how to help her. after finding ways to deal with my own anxiety, i started to get the idea that it WAS possible for me to help her. all i had to do was show her that it was possible, and get her thinking about it. i had to give her hope. so, it was incredibly important to me that i learn everything i could about overcoming my own anxiety so that i could help my wife. that was what gave me the motivation to put myself into places where i would normally shut down from anxiety. i didn't just think about such situations... i actually put myself in them. once i was convinced that all my work had payed off, i was convinced that it was possible for anyone to do, including my wife. she COULD get past her issues, it would just take a lot of time, work, and patience. 

so, i started talking to her about what i had been doing internally. i started asking her if she had noticed any changes in me. she had. so, i decided to see how far the rabbit hole went. i decided to see what changes would happen if i practiced complete transparency. that meant i would have to tell my wife everything about me, what it thought and felt as i felt it and as i thought it. to do this, however, i would have to become the exact opposite of what i naturally am. for some reason, thinking of it as an experiment made it easier for me. i was out to collect data, so i could do whatever i needed. i still find it strange that i could think like that. but, so be it. i started telling her everything. it didn't matter how trivial it was, if i felt it or thought it, it was coming out of my mouth. from that point forward, i started telling my wife EVERYTHING. at first, it was mostly negative stuff. if you think about it, that makes sense. i really didn't have an issue with telling my wife my positive thoughts and feelings, but i had always been holding the negative back. so now that i had made the decision to hold nothing back, all the negative came pouring out. it was like a opened the floodgates, and for a while, my wife felt like she was drowning in it. it didn't stay that way forever though... after a few days, there wasn't anything left that i had been holding back. those first few days sparked a lot of arguments between us. then i started to notice something... i stopped feeling anxious about telling my wife the negative things. it was like i had been afraid of the consequences, and for years had been telling myself a lie, that my wife wont love me if she really knew me.

my wife really stepped out on a limb here at that point. instead of just resenting me for all the negative crap i was spewing forth, she started doing things differently so as to accommodate me. for instance, she stopped leaving dirty dishes on her desk. she started spontaneously picking up stuff around the house in order to make me feel more relaxed. when i saw her making an effort to be a better wife for me, i jumped on the praise wagon. i started doing things for her to make her life a little easier, and i would tell her i was doing it because i wanted to do something for her to thank her for doing all those little things for me. that's when i stopped getting irritated by the little things, and i felt free to express to my wife how much i loved her. i was no longer feeling anxious all the time. negative thoughts and irritations no longer caused me anxiety because i that i could express them and resolve them. my wife started to do the same thing. at first, i started getting defensive whenever my wife would tell me about the things that rubbed her the wrong way. i don't remember it as much as my wife does, but we both remember when it changed. there was a small voice in the back of my head that wanted to get defensive every time she told me about something that i was doing that irritated her, but displaying that wouldn't have done me any good. so i decided that i would do my damnedest to not get defensive. i had to remember that the way she felt was completely legitimate... in other words, even if her reasoning was completely flawed, she wasn't wrong just for thinking it or feeling the way she felt. sometimes she would feel like i just wanted her to do everything for me, and basically just be my servant. it was hard for her to express that, but when she finally did, i came back with discussions about how i can convince her that i DIDN'T just want a servant. it wasn't a matter of me trying to prove her wrong, it was about helping her FEEL like she wasn't a servant. i didn't want my wife to have to ask that question, "is it wrong that i feel..." i figured the best way to handle that was to make her feel differently. so, we talked and discussed such things until we both came to agreements that work for us. sometimes we weren't able to come to something that both of us liked, so one of us would try stepping out on a limb and just suck it up and do whatever it was the other was asking for. after a while, we both started doing it so much that it started to seem like our issues were taking care of themselves.

it was around that time that i started to realize that we had been living by an unwritten rule.
a pretty simple rule, but when i realized it, it changed the way i thought about things. 

our feelings and thoughts are completely legitimate. the ONLY thing we can possibly know for sure are how we feel, what we think, and what we experience. that meant that i cannot possibly know what my wife is thinking or feeling unless she tells me, and my wife cannot possibly know what i am feeling or thinking. it also meant that, by definition, my wife's feelings are completely true and legitimate, because it is the only thing she can know for certain. the same went for me. 

when i realized that we had been doing this, i talked to my wife about it. i told her that i will keep this rule in mind and will never forget it. i will NEVER blame her for how she feels. no matter how ugly it may seem to me, she is not wrong for feeling it. it also means that i am not wrong for how I feel. from this perspective, we both started taking it upon ourselves to make the changes within ourselves to be better partners. after drilling this point home into my own head, i started to realize that it was not only OK to express my feelings and thoughts to my wife, it was necessary. she has absolutely no way of knowing how to love me if i don't tell her how. 

that is when our whirlwind romance started. five years into our marriage, we literally fell completely in love with each other. it was something i had never expected. i had often thought about being in love is really like, but i had never actually experienced it. being a reason based person, i had long felt like feelings were irrelevant because it wasn't part of the problem solving process i used to cope with just about everything. it wasn't just that i wanted to think of feelings as useless, i actually felt like they were irrelevant. i couldn't find a logical reason for them, but at the same time i also realized they were inescapable. i couldn't be a robot all the time. i still got frustrated, excited, depressed, irritated, elated, proud, etc. i had long tried to deny that i felt any emotions at all, but of course, that doesn't work. what i find interesting is that i used my logic to get in touch with my emotional side, and by doing so, i felt like i was actually in control of my emotions. i am rarely ever anxious at all now, so im actually better at logical thinking than i was back when i tried to deny my emotions and just focus on logic. no more cortisol spikes interrupting my thinking. i thought i was well off after i got used to being a confident individual. i had no idea how much better it could still be.

there is nothing that i dread now. and i LOVE my wife more than i ever thought i could. its strange to my rational mind, but i'm loving it. for me, love is a puzzle, it is irrational, and it is at the same time insanely logical. it is what i feel when my wife speaks my language, and it is what i do when i speak hers. love is a process and it is a byproduct. what i have found is that love starts when i make the decision to love. 

love starts with a choice.


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## jld (Dec 1, 2013)

That was beautiful, As'laDain. Thanks so much for sharing it with us!

I, too, think love is a choice as well as a feeling. And clearly you and Akinaura have much respect for one another as well as commitment to the marriage.

It would be nice to have a journal section here. It is so interesting to read everyone's story and evolving thoughts.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

i actually plan on writing my biography, focused heavily on how i have overcome issues in my life and achieved my goals. 

some of the chapters i have not even lived yet, but ill be documenting it along the way. 

this is basically just a piece of what i have been writing. i still have a lot more to write on this subject alone...


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## Sandfly (Dec 8, 2013)

As'laDain said:


> so i thought about the times when i felt love. i thought about the times loved. i came to realize that in order to feel love, somebody has to DO love.


I stopped reading at this point, because this paragraph is spot on.

Love is what you do, and not what you say. It's an expression and an activity.

All else is just good intentions and illusion.

Hope you don't mind that I cherry picked this.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

Sandfly said:


> I stopped reading at this point, because this paragraph is spot on.
> 
> Love is what you do, and not what you say. It's an expression and an activity.
> 
> ...


thats alright. i know its LONG. 

i am trying to write a book after all.


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## Sandfly (Dec 8, 2013)

As'laDain said:


> thats alright. i know its LONG.
> 
> i am trying to write a book after all.


Since Uni, I've found it hard to process lots of big words at one time. I can't actually read technical books without getting depressed now. 

Just some ideas, because from reading your posts, I have the impression that you are a 'what works' kind of man, so these are my suggestions for your book (not here on TAM!)

The best educational/'technical' books I ever read had a variety of these features:

broken up with graphs, diagrams, pictures, anecdotes, quotes/proverbs/sayings, practical but simplified examples;

And also broken up by many: well-titled subchapters, sections, good numbering (a paragraph system with numbers like 1.10, 1.11 etc)

Hope you don't think I'm being cheeky! I'm not criticising, just saying what would work for me as a reader.


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## SimplyAmorous (Nov 25, 2009)

Gotta say...for a couple of young ones who got quickly hitched within a few weeks of meeting.. (I was thinking to myself.. Oh my "what a disaster" awaits there)....you & she, despite the early 1st hurdle of misfired communication... and many faults coming to light to annoy each other ....just how that action of Love TO DO...showing that determination, and commitment despite all else.. can prevail... you 2 come a long way baby! :smthumbup:



> *As'laDain said* *i staunchly refused to do ANYTHING around the house. well, that didn't work at all. it just ended in screaming matches. i had to suck up my pride and realize that the fifteen extra minutes of work i had to do was necessary for my wife to feel like i was contributing to the marriage. the fact that i was working extremely hard to provide for the family was important, of course, but it didn't help her FEEL like i was contributing. fifteen minutes of work at the end of the day did. that was the bare minimum, so i decided to start doing at least that much until i could get some rest from the constant training that comes with being an infantryman in the united states army.*


 So it started with you making the decision for peace.. I will give 15 extra minutes of my day... to help her FEEL what she needed from you. You gave it -your "meeting half way" a good faith effort... 



> *As'laDain said*:* my wife really stepped out on a limb here at that point. instead of just resenting me for all the negative crap i was spewing forth, she started doing things differently so as to accommodate me.* for instance, she stopped leaving dirty dishes on her desk. she started spontaneously picking up stuff around the house in order to make me feel more relaxed.* when i saw her making an effort to be a better wife for me, i jumped on the praise wagon*.


 I like that.. "jumped on the PRAISE wagon"... It always starts with one partner... 



> *i started doing things for her to make her life a little easier, and i would tell her i was doing it because i wanted to do something for her to thank her for doing all those little things for me. that's when i stopped getting irritated by the little things, and i felt free to express to my wife how much i loved her.*
> 
> *i was no longer feeling anxious all the time. negative thoughts and irritations no longer caused me anxiety because i that i could express them and resolve them. my wife started to do the same thing.*
> 
> ...


And see what took off....when a couple feels appreciated and loved, it is very soothing to the spirit and we WANT to give back.. and you & she ... really worked that communication [email protected]# 



> when i realized that we had been doing this, i talked to my wife about it.* i told her that i will keep this rule in mind and will never forget it. i will NEVER blame her for how she feels. no matter how ugly it may seem to me, she is not wrong for feeling it. it also means that i am not wrong for how I feel. from this perspective, we both started taking it upon ourselves to make the changes within ourselves to be better partners.* after drilling this point home into my own head, i started to realize that it was not only OK to express my feelings and thoughts to my wife, it was necessary. she has absolutely no way of knowing how to love me if i don't tell her how.


 Boy if more partners could get ahold of that one.. I want to leave one of my favorite sayings out of a Book I have on temperaments entitled "Please understand me"......



> *Different Drums for Different Drummers"*
> 
> If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.
> 
> ...





> that is when our whirlwind romance started. five years into our marriage, *we literally fell completely in love with each other. it was something i had never expected. i had often thought about being in love is really like, but i had never actually experienced it. being a reason based person, i had long felt like feelings were irrelevant because it wasn't part of the problem solving process i used to cope with just about everything. it wasn't just that i wanted to think of feelings as useless, i actually felt like they were irrelevant. i couldn't find a logical reason for them, but at the same time i also realized they were inescapable.*
> 
> *i couldn't be a robot all the time. i still got frustrated, excited, depressed, irritated, elated, proud, etc. i had long tried to deny that i felt any emotions at all, but of course, that doesn't work. what i find interesting is that i used my logic to get in touch with my emotional side, and by doing so, i felt like i was actually in control of my emotions.* i am rarely ever anxious at all now, so im actually better at logical thinking than i was back when i tried to deny my emotions and just focus on logic. no more cortisol spikes interrupting my thinking. i thought i was well off after i got used to being a confident individual. i had no idea how much better it could still be.
> 
> ...


 Oh wow, What a great ending....

Kinda like this -- a choice









Your story made me think of this ...


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## jld (Dec 1, 2013)

SA, I loved those last two images! I called the kids in to see the cartoon, and I am going to show dh the Marriage Box one. 

I loved how the box starts out empty, and we fill it. So much really is up to us!


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## Akinaura (Dec 6, 2011)

jld said:


> SA, I loved those last two images! I called the kids in to see the cartoon, and I am going to show dh the Marriage Box one.
> 
> I loved how the box starts out empty, and we fill it. So much really is up to us!


I agree...our box started off with spider webs and nightmares...now it's at least got some decent lights and pink flamingos.:rofl:

(And some awesome bedroom aerobics, if you catch my drift, lol):smthumbup:


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## unbelievable (Aug 20, 2010)

The two things required to keep a marriage going is to avoid dying and avoid divorce.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

unbelievable said:


> The two things required to keep a marriage going is to avoid dying and avoid divorce.


i dont want to keep my marriage going. 

i just want it to thrive.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

SimplyAmorous said:


> Gotta say...for a couple of young ones who got quickly hitched within a few weeks of meeting.. (I was thinking to myself.. Oh my "what a disaster" awaits there)....you & she, despite the early 1st hurdle of misfired communication... and many faults coming to light to annoy each other ....just how that action of Love TO DO...showing that determination, and commitment despite all else.. can prevail... you 2 come a long way baby! :smthumbup:
> 
> So it started with you making the decision for peace.. I will give 15 extra minutes of my day... to help her FEEL what she needed from you. You gave it -your "meeting half way" a good faith effort...
> 
> ...


thank you for your comments. i still have a lot to write about this one topic alone. there was a LOT that i left out. 

i post these things online because i am still unsure(and therefore insecure) about my own writing. i dont think of myself as a particularly skilled writer.


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## Sandfly (Dec 8, 2013)

As'laDain said:


> thank you for your comments. i still have a lot to write about this one topic alone. there was a LOT that i left out.
> 
> i post these things online because i am still unsure(and therefore insecure) about my own writing. i dont think of myself as a particularly skilled writer.


No one starts off knowing exactly what to do.

I like to read biographies. So far Stephen King is the only one who claims he can just 'sit down and type'. But really, even he spends a lot of time reading and out walking, thinking...

Everyone else admits they had to work at it, and benefitted from practice, and also...

many of them make the dedications to their editor - that's not just for show - the end product is the result of criticism and self-criticism.

So don't expect perfection from yourself, just make regular time, with definite break days too.

Once the words are down in black and white, it is easy to cut; or transfer bits. 

I've read that as long as you 'like' your readers, and it comes through in your style, you will be in the right frame of mind to reach them.


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## SimplyAmorous (Nov 25, 2009)

As'laDain said:


> thank you for your comments. i still have a lot to write about this one topic alone. there was a LOT that i left out.
> 
> i post these things online because i am still unsure(and therefore insecure) about my own writing. i dont think of myself as a particularly skilled writer.


 We all start somewhere...there have been a # of posters who shared their marital ups & down here in story form...These can be found in the *Successful Marriage section * here..... 

Copy & pasting is heaven...Thank God for EDIT... I shared our story as well... (in my signature below) .. I did break the posts up some so it wasn't a huge wall of text... the readers will appreciate this, it won't seem so overwhelming.... Helps with the different stages of our journey....

It's a Wonderful thing to hand down to our children as well... many lessons in that..maybe they can bypass some of our blunders.....


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## bilbag (Aug 3, 2016)

You replied in my thread and I wasn't sure if you were just pulling my leg. You weren't. Congratulations on your happy marriage. I enjoyed reading your stories.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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