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There’s a bar and restaurant in Spokane called The Screaming Yak. Lori and I have said many times, “We need to eat there.” A few months ago, after more than a decade of saying that, we finally did it. The food was very good, but even if it hadn’t been, it was fun to do it together.
What have you and your wife talked about doing but have never done? Make a plan to do it together soon!
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We try to do one or more of these periodically when we can. I love to try new things together that neither of us has we tried before. I treasure those experiences.
My wife seems resistant to trying new things with me that we haven’t tried separately. She seems to prefer trying things with her mom or her friends before she is open to going back with me.
I suspect it has to do with my reaction to a big new experience we had planned for years that she ended up doing as a ladies only trip instead. We were still in the rougher part of rebuilding our relationship and her mom paid for her to go. Discussing it later, I found out that she had no desire to go with me at that time due to the damage to our relationship.
To be fair, she did ask me if she could go and I gave a very reluctant okay. I did try to balance making it clear that I would really rather she wait until we could both go and that I didn’t want to stand between her and this opportunity. It was a congratulations gift for completing another college degree. She had earned a good time. I just really wished she would do something else or hold off until I could celebrate WITH her.
Since we had looked forward to this for over a decade (closer to two) as something to experience together, I truly hoped she would reconsider and choose to wait for me. She chose to go without me anyway and I was absolutely devastated.
When trying to work through things that had wounded us deeply, I brought it up as one of my deeper wounds. She didn’t acknowledge my pain and explained it away as consequences of my sins. Seeing she either hadn’t understood my pain or hadn’t been ready to acknowledge it yet, I left it alone for a while and then touched on it again in a later session. I think it was three times before she changed her response to “which you will apparently never let me live down.”
Frankly, her attitude kept the wound open and her last response greatly deepened the wound. It wasn’t about putting it in her face, even though she did that to me for years with my faults and failures (still does from time to time when she is feeling really frustrated and angry). It was about her acknowledging the reality of my pain. Just or not, I was deeply wounded.
All of that pity party to say, yes, please make it a priority if this is something your spouse finds special. Yes, they may make mistakes, make you angry, even break your heart. I get that. But if you are both working to mend fences, this can be a huge blessing to that spouse or a devastating wound to a relationship that is just beginning to recover. You can choose to bless or to wound.
To me, this is a huge deal, nearly on par with getting or missing sex. Whether you understand it or not, it just might be for your spouse, too. Please choose to bless.