Love is not Irritable….except for yesterday

Day 6 started out fantastically…..it did not end that way. I know that since things have been going so well I’ve been easing up on my determination to do this right. Last night was a reminder that things can change at a moments notice and I can’t let up even for a second. I havae to continue all these things that I’m working on until they are second nature. If I stop now everything will just go back to the way it was. So I’m back on the horse, I’m going to hit this harder than ever because I DO NOT want a repeat of this…

Yesterday was going very well. We had a little discussion about where our relationship was headed, I threw out the idea of maybe casually dating each other to try and start over and rebuild our relationship. That idea was met with crickets chirping, but at least it wasn’t met with a “NO”, which is what it would have gotten a week ago. He left shortly after I got home from work, I asked if he would be coming back and he said maybe, all normal stuff. A little bit later I called to ask if he was going to come by, he said yes he had some stuff to do and then would be by. The clock starts ticking, and ticking and ticking and he doesn’t show up. He won’t answer his phone or texts. I finally put together that he’s at the bar with his HORRIBLE friend. I knew right then it was going to be a terrible night. This person is not a friend, he’s a selfish, abusive, horrible person who is miserable with life and wants my man to be miserable with him since he has no other friends. At least not any that like him. I know the key to our relationship working out is for that guy to go jump off a cliff because everytime we start to make progress he gets in my guy’s head and undoes everything. He’s an insect that needs to go infest someone else’s family.

Anyways, my day 6 challenge was to find areas in my schedule that I could add margin to and to make a list of wrong motivations that I need to release. I’m still not positive what either of those things mean but I did my best.
For my schedule, I decided that if I start implementing a normal dinner, bath and bedtime routine with the kids, things will be calmer at night and we will get more alone time, assuming he is there. Also, there is a strong possibility that my work schedule will be changing in a couple weeks, which will allow me to start taking T to school in the morning, letting him sleep in with E.
As for wrong motivations that I need to release, jealousy is one. Always assuming he is doing something shady or with someone else. Trying to manipulate him for selfish reasons, mooching his stuff. Yes I live under the motto “what’s mine is yours” but he does not and I need to learn to respect that and not take advantage of his kindness and inability to say no to most everyone.

So far this morning is going OK. When he showed up this morning, I did everything in my power to not start a fight about last night. I expressed my disapointment and left it at that. We will see how the rest of the day plays out.

Today’s challenge is to get two sheets of paper and list out your partner’s positves and negatives…..this shall be an easy one 🙂

Love is not Rude….

Day 5. I never actually got him to let me know 3 things that he would change about me so I brainstormed with my cousin and we picked the 3 most obvious things that he has mentioned in passing.
1) would be bad habits that I have accumulated. Time to get rid of vices and practices that prevent me from being the best person I can be for my family and that will take my time and affection away from them as well.
2) My temper and likelihood to overreact. So he has the tendency to be out somewhere and I will call to see when he’s going to be home. He will tell me he’s just finishing up what he is doing and he will be home in about 10 minutes or so. After an hour has gone by and he is still not home I will call again, somewhat perturbed. Him, being a guy and thinking that if he ignores the problem he won’t have to deal with my anger, doesn’t answer the phone. I then proceed to call repeatedly for the next 45 minutes or however long it takes him to answer, getting more and more furious with each click of the redial button and when he finally answers I explode. It happens a lot. My point has always been that I worry about him and if he would just let me know that plans have changed then I would be fine. I never take into consideration that he is letting off steam and yes the time may have gotten away from him, but me flying into a rage and calling him constantly until his phones dies just makes him not want to come home because he knows he will have to deal with me. Both of us could change habits here, but if I change first the likelihood that he follows suit is very good.
3) Constant nagging and putting down. He is a stay at home dad. He spends the days with the kids and I know that is hard work. Granted he doesn’t do a lot of housework when he is home and most of the cleaning and cooking is left to me when I get off work. Rather than come home and complain about how I have to do so much and he is so lazy and on and on and on, I will start coming home with joy in my heart. Joy for the fact that I GET to take care of my family, that I GET to take care of my household. If he sees the change in me that I bring happiness and willingness to provide for my man and my children than he will also follow suit and hopefully start joining in with the housework.
None of these changes will be over night. They will all be hard because they have become habit. There will be days when I fall off the wagon so to speak and there will be arguments. Neither of us are perfect and we will stumble and we will struggle, but if I put all the effort into making these changes that I used to put into acting out the way I was, then I have 100% faith that I will change and he will follow.

Today’s challenge is to find areas to add margin to my schedule and to list wrong motivations that I need to release from my life. Trust me, the listing has already started and I keep coming up with things to add. Interestingly enough, an opportunity was presented to me today that ties in perfectly with today’s challenge…more on that tomorrow 😉

Love is Thoughtful…

Day 4 was the day he came home and technically he didn’t get home until the wee hours of day 5 but we will count it. There was also a little day 3 smashed in there since he could not receive the gift I got him until he came home.

Earlier in the day I had made sure to get in my day 4 challenge and call him just to see if he needed anything. I called, and surprisingly he answered, so I was able to ask if he needed a ride home from the airport. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to let me pick him up, if nothing else because he was getting in late and the kids would be sleeping.
So I put on his present after the kids had gone to bed and fell asleep on the couch waiting for him to get home, or more accurately/currently, to my house. He pulled up close to 1am and I was hoping he would notice his gift right away, but he was all a-buzz with travel excitement. He did however talk to me about his trip which was nice. He called one of his friends to talk to them as well (this friend also happens to be my cousin so I couldn’t be too bothered by this). He still hadnt noticed the new nightie so I changed into sweats at this point and dozed off. He was still wide awake and put in a movie and sat down next to me, as I was of course, curled up on the couch. At some point he woke me up and told me I should go lay down in bed, sagelit you should be happy about this one hehe.

This morning I had a little time at home with him as I went into work late. I asked him if he had noticed the present I had gotten him and he stared at me with a look of bewilderment. I brought it out (I did not put it on) and showed him, telling him that I had it on the night before and was hoping he would notice, but understood he was busy unpacking and was all amped on travel juice. He swore up and down that I did not have that on when he came in and we both laughed a little. He then asked me to try in on for him, which I did 🙂

This is the progress we have made so far, I have gotten better about constantly needing to know where he is, what he is doing, and have him immediatly respond to me. It’s still hard don’t get me wrong. I absolutely HATE to be ignored so it’s a struggle to just go on about my day when he doesn’t respond, but I’ve been working on it. I no longer feel that he hates me. The loving feelings have not quite returned but at least the anger seems to be gone. Also he has spent the last 3 nights at my house. Not counting when he was out of town, and of course there has been convenience reasons for all of them but at least he is no longer refusing to be near me.

Today’s challenge is looking to be a little bit of a struggle. I am supposed to ask him 3 things he would change about me if he could. I feel like this would be a hard one for men. They have to feel like this question is coming at them in the same way a “do these jeans make me look fat” question would. It doesn’t matter if you say, “it’s ok I won’t be insulted”, they feel like they are walking into a trap. So I have asked the question and explained that by answering he will be helping me be a better person, mother and partner. Now all I can do is hope he answers and if not I can pretty much assume what his top 3 things would be. I will just use those and start focusing on changing them.

Tonight I am going to see if I can encourage him to watch a movie with me, wish me luck and more tomorrow 🙂

Love is not selfish….

Day 3 was a little tough. I was having a really hard time with the fact that he isn’t responding to me. I know the whole idea was to let him have his time alone but I guess somewhere deep down I was hoping he would miss me and want to see how things were going here, or even check on the boys. The motherly instincts in me don’t let me go overnight with out checking on my babies, however he knows they are safe and with their mother and he’s a lot less of a worrier than I am, so I still stuck to my guns and didn’t bother him but it was a lot harder than the first two days.

Day 3’s challenge was to buy your partner something that says you are thinking about them. He is always asking me to be romantic and get a nice “nightgown” to wear to bed. So I got a cute little black item to wear to bed when he gets back. Hopefully showing him his gift will mean he will actually stay here again when he gets back tonight.

The challenge is not about spending money per se, it is about being unselfish. There is a lot of talk in the pages before the challenge is stated about selfishness in relationships. There are not many partners that are in a completely unselfish relationship but the ones that are, are the kind of marriage we all dream of. Being selfish is human nature. We are born with the instinct of self preservation, to put ourselves first in order to survive. This is great in a survival situation, it is not great in a partnership. This challenge is about learning to put the other person’s needs in front of your own, to do whatever you need to do to make sure that they are happy and their desires are met. If you can do this, the idea is that they will start to return the favor and in the end, both your wants and needs will be met by your partner. You will be reliant on each other to keep yourselves happy and it will not be because you have to but rather because you want to. Can you imagine a love like that? I can and from now on my man, the head of my household, the father of my children comes first. To some people this may sound like an archaic concept, something out of the 50’s where the woman made sure the man’s dinner was warm on the table when he walked in the door and even though she was tired from doing her duties during the day, she rubbed his feet in front of the fire before bed. To me, that sounds freaking fantastic. I want to be the one to make my man happy, I want to be the one he races home to because he knows he is coming home to someone who wants nothing other than to please him. This is my new goal. What he wants I will provide and I know in turn he will develop the same mindset and I will have to worry about nothing because he will make sure I am taken care of as well.

I actually watched Fireproof the other night to kind of get in the spirit of this whole challenge and one thing Caleb doesn’t do in the beginning of his challenge is do this with his heart in it. He just goes through the motions and does the bare minimum to meet the challenges. Although I feel like I have had my heart in this from the beginning since I REALLY want this to work, I have vowed to make sure that every challenge I complete is done with absolute love.

Today is day 4 and the challenge goes a little bit against what I set for myself but I think I can make it work. Today I am supposed to call him at some point just to see if he needs anything. I figure I can call under the guise of making sure he has a ride home from the airport and see if he needs anything else. I am also going to make sure the house is sparkling clean and his day 3 surprise is displayed for him to see when he comes in. I think I may also have a couple other things set up for him, maybe a beer and something to eat.

So far he has been out of town so this has been a little bit easy. I don’t know if easy is the right word but without him here I just do the challenge and move on, I don’t have to deal with any reactions or rejections so it’s not as personal as if he were here. Tonight and tomorrow will be the real test and I know this is going to get a lot harder before it is easier. The idea that after 40 days of me pouring my heart out and doing all these things to better our relationship, that I will still be rejected and he will still want to go our separate ways. I’m not sure how I would deal with that. I know that even if that did happen that I will have learned so much and grown as a person and as a wife to someone some day, but the idea that the person I would be a great wife to would not be him is more than I can bear right now.

On a side note, on top of The Love Dare, I have also started reading a book called, For Better or for Best, which helps you learn how to better communicate and how to change yourself in order to help your spouse want to change with you. As I’ve been reading it I keep stopping to laugh because this book HAD to have been written by someone who knows us. Every example in it is us and our relationship to a T, and the fact that the author says that the problems we are having are completely normal and CAN be fixed, is keeping me hopeful and willing to keep working to better myself so that I can be someone he wants to be with and wants to change for.

I will not give up on our family, because anything good is worth fighting for!!!!

I will post my day 4 update tomorrow morning so that I can get in all the details of his homecoming!

Love you all, keep those positive thoughts and prayers coming 🙂

Love is kind….

So with day 2 down, I honestly feel like I’m making a little bit of progress, if nothing else with myself. I’m forcing myself to be patient and not jump to conclusions or anger. It could just be that I want this so badly that I’m seeing what isn’t really there and I hope that isn’t the case. If it is, then I can at least say that I tried and that I am the better for it.

Today’s challenge was to continue saying nothing negative as well as do one unexpected gesture of kindness. As I said earlier he was leaving for a weekend getaway today, so as my gesture I got up early and made sure all his clothes were clean and folded for easy packing. I also packed a snack bag for his flight. All of this took me maybe 20 minutes to complete and made me feel so good that I was able to do something to make his life a little easier and show that I care and was thinking about him.

The saying nothing negative part was put to the test as some useless drama came up as the result of a certain psychic vampire’s terrible behavior. I was inclined to call him and complain, instead I told him to have a great time and that I would see him when he came back.

I plan to contact him as little as possible while he is away for two reasons. The first being that I hope this will be the break that he needs to recharge and think about everything. Me bothering him while he is there will not let him do this. It also won’t allow him to miss me, which I also believe is needed. We spend the majority of both our days at home taking care of our kids. We don’t get a lot of time to miss each other, and when he does get away I am very guilty of making sure I am in constant contact with him, I am a worrier and always want to know where he is and when he is planning on coming home. This is something that I need to stop. There is nothing wrong with occasionally checking in but I know I can get overbearing. So this weekend will be his time and I will not interject unless absolutely necessary.

I’m so excited about all of this that I have already put something together for tomorrow. While he won’t reap the benefits of tomorrow’s challenge until he gets home on Monday, I will have a great surprise ready for him! Tune in tomorrow to find out what it is 🙂

Love is Patient….

Day one is in the books and I must say it went rather well. Considering he’s standing in my bathroom after having spent the night. I on the couch, him in the bedroom but none the less it’s baby steps.

*As a side note, it was mentioned to me yesterday that I may want to be careful of copyright infringement of The Love Dare book, since I am posting the challenges daily it may be frowned upon to post them verbatim from the book, so as I did yesterday (which was purely coincidence because I didn’t have the book with me when I was posting) I will post a summary of the challenge and not what it is word for word. I will also leave out any of the additional messages, if you want to complete the challenge in your own relationship I highly suggest buying the book 🙂

Back to my first day, the challenge was to say nothing negative with an added aspect of my own that said not to bother him if he doesn’t not respond.
So I did rather well if I may say so myself. I didn’t say a single negative word or even anything in a negative connotation. This was no easy feat. In our relationship we have always been sarcastic with each other. Often times we will use a sarcastic joke in order to get to our anger across without acting angry. One thing I found when I was bringing anything negative to the surface, either out of anger or sarcasm, was there the anger and need for sarcasm were not there. I was much happier by the end of the day and even though I text him later in the evening to see if he saw the northern lights but got no response, I did not feel the need to keep bothering him for an answer. Also I did receive more answers from him than usual.

I went to bed without trying to get him to talk to me but also without any stress or anger so for the first time in at least a week I actually fell asleep quickly. Then without warning, my front door opens and in he walks. He didn’t tell me 50 times like last time he stayed over that “this doesn’t change anything” but I didn’t act like I thought it did. For the first time since the breakup we talked like friends, we laughed like friends and we went to bed in different rooms like friends.

I am very happy with this. What better way to rebuild the base of your relationship than as friends.

Today he is leaving for San Diego for the weekend so the next couple days of challenges might be a little difficult, but it something was easy it wouldn’t be called a challenge.

Today is day 2 and on top of continuing to say nothing negative, the challenge is to do something that lets them know you are thinking about them.

Onward and upward!