It wasn’t a great week for my relationship with my wife. The little stresses seemed to take a toll: my misjudging our tax situation, me getting a cold, increasing worries about my daughter’s back fusion, me forsaking writing Joe to Gos in favor of prospecting for contract work, and Robbie having a very hard time with her Tinnitus. By yesterday afternoon, we were clearly feeling distant from each other and she was admittedly cranky.
We knew we needed to get out and spend some time together and do something fun and distracting that wasn’t expensive. As we left town, I challenged her contention that part of her crankiness was that I’d ignored her all week. I was all set to have one of our occasional verbal battles that helps clear the air, and typically ends with each of us seeing how we contributed to the problem. Only this time, she just broke down in tears and said she wanted to go back home. It’s just not like her at all to do this and it was then I realized that she had reached the edge of her ability to deal with her medical problems on top of all the stresses of the week. I was assuming she was just her normal, spunky self, able to have a quick fight with me, resolve it, and move on to having fun and being intimate.
So as we drove to the Cities in silence, I just reached out and touched her leg affectionately and within a few minutes, she reciprocated by touching my hand. As we went from store to store to movie and back home, we kept holding hands, locking arms, and sending little squeezes back and forth. We never did any more talking about “the issues” and I think now it’s because we both realized that there wasn’t anything important enough to resolve that couldn’t just be “let go.” So we just fixed ourselves with affection, then a good movie comedy (Bridgitte Jones’ Diary – romantic comedy), and when we got home, candles, wine, music, and related activities.
I think I’ve learned something.