Hi everyone! I’m not a wife yet, but an engaged to a lovely man since March and we’ve been seeing each other since 2016, living together since 2018.
He works like crazy and I’m a student w very little income— but we have a really good balance of home duties— he does trash, plumbing, backyard, and front yard, I do everything else 🤣
I really love having the time and flexibility (especially with covid) to be at home and take care of our house, but sometimes I get overwhelmed even though it’s just the two of us. He’ll get home from work and I’ll have been oscillating from homework to laundry to dishes to working out and then BAM it’s time to make dinner and I’TS NOT HAPPENING FAST ENOUGH!
When this happens, (i.e it’s 6pm, he’s gotten home and the table isn’t set) my brain will start panicking and I’ll immediately start blaming him in my mine. Saying things to myself like “dinner would be set if he would just get up off the couch and do _ while I finish this ”
But I realized the other day— HE isn’t the one putting this pressure on me!!! He’s just sitting down after a long day reading or looking at his phone, taking time to decompress from a day that was WAY harder than mine in a lot of ways. I realized this as I was wrapping up dinner— that I was PROJECTING my own expectations of myself onto him and then asking him (in my head) to fix it. The answer wasn’t actually him cutting his moments short, but instead ME being gentler with myself. And then I realized how the negative thoughts all came out of love, how I wanted to have something on the table for him when he got home but (understandably) it was going to be 30mins or so. When I realized this I just took a huge breath of relief— I wasn’t “late” I was doing the best I could to show him my love and feed us both.
I don’t know if this will be helpful to others, but next time you start to feel that bubble of anxiety, maybe stop for a moment and ask yourself where it’s coming from! If the answer is that you WANT to prove the best most loving environment for your family (of whatever size), try being gentle with yourself FIRST, before you assign blame. So much of this comes out of anxiety and expectations we put on ourselves. Dinner will be just as good in 20 more mins, without the resentment <3
