“You’re not gonna like this…”, Tim began bravely, “but I think it might be a good idea.”
We were discussing the likelihood of getting our extension started this side of next year. A touchy topic on its own, and anyone starting out with “You’re not gonna like this” was likely to be shut down, hard.
But bravely, or naively, he continued on, “Jay thinks we should get a shipping container at the top of the road.”
Me: “What, to store all our building materials in?”
Tim: “Well, he thinks we should just have one there all the time for my work stuff, but yeah, it would help with the extension.”
“Ha!” I scoffed, giving his blunder the punishment I felt it deserved. Earlier that day I’d notified him that I’d be needing access to the kids bikes over the holidays (aka, he would need to move the things blocking the entrance to the shed, so that he could open the door to remove the things that were in front of and on top of the bikes, so that I could get at the bikes). “Do you really trust yourself with a shipping container? I mean, seriously, you can’t even stop yourself from piling things in front of shed doors!”
Tim has slowly accumulated four small sheds, all full of materials, in addition to the other unit on our block, none of which can be accessed due to the amount of things inside them as well as piled outside of the doors. I could not even believe his audacity to voice such a suggestion.
He went quiet for a minute, but continued to converse amicably when I changed the subject to avoid feeling guilty for my harsh response.
I knew that my scathing reply had hit hard. In truth, that was my hope, after all. That he would feel the pain (a small amount of the pain that his behaviour causes me on an ongoing basis) and at last understand the seriousness of the problem and STOP.
But I also knew it wouldn’t work that way.
When I ask myself, “What do I have to do to get my partner to stop doing X?” I am asking the wrong question. Simply because when I ask the question, my orientation is to try and force an outcome. And I already know what the result of that is (as I amassed a wealth of experience in it over the first 12 years of our marriage.) The result is….nothing changes.
Truth is, I’ve been waiting for him to suggest a new shed, because it would give me an opportunity to show him how wrong he is*, or more to the point, how right I am about how he needs to get rid of his stuff.
*(Subconsciously Tim believes that in order to receive love, he needs to be competent, and his way of preparing for that in any situation is to collect things he might need to show competency. He’s wrong. In fact, his collecting of stuff causes division in our relationship, because, subconsciously, I believe that in order to receive love I have to be impressive. Having a whole lot of what I call “junk” around the place takes away from this. I’m wrong. In fact, my desire to be impressive causes division in our relationship.)
“I’m sorry” I said after a while. (Which I almost never say anymore, “Thank you for hearing what I had to say” being our preferred response, as it speaks more to what feeds the masculine state.)
But I said it because I knew that I was falling back into my pattern of trying to force an outcome, instead of actually working on the problem. If I’m honest, a lot of the time, what I want more than getting what I want (In this case, a house extension) is to be right about not getting what I want. Because I’m afraid.
I dread the mess and disruption that’s going to come from extending our house. I am resisting it, and this is in the way of us moving our house extension forward. I look around to see how I can avoid my fear, and I see stuff/sheds/sheds full of stuff standing literally in the way of the buildings that need to go up. Instead of working on my dread, I shift to externalise the problem and put the blame on him. And right now, I need Bob the Builder, not Harry the Hoarder, and the more I push him to get rid of his stuff (which he believes he needs in order to succeed in this extension) the more he will resist doing it at all.
So, I asked myself, what would he need to feel like this is something we can achieve? He would need to feel like he could buy/scavenge/keep/store everything he needs for competency. The more freedom I give him around this, the more likely it is that I will get what I want (an extension) and enjoy the process of doing it. Extending the house is going to necessarily involve collecting more things, and adding them to our house. Rather than fighting with reality, I would be much better off to embrace it.
That night we made love and it was amazing and he said to me (in a skill we have been painstakingly cultivating in order to turn our learned negative associations with sex into positive ones). “That was amazing. You can have all of me.”
I thought of the sheds full of stuff, and the more to come.
And I realised that my husband comes with what appears to me as the good and the bad, and I really cannot take one without the other, and I do want all of him.
“I’ll take it”, I said, meaning him and the sheds.
And a few weeks later (I’m slow) I got up the courage to tell him what I’d realised and to let him know he was free to do what he needed to do to make it happen, even if that meant more sheds.
He said, “Thanks. I need to get a skip to get rid of some stuff.”
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