The Times I Didn't Listen And Wished That I Had

It's true that in the many years we've been together, there are times that Tom and I butt heads completely on a decision. We did not have this DD arrangement. There was no dynamic of him being in charge. We were in an "egalitarian" relationship. I use quotation marks because what we had was not what couples who have a successful egalitarian relationship have. What we had was a constant power struggle - over ten years of it in fact. There's nothing more mentally and physically draining than going through life where every day is a constant power struggle. But that's where we were.

Anyways, the point of this post is to talk about some of the times that I wish I would've let him taken the lead on the decision. I know there's more events than I will discuss, but my memory isn't overly wonderful. So here's a few that stick out in my mind a bit.

1. The time I was friends with a taker. You know those people. They're not really your friends - just so long as they benefit from the relationship and can get what they want. They don't really care for your feelings, but expect you to listen to their laundry list of woes whenever and wherever. In this particular instance, the friendship developed rapidly during a time in my life when I was dealing with things and so this was fun and irresponsible friend that fit the bill as far as my letting go and finding a release for some stressful circumstances. She was a nut from the go, continually ran her husband and guys in general through the mud, a pathological liar, unstable and mentally ill but not taking medication for it. You know, the whole nine yards of nutty. But I gave and gave and gave because there were glimpses here and there of her caring for me and because she was my "fun" friend and I didn't want to let that go. Well, when she decided to end her marriage and started dating while her husband still lived in the house, divorced him, and then gave him the runaround and threw obstacles in his way when he tried to see his kids, I just couldn't take it anymore. The situation had been souring for months and I was trying to walk that fine line of being a listening ear while not agreeing with her behavior, even trying to stick up for her husband when the opportunity arose. I thought maybe if I hung in there she'd come around and see that her behavior was nuts and decide to straighten her life out, get on meds, and resume her relationship with her husband. Boy was I delusional! But she was one of those people that hears and sees what she wants and I realized that any listening on my end was only validating her horrible behavior. My husband sang this tune for months before I finally decided to listen to him. The thing is that I knew deep down that he was right all along, but somehow it just felt wrong for him to tell me who to be friends with and I told him as much. I felt like that was crossing the line. Perhaps I should've also remembered at that point that he has never prior to that or since told me to end a friendship, even when he didn't really care for the person. This was different. He saw her draining me and using me and I just let it happen. I felt a huge weight lift off of me after ending the friendship. Now all I really regret is the countless hours poured into that friendship that could have gone towards friendships much more deserving.

2. There was the last vehicle purchase decision that I made. The vehicle had issues, but I felt it'd be okay because we were still getting a deal and once we fixed said issues it'd be fine. We're two years out and still haven't fixed the issue because we haven't had the chunk of money that we need at one time to fix the issue, which was Tom's concern and why he didn't want to get the vehicle. So we have a vehicle that can't go out of town and now our second vehicle, our good one, is down because it needs a new computer right now. So we are literally trapped within the borders of our town. Perfect!

Granted, I'm sure there are other issues where I didn't listen to him and things turned out dandy. But I guess maybe I needed to write this post because there are the times where he really does know what he's talking about and if I'd just listen to him, I'll thank him for it later.

We actually have an issue right now that we're going back and forth on. Granted, this isn't the sort of thing where I can just blindly submit as this will uproot our current lifestyle and change my current job. He's at a point where he's all for the new opportunity, but I will have to personally give up a lot in order to take it and money wise it doesn't seem worth it to me. Anyways, who knows what will happen or if the opportunity will even pan out. But I am trying to remind myself that maybe he can see something I can't and this could be a situation which in hindsight I would be happy that I listened.