Anniversary reflections – my past didn’t determine my future

Today was my wedding anniversary, and when I mentioned it tonight to one of my teens, he said, “Thirty three years, right?”

“Yes, thirty three wonderful years!” I answered.

Then I amended for the sake of being honest, “Actually, all of the years weren’t wonderful. Life isn’t always easy and we went through some very challenging times. But no matter what, I was always committed to making our marriage work, even when it felt hard.”

Sometimes I regret that I didn’t know when I was a young married woman all that I know now about how to be in a relationship. I most regret not appreciating my husband enough and not respecting him enough.

But what I did right was to keep trying. And there are times that that’s a very, very huge thing to do. Especially with the background that I came from, when divorce was the norm and I’m one of very few women throughout several generations that didn’t divorce.

I didn’t grow up seeing healthy relationships, I didn’t know how to work out differences and how to communicate about hard things. I didn’t know how to directly ask for my needs to be met. Mostly I stuffed my feelings down, with occasional verbal outbursts when I felt very strained.

We learn about relationships from the time we’re young, usually without recognizing the messages we’ve absorbed. We don’t generally question those messages because to us, they are the reality of how the world is and we assume it’s the same for everyone.

I was fortunate (though it felt far from fortunate at the time) that a dramatic and painful event occurred in my life when I was seventeen years old. That event was the cataclysm that led me to everything I am and have today. The very first step was to consider a comment made by a family member: there was an unmistakable multigenerational pattern of dysfunctional and codependent marriages.

That was far from something a teenager wants to hear, and I could have let that slip past me and discarded it immediately because it was so uncomfortable to consider. I didn’t – I reflected on that insight repeatedly.

It wondered what caused all of these decent people to be unhappy in their marriages. They must have wanted to have good marriages, just as I did.

But they didn’t succeed. Maybe because they didn’t know how? Maybe because they never saw it modelled for them? If none of them could do it, what did that mean for me?

Realizing that I was no different than any of them and I had the same conditioning, I knew it was highly likely I would end up just like them if I didn’t learn new ways of being.

I went to study overseas and when I was hosted by families, I paid attention to how the spouses interacted with one another. When I saw couples who were consistently kind and respectful of one another, and they invited me to come back, I went back – repeatedly. I doubt they knew how consciously I was observing how they interacted with one another.

That was the beginning of looking for role models who had what I wanted, and creating a vision for the kind of marriage I wanted to have: one of mutual respect, kindness and love between two best friends.

Several months into that school year, a friend mentioned having heard about workshops given by Dr. Miriam Adahan based on her EMETT method (Emotional Maturity Established Through Torah). She said she was thinking of going; she was delighted when I told her I’d go with her.

Shortly after I turned eighteen, I attended my first workshop. My friend went for a while and then stopped, but I continued attending every week for the next four years (continuing through getting engaged, married and having my first two children).

Around the same time I heard about EMETT, I also heard about a twelve step support program for people whose lives have been affected by someone else’s problematic behaviors. I don’t remember how I found out about that, but I began attending those meetings once a week as well, despite feeling extremely uncomfortable and out of place.

The year that I attended was a valuable learning opportunity for me. I wasn’t spending these evenings in a way that was typical of students studying overseas for the first time, but I knew I had to do something to change myself if I was going to change my future.

My involvement in those programs helped me develop self-awareness and learn emotional tools, and I had endless opportunities to practice them. I continued seeking out resources to support ongoing growth and learning throughout the years.

Many times in my marriage I failed to respond the way I knew to be best. But I kept trying and I never broke the commitment I made to myself before I got married: I would do whatever I could to make things work, and I would never consider divorce. (Obviously, that presumed no abuse.) I had to make that commitment because what I had seen in my life was, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’.

—————–

My husband has said many very nice things to me over the past three decades, but one of the nicest was a casual comment a few years ago.

“You know, you’re a very pleasant person to live with.”

I wasn’t always so nice to live with. Sometimes – too often – I was critical and impatient due to my own insecurities and frustration. But when he said this, I knew it wasn’t just his perception, but I had become that kind of person.

If someone were to look at my first eighteen years, I doubt anyone would have predicted that I would end up with a strong marriage and amazing family. As I look back on thirty three years of marriage, my success came from continuing to take the next small step in the right direction and never giving up.

Sometimes my efforts seemed almost imperceptible, but over time the small changes made a huge difference. My family life ended up being completely different from the family pattern that I had wanted to avoid so many years ago. I don’t say that with arrogance, but with gratitude and thankfulness.

Avivah

PS – To comment and/or read the comments, you’ll need to click on the post and then scroll all the way down.