Communicate

So this is my husband.  Todd Parker, Christian, leader, hilarious, handsome, listener, good advice giver, best friend, and the number one person I fight with.  I bet you weren’t thinking I was going to say that :). But here’s the deal friends,  we for the most part communicate well, but there are times where something gets lost in translation and we end up having the most glorious battle of the sexes.  We’re both strong willed people and we both have ideas of how things should be done.  It’s when one person says something that is misconstrued and we don’t properly communicate that’s when our fights happen.

This morning we fought over the kids doing chores,  a very stupid disagreement and further looking at the situation I can tell there were several more factors that caused this fight.  First, I didn’t communicate with Todd the fact that I think giving a child an allowance at this time is asinine, that they should just do the chores.  I grew up like that and I’m a semi normal person.  Secondly, recently I’ve been under a lot of pressure at my work and it’s not helping the fact that he wanted me to make a chores list for each child (I didn’t tell him this, I just sat and stewed on it). Thirdly, Todd is gone this weekend, my kids are always slightly off when Dad isn’t at home, grumpy, irritable, and mouthy.  These three factors opened up a geyser of emotions where Todd got to hear a mouthful from me over the phone.  He had no clue why I was irritated, why...  because I didn’t communicate any of this.

The book Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs, Ph.D will go through why we as a married couple go through such a crazy cycle and why it’s so important to change the way we communicate with our spouses.  If you have fights regularly and you can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong read this book.  It really does help.  Here’s also the Love and Respect website for you get started on healthy communication Love and Respect.

So the fight we had this morning was essentially for us a healthy fight.  I mean we were able to communicate with each other in a way that won’t have any lasting effects on us.  I did have to apologize for not stating how I felt in the beginning.  This is our life; the good, the bad, and the ugly and I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else.
Have a great day everyone.
Love you friends and I’m praying for you.