Two weeks back, I got into a stroppy mood. It got seeded over a small-ish tiff with the husband, and a bunch of annoyance, then escalated internally into a three-day monologue. During these three days, I was quieter, going about with the usual life but not functioning at 100% because my emotions were awry and I'm definitely one who operates optimally when I'm emotionally balanced, better when I am emotionally happy and worse-off when emotionally down. Can you tell I'm quite the emotional creature?
So anyhow, during those days, I allowed myself to mull over the matter(s) and I must say that it was quite a draining and refreshing process. Draining because thinking is always difficult, especially when it's matters of the heart where I am training myself to use my brain versus heart; and refreshing because along the way, the need to rationalise with myself and derive a good outcome in preparation of when I was going to speak with the husband, made me have several 'eureka' moments where I felt proud of myself with little discoveries.
Two things I learnt:
1) Thinking alone is not all bad
By nature, I'm quite a reactive type of person and more often than not, I laugh/cry/get angry before I am fully aware of a situation. I've learnt that sometimes, time is needed to wallow, to ferment the information, to process it on your own in varied ways before it can come back out in a good-enough form. While it felt uncomfortable being so measured and paced in my thought process (gah, I just wanted to scream/cry naaaaoooooo) I do admit that it has its merits.
2) I have learnt to find ways to better communicate with the husband
After knowing him for 15 years, dating him for 11, married for 8 - I have learnt a lot from this man. Most of it has been pretty good; where I try to gain positive influence from him and also apply certain matters to my own life and approaches that drive better results.
I know that keeping a marriage healthy is hard work and I pride myself on being a key driver in maintaining equilibrium in our relationship. The husband does play a co-operative role and in order for us to understand each other, I need to reach out to him in a way that he is receptive of; and I do think this is a success point.
In this instanace, specifically; after doing a whole lot of internalisation and processing of thoughts, I found a way to reach him and have him on my side. The knots I had on my emotional being were untied and it felt good.
Offering chocolate - I'll leave that as an inside joke between him and I than elaborating; but it's fact that we both love chocolates and I think despite how different we are in terms of our personalities, we also have a lot of common likes and interests. I guess while we are opposites to each other, we are also complementary - and that is what makes us work. That baseline chemistry, and hard work.
The picture below was taken in Korea about 1+year ago last June. I'm putting it here because I remember that the husband and I had a tiny quibble here at this attraction spot, and he was quite the grumpy monster. While it felt un-great, I made myself go ahead to have fun with the kids and here's proof that everything will pass and will be well again. The result is that we have nice pictures; the learning is that thankfully I did not wallow and allow myself to be consumed by the quarrel at that moment and truly, how can we ever forget that we ought to always give thanks for these two adorable little monkeys?
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| Being silly |
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