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Browsing Tag: compromise

Husband,Lessons Learned,Life

Tomato Soup and Tuna Sandwiches

posted on : March 2, 2019 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 2 Comments

When my husband and I were newly married we often had tomato soup and tuna sandwiches for lunch after church on Sundays. The only problem was I liked my tuna with mayonnaise and tomato soup made with milk. My husband liked his tuna with miracle whip and his tomato soup made with water. I couldn’t believe he liked it that way! After a light teasing about who had better taste and who was right, we came up with a solution to the dilemma. Whoever made lunch would get out two pans and divide the soup and put half into each pan, and to one add milk and to the other add water. The same happened with the tuna. It would be divided into two bowls and to one was added mayonnaise and the other miracle whip. Even though this was extra work it went on for several months and solved the problem of accommodating completely opposite tastes. One Sunday after church my husband was making our usual lunch of tuna and soup and I noticed he only had one pan out and one bowl in which to make them, and he was making them the way I liked them. I asked why and he responded it was just too much energy to divided everything, and being the kind person he is, he did it the way I like it. We have done it that way since then, almost 34 years. Yet, if he hadn’t simplified it, I would have kept it up because it’s so easy to get upset at stupid things and to let little things become big things. Little, unimportant things like tomato soup and tuna sandwiches get blown up out of proportion and cause unkind feelings between people. I once read a letter someone submitted to an advice columnist. It seems that the wife liked to keep her peanut butter in the cabinet and her ketchup in the refrigerator and the husband liked to keep his peanut butter in the refrigerator and his ketchup in the cabinet. They had been fighting about the right way to store them and they were asking the columnist to solve the problem. The answer? Keep ketchup and peanut butter in both places, the cabinet and the refrigerator. So simple, and if I had been the one to write the letter asking for help I would have wondered why I hadn’t thought of that obvious solution. Maybe I would also have wondered why I had spent so much energy and unkind thoughts on something so insignificant. Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in who’s right or the emotions of the situation that we don’t get to the problem solving stage. Most problems have solutions and if we take a few minutes to think about it we realize that usually it’s just a matter of taste or even habit, not what’s morally right. Realizing this allows us to think of solutions to problems that confront us and then everyone wins. Relationships take a lot of effort, energy and compromise but when both people are happy, life is good. I have found the when I take the time to focus on solutions to the problems that confront my husband and myself that we’re both happier.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/04/what-are-you-thinking?lang=eng

Husband,Parenting

Differences in Parenting

posted on : January 12, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 2 Comments

My husband and I haven’t always agreed on child rearing methods and practices.  He is more lenient, kinder and if our kids came to him asking for money he had his wallet out asking them how much they wanted before they even finished asking him for it.  He believes, and rightly so, that you treat a person as you want them to become and you just love them.  I believe that’s important too but that child rearing needs rules such as everyone has jobs to do in a family which allows people to feel good about contributing, being a valued and important member of the family and teaches them to work.  If they wanted to have some extra money, I had a lot of extra jobs they could do to earn it themselves. He feels that rules are important too but that you mostly lead by example and kids learn from what they see their parents doing, and of course he’s right again because kids do learn from what you do and say. He is a hard worker, he’s honest and faithful to responsibilities and commitments and so our kids will learn to be also (and they have). I think children and teens earn trust, respect and privileges, especially as they grow older and as our children grew older he thought that they just got more privileges because they were getting older.  I think that by giving kids everything they want they develop a sense of entitlement.  He once told me that he naturally deferred to how he was raised, that his parent treated him with respect and love and he just always wanted to measure up.  I have pointed out that he was always a good kid, that he didn’t lie to his parents and steal from them to feed a growing drug habit or to just buy something they wanted.  That he didn’t sneak out after his parents went to bed to meet up with his friends, that he wasn’t doing illegal things when he was with them and that he was morally clean, and most importantly that he didn’t have mental health issues that clouded his thinking. We basically approached child rearing from very different viewpoints.

If we ever had disagreements it was usually about how to handle a problem with one of our children.  And sometimes I would be really mad at him but through it all, I always tried to remember that he loved our kids just as much as I did and that he wasn’t trying to be difficult or stubborn but that he truly thought that how he wanted to solve the problem was the best way to do it.  Remembering this helped me to focus on the issue, to listen better to what he had to say and to try to understand him and then to compromise.  In compromising we tried to combine some of his ideas and some of mine.  Usually we ended up with a better way to deal with the problem.  Sometimes when there could be no compromise, that it had to be one way or the other we went with the one who felt the strongest about the issue and sometimes we just took turns doing it the way one of us wanted. And I have also tried to focus on that he was an involved parent, that he was there physically and emotionally, he didn’t defer everything to me and take the easier path of noninvolvement.  He loves our kids just as much as I do.