Losing the love connection
Yesterday, I was feeling a bit off kilter. We woke up, thrown from sleep into parenting life rather abruptly. Parents out there will know the feeling, when you’re lying in bed, listening to the dulcet tones of scrapping children and wondering how close they are to clawing each others eyes out. Eventually my husband decided that intervention was decidedly necessary and got out of bed to referee and break up the brawl.
I chose a slightly less noisy path and started getting stuck into the household chores to get the day underway. Hubby and I had full days ahead, and fell into routine without needing to communicate. I took Otis (beloved border collie) to the vet and then went on to visit my parents, while Nathan was off to get the kids to sports and go buy some household stuff we needed (he’s aiming to get our lawn better than a bowling green so there’s quite the chemistry happening).
What should have started as a lazy, savour the moment kind of morning had turned into a rushed, task focussed, sprint to sundown.
I felt disconnected and immediately my mind started telling me, “You know he doesn’t really love you”.
We met up at home halfway through our personalised to-do lists but the conversation was mainly focussed on grass (the lawn, not the drug) and I could see that he was engrossed on getting his list completed before he had to leave again to pick up the kids. My helpful mind chimed in her two cents with “He doesn’t think you’re a very good step mum, you haven’t bothered to take them to sport practise EVER!”
It was dinner time when we all descended on the house again, so husband and I fell into our traditional roles of dinner prep. The communication between us continued with mission critical comments like “should I cook all these sausages?” and “do you want potato chips?” (homemade, of course!)
Elbow deep in salad preparation, my mind jumped in with more observations, such as “you know, he doesn’t think you do as much stuff around the house as he does”.
It wasn’t until much later in the evening following more brooding brought on by more mind chatter, that I realised exactly what had happened throughout most of the day. Having failed to connect with each other and check in with how the other person was doing, my husband and I ended up being yanked around by the busyness that is family life.
I say yanked because that’s what it felt like. Nothing flowed. Everything was awkward. I wondered if he still loved me and he was wondering why I was looking a bit unsettled and if he’d done something wrong. All of this resulted in a day full of sideways glances and stilted conversations.
Both of us (read: mainly me) had once again been duped by our mind. The thoughts that were popping in out of nowhere were not only unhelpful, they were so ridiculously untrue!
You see, our mind is there to think. That’s its sole function. And boy, does it do a good job! The only fly in the ointment is that the thoughts are often false and unhelpful. And (even more annoying) they just don’t stop.
I used to think it was just me that had this crazy overloaded mind……it’s not. It happens to everyone. Except maybe the Dalai Lama and some other ridiculously cool zen people.
Becoming aware of the mind chatter and weighing up what parts are worth listening to can help avoid a lot of inner turmoil, especially the stuff that hits us in every day life. Otherwise, the small stuff can take the gloss off a perfectly good Saturday.
