Teamwork. Or how I learned to work with my wife instead of against her.

Here in the 'burbs on the west coast we had a bit of a blow-up a couple of weeks ago.  Some financial stuff that went unchecked, some long-term burying-of-head-in-sand, which culminated in hysterical sobbing and angry stares and some very tense moments were I tried not to break things (I SUCCEEDED!).  I never pretend marriage isn't messy, certainly not MY marriage.  You are innately attracted to the people who will push YOUR issues to the forefront over and over and over again until you actually deal with whatever you're supposed to be working on.

All that counselling paid off when I didn't walk out of the apartment and immediately file for divorce when this shit went down.  It is Ugly.

I take responsibility for the part that I played (knowingly remaining ignorant of the situation) and J took responsibility for her part (refusing to deal with the situation in the first place to prevent the Ugly), and we worked together and solved it.

And the funny thing is, I've already mostly forgotten about it already, it is not what immediately comes to mind when someone asks "so how was your vacation?" (this occurred during my 3 week vacation that I had from work).  We processed it (with much teeth gnashing and tears), we addressed the problem (figured out what kind of financial mess it was and how bad it really was), and then found solutions to that mess.  We worked together.  It's solved.

It was HARD FUCKING WORK to do this, to accomplish this.  It was hard not to want to shake my wife and yell at her and say "WHAT THE HELL'S WRONG WITH YOU?!" and it would have been much easier if I had flat out refused to take responsibility for my part in this.

It was kinda neat to see how this all panned out as well, since being unable to deal with money was one of the reasons we were pushed into seeing our counsellor in the first place, which then was pushed to the back burner until we had dealt with some other underlying things first, and when we were ready and had the ability to deal with it, it reared it's ugly head.  We saw, we dealt, we conquered.  I feel like we can do ANYTHING now!!  It was a tremendous boost in confidence to see how well we work together and how well we play off each other.

J started back to school this week.  I spent the previous week cooking like a madwoman making freezer meals so we don't starve when neither of us have time or energy to make dinner.  We're solid until November, I swear.  Last week I could not get another THING into the freezer.  It was kind of awesome.

I'm trying to figure out what I want this blog to become, mostly because it was meant to document and record our experiences in trying to become parents, but maybe I'll just focus on US for the moment, documenting our emotional journey towards whole, authentic personhood (good grief that sounds incredibly silly), which will morph into parenthood.