When you go out with your spouse on a trip do you share the driving or does one person drive all the time? Sometimes what happens in a car can reflect what is happening in a marriage.
Mick and I share the driving when we go on a trip – if he starts, then I will drive later and finish or vice versa. The idea being if one starts to get tired then the other takes over. Similarly if one of us isn’t feeling well, the other person would do more than their share of the driving. I know other marriages where the couple shares the driving when they go out together.
I also know of couples where the man refuses to hand over the wheel, ever. Interestingly,the thing I’ve noticed in couples where this happens is that the marriages are also one-sided. The man in each case is a domineering person who treats his wife as though she is there for his convenience. He expects his wife to run around after him and do everything for him. Is it co-incidence? I don’t think so.
Yesterday in the hairdressers I heard a woman say she is never going on holidays with her husband again. Why? Because he insisted on driving all the time. ‘And he’s such a bad driver,’ she said. ‘He’s always gone past the turn before he realizes he should have turned. He never uses an indicator.’ She went on and on.
It sounds to me like this marriage has gone past the turn too. The indicators are there that this man does not trust his wife to drive the car. He thinks she can’t do it as well as he can. Or it could just be he likes to be in control.
I understand that. I never worried about driving with anyone no matter how fast they were going, or how they drove, until I got my license. Then I started to notice how other people drove. Suddenly I didn’t feel as safe with some drivers. That doesn’t mean I insisted on taking the wheel, even though I might have felt like it. In the end it comes down to how much you trust the other person to know what they’re doing and be able to do it..
A lot of issues in marriage come about because one person wants to be in control. But marriage shouldn’t be about control. It should be partnership. It should be about give and take and about caring for the other person. It should be about trusting the other person and them being able to trust you to work as a team.
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