My wife is a very multifaceted person. She’s one of the most soft spoken people I know but at the same time she can be the loudest person I know. She has the calmest hand for the most delicate crafts but also can be extremely clumsy. She’s full of these crazy opposites and it’s so interesting to see how all of it can be contained in one person.
May 8th is our annual anniversary for when we started dating. Although people typically celebrate marriage anniversaries we like to celebrate our dating anniversary as well. More days to celebrate! It’s been 14 years since we started dating.
There is nobody in my life I’ve been around for this long of a time outside of my pre-marriage family. Is that rare? I think people who generally grow up in one neighborhood tend to have longer relationships than their partners but since I moved around a lot my wife is the most stable personal force in my life.
14 years, that’s a pretty damn long time. I started my self development path around 4 years ago so I spent 10 years with my wife prior to that, and only recently do I really learn from my wife because only recently have I completely dropped my ego. So over the past decade+, what are some lessons I should have learned sooner from my wife?
Don’t Complain
I used to be the biggest complainer in the world. I complained about everything. When I was working, I complained about work. When I was going home, I complained about the commute. When I was eating, I complained about the food. I was just a super whiny dude.
My wife isn’t much of a complainer, and for a very long time I thought it was because her situation wasn’t as bad as mine. But the more I learned about her life, the more I realized: holy fuck, if I were in her shoes her ears would be bleeding from my constant complaints (who knows, maybe her ears were already? haha).
When I asked her why she doesn’t complain, she told me it was a waste of energy. If there’s something you can do to address a situation, then do that. If not, what’s the point of complaining? So much better to just deal with the situation.
She’s kind of an efficiency nut and it extends to emotional efficiency as well. As much as she dislikes taking paths that make her go back and forth, she doesn’t dwell on things that make her go back and forth emotionally. Which is kind of crazy because she also is the person with the biggest decision paralysis I know, lol.
Don’t Fix
I mentioned this in previous writings too, but when a person talks about their life struggles in front of me and my wife I do all the talking to try and make them feel better, and in the end they thank my wife instead of me. Dafuq? My wife just has that calming presence.
My mom would sometimes visit and she would talk about her grief. My uncle, mom’s oldest younger brother, passed away with a rare form of cancer and it took a lot out of my mom. She would tell us how much she misses her little brother and all my wife would do is just gently lay her hand on my mom’s shoulder. Nothing gives more solace to my mom than Claire’s gentle touch.
When I asked her about her magic touch she replied that she doesn’t feel the need to really say anything because nothing she can say will change their mind. All she can do realistically is just be there for them and let them know that she is expressing compassion. And maybe that’s all we need sometimes, if people aren’t actively looking for solutions; too many times we forget that and try to fix things.
Go Hard Or Go Home
My wife is the hardest worker I know. She doesn’t complain about it so I keep thinking she takes it easy. The times I notice my wife’s hard work is when other people praise her in front of me, and that happens super often. How can I simultaneously know she’s the hardest worker and yet think she takes it easy? Because I took her pilates classes.
When she’s focused on her scrolling and playing games on her phone, she’s very quiet. I’m usually in front of the computer doing my work so when she’s quiet I assume she’s enjoying time to herself. But once I realized how much she works, I noticed more and more that she’s in hyperfocus.
This is throughout her entire career. She worked hard as a graphic designer. She worked hard as an animator. She works hard as a pilates instructor, almost to a fault in my opinion; none of her peers put in this much time to make a great workout routine (which is why her clients love her!).
The thing I admire about this the most is that she doesn’t value the results. She values the hard work itself. I ask her, “doesn’t it bum you out when you don’t get the results you want?”. She replies, “putting in my honest best work, that’s what feels the best to me”. She just has great priorities. She probably wouldn’t take results she didn’t work to earn.
We both got introduced to Buddhism around the same time. I decided to change my life and become a person who changes his karma. My wife decided to live her karma and just accept that she will live a karma-shaped life. That is kind of badass on its own; she’s just going to be angry, she’s just going to live life as she has always known and that may mean she’ll never get upsides or she’ll always get some downsides. She doesn’t care. She’s bigger than that.
Hope you learned a thing or two from my wife without being married to her for over a decade. :)