From the Other Side--The Wife's Perspective

I guess I have had a little bit of thinking going on lately, and I am sure that it will be a good thing to put all this thinking on paper and maybe share it with 'yall.

I have one confession--I listen to Dr. Laura on the radio. I used to do it for kicks. I told Jared once that I listened to her because I was so cynical about her views, and I wanted to know how bad it could get--that is, how bad your viewpoints on life could be. However, a miraculous thing happened, I started to like her. So now, I listen to her whenever I can, and, mostly, I agree with her.

Sometimes when life seems really bad, I listen to her show, and it changes my viewpoint a lot. One time, a wife called in and her husband had been sick for a while. The wife was really tired of her husband leaving his shoes in the middle of the floor. Dr. Laura's response was that at least he was still around to leave his shoes in the middle of the floor and maybe the wife needed to change her viewpoint. I think about that caller all the time, and realize how lucky I am.

My love of Dr. Laura started when I heard of the titles of one of her books--The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. I liked that title. It really rang true with me, and though it may not ring true for a lot of wives, it really rings true for me in my situation.

You see, I am the wife of a husband that is ill with Ulcerative Colitis, and has been ill with it for the duration of our relationship.

Sometimes, I try to feel sorry for myself, like I got the bad of the stick or something, but when you actually look at it, I may be the lucky one. When Jared and I were first dating, he told me that he had a disease that was not a lot of fun to mess around with, and he suggested that we just stay friends until he found a workable solution to essentially handle the disease. He reminds me every once in a while that my response to that was, "hell no." If someone that I love is going to have to go through something that difficult and that complicated, they shouldn't have to do it alone. I told him essentially that he was not allowed to break up with me, and I forbid him from ever even suggesting it again. This shows how strong willed I have been in the past, and always gives me a chuckle myself, because, yes, that is just the kind of person that I am.

However, you can ask Jared this, I am not stoic. I am not one of those wives that sits by my husband when he is ill and show no emotion. You always see on TV or read in books how the wife is strong and as a side story or in the end, someone gives the wife (or whoever it may be) some extra support for being such a stoic and solid person, I am not that way. I wish I were. I wish that I could take everything that comes my way and process it and set it aside, but somewhere along the line, I decided that if we were going to be in a marriage that we would really have to work things out alone. The result is that my poor husband has to listen to me all the time nagging about how I think we should make this decision or that decision together while it is all he can do to stay sane and try to live a normal life.

Jared leaves a lot up to me. He lets me make a lot of decisions and run the house how I see fit. I find that I don't mind helping out or being the bookkeeper and not necessarily the one who makes ALL the financial decisions (though sometimes I do that too). I get to decide how to raise our baby and how we are going to pay the bills and how I want to clean the house and how I want to work and take care of the baby and make sure everything gets done. I don't get a lot of nagging from him, I get a lot of admiration, and that is nice. Meanwhile, I have been known to lord over him how right I am about this or that, kind of as a kicking him while he is down kind of thing. I guess what I need to be paying attention to is the fact that no matter if he is right or wrong, I am living the life that I want to live, and he is making damn sure that I get to continue to do so. So, doesn't that win him a few wrong points now and then?

In the end, we always end up together, we always end up smiling. Now matter how far down he gets kicked, he is never too far down to tell me that I am a good mom and a good wife, he always finds the energy to compliment me.

Our relationship is other than the type of relationship that you will probably find in America today. I'm not saying that we don't fight about money or who gets to get out of the car open the garage door in the middle of the winter, we have our fair share of that. I think that despite our petty fighting and arguing now and then, we have a strong relationship. We've had to battle a disease that really isn't in to giving in, and though I haven't always been the most stoic or sensitive wife, I have always been there, and I think that is the most important part.

So, though I am not the most stoic and perfect wife, I hope that I am doing a good job.

I guess my new years' resolution list is going to include just being the happiest wife I can be to support my husband and help him kick this disease's butt. That would be nice. Then, maybe I can return some of the favors that Jared has given me by being a solid husband in the times of my flawed wifelyness.

My hope is that he will read this and see that I do see I am a shmuck sometimes and that I do try to love him as much as he loves me.