How Tracking My Husband’s Habit Helped Our Marriage
A wife’s confession to why she did it
In the Beginning
Before the birth of my first child, I started writing a small group curriculum to help teenage girls navigate their faith in God. I loved it. I’d spend hours creatively drafting workshops and envisioning large scale conventions. That curriculum was my first baby, one that I devoted midnight hours to, and energy I didn’t even know I had. Then I became an actual mother — not in the proverbial sense.
I can’t image a better experience in life than motherhood. The privilege to inspire, guide and encounter the manifestation of God’s unique creation. This new venture, needless to say, became all encompassing. There was no time for my first child, the metaphoric child — my aspiration to mentor teenagers in the capacity I dreamed to do. The trade-off was fine with me because I knew, in time, I’d find balance and space to return to building my dream. However, that time and space seemed so evasive.
The Record
My husband, a free-spirit in his approach to life, explored the possibility of entrepreneurship after a series of corporate betrayals. I don’t blame him. Workplace politics can reshape your paradigm in more ways than one. While taking the time to develop his next opportunity, I found myself in mothering overdrive which was extremely exhausting considering I work full-time outside of our home.
Then came what my husband called nagging. But it wasn’t nagging. It was the confronting he didn’t so much appreciate. Not to seem too self-righteous, I wanted to prove my point of his absenteeism with concrete examples. Why did I feel the need to approach the situation this way? Because my husband is the kind of man that reshapes an evaluation of “unsatisfactory” to “not so bad.”
I taped a calendar to our restroom mirror and convinced him that it would be good for us to mark the evenings he was away. Both planned and spontaneous outings. He agreed, shrugging that I would be proven wrong about his time spent networking. In no time, the squares quickly accumulated ink, and I was careful to grin inwardly.
Then, the calendar went missing.
Irritated, yet satisfied, I confronted him about it. His only response was, “We don’t need that piece of paper to prove anything.”
But we did.
He did.
I did.
Concrete facts, unobscured by opinion, emotion or subjectivity.
WE needed it.
My Hypocrisy
I know better than to keep a record of wrongs because no one deserves to have their flaws read aloud to them, but I did it to help myself. As selfish as that sounds, I am technically half of the ‘WE’ that needed that record.
My nature is forgiving and patient — to a fault. It’s easy for me to approach an aloof friend to ask if I did something wrong. I’d rather be vulnerable and apologize than think I couldn’t have possibly offended anyone. I wanted this same approach to friendship reciprocated in this situation, in my marriage. But my husband wasn’t forthcoming. In order to preserve my mental clarity, I had to make sure I wasn’t hyperbolizing the situation. That’s why I decided to record his habits.
And after awhile, he begrudgingly came around to understand that I needed more of his presence at home.
I would not recommend employing this tactic to confront situations. In fact, I cringe at the thought of having tried it myself. However, there was this mindful need to preserve myself, to take care of my reserve of giving, to solidify my claims with proof.
Self-advocating is necessary to protect my ambitions and my sense of purpose. I don’t regret the way I went about it, but I am contrite as I believe both emotions can coexist.
The Blessing
There’s no new calendar now, but if there were, its boxes would be filled with ink — both ink for him and ink for me — because WE fill them together.