Got to see about a boy.....

I love my husband.  He is my best friend.  The Yin to my Yang, the Beans to my Toast, the Dippy Egg to my marmite soldiers.  Without him the amazing holidays might not actually get booked.  Without him my new car would’ve blown a gasket due to lack of coolant and my old car would still be sat on the drive.  Scrap that, I would still be driving my old car wishing I had a new one without him.  You see he is amazing at making things happen.

Recently I’ve been worrying about him.   A lot.  Unnecessarily.  He’s going through a learning curve at work and as with all learning curves, there are times when it can be tricky.  It’s hard seeing someone you love going through these tricky times.  And the natural inclination is to want to help, to take on the burden so they don’t have to.  However, I realised recently that I’d been so pre-occupied with this.  I’d been focusing a lot of my energy on finding out about the problem; trying to come up with solutions; offering advice; then forgetting what advice I’d offered him and offering different advice.   I realised I’d forgotten some really important things about my husband:

•  My husband rocks.  He is a very bright man.  He is more than capable of figuring this out for himself.
•  My husband is not stupid.  He will also ask for my help if he needs it and knows me well enough to know that if he asks, I will jump at the chance to help in any way I can.

I’d also overlooked a few things about myself:

• I was also on a learning curve at work and personally.
• There were challenges I was going through that I hadn’t figured out (like how to get better work life balance / how to say no in a way that still felt authentic to me / how to embrace my strengths)
• I’m all about empowering people and encouraging them to do what’s right for them.  I wasn’t convinced I was doing this with him.

I felt awful.  Really awful and so guilty.  I realised that I wasn’t giving him the time and space to figure it out for himself.   I wasn’t even showing him that I had utter confidence that he could figure it out for himself.  I was being a douche!  Although once I got over my über guilt, I realised I was being a douche with the best of intentions.   So I decided I would figure out how I could feel like I was helping without interfering. 

And so this is what I did:

I acknowledged that I hadn’t been just listening and I let him know that from now on, he was welcome to scrap what I had said before and just know that I support him.  This one is credit to Helen at work, who had done something similar with her other half.  She is my go to person when I want to get some perspective and some logic.  And I’m sure I could see relief on his face when I came home from work that day and I wasn’t going to ask him how his day at work had been and we’d just chill instead.  I’m so glad I did; thanks Helen!

I decided to spend my energy instead on doing what I do best.  Actually telling him that I think he’s great and that I KNOW he can do whatever he wants to do.  And so I decided to tell him something I’d realised the other week I had never told him.  I told him that the reason I moved back to our home town of High Wycombe from Wales where I was at Uni was because he was here.

You see, our story goes that some good friends of ours Harry and Lou had put the idea in both of our heads probably two years before this that we might be good for each other.  We’d had a little kiss as a result, but he was here, I was at Uni and I was determined not to have a long distance relationship (I’d been there, done that, it didn’t work).  So, we met up every now and again.  We both went on dates with other people.  We kissed again at the wedding of our good friends Harry and Lou and then for the next year or so spent every Sunday afternoon for many months talking.  We laughed, we joked.  We got to know each other.  It was lovely.  I was doing my finals and I looked forward to my Sunday chats with Johnny.  He was my light relief from the revision and the pressure.  And when I got my results, I knew he had had a part to play in helping me achieve them  (alongside a fair few others to be honest – Mum, Dad and my lovely Welsh family Frank, Merril, Llian).
And so, this evening when I wasn’t going to ask him how his day went, I told him two things:

The Text Message.  I checked he remembered that I’d texted him the night I got my results to thank him for the support he’d been to me.  (I think I’d written: you’ll never know how much it’s meant to me).  He remembered.  So I told him the back story.  I told him that the morning after my degree results, I had a bit of a moment of panic.  I had to check back through my phone to read through what I’d sent.  Why?  Because I had a feeling that I might’ve told him I loved him in my text.  Because it’s that night that I realised that I did.  And it scared the living daylights out of me.  ‘You can’t be in love yet, you’ve only been talking over the phone.  You haven’t even been on a proper date yet’ the internal voice was saying.  ‘What if you’ve scared him off!  You definitely don’t want that!’  it continued.  To say I was relieved when I realised I hadn’t sent the text message was an understatement.  And I was relieved recently.  Because now I got to use that story to let the man I love know that I loved him before he’s even had to take me out on a date.  I loved him because of what he had to say for himself and how he made me feel.  I loved him because he quite frankly rocks!

By this point he’s looking all bashful because I love to tell the story and I love to make sure he feels it as well as hears it.  So I tell him the next bit.

I came back because I wanted to be with him.  I was scared in case it didn’t work out, but I decided to take the risk.  I thought he would be worth that risk.  I realised that I loved him as soon as I’d checked for that text message.  I was so afraid to listen to the instinct and feeling rather than the internal voice.  But I did.  And it’s then that I made a difficult decision I’d been pondering over.  A really hard one.  You see I had a wonderful, very special lovely, amazing friend Llian whose family I had been literally adopted by.  I loved them.  They’d taken me in, supported me, made me feel so special and had faith in me.  Llian and I were like a married couple.  We had our own ends to the sofa, we finished each others’ sentences.  I loved them all and they made it clear that I could stay as long as I wanted.  In fact, they told me they wanted me to stay.  And I wanted to.  But I also had a feeling that there was something with this boy Johnny.  He made me feel amazing too.  And it was that night, sat on a wall outside a country pub my Welsh family were sitting inside toasting my future, that I sent that message.  And the next morning, checking through my sent items in a state of excited panic, I decided I had to go and see about a boy.

Now Johnny and I didn’t talk about this revelation much after.  I didn’t tell him because I wanted him to profess a better story or to feel like he owed me anything in return.  I told him because I wanted to share this with him.  And I told him because I thought he’d like to know.  And it was much more fun than asking how his day went and made him smile!

So, I learnt that it’s the little things that really do matter.  I don’t need to try and fix all of Johnny’s problems, but what I can do is make sure that he knows how amazing he is to me.  They always say that "people won’t remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel".

I really hope my husband remembers how that made him feel, because I know good it feels for someone to tell you just how much they love you (he does it all the time!).   My husband loves films.  This story reminds me of the Film ‘Good Will Hunting’  It’s an amazing film and captures what can be gained by following your dreams.  A lifetime of love with a special person (well for my boy it’s since June 2005 to be precise).  As he loves films, hopefully by linking it to a film he likes he’ll remember it every time he watches this film.

Film recommendation: Good Will Hunting
Here's the soundtrack song to evoke the feel good factor of this film for those in the know already about how wonderful this film is.

If you take just one thing out of this post, I ask that you take the following:

People matter.   Don’t take for granted that the people you love know how much and why.  Follow your instinct.  That is all.