Relationships
Go Ahead and Compromise In Your Relationship
It’s not selling out, it’s buying in
How to instantly screw up a good thing
A friend accused me once of selling out my manhood for deciding to forgo a sports event in favor of spending time with my wife.
“Bro. Be a MAN!” he implored. “Don’t let your wife take away who you are!”
I made a huge mistake in responding to this shot: I listened to him and changed my mind.
My marriage still had that new car smell, and I ruined it by farting a bad decision right into its fabric. My priorities were centered on self back then, and eventually that was all I was left with — myself.
I reneged on a promise to spend time with someone I had promised my eternal love and devotion to, and for what? A sporting event that I wasn’t even at. So, really, I stood her up for my television.
I deserved the way that relationship eventually ended.
I get that learning from mistakes is an important part of maturing, but that was an especially painful trip to the Learning Tree. Even now, years later, I think back on that pivotal moment in that relationship and it still kicks me right in the gut.
But I did learn. In fact, I am a veritable repository of hard lessons on how not to be a husband.
A second chance (with a different person)
I took a new position within my organization about a year and a half ago. I did my homework before showing up, and everyone I talked to assured me that it was a cake gig.
“You’ll get to spend plenty of time on the Bay,” they all said. “That job takes care of itself.”
I was there around, oh, six minutes when I realized that everything anyone told me was just bad intel. It wasn’t that there was nothing to do, it was more like there was plenty to do that just wasn’t being done.
As COVID restrictions abated and in-person business started picking up again, I quickly found myself at airports all over the country.
My current wife was happy about that at first. We love each other, but we also appreciate the benefit of space to breathe and reflect on our lives as both a couple and as individuals.
I’m now gone from home an average of two weeks every month, and that has become more than we bargained for. We quickly went from appreciating the brief, infrequent periods apart to needing to make the most of the now-brief time we have together.
But I’m still a sports nut.
Football just ended, but basketball is still in full swing. The last time I came home from a long trip, I immediately went to the TV and clicked on a basketball game.
I could hear my wife’s silence over the sound of the television, and it was piercing.
I was slipping into that selfishness again that I had worked so hard for so many years to outgrow, and I could feel those old feelings of fear creeping up into the back of my throat.
Last weekend, I took her to lunch. On Saturday. During a game she knew I wanted to watch. And I didn’t set the DVR for it, either.
I made a deal with myself, and I wanted to share it with her.
“Babe, I’ve been gone a lot and I feel the pain of not having quality time with you — even when I have time with you,” I said. “I’ve been selfish, and I’m sorry.”
I told her that I would be more determined in my here-and-now presence in our marriage with the time we have going forward.
I won’t lie — somewhere in the very back of my brain I could hear that friend from years earlier whispering, “Don’t let your wife take away who you are!”
This time, though, I had an answer to that.
“She isn’t taking away who I am. Who I am is a husband, a father, and my wife’s best friend.”
I wasn’t selling out who I am; I was buying in to who we are.
