Balancing Out The Crazy
This is a guest post from Pas de Deux series contributor Steph Auteri
There was a time — as recently as a year ago — when I regularly lost my shit with Michael.
Sometimes, I’d fling my wedding band across the room. Other times, I’d lock myself into the bathroom, or scream myself raw. Once, I dumped a freshly-baked pan of cookies on top of his freshly-cleaned clothes and stomped up and down on them.
The worst was the time I tried to barricade myself in our bedroom after a particularly high-decibel argument. I sweated and strained to move a nightstand in front of the door, but he pushed his way in, wanting to talk things out. When I made a run for the front door, he wrestled me to the floor and carried me back to the bedroom. I kept fighting him, my hair dripping with tears, my body weak but my adrenaline pumping.
I was tired of having the same fights over and over again, and wanted to walk away from our marriage. Michael just wanted to keep me safe, and he wanted me to realize that we were good for each other.
My husband is not a saint, but I am particularly difficult to live with.
Not Steph...
When we got married about three and a half years ago, I was on Lexapro for chronic depression and anxiety. It would work for awhile, and then it wouldn’t, so we’d up the dosage again. My psychopharmacologist also prescribed Xanax, for emergencies. I eventually started taking Yaz as well, a birth control pill created to manage PMDD.
When Michael and I started having babymaking sex, I went cold turkey for the sake of my yet-to-be-conceived child. I let my pills expire. I tossed the last of my Yaz. I started looking for natural ways to stabilize my mood.
I wrote about going off my meds for YourTango, where I manage a parenting blog. I wrote about the worries I had, in regards to both my mood and my marriage. There were those who wrote in with words of encouragement, but amidst these were a slew of comments chastising me. These commenters told me I was selfish for wanting to have a child, and they assured me — with absolute certainty — that my husband would eventually leave me. I felt blindsided. As I scrolled through, I came very close to crying in my cubicle.
I was angered by these commenters’ nuance-free judgment, but I also suspected that they were right.
The thing is, Michael didn’t leave me, despite my being a grade-A pain in the ass. Instead, he joined me in couples counseling and, while we stopped our sessions after several months, we left the experience heaving learned how to listen to and understand each other.
Nowadays, we fight a lot less. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that we both have significantly more fulfilling careers. Not being miserable on a day-to-day basis can do wonders for the psyche. Another part of this comes from the fact that I’m managing my mood in more organic ways: I’m getting more sleep, eating healthier, taking daily walks, and regularly practicing yoga and hoop dancing.
But a big part of this new and improved state of being is thanks to a simple tactic our shrink taught us. Now, when my mood has taken an obvious turn for the horrific, Michael very calmly suggests we do some reflective listening.
What this means is that we sit across from each other and take turns explaining how we feel. For example: “When you bring up the disparity in our incomes, I feel as if you don’t appreciate how hard I’ve been working to build a successful business.” Or: “When you nag me about the dishes or the laundry, I feel as if you don’t notice all the little things I DO do.” After each statement, the listener then repeats back what he or she heard, in order to confirm his or her understanding. Because, in the heat of the moment, it can be near impossible to really hear anything but your own angry thoughts.
What does this have to do with love? (you ask, after making the sign of the cross and praying that your relationship never looks anything like ours…)
Well.
After endlessly torturing myself over whether or not Michael really was The One, I’ve come to the point where I believe this:
There’s no such thing as The One. Instead, you make the choice to stick with one person over another, and then you work your ass off to make it last.
That and: Love is being able to balance out each other’s crazy.
Michael and I are good for each other.
And thinking of the way he oh-so-calmly suggests reflective listening in the face of my absolute lunacy helps me remember that.
Photo Credit: Getty Images – h.e.r.
Pas de Deux Contributor – Steph Auteri
Steph Auteri is a writer, editor, and career coach. She has been published in Time Out New York, New York Press, Playgirl, YourTango, The Frisky, Nerve, Lemondrop, and other bastions of fine writing. She recently co-wrote an e-book with Ian Kerner: 52 Weeks of Amazing Sex. If you’d like to cyber-stalk her, visit her professional page, her blog, or her Twitter feed. And by all means, check out her coaching practice: Career Coaching for Word Nerds.
Song: Sort Of by Ingrid Michaelson
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