Monday, February 12, 2018

i am not a terrible wife. i am not a terrible wife. i am not a terrible wife. i have told myself this a lot in the past 18 hours. this is because i do indeed feel like a terrible wife. i know, really do know, that i am not a terrible wife though. i felt needy this weekend. i felt like brandon and i needed to spend time together since this past week after our honeymoon was busy and we were both sick and it didn't feel like a lot of quality time happened. several nights i read or watched tv in bed while he played video games. that happened some this weekend too. we didn't have many plans, which i love and hate simultaneously, and we spent majority of saturday afternoon apart and spent time with friends saturday night and i took a long walk sunday afternoon. all weekend i felt needy. i felt like i need more and more time with brandon since i felt like this past week wasn't full of quality time or quantity time. in scary close donald miller talks about how when dating his now wife she said i don't need quality time, i just need quantity time. when i read that statement its like my eyes were opened. someone finally put into words how i felt. i don't need quality date nights or extravagant adventures. i need quantity time. running errands together, sitting on the couch watching tv together, talking or not talking. this weekend i think the breakdown came in the quality/quantity. i needed both i think. brandon spent a lot of time playing video games, which he plays online with his best friend. so while i may be sitting across from him or next to him i feel totally isolated. he's got a headset on and is actively talking to someone else, focused on something else, and not easily distracted. to me that doesn't feel like quality or quantity time. i think to him it does. we were in the same room, probably on the same couch, and i was probably reading or playing candy crush next to him. sunday night when we were talking about our weekends he snapped a little (understandably so, and not even in a mean way) and said he felt annoyed that i kept telling him we weren't spending time together when he felt like we were and felt like he wanted to just relax and that every moment didn't have to involve a conversation or meaningful time together. he agreed that he understood how i felt while he played video games. and i agreed that i came across as a nice version of smothering.

then i laid in bed next to him and cried a bit. because i think all this comes from real deep seated fears of insecurity. i have been feeling like i have no idea why brandon would want to be married to me. we spent our honeymoon in mexico and were surrounded by people all over the world and everyone was very kind and we had an amazing time. but, i felt bad for brandon. i felt bad that he was married to a wife who just stared at him across the dinner table at amazing restraunts every lunch and dinner because i couldn't eat. i felt bad that i felt nervous talking to other couples because i always don't want people to feel awkward if they can't understand me. i felt bad that i got sick due to a lack of sleep and food one day. and all these insecurities mean i feel like this could never be true or good or have longevity. as if brandon will wake up one day and see my face and realize that he could do better. (update: he has in fact seen my face, and this has yet to happen. very certain that it won't ever happen but these types of things have deep roots) even last night brandon said hannah you're the perfect wife for me. and i said no and he said yes. you are. brandon is so good at calming my insecurities, without me even verbalizing them. i mean, obviously my neediness came out in full swing this weekend and so maybe he just knew that i was feeling insecure and the by product was me being clingy. (or, and this is stupidly shocking to me, God gave us good good gifts in each other, because he is a God of good good gifts. and brandon is perfect for me. and i am perfect for him. thanks God.) he may be that in tune. or, maybe, he really does just love me. and we both agreed we have things to work on. and communicate better about. and we are still trying to figure out schedules and time and what the other person needs. part of it i think is due to still being very estatic that after 1.5 years of being apart i'm still really jazzed that we ge to be together. and we have fun together. and i love spending time with him. but, i think another part is insecurity coming out in unhealthy ways.

so, i am not a terrible wife. i am trying. i am praying. i pray a lot, every day at 8:48 to be precise, for brandon and our marriage. i don't think i have prayed for myself in our marriage since we were engaged. i don't have it all together. i don't know that i would say i do, but i think that i spend a lot of time focusing on praying for brandon and praying for our marriage and neglecting myself in that (i'm just now accepting that i'm an enneagram 2 so bare with me). every morning i brush my teeth and read this devotional called heart of the matter and i opened it this morning and the first sentence said "you are hard to love too. understanding this is the start of learning to love difficult people...God doesn't love you because you make a wonderful addition to his family, he loves you in spite of what you are like. through his love for you he changes you, to be like himself. he makes you lovely, even though you didn't start out lovely. you need exactly the same things from God, grace mercy, kindness, and welcome, that others need from you." and carried on. and i laughed at God (with God I think) because yup. i am. i am hard to love. but not unloveable. and also, not a terrible wife. just a wife who is in need of, and very thankful for grace upon grace upon grace.

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