- NOT THE ONLY ONE !
- ” MY WAY”
- POST # 36
- Howdy, and once again welcome to my weird brain. I have to confess that I have way more to write about than I have time for. I want to thank you faithful followers, and I appreciate you guys comments , and for sharing the blog ,who knows this may some how play into my retirement :):). However I am stealing time from sleep and workouts, and the two consistent things in my life is my time with God, and work, which has been extremely busy, because we have been caught up in the ” Great Resignation “, as well. I would love to know if any of you guys can tell where ,I’m running to, just based off of the title, probably not so much! Ok, let’s get into ” My Way”. If you have an ear for music, then you may remember this as the title of a song, back in the day. It’s been recorded by Sinatra, Elvis, and Major Harris, just to name a few. It’s something about our independent spirits that like to do it our way. It’s great to be independent, however, when I do that a part from God ,it always seems to turn out , shall we say , not according to plan, that is of course unless my plan was to find myself in a huge sinkhole, which it definitely was not. Ok, this post is about the mother of my children and its kind of in line with a couple of more post that I wish to publish. My ex wife, was all about doing things her way. When we first got together back in 1990, we were pretty close, you know the whole partners in crime thing, we both had a knack for pushing boundaries ,and is probably one of the things that drew us together in the first place. I’m a dude so, yes a little visual. She is a dirty blonde ,with blue eyes, a Midwest girl. She has never really been a small woman, kind of got her father’s big bones ,which really works for me, not fat, just solid, sorry, just never really been a fan of skinny chics, and by all means , a looker. I always thought that we worked well together, of course until we didn’t. This post isn’t about throwing her under the bus, as much as it is about my journey and what I’ve learned, and besides she does a great job of throwing herself under the bus. :):). I will put this disclaimer out there up front and center, I still love this woman, it’s not a romantic , emotional love, but until my dying breath, she has given me two of the biggest most wonderful gifts and that is my son and daughter. She is the only one that I thought about backtracking with and that is because of the kids, it would just make things easier with holidays, birthdays and such, probably not the best rationale, but at some point we had functioned at a high level. I know some people see it as a weakness to still love and care for your ex, but one, I am not one of those people, and two, as I have said numerous times before, it’s a choice to love people. I guess, like a lot of couples we grew apart and allowed all of the trappings of life, push us into different corners of the ring and we didn’t do that together as we had tackle so many other things in life before together. It always takes two to make things work and it takes two to blow them up as well. We both have opposing stories about what actually happened, mine a little bit more based on facts, and hers more emotionally based. If you have been with me throughout the entirety of the blog, then I gave some very specific insights into her trauma and how it has fed into the mindset of doing things ” My Way”. I will fully confess that relationships can be hard and require work, but its not rocket science. If we are willing to put our partners needs before our own, exercise patients and put away the selfishness, things have a tendency to workout, unless the two of you were just never compatible in the first place, and we usually figure that out pretty quickly, so that’s probably not the case for most of us. When you raise kids with someone, it’s like the two of you grow up together. The two of you have all of these shared experiences, and learn new things about yourself, your partner and your kids. This one here is for free as my pastor use to say, and it’s not in my notes:):):). We seem to get ourselves in trouble, whenever we go against God’s original design. Many of you probably don’t want to hear this, and for others it will make completely no sense at all. This simple truth is that children and vocations aren’t suppose to supersede the marriage bond of the two. I know!, what an archaic idea. We both, men and women a like take it on the chin here. We loose focus as to what is important and why it’s important. The marriage is supposed to be the backbone of it all. Kids and vocations will come and go. And you are thinking, no, my kids, will always going to be my kids, well first of all , they are entrusted to you for a season, but hopefully if you do a good job, they leave the nest and go and replicate what has been modeled for them, and BAM!, that’s why it’s so important right there. In this current climate that we are in , I hope that I don’t need to waste words as to why jobs aren’t more important than your marriage and family, and yes I get that’s why you are out there in the first place to support family. So, to what ends? At best I know this can be another balancing act, but I will challenge you with , when is enough a enough? And yes at the heart of this it means putting away some of the comparisons, whether it’s family, neighbors, or work colleagues. Don’t be afraid not to drive the nicest car in the neighborhood, or the biggest house, or whatever it is that you are striving for and I can promise you in the long run, your family, partner, and your health will thank you for investing more into them, than your occupation. And again, you are probably wondering where I am going with this and has to do with my ex. Well, when you put kids or work before your significant other, there is a power dynamics that changes, and takes place, and for the most part it is subtle, and is very rarely noticed until it’s to late, something like heart disease. And hear my heart, I know that there are and will be times when kids and work will require first place, but that can’t be where you are living all the time, it shouldn’t be your norm or go to. I think, no I know that it is the way to many of us, I’m not excluding myself, I have lived it, and now, I’m here to share a little wisdom with you , hoping that you don’t fall into the same pit falls. Ok, I haven’t kept it a secret that I’m a Christian and that is the prism, from which I view life. God intended for marriages to be strong and have a great root system, or foundation. If, He is the base, then you build on that, and that’s not saying that things will go smoothly, but it gives you an incredible resource to seek out and to lean on when things get challenging, and trust me, everyone has challenges from time to time. God’s design is for the marriage to be the core, and everything else is in place to support or enhance that core. Those things can be anything from children, external friendships, sex, vocations, homes to whatever. We get ourselves into trouble when those other things take first place. This is also true in our relationship with God, when we get things out of sync, or out of order, then it messes with the ecosystem. I sometimes make references to my brief time in the Army. So, the Army has roughly twenty-two divisions, but only four of those divisions are designated as fighting divisions, all the rest are support roles. Those support roles can be anything from being a barber, a mechanic, a lawyer, a cook, or whatever, but the point is they are support and not the main thing, and the same should be true of your marriage or relationship with God. That may have seemed like an elaborate explanation, but I want you to look at your priorities and where you are investing your time, talents and treasures. Sometimes, we just need to reexamine our points of attention and our focus. Ok, my ex and I raised our kids in a church and it was a good one, and I say that because all churches are not good, but that will be for another post down the road. We were pretty active in our church, and we had the privilege to be teachers there, both of kids and adults. So, what I am about to share is a little bit of a tragedy, that we taught something that we didn’t follow ourselves, and I guess the lessons to learn are numerous, but a couple that come to mind is not to think more highly of yourself than you should and to be careful and humble less you stumble into the same things yourself. Ok, pay attention, this is important, this is where the rubber meets the road , as they say. My ex wife and I taught a class , based on a book called “Love and Respect “. Its was written by a married couple who both happen to be PHDs, you can Google the title and find the book, excellent read, and extremely insightful if you do what it says and follow the instructions and the message, because it is Biblically based. The readers digest version is , when couples get out of sync, they get trapped into something known as the ” Silly Cycle “. Its all about giving your partner exactly what they don’t need. If you were to take a poll, and ask people across the board, what is a man’s number one need is in a relationship or marriage , you would probably get a varied number of answers from food to sex, and they would all be good guesses , but incorrect. A man’s number one need in his marriage is respect, and a woman’s number one need in a relationship or marriage is to be loved and feel valued. This may seem like a no brainer, but when we get things out of order, it doesn’t take place, and remember, I said that it’s subtle, like heart disease. Women will disrespect, or show no respect to her husband and he will in turn show her no love. It truly is a silly cycle, and unless you address it pretty quickly and treat it as a cancer, that needs to be cut out, the results speak for themselves with a fifty percent divorce rate, that is ever strong. My ex wife and I taught this stuff, and then completely missed it, as I said, tragic. In our case this became further devastating by the fact that we both brought strong Alpha personalities to the table. We both felt that we had to be right in our perspectives, which meant little yielding and compromise. My exs perspective was ,if God had made the man to be the head in the home, then she was supposed to be the neck, that determined where and what the head was supposed to focus on, true, her very words!. We did the marriage counseling thing however, she isn’t a person who can ever be wrong, so when they point out areas that needed attention, she wasn’t so much feeling that. It’s kind of like, tell me what I want to hear, and tell me that I’m right, or I have no use for you. Yes, and so that didn’t go well, and she refused to work on things and she jettison the counseling. This reminds me of the story in Genesis, when God evicted them from the garden and he said that the woman would always want to seek control over the man:):):). She like having and doing things her way, and for the most part, I didn’t mind that, so much and whenever , I could do that, I was more than happy to do that. The place that got us into trouble was when we discussed something and came to a decision on it, but if she wasn’t a hundred percent on board with it , then she would do something else, without another conversation about it. So , I’m thinking that we are doing one thing, when in actuality, we are doing something else completely different. I think the one place that this showed up in our marriage and home, more than any place else, was in the raising and discipline of our kids. Children know how to divide and conquer, like no other army in history has ever known. This is one place where the two of you need to be on the same page with the same message for the kids, because even though kids push against boundaries, its something that is extremely important for them . This is something that I’m ecstatic about that my daughter learned and has present in her marriage and home. Her and her husband back each other up, like the pips did for Gladys Knight :):):). I am not making this her fault and I’m not giving myself a pass. There were things that I should have done and taken a greater interest in and been a little less passive about, but I didn’t see the point at the time, but hindsight can be a real ass kicker. My ex wife has always been reactive, meaning when something comes up, she immediately has some kind of knee jerk reaction. She has to do something, it doesn’t matter if it’s the correct response or not, she can always figure that part out later, but she has got to be doing something. And that brings up another point, if you have calm and peace in your life, that’s not a good place for her, if you don’t have drama, she can manufacture it ,or borrow it from some third party, I have truly never figured that one out☺️. I’ve always been drawn to strong women, I think it’s a template that my mother put into place. The formula for me going forward is a strong woman, who knows how to yield and to communicate when they are unsure of the path that we are taking. Beyond that, they need to be about team, and less about self, and have a spirit of cooperation. My ex wife may have been one of the co-founded for “My Way or The Highway “, and that’s great if you are on your journey alone, or if you wish to make it a journey on your own, take your pick , but in the end, they are one in the same. I want to refer you back to the post on Trauma and how we unwillingly bring these things into our relationships. I say that, with hopes that you realize that I’m not blaming my ex wife for what took place, we both had a part to play, and on the upside, hopefully you the reader can benefit from our dysfunction. If you have already walked this path, don’t be afraid to trust and try again, just do it with your eyes fully open, with the determination that this time you will get it right.
- Till next time ✌️.
- Sandy The Southerner
- Reply
- ,
- Reply All
- or
- Forward
Send
