Is Your Spouse Stuck with Your Leftovers?

Hi, Mom—

Have you ever felt like this with your husband? Read below.

The silence was so heavy it pressed on my heart like a vise. I would sit at the dinner table and inwardly fume at the imperfections I felt existed in the man at the head of our table. Hearing him rise and leave in the morning turned to relief for me. It gave my mind a break from evaluating the reasons we weren’t seeing eye to eye or why our time together often turned into conflict.

Was I falling out of love with the man I pledged my life to? Was he getting the leftovers after my full motherhood days?

No one told me that I could have such lonely, silent times in a marriage. My loneliness, the disagreements, and even the love that we had shared together, seemed to slowly fade into busy lives caring for children—lives filled with exhaustion, short fuses, and a weariness that would cause us both to ignore the problem or give up altogether. After we said “I do,” life happened, and children took up residence in the cracks of every inch of our life—until there was (almost) nothing left to the man and wife that God joined together.

I had become the mother. He had become the father. And we had lost us.

The day my husband looked me in the eyes and told me he needed me more than I needed him was the day I realized what I had done. I had created an idol out of my motherhood. I’d been giving, giving, giving to my kids, from the moment they were in my womb until the present. I had shifted most of my attention and time to the service and caregiving of my children—to their present, their future, their comfort, and their success.

I was still present as a wife. I still loved my man, and I was committed to making our home the very best I could for him, but not with him. Not with his hand in mine, together. We were working toward the same goal as two separate entities rather than two people who formed one force, one purpose.

After 27 years of marriage, I have discovered that my truest of heroes and the man who fights for my motherhood more than anyone is my husband. He has seen my sacrifice and he has surrendered the most of any of us. When he and I became a true team, the change was evident to our children. It drastically changed our parenting and our model of loving.

Hold on to your love. Find it again if you need to, and learn to love the new you. Your marriage is worth fighting for, and the effort you sow into the strongest cords of love will be the very fiber that holds you together from this day forward. Your children are waiting for you to model love, remember? Don’t wait another minute to find your way back.

Your friend,
September

***

September McCarthy is a writer, speaker, and founder of the ministry Raising Generations Today. She lives in rural Upstate New York with her husband and their large family.