Spouse as Scapegoat

“Nothing, not even your children, should prevent you from meeting each other’s intimate emotional needs, such as affection, conversation, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment. Don’t neglect this time together, because what your children need most from you is parents who love each other. And you will not be in love if you don’t meet each other’s intimate emotional needs.” -Harley, Love Busters

I haven’t had as much time to write lately, mostly because we are spending that spare hour or two we have each night doing the reading, worksheet questions, listening to CDs, and discussing that is part of this marriage class we are taking. The topic for this week is identifying, discussing, analyzing, and having a plan to overcome our biggest “love busters”—the author’s term for activity not related to an unfulfilled need that actively withdraws negative units from the love bank. He categorizes them into six things: annoying habits, angry outbursts, selfish demands, independent behavior, dishonesty, and disrespectful judgments.

A lot of the ones we struggle with involved issues surrounding childcare. It made me realize that, when it comes down to it, Dave often becomes my scapegoat for life struggles. When I get chronically sleep-deprived until it builds up and I hit a wall, the fatigue translates into an irrationally grandiose grumpy mood that affects him, or an angry outburst towards him. When I feel suffocated by my loss of self, I pursue some hobby and leave him trapped with childcare. When I feel unhappy about myself, I somehow find more fault with him. When the kids have pushed my buttons all day, I somehow get irritated at him. When I feel like I can’t get away from it all, I rail at him.

All those are negative units in the love bank. Combine that with less energy and time to make positive deposits by meeting emotional needs, and it’s no wonder that marriages dissolve when people have kids. They say the highest rate of divorce happens during the first year of marriage. The second highest rate occurs within the first year of having your first child. And studies show that happiness in marriage decreases as the number of children increase.

Part of this week is me realizing that all this stuff matters—all this working on stopping things I do that impact Dave negatively. He is not some invisible, eternally-loving and forever available entity in my life. He is a person, with limits, and how he sees me is going to be affected by his interactions with me. I need to commit to, and believe it possible, that I can eradicate these things in my life. That I can actually commit to never having another angry outburst, or simply stop an independent activity that he is not enthusiastic about, or simply not make a selfish demand. The world will not end if, say, I don’t get to shower at a time best for styling my hair for the day, or if I don’t answer all my emails, or if we have to hire an occasional housecleaner.

Part of all this is learning more about myself—having a better internal thermometer for gauging my own spiritual, emotional, and mental health. For knowing what circumstances, situations and behaviors trigger various emotions, so I can choose to react or cope more appropriately, before I get to a point where I feel like I’ve lost control or am acting a certain way without being aware why.

In the end, I care for my children by caring for my spouse. I care for myself when I care for my spouse. It’s easy to take our spouses for granted, especially when the more vocal demands of childcare or work are around, but as usual it’s the less demanding, less urgent thing that is more important.