Determine to become your spouse's biggest fan…share with your spouse how glad you are about a success he or she recently enjoyed.
OK, so I don't know if this counts, really, as a "recent" success, but it was the first success that came to mind. In June, 2008, my husband graduated from Baker College with a BA in marketing. Tonight, I told him how I proud I am that he did that. After all, he was working full-time and helping me care for our three children as he went to school. He had to make a lot of sacrifices to finish college, and it took him a lot longer than he had planned. But he did it! That is an awesome accomplishment.
Along with the accomplishments, my husband had to deal with some frustrations and resentment. The frustrations came from himself and to some extent from me.
The resentment? That was all me.
We graduated from high school in 1994 (yikes, did I just admit my age?). In June 1998, he graduated from Jackson Community College with an associate degree. His mother and I were in the audience, watching him receive the degree, and cheering loudly for him. Three months later, his mother suffered the first in a series of strokes. He took the fall semester off to take care of her. Working full-time, looking after his younger brothers and sister, and traveling to visit his mother (at one point, she was in a rehab facility nearly 90 minutes away from home) took up too much time. He couldn't concentrate on school at the same time. And since he was suddenly the only one to provide financial support for his little sister and 3 younger brothers, quitting his job or cutting back on his hours was out of the question. He said he was going to just give up on school all together so he could bring his mother home to recover. I convinced him not to do that. Instead, I gave up a full-time job and moved into his mother's home. He was closer to finishing school than I was, and I didn't want him to give up on his education. His mother was very proud of her college graduate son, and I hoped that pride would help her continue to get better.
That is where the resentment began. We were not yet married, yet I gave up everything to help out his family. In return, he was supposed to finish college and find a good job to support the family that we planned to start. Instead, he worked at Burger King and put school on hold. He worked long hours as an assistant store manager in a store 30 minutes from our home. Sometimes, my needs and plans we made together were pushed aside so that he could work more—if the store manager needed his help, he took off to give it. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought he was having an affair with her. In fact, if you read my journals from that time, you would see how much I wondered about their relationship. I never thought it was a sexual relationship; the manager was, after all, old enough to be his mother. But I often felt like she mattered to him more than I did, like her wants and needs were more important than mine. There were times when I wondered if we would even get married. I was afraid that she would need him to work on our wedding day and he would take off.
Shortly before our second child was born in 2003, I decided that I would go back to school. One of us needed to finish, right? Things were going well with that, until a miscarriage in 2005. I fell apart, failed my classes that term, and completely gave up. My husband, though, had decided if I could finish school, so could he. And the miscarriage didn't stop him. That sure added to the resentment. Even though he was only in school part-time, he was still in school. I was spiraling into depression, struggling to keep things together in front of our kids and just get through a day without hurting myself. He was working outside the home full-time and doing school work inside the home part-time. When he was here, I was still the one "parenting" the boys while he closed himself up in a room to do his school work.
Even the day of his graduation, I felt like I had made a lot of sacrifices for him to get through school. But it would all be worth it when he started to use that degree and had a better job, right? That didn't happen. Not that I blame him for it. The economy in Michigan was pretty bad before the rest of the country started to have problems. He has kept his factory job because of the benefits. If he could find a job in marketing that came with the same pay and a comparable benefit package, he would likely take it.
You might not be able to tell from what I have written here. To me, this sounds like a lot of complaining and griping. But I really am proud of my husband. I've moved past the resentment stage. Today I feel bad for it. He worked hard to better himself and try to provide a better life for our family. His college degree is just one thing that he has done to show his love for me and our children. I appreciate all the hard work that he put into it and hope that someday I can repay him for it.
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