R-E-S-P-E-C-T

In spite of how happy I am to be married overall, John and I definitely have our conflicts. They are not daily, or even weekly for that matter, but they do occur. I've noticed that the issue of respect is a common theme that permeates 90% of our disagreements. I don't mean the "respect my authority" kind of respect, but rather the "respect my space" and "respect my stuff" and "respect my time" and "respect my feelings" and "respect my ideas" kind of respect that people in all types of relationships deal with to some degree. Marriage can exacerbate these issues because another person has constant access to your space, stuff, and time, and as much access as you give them to your feelings and ideas, even when clear boundaries are set. Privacy is at a minimum in marriage, and this is where trust comes into play again. If we set aside time and space that is to be only mine or only his, we have to trust the other person to respect those boundaries. And, when (not if) the boundaries are crossed, the breach can seem like a betrayal of trust even more so than in relationships where boundaries are clearer than they are between a husband and a wife. These feelings of betrayal and disrespect breed conflict.

Now, I realize that some may question whether or not husbands and wives should have any separateness since we become "one" when we get married, so I will briefly pause here to address that question. I definitely think that a certain amount separateness is important in order to maintain individual sanity--sanity which will ultimately make the marriage stronger. Brief time apart each day or each week allows each spouse to rejuvinate and to return to togetherness without fear of becoming completely sick of the other person. This sanity-maintaining alone time helps prevent the constant feelings of being at odds with the other person that marriage-gone-wrong produces. The amount and nature of the time and space each person needs will obviously vary from person to person and marriage to marriage, but I think some personal time and space is a clearly established need in a healthy marriage. For some people, these boundaries can take place outside of the home at work or at play, but for others alone-time may be needed at home as well.

Clear communication is necessary to boundary establishment. If I say I need an hour by myself, I need to be assured that I will have that hour I requested and not just 40 minutes. In my marriage, this is tricky because our house barely holds the two of us, and so neither of us has a space that is just ours. So, if John and I are sitting on the couch and I say, "I need an hour to [read, practice yoga, call my mom, nap] so I am going upstairs," John has to be able to say, "OK, I will stay down here for the next hour so that you can have that time." And vice versa. Same thing with feelings and ideas. If I say, "What you did made me feel [sad, angry, defensive, irritated]," I need John to say, "I may not understand why you feel that way, but I am sorry that what I did caused you to feel like that." And vice versa. Basic respect issues. Seems simple enough, yet these very issues are what constantly create 90% of the division between us. We are both smart, people-savvy individuals, yet when we get together we can sometimes forget our intellectual and relational skills and become ill-mannered. I read an article about this in last month's Experience Life magazine that supports that our respect problem is one that many married couples experience. Even in this article, the solutions are simple on paper, but in practice an unwavering committment to behavior change is not so easy to muster. Especially after a long week at work.

Marriage, I am learning, requires continuously upgrading your active love of the other person. Marriage is not just about love, it's also about embarking on a life-long journey of discovery of another person. Learning how to love and respect someone else requires both a constant awareness of yourself and the other person as well as a deeply-embedded genuine excitement for learning how to make the other person light up. Marriage vows require a serious understanding that it's not always going to be easy or fun to fulfill your committment to each other. However, marriage vows also come with the hope and promise that if you are both committed to making your love last, marriage is going to be worth persevering through the un-easy and un-fun times when you know that each day you will both become better at loving the other person and therefore your love and marriage will become better as well. Or, at least, this is the theoretical, utopian goal.

By the way, the other 10% of the problems John and I have are issues that are by and large out of our financial control at the moment. I may write about those issues another time.

Posted by Kim at October 31, 2005 09:21 AM