On a Thursday, I was just doing my regular thing and took the kids to McDonald’s for some chicken nuggets and a McFlurry when Jay asked what we were doing. “We are at McD’s.” I texted him. Then 10 minutes later, Jay showed up with a bouquet of beautiful flowers and a card and said, “Happy Anniversary!” and my reply was? “Wait, our anniversary is tomorrow!” to which he said, “Um. no… it’s today.” I looked at the calendar and oh crap! It was today! This is my second time forgetting the day of our anniversary, I’m the worst wife!
But in my defense, I had originally set up a reservation to eat at Spencer’s on our CORRECT anniversary day but Jay had Cub Scouts that day so he asked me if I could move it a day later. So I somehow linked our anniversary date to our anniversary date. So it’s forgivable, right? 😉
Going out to dinner was all we did for our anniversary, please tell me this is normal with couples with young kids, and we are not some boring couple! We have tried various fancy restaurants in the past in Utah and we haven’t really been impressed. I think I blogged about this before, how we are not big into fancy dining because we haven’t really gone to a place where the food is AMAZING and the quality and the quantity is equally good. Jay is a big man and he needs a lot of food! But we decided to try Spencer’s for Steaks and Chops, located inside the Hilton Hotel and it is our favorite fancy restaurant we have ever been to in Utah! By far the best fancy dining we’ve tried. We were so impressed with the food, the portion sizes and the customer service, and the tuna and the lamb was cooked to “perfection” according to Jay, which says a lot coming from someone who is very picky about tuna and lamb, having tasted a lot since those are his favorite foods. And if you check out the restaurant, you MUST try their chocolate cake. Oh my goodness. I don’t like cakes much unless it’s an ice-cream cake but this chocolate cake is the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had! They only use 2 TBSP of flour in each slice, which tells you just how thick and rich it is and it tasted literally like pure melted chocolate. It was divine. I wanted to eat the whole thing by myself but I knew my kids would love it too since they just love a good chocolate, so I only ate a little bit and brought it to them to eat. They were in Heaven. but next time I go, I am getting a whole slice for myself and then another slice for the kids and I ain’t sharing mine!
9 years. That is a long time. It went by so fast. I am not going to say it’s been easy, it’s actually been really hard. Marriage is so hard! So much miscommunication, misunderstanding, hurt feelings and hurt words were said within our 9 years of marriage. The hurt words were said mostly by me, which I deeply regret and it’s something I am working on. Therapy has been really good for us and it’s helped with our communication a lot. We realized so much of our problems are just a misunderstanding. I love Jay and Jay loves me and we are both good, kind people, so we would never intentionally hurt each other. But we can only see through our own experiences, hurt and perception so we each take it the way the other person didn’t intend to. Oh, that reminds me, I had wanted to write a blog post for each therapy we attend and what we learned, I actually have been wanting to make videos of it but don’t have the equipment and it’s overwhelming so I’ve been putting it off. But I should just film with my phone and post. Would you like to see a vlog of me talking about what we learned in therapy? Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in, I think I need the extra motivation and incentive to actually make it happen.
Anyway, one thing we learned in therapy is INTENTION and EFFECT.
Our intention might have been way different than the effect it had on the other person. But it doesn’t mean the intention is not valid, nor the effect! Sometimes I tell Jay, “That really hurt me.” And he might say, “No, it didn’t.” Which would make me more mad and make me feel devalued and unheard, but what we are really saying is, “That really hurt me.” and “Oh, you are? How could that be because that was not my intention…?” So if we ask, “Wait, what you did to me is hurting me a lot, but was that your intention?” before we just assume and be effected by it and take it our own way and get angry, we’d realize that the other person’s intention was never to hurt us. I know Jay would never intentionally try to hurt me because he has a heart of gold and I know he loves me with everything that’s in him. Knowing this has helped us a lot, it’s a baby step though and in the moment of getting our feelings hurt and wanting to get defensive and angry, it’s very, very hard to take a step back in that moment of sudden hurt and anger. But our therapist says the more we do it, the easier it gets and eventually it’ll just come naturally! How awesome would that be? We can’t wait to get there. 🙂
Happy 9th anniversary, Jay. Even though I forgot the day of our anniversary, know that my heart never forgets loving you. PUHAHAHA, that was so cheezy, my insides are churning.
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