Over Christmas we took a walk one night with Mia’s brother Chris and his wife Jamie. On on our walk we were talking about telemarketers. Jamie said she had one telemarketer that kept calling her and bothering her. She said one time she was with her older son Declan who is five and the phone rang. She said to Declan, “That’s probably daddy.” Instead of being her husband, it was this telemarketer. Jamie said she was so fed up she yelled into the phone, “I told you never to call me ever again. Never call me again!!!” And she hung up the phone. Declan said, “Mommy, was that daddy?” Jamie assured him that it wasn’t Chris. Declan responded, “You would never talk to daddy like that, right? You would never tell him not to call you, right?”
We laughed when we heard that story, but it was also a great reminder that the best way for us to love our kids is to love our spouse. Our kids find stability when there is stability in our relationship.
(Mia) Honestly I hate it when I hear a wife call her husband a name or vice versa. It sends out a cloud of poison and disrespect. Everyone can relate to being mad at your spouse and being tempted to vent at them, but when you know your kid is looking up at you, their innocence and need for things to be good and true, has to overwhelm the situation. What makes that story so funny is the disparity between being clear and firm and loud to a telemarketer and the horror of Declan’s misunderstanding. “OF COURSE, that wasn’t Daddy, how could it be? It couldn’t possibly be Daddy, because I would never send that vitriol toward him. I love him.”
I think some couples think it doesn’t matter, the little reactions to a spouse, but that is a lie. All it does is lay the foundation, comment by comment, utterance by utterance for a final attitude shift toward disrespecting and ultimately despising your spouse.
It takes hard work to just say what you feel without dropping bombs. It makes you vulnerable. It feels safer hiding behind ridicule, names and sarcasm. It’s so much easier to get mad than just address the issue. But that’s not where love is. It will never be found there. Love is direct. And vulnerable. Love hides out in the open when you just say what’s on your mind and in your heart. Taking that risk challenges your spouse to respond in kind.
(Tom) Harsh and disrespectful words towards our spouse not only harms our relationship with our spouse, it harms our kids and weakens their future relationships.
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