Is there a conversation you wish you had had with your spouse? It might be a conversation you wish you’d had with your spouse, or your parents, or another family member. The book I’ve been reading suggested, ‘write down something you wish you’d said with someone close to you but never did.’
In the book the main character, Sophie, looks back at all the ‘honest conversations’ she didn’t have with her ex. Conversations that she believed later might have averted the ‘derailment of their marriage.’ She thought about all the conversations she didn’t have with her parents and with her own children. I suspect there are a lot of us who have things like that festering away inside. Conversations we haven’t had and the things we haven’t said to our spouse and to others we love.
Too often we bottle things up and do not let them see the light of day. One of the things I like is that I can talk to Mick about anything. He may not always understand or react the same way to something as I do but he listens. Like the other day when after hearing a story about a woman who’d been in a nursing home for twenty years, I admitted that at night I often think and worry about getting old and what the future holds. Mick doesn’t. His rationale is ‘why worry about things you can’t do anything about.’ But I’m not wired the same way. I’m a natural born worrier.
While Mick may not understand why I worry about things I can’t do anything about, he still listens and doesn’t belittle me for feeling that way.
Admittedly I’m not as bad as another woman I know who was told once, ‘ if you haven’t got something to worry about, you can find it. You’d worry about not having anything to worry about.’
Does your spouse know the things that worry or concern you – the things that keep you awake sometimes at night or fill you with fear? Do you know the things that concern your spouse and make them feel worried or fearful?
How long is it since you sat down and had a conversation with your spouse about any of these things or about anything else that is important to you? How long since you had a conversation at all – about books, politics, art, religion, work, your hopes, their dreams, in fact anything except the children? If you can’t remember the last time you had such a conversation, its time to do something about it.
Take a piece of paper and write out those conversations you wish you’d had with your spouse. Then make time to talk to each other. What’s to stop you doing it this week?
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