Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Many people assume that married couples are more alike than different. After all, if you’re going to spend a life time together, isn’t it going to be easier if you agree on most things? Especially the things that are important? I don’t necessarily think that this is always true, but this seems to be society’s view.

That’s why it can be quite a shock when, after you’ve been married for a while, you start to disagree on things that aren’t so minor anymore. Examples are how to raise your children, which religion to practice, and how to spend your money and time. At best, these differences often require careful negotiation and communication. At worst, they can put your marriage at risk.

And these differences can make people question their love for one another. Someone might explain a situation like this one: “I love my husband dearly. I want to make that clear and get it out of the way. But lately, I do not like how he is acting. I knew when I married him that we would have cultural differences. He is from the North. And I am from the South. In my family, we dote on our children. For example, when one child has a birthday, we buy presents for all of the kids, because we don’t want for anyone to be left out. When one member of our family gets too old to care for themselves, someone will invite them to live with the family rather than going into assisted living. When you have a god child, you are expected to love that god child like your own and you are expected to attend all important events in that child’s life. I have god children that live in other states. When I try to be involved in their lives, my husband gets annoyed. He says that we can’t afford to travel every time something happens. And that it is silly to buy every cousin a gift when someone has a birthday. By his tone of voice, he makes it sound as if my family is backward or something. I resent this. And the other day I got so angry about it that I told my husband I did not agree with him. I told him that it is important to me to remain close to my family and I wasn’t going to hold back just because he is choosing to be cheap and stingy. He was furious and said that he doesn’t know how I can possibly love someone as ‘cheap and stingy’ as him. I told him that was ridiculous and his response to me was that I sure don’t act very loving to him.  He said that I act as if I love my distant cousins and god children more than him. None of that is true. I love him. He is the most important person in my life. But must I choose between him and my family? And how do I make him see that just because I don’t agree with him, I still love him?”

What you are going through is not at all uncommon. One of the greatest tricks to married life is negotiating this sort of thing so that no one has hurt feelings or doesn’t feel that they matter. It’s a tough situation because both sets of families are used to being front and center. I dealt with this in my marriage also. I had never spent a single holiday away from my family when I got married. And yet now I had a husband with a family who wanted to see him on holidays and who were just as close as my own family.

In the early years of our marriage, the dual family situation did cause conflict. For a couple of years there, holidays were not particularly happy for us. Until we decided that the only way to make every one somewhat happy was to alternate the get togethers with no questions asked. One year it is his parents and one year it is mine. I will be honest. On the years that we go to his family’s, I miss mine. But they don’t live close enough together to see them both. And when you are married, you have to compromise. I can’t blame my husband for wanting to spend the holidays with his family when I want the very same thing. In the end, we are both in the exact same situation and we are doing the best we can.

You’re in a similar situation where neither person is wrong. You want to express your love for your family and he wants to stick to a budget and establish boundaries within your married life. Both goals are absolutely understandable. No one is the bad guy here. And I think that if you show him that you are willing to compromise, he will drop the whole “you don’t love me if you disagree” argument because he will see that you love him enough to compromise.

So I think it helps to ask yourself what is most important to you. Perhaps you really feel strongly about acknowledging being involved with your god children,n but you would settle for smaller gifts or cards for someone who isn’t having a birthday? Maybe, like me, you alternate family gatherings between his family and yours. Whatever you choose, make sure that you are comfortable with it so there is no question that you’re willing to compromise.

Many families have to navigate this and it isn’t always comfortable because it requires change. People get used to things one way and so there is resistance to change. But no one can blame either of you for wanting to remain involved with your families while creating your own marital traditions. The key is figuring out how to negotiate this with love and respect. You might have this conversation with your husband: “our disagreeing doesn’t mean that we don’t love each other. It just means that we need to sit down and negotiate this. Neither of us is wrong. We are both working with what is normal for us as individuals. Now, we just have to establish what is normal for us a couple. I’m more than willing to do this if you are. I don’t want for this to create conflict in our marriage.”

Then, lay out where you’re willing to negotiate. You might be surprised to find that he will do the same. People often just want to feel as if you are willing to work with them and that you are not just automatically dismissing their point of view.

I don’t necessarily think that these conflicts are what lead to my separation.  But I do have to admit that I was less willing to compromise in other areas of my marriage and that was obviously a mistake.  It put my marriage at serious risk. You can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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