Step Twenty-Four: Are You Focused?

This is just your daily reminder to stay present with your husband. Be aware, be involved, be supportive. It's easy to take that man for granted because he signed his life away to be with you forever, through thick and thin, sickness and health. So yeah, he shares that home with you, but are you aware of what he's doing for you or are you continually pointing out all he's not doing?

It's really easy for me to get caught up in my day- work, planning dinner, taking the dog for a walk- I'm already mapping my day by the time I get up to get the most out of my time (otherwise I'll sit like a bump on a log). Mr. E and I are passing like ships in the night- his Sound team was let go from the feature so he's home, and I'm gone early, home late. It's not unusual for me to leave him a list of things to do around the house: deposit a check, make a return to Target, etc.

But sometimes I forget to say these things with love. I forget that Mr. E will do anything for me but he can't do everything. I don't always remember that he operates in a different way than I do and that my list-making and order-giving can seem condescending, even when I don't mean it that way.

It's times like these that I have to re-focus on my husband. In keeping our communication open and honest, I'm better able to understand how he's feeling  (not so great being job-less, thanks) and what I can do as a wife to support him.

When I focus on my husband, I'm focusing on our relationship and that's always a good thing.

Mr. E on Balancing Work and Home

A typical work hour in the film business is 12 hours. That means 12 hours of work, not counting breaks or travel time. And that’s assuming your production is staying productive throughout the day, which doesn’t always happen. Let’s just say that everyone is very familiar with the concept of Overtime. I’ve been on sets that worked for 16 hours and I’ve even heard of shows that went up to a 24 hour work day. It’s very rare to get that high, but it does happen.

Now, this means that on a normal work day, depending on where we are shooting, I could leave the house at 6am and not get home until 8 or 9pm.  Everybody in this business is a little bit crazy, because we all know that this is normal and expected.

These working hours are a huge reason why so many people in the industry are not married, or have been married far too many times. So it’s important that I remain focused and put my family before my business.

Text messaging saves marriages. I’m not saying that you need to have constant text conversations with your spouse, but for me it’s a fast way to tell Mrs. E that I’m thinking of her. I send her little tidbits throughout the day, and by doing so, we are able to have some personal interaction. It’s obviously not as good as being together in person, but when I’m away from home more hours of the day than I am there, I need to do what I can.

Thankfully, Mrs. E and I have taken the time to understand as much as we could about the business before we started. Since we communicate so openly, there aren’t as many snags or pitfalls when the industry makes yet another drastic change. But as long as we keep in contact with one another, being apart isn’t quite so hard.

One of the keys to a good marriage is to give more than is expected. When the two of you are selfless it only serves to strengthen your relationship as a couple.

Step Eighteen: Be Honest (?)

We've already talked about being honest with your husband- how omitting things, avoiding blame and outright lying to your spouse can lead to resentment and trust issues. And what's a relationship without trust? Not a whole lot.

So you know it's important to be honest with your husband, but an important step in the process is to be honest with yourself.

Chances are you know exactly what you can handle, but do you know how much your husband can handle? Do you know his breaking point? His comfort zone? These things aren't just nice to know- they're useful tools in gauging your husband's ability to juggle life's curveballs.

Keep it real, readers! Expectations are well and good but understand that your standards and his standards may differ. Communicate with each other, but above all, have realistic expectations. I would love to have my home sparkling and spotless when I come home each day, but that's not a very realistic request of my husband- just as he knows it's not realistic for me to make dinner everyday. When we commit to honest dialogue, we encourage a relationship that's built on more than just assumptions, but trust and respect.

Step Sixteen: Communicate Your Desires

This one seems sort of self-explanatory, right?

Except when can you find the time in your day to feed yourself, commute to work, blog, do the laundry and all the other myriad of daily, weekly and monthly tasks life has assigned you, much less communicate with your husband. 

Juggling life isn't always easy. But there was one thing that changed my outlook on how I deal with all that: you make time for what's important to you. Instead of saying "I would love to, but I'm so busy right now" try saying instead "I don't want to make time for that". 

Sounds a little different, doesn't it? 

That's really what it comes down to- there are cut and dried priorities in your life (going to work, paying bills, etc) and then there are things that are a little more loose (sleeping 8 hours a night, walking the dog, etc). 

Mr. E and I are in that awesome up-swing of marriage where the other person is top priority. The shoe will drop someday and we may forget all of our tips and tricks for staying happy with one another, but right now we focus on each other: supporting, enabling, comforting, communicating. 

We're far from perfect at this (good GRIEF would you just finish dishes one of these days!) but maintaining communication is paramount to getting what we want. After all, Mr. E doesn't always know what I want if I don't tell him.

Today I squoze squeezed fit in the Five Minute Friday word: Laundry. We're taking ours this weekend to my parents and avoiding that $11.50 charge.

Step Fifteen: Change What You're Asking For

You may think that with all of my posts that Mr. E and I communicate extremely well. For the most part that's true...we've been together for five and a half years, so I think we've definitely hit that stage where we understand a lot of the motivations behind each others actions.

But I wasn't born with telepathy. And neither was Mr. E.

This can lead us to some pretty thorny arguments! In general, when I'm doing a task (dishes, errands, making dinner) my thought process is two or three steps ahead of what's at hand. I multitask a lot, so I'm usually thinking something like..."1/2 tsp of salt...1/2 tsp of salt...I need to change my mailing address for my Old Navy credit card...Old Navy has shoes on sale right now...Ripley ate a pair of my shoes last week...Ripley needs to go out...I'll do it and take the trash out at the same time...I found our TV desk by the trash...I need to dust the TV"

I'm learning that this is not the way that Mr. E works. Frankly, I'm learning that this isn't the way a lot of people work! So while I'm reciting a to-do list to myself, committing it to memory and actively thinking about each project simultaneously, I might be talking at the same time about a completely different subject.

Mr. E, on the other hand, needs one task to be finished before he can be told the next one- he likes to focus on one thing at a time, to be present and thorough about each individual task. My brother is the same way; so much so that I wish I could go back in time and implement that lesson earlier. Sorry, Colin.

I'm still learning how to communicate with my husband (and other people in my life who think this way), but I'm already making pretty good use of the information. When we get frustrated with one another because I'm six steps ahead and he can't catch up, I remind myself to stop. Slow down. To change what I'm asking of Mr. E.

There's no right or wrong way between the two of us, but there are certainly better and worse ways we communicate. I have to take it upon myself to change how I'm asking for something to be done, rather than assume that everyone's on the same page. I like to think that my example is useful for Mr. E when he can't seem to communicate with me, either.

I hope.

Step Fourteen: Make Him Choose

If you were looking for helpful hints and tips to get your husband to do what you want, you may have been disappointed. As I've said before, my husband doesn't "do what I want" because I'm in charge or bossy or dominating (at least I don't think!). I work hard to serve my husband: to understand him so we can better communicate and build a strong relationship that will last longer than we do.

But I do have one trick up my sleeve.

Whenever we have tasks that neither of us relish doing, I always give him the first choice.

"Hun, would you like to do the dishes? Or make dinner?"

"Do you want to help me make the bed? Or do you want to take the trash out?"

"Do you want to vacuum or clean out the car?"

I like to think that when I take charge to get something done, I turn right around and relinquish control of the situation to put us both on an even playing field. That way it doesn't feel like I'm ordering him around: this is OUR space, not mine, and I'm just as responsible for maintaining it as he is. But by giving him the choice between tasks, he feels more in control- like he's able to choose the option that he thinks least sucks.

Spoiler: sometimes both choices suck.

But he has a completely different attitude about what he's doing when he got to choose.

I'm not ashamed of the fact that I ruthlessly applied this tactic from a parenting magazine, but in the end what matters is the fact that BOTH chores are done with minimal blame or accusations- just the way I like it.

Step Eleven: Don't Set Him Up to Fail

In my experience, husbands are fragile things. They rely a lot on wives to work- much in the same way that wives rely on husbands, too. Men and women may be independent entities, but the identity of a "husband" is highly dependent on a "wife".

You know those couples you see that finish each other's sentences? Or always seem to know what the other is thinking? They operate like a well-oiled machine, many hands moving and working at once to complete whatever task they've focused on. I'll let you in on a little secret: this wasn't born overnight. 

That, my friends, was a labor of love. A towering building set on a foundation of communication and honesty.Yup, we've talked about those things before- they're just so important. These are the tools you need to encourage your relationship (and your husband) to succeed.

Don't feel like the two of you are on the same page? Take a minute to sit down and pin point exactly what's bothering you. Assuming the two of you take the exact same steps to solve a problem is just like setting your husband up to fail: your expectations don't match. And that's not a bad thing. 

We're pretty busy creatures of habit- used to doing things a certain way so often that we can do it blindfolded. So there's the expectation that because it's so easy for us (the asker) it must be easy for them (the doer). Whoops. When he comes home with the wrong brand of milk or washed your dry-clean-only coat on accident, maybe not all of the blame is his. 

When Mr. E and I were first married (heck, with only two years under our belt, we STILL are), it drove me crazy that he didn't know what type of milk we buy. Or where the extra plastic bags were. I had been buying and organizing these things, respectively, so often I could do it blindfolded. But he hadn't. Assuming that my easy tasks were also going to be easy for him was like sending him unarmed and unprotected into battle. That battle just happened to be set at the grocery store.

Okay, maybe it wasn't quite that intense. In essence, I was setting my husband up to fail because I hadn't provided him with the necessary tools to complete his task. (This applies to far more than just husbands, too!) Mr. E isn't quite so reticent when I ask him to do things because I make sure that he understands the task at hand before he's expected to do it. With a little bit of preparation (we buy Alta Dena whole milk) Mr. E completes these tasks with his eyes covered, too. 

He's even been known to take it upon himself and runs to the store during a break at work in order to grab a carton because he knows we're out. Love that man.

Step Five: Accept Blame

This goes against every single lesson I learned in childhood. With three siblings it was much easier to play the blame game- so much so that mom always said her fifth child was "Not Me". Avoiding trouble and responsibility was like second nature- if I could get out of it, I would. If I could prove someone else might have done it, I would. But durn if that's not how marriage works.

Owning up is something I would like to go out of my way to avoid. Personally it's deeply shaming that I did something wrong and got caught for it- left the headlights on and killed the car battery? Forgot to hang Mr. E's T-shirts so they wouldn't shrink? Missed a bill deadline? Things like this happen all of the time but they also suck. I take pride in the things I do, be it chores or errands or craft projects, so to mess up or fail at something I'm working on is kind of a blow to my ego. But while my first instinct is to get annoyed and my second is to blame something else, I'm practicing my latent acceptance skills.

Just like any other skill, you have to exercise this one; allowing yourself to be at fault and accepting the responsibilities for it. 

How does this get my husband to do what I want? Because I'm setting the example for him that I expect responsibility and fairness in our relationship. That I don't get a "Get out of Jail free card" just because I was the one who made the mistake. That house rules and agreements are to be abided by equally and fairly. By making myself vulnerable and still accepting my load, I'm creating an environment of shared work and mutual respect.

I'm also refraining from blaming him. Being blamed for something you didn't do is a surefire way to feel like you're thrown against the wall, a tactic that is not only unfair but deeply threatening to someone who is supposed to be your equal. My husband has the right- as I do- to feel accepted and be treated fairly in our home. If I am able to swallow my pride and squash those nasty blaming habits of my childhood, I am better able to encourage and welcome an atmosphere of retreat. Or happiness and rainbows, whichever he prefers.

I think it's important to bow your head and swallow your pride every once in a while. You can't both be right all of the time and marriage is not a power struggle. I don't want to battle my husband to find fault in the Who Didn't Take Out the Trash scenario because my husband deserves a deeper respect than that. After all, that's part of the reason I chose to marry him.