There I was walking the pooch yesterday afternoon and minding my own business when I was hijacked. Sometimes, not all the time, just sometimes, I like to put my ear buds in and blast music while I work through a tricky scene, and yesterday? It was one of those times.
Unfortunately, a neighbor decided she needed to have a burning question answered. So there I was, yanking out my buds, corralling the pooch and trying to be polite when all I could think of was where my mind had just been. (Think snowed-in manor house with a raging fire, one huge and gorgeous hero and a petrified heroine looking for a weapon, and you’d have the visual) Anyway, to say that I was having a hard time grasping what she’d just asked me would have been understating the matter completely. Here’s the conversation…
Neighbor. “Don’t you guys every fight?”
I look down at the dog, who is pretty much cool with hanging out with me no matter where we are, and frown. Of course I don’t fight with the pooch as a rule. So I look up and shake my head. “With the dog? Not really.”
“With your husband.”
Hm. Kind of a personal question, I was thinking, but then I also thought she wouldn’t have chased me down and asked it if she wasn’t desperate. As an aside, this neighbor and I are just casual acquaintances, so I was a little caught off-guard. I was also enlightened to the fact that she’d never read this blog because if she had, she’d know that Honey and I argue all the time.


“Oh, Yeah. Absolutely.”
“But you’re always out walking together and I never see you yelling.”
Hm, again. Good to know we’re being spied on. But now I’m intrigued. Call me nuts, but at this point I’m thinking this might make a good blog post. >:) “I try to do all my yelling behind closed doors.” A total fabrication. Trust me, on this. If I felt like yelling at Honey in the middle of an airport (I SO did that once) I would.
“But you walk every day with him. I see you smiling and laughing.”
Okay people, the pooch is getting restless. The sweat is trickling down my neck in ninety degree heat and to my mind? This conversation is not as blog-worthy as I had hoped. Time to get to the point and get the hell out of there. “Is there something I can do for you?”
*I shall pause here to impart some words of wisdom. Never. Did I say never? I meant NEVER ask that question when you’re being hijacked by a woman who thinks you don’t fight with your husband.*
“I want to know how you get him to go for walks with you. ****** (Name redacted for privacy and possible lawsuit complications) won’t walk with me. He’s even given up on date night and I don’t know what to do.”
The dog is panting in the heat. I’m melting and all I can think is, who stuck the sign on my back that reads “Marriage counselor open for business”? “I’m sorry to hear that. Have you thought about talking to someone (I didn’t add other than me, but I wanted to really bad) about this?”
“Yes I did. That’s why I’m asking.”
She smiled and I felt bad. I also mentally snapped my fingers because I should have said, “other than me”, another bit of wisdom you may take from me people. You’re welcome.
So here’s the deal. I spent the next twenty listening to her complaints and concerns. All generic, if you ask me, as we ALL have stresses, issues and imperfections in our relationships. This is when I discovered the obvious difference between me and her. I accept imperfections in my relationship. In fact I expect them. That’s the challenge. It’s not trying to attain perfection (because, you gotta know that’s never going to happen) it’s about learning how to roll with your partner’s flaws that really requires elbow grease in a marriage or relationship.
So when I suggested she may want to examine her partner’s weaknesses instead of resenting his strengths, she was a little taken aback. “I don’t resent him.”
My answer to that? “You just spent twenty minutes complaining to me about how he’s capable of doing certain things, but he just won’t. If I were you, I’d be looking at this from the flipside. Why isn’t he doing the things he’s capable of?”
 I’m not sure she understood what I was trying to convey, but there is logic here. I’ve always maintained that we learn more from studying our weakness, than from concentrating on our strengths. So, if you believe that, then in a way, this makes our weakness stronger, doesn’t it? But to get back to her dilemma. To my way of thinking she’s spending far too much time focusing in on his “letting her down” by not utilizing his known strengths to the best of his advantage just to please her, instead of exploring why he’s “letting himself down” by caving into his weaknesses and not being the man he’s capable of being. She’ll never have a man at his full potential if she doesn’t help him understand that he has to please himself before he can please anyone else. Her included.
Yeah, I know. At the end of that conversation she was probably going… *insert the mighty globe here*

And what was I thinking? *beams* My work there was done because she’ll never hijack me again. She did get me thinking. Not about what I should have been, but an interesting topic nonetheless.
Riley