Finding My Home (Part 2)

In Finding My Home (Part 1), I talked about how we had to learn to establish trust and communication before we could commit to homeownership.

Today, I’m going to introduce the first thing we started doing in order to strengthen that trust and communication.

Part 2. Communicating Needs

For us to be able to create the home we wanted to live in, as responsibly as possible, we started telling each other what we as individuals needed from the other person. I know this may not seem especially relevant to owning a home, but it’s more about learning to trust your husband, which is necessary if you’re going to commit to something like a thirty-year mortgage together.

Because we think so differently from one another, we can rarely fathom what the other person needs. In fact, for a long time, we each believed that the other people should understand what we wanted and needed, and that’s just not how things work.

We had to learn how to tell each other what we needed. For example, my dad recently fell down and hurt himself pretty badly. He broke some ribs, bruised up his face really badly, and had a huge bump on his head for a few weeks .

As someone fueled by her emotions, I freaked out a little when it happened and needed someone who would calm me down. I called my husband and told him the situation. He responded by saying that my dad was stubborn and wasn’t ever going to change. He said I needed to stop freaking out because he was obviously okay and that yes, someday he was going to die, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Though this was true, it was the wrong thing to say and I didn’t take it well.

I just wanted someone to tell me that it was going to be okay. That it was okay that my dad is old. That, yes, he fell down, but he would be okay. And that when he dies, someone will be there to comfort me and tell me that everything is going to be okay and that my world wouldn’t end when that time came because someone would be there for me. I wanted comfort. I needed comfort and to feel hope that everything would be okay.

I had to ask for this. My husband is a logistics guy. In his mind, my problem was illogical and something I couldn’t control, so why bother worrying about it. I had to teach him that it didn’t matter that my thoughts and feelings about my dad were illogical. I was terrified and needed comfort. I didn’t need him to understand what I was feeling. I just needed him to comfort me and help me feel better.

I had to learn to ask for that comfort, and that’s okay, because it’s what I need from my partner, even if it’s not instinctive for him to give it. I learned to ask for validation. I learned to tell him what I needed to hear when I felt that his responses to situations didn’t make me feel supported or heard. Does that make me sound really demanding? Does that make me sound selfish? Maybe I am. But, if I need these things, and can’t ask for them from the person from whom I need them the most, then what’s the point of being with someone? If I can’t ask my life partner for things that I need from them, then I don’t feel that our relationship can be successful.

I needed to be able to turn to him and feel comfortable saying, “Will you please just hug me and tell me everything is going to be okay? Even if you think I’m overreacting? Will you please just give me a little comfort? That’s all I need to hear right now. Just that you’ll always be here for me and that everything will be okay. Because I’m scared and need you to do this for me right now.”

And he did, and he does do that for me.

For example, when Kobe Bryant died, we had just found out that I was pregnant (yay) and I was feeling extremely vulnerable. So I went into the kitchen and I looked at him and said, “I’m going to cry and freak out for a second and I just need you to be here with me.”

And he immediately stopped what he was doing and turned to face me, and I immediately burst into tears and said, “I’ve never really raised a child on my own before, and I’m scared, and the idea of being a single parent is terrifying to me, thought there are many strong people out there who do it everyday, I don’t think I can be one of them, and so I need you to be okay, and not get on any helicopters, or do anything foolish, or reckless, or dangerous, because then I’d be alone, and I love you, and can’t imagine my life without you, so please try your best to be safe and okay.”

Remember, I’m very sensitive and was like six-weeks pregnant at the time.

And he looked at me and hugged me and said, “I promise to be safe.” And that’s really all I needed to hear from him, and I started to feel better after that, save for the fact that I was still very sad that we had just lost a national icon, and great man, along with the lives of his daughter and three other families.

In turn, I learned to control my emotions and not respond immediately with tears. I learned to confront situations when I was upset and learned to ask why more often. I also learned to be prepared with a lot of follow up information whenever I had an opinion or suggestion about something. In short, I learned to care about the things that mattered to him, like justification and clarity and being able to articulate “why.”

And you know what? It made me not only a better wife, but a better person. A better colleague, a better friend, a better daughter, a better step-mother. And someday (soon!), I’m sure it will make me a better mother.

He basically taught me that confrontation is okay as long as you do it the right way, and that it’s okay to ask why something is necessary. Learning to ask why didn’t make me bad or disagreeable. In fact, it had the opposite effect. It made me a better worker, forced me to reevaluate decisions and determine “is this really necessary?” It made me a better employee and a better writer, and I’m glad I learned these lessons, because it actually helped me learn to manage my emotions and control them.

We learned to tell each other what we wanted and needed, which helped build trust in our relationship. I mean, who wants a home anyway if you're just going to fill it with disconnection, frustration, and fighting? That trust improved the way we saw each other and allowed us to eventually commit to a thirty-year mortgage together.

In part three of Finding My Home, I'll talk about the next thing we did in order to build trust in our relationship which was to find happiness together by finding happiness in our careers.