By David Trinko
The Lima News
I spend more time parsing my words and thoughts for total strangers than I do for my wife.
In most conversations with strangers, I’ll carefully think about what I’m about to say and how I want to say it. I don’t want to offend, and I want to be clear about my thoughts and my intentions.
With my wife, I’ll just say whatever pops into my head.
As we approach another wedding anniversary next week, it occurs to me how sloppy and occasionally hurtful we end up being toward those we love the most.
As much as I hate to do it, I should reflect on going on first dates again. While I haven’t been on a first date in two decades, I used to mentally prepare myself for the conversations. I’d think through what I wanted to introduce and what I wanted to hold back. Experience taught me what to say and what not to say.
When you put it into action, you were a compassionate, thoughtful listener.
Unfortunately, time makes us a bit too comfortable with one another. That same comfort that might allow you to pass gas in front of your beloved can also lead to reprehensible verbal vomit.
It can also make you stop seeing things through their eyes.
As an example, we recently had a weekend where our children were clearly frustrating their mother. They weren’t being as respectful as they should’ve been, and I wasn’t being a good defender of the most important woman in the world to me.
The following day, I allowed them to leave the house for most of the day, going out to lunch and to a movie. In my mind, I was a peacemaker, bringing a thaw to their cold interactions with some distance that day.
After careful reflection, from another point of view I rewarded our children with a meal and a movie for their questionable behavior.
We’ve all mended fences since then, but it was a pivotal moment for me. Those closest to me deserve the same courtesy and thoughtfulness that I give to total strangers.
They deserve my benefit of the doubt. They deserve my attempts to see every situation through their eyes. They deserve my unwavering support.
Being a husband and a father is easily the most rewarding thing I’ve done. For years, it felt easy. In hindsight, it’s because I wasn’t trying hard enough to do it as well as I could.
It’s not easy having a healthy marriage full of introspection and respect. It’s easy to see how 43% of first marriages end in divorce, and how the average divorce occurs after eight years, when your comfort can turn into vitriol. It’s understandable that the rate goes up for people who are younger and have less understanding of how to get along in the world.
Sometimes I equate having a relationship to owning a hydrogen bomb. You know things about the other person that, if brought up in a heated argument, would absolutely destroy them and lead to assured mutual destruction. Not wanting that kind of carnage, you never say it.
We’re not always on our best behavior, like we are on our first dates.
The first date for my now-wife and me was courteous but extremely honest. Since we were both in our late 20s at the time, we’d both been through enough relationships to know what our deal-breakers were. We kept trying to trip each other up, looking for red flags so we didn’t have to waste our time and heartbreak.
Finding none, we proceeded into what have been the best years of my life. With more thoughtfulness, compassion and complete support of each other, I look forward to many more years of wedded bliss.
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See past columns by David Trinko at LimaOhio.com/tag/trinko.
David Trinko is editor of The Lima News. Reach him at 567-242-0467, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.
