The Love Dare - Day 6

I wasn't quite sure what this day meant exactly:

6 - Patience

Choose today to react to tough circumstances in your marriage in loving ways instead of with irritation. Begin by making a list below of areas where you need to add margin to your schedule. Then list any wrong motivations that you need to release from your life.

Sometimes, especially when things are hectic with the kids, I lose my cool. Or I think about having some free time to myself. But I don't think that's what I really want. I want to be with my children and with my husband, because I love them, and who cares about the other stuff? It's sort of like the laundry that's sitting on our couch, waiting to be folded and put away...yes, it needs to be done, but it's more important to have a fun day with the kids. Laundry can wait.

The Love Dare - Days 4 & 5

Day 4 of the dare I unfortunately have to pass on; I can't really contact Danny at work unless it's an emergency. But here it is in case you were wondering:

4 - Thoughtfulness

Contact your spouse sometime during the business of the day. Have no agenda other than asking how he or she is doing and if there is anything you could do for them.

So today, instead, I went on to day 5:

5 - Politeness

Ask your spouse to tell you three things that cause him or her to be uncomfortable or irritated with you. You must do so without attacking them or justifying your behavior. This is from their perspective only.

I asked Danny this; I think he thought there was some kind of catch. He wanted to know how I arrived at the number 3 ("why not 5 or 6?"). He also wanted me to tell him 3 things about him. Because I am supposed to be doing this dare in secret, I had to try to come up with a reason why I was asking ("just because"), and also had to get out of telling him 3 things about him, because I felt like that wouldn't be fair.

So, his 3 things were, in order: 1) When I am vague about things with him 2) When I don't tell him everything that is going on with me or with the kids 3) That I have an account on meetup.com.

The whole purpose of the exercise was not to get defensive, but just to listen to what he said. I am not going to defend myself on here, as I don't think that would be fair to what I was supposed to be doing either. I will say, though, that I got a meetup.com account about a month ago, in order to meet other moms and their kids. I have not met anyone, nor gone to any meet-ups. Because it was one of the 3 things he mentioned, as of 5 minutes ago, I logged on and deleted my account. I feel better having done this, because if it really did bother him that much, it wasn't worth it to me.

Outcome: I'm glad he was honest with me, and I didn't end up having to give up the dare. :-) It is sort of strange, but I felt proud of our relationship that the 3 things that bothered him about me were such small things (I don't mean I am belittling how he felt; I actually mean that these are easy things to fix; for example, he didn't say, "We fight too much," or "We don't spend any time together." :-)

The Love Dare - Day 3

Okay, I will be honest: I had to skip yesterday. I didn't start off the day being very nice. We went to the beach, and I was unnecessarily grouchy and negative. I knew right away my Day 3 wasn't going to work, so I decided to put it off for a day.

3 - Selflessness

Whatever you put your time, energy, and money into will become more important to you. It’s hard to care for something you are not investing in. Along with restraining from negative comments, buy your spouse something that says, “I was thinking of you today.”

Today, the kids and I spent the day at my grandparents' house. I bought a half-baked Lou Malnati's pizza (I don't know if I could live anywhere else besides Chicago, for all the great pizza) while we were out there, to surprise Danny with when we got home. He was very hungry, and very surprised. :-) We also got to watch the newest episode of 'True Blood' after the kids were in bed.

Outcome: Pizza was a success!