At lunch on Sunday, I was compelled to apologize for careless words I had spoken to my husband last week in the throws of a rare meltdown. Generally speaking I am calm, rational, and possess the ability to filter my emotions and thoughts. The filter looks like this:
"What do I know to be true about this situation?" "What do I know to be true about Andy?" "What do I know to be true about me?" "What external/environmental/situational factors are affecting my emotions right now?" "How do I want to respond?" "How can I respond that is more loving?" "How can I concisely communicate all of this to Andy?"However, lack of sleep and academic strain wore down this filter and, thus, my rationale. I found myself downward-spiraling too far into my head (ladies, I'm sure you'll understand what I mean) and I spoke from that place.
Not good.
Being the "slow processor" that I am, it took me several days to filter through what happened, process the full implications, decipher what I should take away from it, and then determine how to communicate all of that to Andy in a concise manner.
(Yes, it took that long.)
Thankfully, I married a rational man who (though passionate) can be calm in the face of adversity and respond calmly. It was absolutely necessary for me to apologize and acknowledge that I had wronged him both in my words and my actions. But I was not prepared for his response.
In his calm, he acknowledged and affirmed my apology. He explained his view that men are structurally designed by God to be strong and endure physical strain. They are built to compartmentalize and are capable of setting their emotions aside in a moment in order to deal with a given situation.
He then took it a step further and explained that he sees situations such as these much like the scene when Wolverine kills Jean (Phoenix) in the movie X-Men: The Last Stand. At that moment, she was the embodiment of raw emotion and power, and Wolverine was calm and rational. He knew his role and held her in that moment. He did what had to be done while she was in that moment.
Now, please don't hear what Andy was not saying! By no means was he saying that a husband should kill his wife when she is in the midst of a meltdown! (No matter how much he may want to!)
Andy's point, rather, was that a man knows there are going to be difficult moments and man is built to withstand heavy loads. When his wife is feeling a heavy burden and laying that on him, a man will stand there and accept it, just as a lighthouse withstands the waves from a storm. In those moments, she needs the freedom to release that pressure and he allows her that freedom becasue he is built to take that. In that moment he sets his desires aside to allow her that moment of release. He doesn't consider an out. He doesn't cut his losses because it's too hard and/or she's too "high maintenance." He stands his ground (just as Wolverine did) and rides it out with her. He makes the hard decision to absorb and not reflect the emotion back on her as opposed to another X-men moment in X-Men: First Class when Shaw demonstrates his ability to absorb energy and reflect it back on his opponents.
In the aftermath of the moment, he can then be the strength to revisit the driving force behind her needs and address the matter.
I am blessed with such a man. Our short courtship gave us little time to learn things about each other before marriage, but he has committed to love me NO MATTER WHAT.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the stereotype about how irrational women are and than our husbands are dullards that we must "mother" through our marriages.
It is a strong desire of mine that I not embody that stereotype. Let's face it though, I am a woman. I am an emotional creature. My belief is that, just as men are built to carry physical burdens, women are built to carry emotional burdens. Our capacity for love, hate, fear, trust, compassion, intolerance, etc. is big and inconceivable for most men. (Hermione describes this quite accurately!)
Andy always says that it's up to me to either change the things I don't like about myself or to accept them. I wholeheartedly agree! I must accept that I am an emotional creature and that I was made to feel the gamut of emotions on a daily (if not hourly) basis. However, I must also choose to recognize when my emotions begin to take over and communicate this with him before they escalate out of control and I turn into Phoenix.
When that does happen (notice, I said when, because I'm human), Andy must also choose to bear those burdens in those moments and absorb the blow or reflect the damage back at me.
The key word in all of this is "choice."
