Today’s post is written by my friend Lisa McLean. While this month is about marriage, making friends with folks who are working to stick with it is vital. Friends make our marriages better.
Know yourself to stay married.
In ICC, I learned the phrase “Know yourself to lead yourself,” which means that if you don’t know yourself and what makes you tick, you won’t be able to be in control of your feelings and actions. My family KNOWS each other. We know if you’re an INTJ or an Individualist. We know if you have Learner or Focus or Activator strengths. We know if you are a Connector or a Pioneer. And let me just say…. We’d be in a pretty pickle if this house-renovation had hit without that!
My husband John drives up, and I know it because the dog barks outside at every truck or car that comes down our quarter-mile rock driveway. It takes him a while to make it upstairs where I lay on the bed, trying to do a relax-the-muscles-therapy-routine I’m fond of. I hear the feet on the newly-stained stairs, the head and elbows swishing through the visquine that protects us from the downstairs dust, then the door opening.
“Hey, Honey” I say. I’m reading his face; it doesn’t look right.
He throws a stack of stuff on the bed and plants his palms dramatically on his drawn cheeks.
“They did it wrong.”
Of course, they’d done it wrong. He tells me how the benches on the window seats are showing big shiny hinges on top–put in upside-down.
This has become par. We’re having to re-sand, re-stain, and re-finish 1000 square feet of wood floors at an added expense of $3000. Yes, we did want a lip on those benches, do it again. The painted walls show bumps, do it again. The can lights are too bright, replace them. It’s difficult for my tactful husband to tell people to do something again, that it wasn’t done correctly.
Other things I’ve learned about my husband help me today when he begins a tirade, a passionate listing all of these botched jobs. I know them already and am beginning to get my feelings hurt–what had I done wrong, after all? He’s yelling at me! I’m just lying here trying to unclench my jaw after sitting at a computer for five hours straight, breathing in dust that finds its determined way past the visquine AND the towel stuffed under my closet door, after having a workman knock on the door the ONE TIME I sneak out and try the bathroom, after filling my mouth with toothpaste only to realize the water had been turned off.
BUT… I recall. I know what’s going on. I know what makes him tick. I see the mechanisms at work, and I know that all is not as it appears. He’s not yelling at me. He’s processing difficult emotions and situations, and, if I’m patient and will listen, he’ll come out of it in a little while and appreciate that I didn’t retaliate. He’ll also be embarrassed and ashamed, probably, which breaks my heart.
I also know what makes ME tick, the mechanisms at work in ME. The Enneagram Type 2 needs to know she’s approved, the ISFP dislike of any word or tone of criticism, the Empathy strength that feels strongly other people’s pain, the Nurturer that just wants to put a Band-aid on it and tell it to shut-up. I recognize it and call it off.
This is what it means to “Know Yourself to Lead Yourself.” I’d always heard about marriages breaking under the weight of living in a construction-zone. It’s been 10 weeks of this, and we’re gritting our teeth, sure that it must end at some point. Lead yourself and stay married, that’s what I’ll tell my great-grandchildren one day when they sit at my feet while I rock.