Our Marriage Shortcut for Being Nice to Each Other
“My belief is that communication is the best way to create strong relationships.”
It all started around the time that Scott and I realized that there is one very specific circumstance when we suck at liking each other. This: When we both feel we are owed TLC from the other, when we both expect to be served, to be on the receiving end of giving.
He’d return home from a taxing business trip thinking he’d be due some extra attention. I’d welcome him home from that same trip after single parenting like a boss thinking I was deserving of extra attention. We both wanted doted, appreciated, complimented for our separate hard work of the previous week. We also both expected to be gifted alone time, a break or two, permission to run away from our house and children and responsibilities screaming. And neither of us got any of it.
In this work trip instance, and in pretty much every other instance when we are each ragged and our expectations simultaneously clash up against one another’s, we are both not wrong. Sometimes we are equally working damn hard. And sometimes we are equally deserving of being given to. And sometimes we are equally pissed the other ain’t giving it.
Maybe for you it’s when one of you is recovering from surgery at the same time one of you is coming out of a season of depression. Maybe one of you is completely sucked into a draining work project and the other is concurrently nursing an ailing parent. Maybe you are deflated from a diagnosis while your partner is deflated from the loss of a job. Maybe, like my example, you both simply had freaking taxing weeks more of the humdrum sort, one up several consecutive nights with puking kids, the other pulling the weight of consecutive help-with-homework nightmares.
We needed a system. And so, The Number System got born.
It’s not complicated, insofar as it requires only that you can count to ten. It’s not easy, though, because any hint of disingenuousness will instantly dissolve its effects. Basically, we report in to each other regularly what our number is: 1-10. 1 is the worst state ever. 10 is the best state ever. When I report that I’m sitting at a 2, and he reports that he’s sitting at a 2 too, we hang on tight and push through together. On the other hand, when he’s a 2 and I’m an 8… it’s clear who steps it up.
The other time this system isn’t easy (or necessarily useful) is when there is never a flip flop. If one is always reliably < 5 and one is always > 5, then there would never be a need to check in… that pattern sounds pretty fixed (and dareisay miserable).
Thankfully, although sometimes it takes more months instead of hours, there is usually a healthy flipflop for me and my partner. Thankfully, also, we typically stay at a bottomed-out 1 or 2 at the same time for relatively short periods of time (you’ll know because there’s a haggard look to our faces and our property during these stints).
I’m thankful for the Number System. It helps us know – in a lightning-quick way – how each of us is on the inside at any particular moment of our marriage. And it dictates the direction of the giving as a result, who's the tree casting the shade and who's sitting under it. Best of all, if done fairly and honestly, it dispells resentment from both parties when we both know we both can't give.
Here's the thing: We can work with what we know.
There's the famous idiom that a picture is worth a thousand words.
I say a number is, too.
