Internal Narratives - Part II

I mentioned in the first half of this story that my wife and I continued to help her parents as we started building our own family.  We were both working and I was going to school at night.  She got laid off just before our daughter was born.  The timing was perfect.  Eight months later the company brought her back part-time, then laid her off again just before our son was born.  Good timing again.


Our son had special needs and needed a stay-at-home parent.  So my wife getting laid off wasn't a bad thing.  I changed jobs and started working longer hours.  Within 2 years I was offered a job that would require absolutely crazy hours.  As I considered my options, we discovered our son needed a combination of speech and physical therapy five days a week.  It was not covered by our health insurance...and 20 therapy sessions a month was going to be expensive.  I took the job.


As a result, my wife had to take over managing our bills.  I was so disconnected from our finances I only looked at our bank balances at tax time.  I noticed the balance in our savings account was lower than the year before.  My wife's explanation didn't sound right, but I had no reason to doubt her.  We agreed neither of us would touch the savings account without talking about it first.  We repeated that scene/conversation 3 years in a row.


After the 4th year I changed jobs and didn't work such long hours.  I planned to take over managing our bills again.  My wife asked me to wait 6 months so she could get everything organized.  I agreed.  When I brought it up in 6 months she said she thought I was kidding and needed 6 months to get things organized.  I got mad.


I 'd worked out several budget scenarios, trying to figure out where our money went.  Every calculation showed we should have been adding to our savings instead of eating into it.  Based on the variance, I thought she might have been making double mortgage payments each month.  She wasn't.  I'd hoped she was spending it on her parents.  She said she wasn't.


She was (but, technically, I didn't know that).


She felt weird about the money she spent on them because she wasn't "working" (she was working harder than I was).  She thought I would get mad...maybe mad enough to leave her.  That was the false narrative that existed just in her head.  We'd been helping her parents pretty much always.  I didn't mind that.


But I developed a narrative in my head too.  I felt I'd spent years working 100 hour weeks for nothing.  My wife was lying to me.  Which meant she didn't respect me.  Which meant she didn't love me.  I was being dumb.  "Technically" I didn't know she had spent the money on her parents.  But I knew my wife and, in my heart, I had to know the money was going towards them.  My head was being stubborn and wouldn't let me see that.  (When people ask what one thing I would go back and change, I think about this situation.  I would change how I reacted.)


The false narrative in my wife's mind, combined with the warped logic of my burned-out brain, almost caused the very thing she feared.  It was kind of ridiculous, but I'm afraid it happens to couples fairly often.  Some "thing" that's not even really a "thing" tears them apart.


We eventually had an honest conversation about this and we were able to work through everything.  It wasn't easy.  But the fact that we did is proof (to me) that people can get through almost anything if they are committed and communicate with each other.


Never assume a "thing" is really a "thing" without talking about it with your spouse, partner, friend, co-worker, whoever.  You could be causing yourself unnecessary aggravation and creating a problem out of nothing.  Talk about whatever it is.  Even if you're right, it's still better to talk about it.  "Things" rarely go away by themselves.