Category: Him vs. Her

Him vs. Her – The window to his soul

~ ~M ~ 20 Comments

Recently, I’ve been asking myself how it is that my husband and I have had such a quick turn-around in our marriage.  Since September he made the decision to go above and beyond what any normal husband would do, all in order to prove to me that he really wanted to make our relationship work.

I fought him for several months, not believing a word a word of what he was saying and figured he would go back to his old typical ways.  Six months later he has surprised the heck out of me.  He has completely changed into an entirely different person.  It’s as if God said, “Alright Michelle if this is what you want, your perfect wish is granted!”  And then instantly, he handed me somebody new.

At first, I thought an alien had quite possibly taken over my husband’s body.  He is actually so different, that I had to get used to him all over again and frankly it sort of scared me at times.  All of a sudden I had a stranger living in my house, telling me how much they loved and adored me over and over.  And it’s been non-stop for six months now.

So I’ve been trying to figure out what finally broke through my concrete exterior, in order for him to reach in and take back my heart; which had undoubtedly gone into deep hibernation.  After pondering this for quite some time, I’ve finally figured it out!  It’s his eyes… he is finally looking at me!

During our 23 years of marriage, he would never look me in the eyes when he spoke to me.  He just couldn’t do it.  I would ask him to and he just never could.  So connecting with him was very hard, because I could never really relate to him on a deeper level.

Now, when I look at him, he doesn’t look away.  His focus is completely on me and his eyes say it all.  He loves me and what more could a girl want!  He has finally revealed to me the window to his soul.  And I have to say, the view takes my breath away every single time I’m met with those baby blue eyes.  I can only hope that window remains open for the rest of our days.  I would hate to lose such a beautiful sight.

 

 

Him vs. Her – A New Chapter

~ ~M ~ 19 Comments

For the last two years now, I have been very unsure about the future of my marriage.  The past sort of caught up with my husband and the present sort of caught up with me.  Needless to say, we were both at fault in different ways.  About four months ago, I had finally gotten to the point where I decided I was tired of trying.  In my mind, I just sort of gave up and decided it was time to figure out plan B.  I started picturing my life without him.  Wondering what I would do apart from him and where I would go.  We still have two children at home, so that was of course another concern of mine.  What would happen to them if we split up, how would we work it all out?  And yet I could never actually see us getting to the point of divorce.  I really couldn’t even fathom the idea of such a drastic decision.

After admitting to my husband that I didn’t think I could continue on the way things were, he in turn seemed to agree.  And yet divorce was the furthest thing from his mind.  His immediate response was to somehow fix what was broken in our marriage and strengthen the parts which looked salvageable.  For four months now, he has been trying very hard to turn things around.  I have to admit, I haven’t made things easy.  I have fought him every bit of the way, by not really believing any of what he’s been saying.  After years of empty promises, I didn’t want to allow myself to be tricked again.

His first response was to begin by writing me poetry; which is something he had never done in his entire life.  I remember reading the words he wrote during those first few months and thinking to myself… “He can’t really mean any of this.”  I thought… “This is just another one of his schemes to make me believe him, but it’s not going to last.” Over the years he would say he would try harder, but there was never any long lasting changes to support his efforts.  It was mostly just cheap talk and I knew I didn’t want to fall for that again.  I was finally ready to move on and I didn’t want to get sucked back into a life of false hopes.

Well it’s been four months now since he’s started blogging.  And I think the turning point for me was when he wrote this… Heart of Sadness.  Since then, I have begun to believe that he is truly being sincere.  He finally seems to understand and acknowledge how I’ve been feeling.  We tell each other everything, but I had often wondered if he was really hearing me.  I wasn’t sure if he understood that I didn’t feel the same kind of love for him anymore.  I wondered if he could live with that fact, or if it would ultimately destroy our marriage.  Yet the more we talked, the more I knew he understood, and he told me very sweetly that he just wanted me to be happy.

I suppose because he isn’t demanding my love, I am slowly finding my way back to him.  We have been making immense progress, and I am finally accepting that he really is changing for the better.  I’m starting to believe him when he tells me he loves me, and I’m hopeful once more that we can make our marriage work.  We will be celebrating our 23rd wedding anniversary on the 5th of February and I’m excited to get away for a few days and just have some time alone with him.  We’ve literally spent half our lives together now, and both of us know that we can’t just throw all of that away.  I honestly just can’t picture my life without him, and I hope I never can.

So to my husband… aka, SW.  I have hope that we will make it, TTF…… ❤️  Love always, ~Me

 

Him vs. Her – Is this for real?

~ ~M ~ 12 Comments

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It’s been awhile since I wrote a Him vs. Her, and there’s been a few things that I’ve wanted to share, so here goes…

As I’ve spoken of in recent days, hubby and I have been having quite a bit of trouble getting through these past two years.  We’re coming up on 23 years of marriage in February and although things haven’t been the best, I see a ton of progress being made in our relationship.

One thing that has recently changed, is the fact that hubby began to ask himself why we weren’t connecting the way we ought to be.  He started praying about a lot of things that he had been struggling with, and asking God to show him where he was going wrong.

One morning he suddenly woke up, and announced to me that he was no longer going to be the man that just let life pass him by.  He vowed to encourage me in my own faith, to stop withholding his love from me, and promised to become the man that I deserve.

I was quite taken back from his sudden change of heart.  I truly wondered if he was serious.  After so many years of me feeling rejected and unloved by him, I wondered why he wanted to change now.  I was actually a bit angry at first, and wondered why he waited almost 23 years to change his tune and be the man that I had always hoped he would be.

It’s been about a month now, and my head is still spinning from the changes that I see in him.  I still have my doubts that things will stay this way and I am unsure of how to act sometimes, because I had gotten so used to feeling as if I didn’t matter to him.  I felt ignored, unimportant, and very unhappy most of the time.

So now confusion is setting in.  I keep asking myself… Is this real?  Will this last? And do I really want to give him a chance to fix what’s been broken for so long?  My stubborn side tells me not to give in; warns me that he had his chance, and reminds me that my heart has since moved on.  And yet the part of me that has never stopped loving him, tells me to forgive and forget; to let go of the past and move forward, because obviously God has taken his heart and changed it for the good.

I feel vulnerable in accepting the possibility that he really has changed.  I feel like I could wake up tomorrow and be taken for granted once again.  I don’t think I can handle another 23 years of feeling that way and I’m almost fearful of being blindsided and letting that happen again.

I have become stronger in these last two years.  Learning to be more independent of him because he wasn’t always there, and quite honestly, I grew to love the freedom of being alone, because it meant that I didn’t have to continue feeling rejected by him.  I used writing as my escape and felt like I didn’t need him anymore.

So now, I have a choice to make.  I am struggling every day to either accept this unexpected gift that apparently God has given me, or throw it all away because I’m stubborn and tired of trying.  It sounds like an easy choice, and yet I’m fighting against my own will to keep myself from getting hurt.  My heart just won’t let me forget all the suffering and the pain, which plagued me for so long.  And yet I know what I must do.

In recent days, I have been blessed with loving words of affirmation, by my husband who is trying so very hard to make things right.  Tonight I spent some time going through all the notes that he’s been leaving for me over the past month, and I affixed them to the tree that I painted on my office wall.  I decided that I needed these loving reminders, to help me move forward.  I need to forget the years of bad memories and replace them with the good ones that we are finally making together.  I think I may eventually win this battle after all.

 

Him vs. Her – The grime of life

~ ~M ~ 17 Comments

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Where to begin… I really have no idea what to write about.  Everything I’d been considering earlier, sounded so much better as I was standing in the shower this morning.  However, I do think that this quote sort of sums things up for me today.  It’s too bad all of the muck in my life, couldn’t have somehow broken free and lost its way down that drain.  No matter what I do, the problems and issues I’m currently facing, just never seem to go away.  I suppose I feel that I have come to a place in my life, of complete discontent and unhappiness.  So much so, that I have been trying to find happiness in all the wrong places and have set myself up for failure during the process.  Backtracking is the hardest thing of all, because once we move forward, we can never seem to go back the same way we came.  True the saying goes… nothing ventured, nothing gained.  But then again, I think I’ve been testing the fire with my bare hands, and now I’m paying the price for that.  Life… does it ever get any easier?  Sigh…

Quote found at: pinterest.com

Him Vs. Her – Manipulation

~ ~M ~ 20 Comments

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Have you ever been manipulated by a family member? Perhaps even one of your own children?

We have four beautiful girls. All of who are very intelligent and sweet. Yet over the years, my husband and I have been manipulated on several occasions by those same sweet girls. It started off innocently enough at first. One of girls would say something like, “Mom, can I have a cookie?” My response… “No, it’s too close to dinnertime.” Five minutes later…. “Why are you eating that cookie? Didn’t I tell you it was too close to dinnertime?” Daughter’s response… “Well… I asked Dad, and he said I could.”

This is just all too typical of how things usually go. If the kids ask me something and I say no, they immediately run to dad to see if he will say yes, and vice versa. During the early years in our marriage, this was a huge problem for us. I would get mad at hubby, thinking he should know better than to give one of our girl’s cookies before dinnertime and then he would get angry at me, since he really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Of course this is just one simple scenario; as the girls got older, saying yes to cookies was the least of our problems.

Years passed by and we still hadn’t figured out that by allowing our girls to manipulate us, we were creating some serious problems for our marriage. There would be times when the kids would make plans with me to do something, fully knowing that their dad wasn’t ok with it, and then I would get blamed for allowing them to do whatever it was their dad had already said no too. This scenario of course went both ways. This caused a lot of resentment to build up in our marriage. The girls eventually figured out which one of us was the most likely to give them the answer they wanted, and so then they would use that knowledge to their advantage.

Hubby and I made the mistake of letting this continue on for too many years. If we had been smart, we would have learned sooner to communicate better and make all of our decisions together as a family. Unfortunately, with the way our work schedules were back in those days, we really didn’t take the time to communicate with each other like we should have. Because of this, our relationship with each other and the relationships with our girls really did suffer.

Fortunately, we have since learned, if one of our girls asks us for something, we make sure that they haven’t already been told no; and any really important decisions, always get discussed together as a family. We have found that by sitting together at dinnertime, we now have the opportunity to discuss things which are currently going on. It’s the perfect time to make future plans for upcoming events and it helps keep everyone on the same page.

Do you struggle with this in your own family? And if so, what have you done to try and remedy the problem?

 

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