I am an internal processor. I think three million thoughts until I say one of them out loud. I spend the majority of my life in my head. By the time I give voice to feelings or ideas, I have considered that thing from every angle one hundred times. This is slow and takes time, which, as it turns out, can be “frustrating” for a verbal processor who is completely on hold until I join back in. I think my way to conclusions, so by the time I get there, they are pretty cemented. Thus when I hear an idea halfway through that doesn’t match the ending, it feels like a lie (but you said . . . ?). In contrast, my sermon notes are practically scripted, endless pages of ordered points, because my ideas find full formation internally through writing. I don’t even leave 2 percent of a talk up to “verbal winging,” because that is never how I make any sense. (Even typing that sent panic up my spine.)
Consequently, intense communication fries a circuit for me. It is all too immediate, too unconsidered, too many careless words flying around. I am like one of those fainting goats; I just freeze and keel over. Because I deal with life in my head, I am not comfortable navigating assertiveness, word overload, and half-formed ideas alongside conflict resolution. I feel manhandled, confused, or unheard. On the other side, Brandon feels ignored, disrespected, or punished.
Just understanding our opposite processes has been life changing. Without any self-awareness, all that’s left is frustration, but acknowledging our basic operating systems removes the ancillary malice once assumed in conflict: bullying and insensitivity or withholding and disregard. Neither of us wants to harm. Ever. We aren’t being difficult or obstinate. We don’t want to punish each other. There is nothing wrong with either of us. This isn’t some weird game with a winner and loser. We have no axe to grind in conflict.
We just work through ideas and feelings differently.
Worth noting, we virtually always come to the same conclusion, eventually. We are incredibly compatible across almost every subject and value. We both want intimacy and mutual respect and emotional safety in our marriage. We like the same things. We have the same kind of fun. We love the same friends. We pick out the same couch simultaneously. At the end of the day, we love each other equally and want the other to be happy and secure in this marriage.
So we work. Brandon, God love him, will sit quietly next to me and talk to me like a spooked cat: May I have fifteen minutes to talk calmly about this thing? He even loosens his physical posture as if to say: Look how easy breezy I am about this, everyone just be cool. Or he will give me notice, building in the time I seem to require: Can we talk about this thing after the kids go to bed? Excellent. This makes my brain so happy, and it will spend the next six hours getting ready.
In the midst of it all, my brain tries to tell my adrenaline: No one ever died from a heated discussion. Get a grip, Hatmaker. I force myself to stay in, to stay engaged, even to say words out of my mouth (!). I remember that what I interpret as aggression is simply a man who loves me, trying to fix something that is off. That’s all it is. He just has a lot of feels and words about it, and I can handle that because I am a grown-up. I can meet him somewhere in the middle. It communicates love to him when I engage, telling him I care enough to see this thing through.
We have learned to accept each other’s limits, especially when we raise the red flag signaling an impending meltdown. We can respect each other’s thresholds and adjust accordingly now. After twenty-three years, we’ve discovered deference and preference—deferring to the other’s process and preferring each other’s needs. This comes naturally around 38 percent of the time, so that seems like a miracle. It’s like Mother Teresa level; although, come to think of it, Mama T was never married; she was probably like, A husband? Girl, please. I have WORK TO DO. Leave your feeling words at the door and hold this baby and kindly get out of my face.
As it turns out, 38 percent (with a 62 percent Mama tried rate) means we are still pretty into each other. We French kiss and stuff. Brandon is still my favorite person, and we’ve built a beautiful shared life. Sisters, listen, we are still scaling the mountain with work and compromise, but at this point in the hike, I’m here to tell you the view is worth the climb. The fragile tipping points that once set us off are mostly smoothed out because, Lord have grace, we cannot feel strongly about everything. We’ve achieved a midlevel chill rate and are no longer jittery, high-maintenance young adults circling the drain about nonsense. Our base camp is more like: I like you, I like this, I like us, sometimes not, but mostly yes.
Around this stage of marriage, we’ve noticed a temptation to believe that another person, someone other than your spouse, would make life so much easier, so much better, so much less annoying and difficult, but that whole suggestion is based on faulty logic. There is a fake idea swirling around out there that says if marriage is hard, we’re doing it wrong. If our person gets on our nerves or still does that one frustrating thing after two decades, moving on to a different man would fix everything that is difficult.
It’s nonsense. Really. Rather than fantasizing about greener grass on some other side, water your own grass first, because there is no marriage, no union that doesn’t have its share of aggravations and struggles. None, I promise. There is no man or woman immune to selfishness, mediocrity, laziness, or failure. Sure, Other Guy can seem quite shiny in that other yard (as could you at first), but a permanent relocation discloses the truth: grass is pretty much grass. Add in bills, parenting, and the lame responsibilities of real adulthood, and that shine wears off lightning fast. That grass is fake, untrampled by the wear and tear of an actual shared life. It is a lovely illusion that looks beautiful from afar but becomes sharp and artificial to the touch, if not initially, eventually. The ensuing wreckage will outpace the fantasy.
Between two people willing to work—and mutuality desperately matters; one soldier cannot win a marriage back alone—to fight for connectedness, to be honest and humble and say hard things and hear hard things, most marriages can be restored from even the worst breach. If you are lonely in your own marriage today, you are not alone, first off. Scratch under the surface of most unions, and you’ll find a familiar song of struggle, one most of us have sung or are singing. It is no simple thing to commit to one person for your whole life and make it work. Mother Teresa was on to something. But I’ve seen God restore marriages that even I, the eternal optimist, declared doomed, beyond repair, in the grave. All I’m saying is that healing is possible between two truth-telling, committed people willing to hope for resurrection.