In this newsletter, I’m sharing an article Linda Jewell (www.LindaJewell.com) sent me about how Taking Out Your Emotional Trash helped her to pay attention to the emotional distance she tended to create in her closest relationships. She writes:
My husband and I brought different histories and expectations to marriage. He is an only child with an orderly personality. Quiet time alone rejuvenates him. I, on the other hand, grew up in a noisy, hodgepodge family. One sister compares our childhood years to a litter of puppies tumbling over one another. We shared toys and books, meals and measles, clothes and chores, bedrooms and bathrooms, secrets and successes.
An old photo of me at age two with my father captures my lifelong expectation that I’ll be involved in my family members’ activities. The picture shows me dabbling my fingers in the same sink in which my father is washing his hands.
One Saturday morning shortly after my husband and I married, I chatted while trailing him from the living room where he straightened the couch cushions then to the den where he gathered newspapers to discard. When he tried to escape to the laundry room, I asked, “Do you need my help folding clothes?”
He stopped, put out his hand, palm facing me like a sidewalk-crossing guard. “I need space.”
What’s he talking about? “Space?”
“Yes. Space!”
I turned and blinked back tears because he didn’t want my help. I walked away-putting physical and emotional distance between us.
In Taking Out Your Emotional Trash, Georgia Shaffer wrote, “[A] reality of life is that people’s expectations often clash.” She discusses how our expectations can easily get distorted into what we not only think we want in our relationships but come to believe we need.
I wish her book had been available when I was a newlywed. Instead, it took me time to recognize that my husband and I had different expectations of what it meant to live as a couple.
Although we clash less often over these differences, I’m still learning to respect the boundaries of my husband’s space. Recently while he poured his cereal, I reached around him, opened a cabinet door, and grabbed a bowl. My husband moved to one side, put his hands on his hips, and looked at the floor in resignation. “I’ll wait until you’re finished,” he said.
I no longer feel rejected when my husband indicates I’ve encroached on his space. Instead, I try to be aware of his boundaries and respect them. He now fixes his cereal in peace at our island kitchen counter while I set the table or putter around elsewhere.
I see the value of giving my husband his space-and having some of my own, too. For instance, I’m thankful my gracious husband respects my early-morning quiet time. He gives me the present he’d like to receive himself, the precious gift of respect for who he is and his desires.
This article is adapted from Taking Out Your Emotional Trash: Face Your Feelings and Build Healthy Relationships by Georgia Shaffer
