When Life Imitates Blog

This weekend, Austin & I went to a marriage retreat on Saturday on marital communications. We went to get some knowledge and tips on how to improve our communication, not particularly because we are having trouble but more to really focus on learning some tips for the future and keeping things going great. It was a really interesting and enlightening experience, and I'm glad that we went.

It was funny to me because about 30 minutes or so into the retreat, life imitated the discussion I had (and Sara had) on our blogs on Friday. There was a couple sitting at our table who had been married I think around 7 or 8 years and had two small children. We were supposed to go around the table and say to our husband/wife the time that we had felt closest to each other and then the other person was to make use of the speaker/listener technique they were showing us and paraphrase to show understanding. When we got to this particular couple, she shared a story of when he had taken her to a bed & breakfast and shopping for her birthday, and she felt closest because she knew he was sacrificing a lot at that moment because he was doing it all for her and it was something he would not really want to do normally. When it was his turn, he honestly seemed to be struggling for a time that he could remember being closest to her and instead opted for telling her something completely different. He told her that he was looking forward to the day when he would be financially able to provide for their family without having to put everything into work and when he would be able to spend more time with her and her children. For me, it was one of those aha moments when I was like, right here is an example of exactly what I was talking about. It made me sad to think that this guy thought that the best thing for his family was to go head into work and as a result, he was really unaware of his family, knew little about his children and had grown apart from his wife. If only he could realize that there could be a balance in the work/family thing and that it was more important to appreciate the time with his wife and children before it was all gone and his kids were grown up and moved on. I hope that they are able to work things out, and I hope that he realizes that he can still financially provide for his family without making it the be-all end-all of his existence. He would probably be happier, and I'm sure his family would be as well. I take this as a learning tool of what not to do as we get older and more involved in work and family and everything else.

On a lighter note, the rest of our weekend went very well. The retreat was fun, we went to see Polar Express 3-D which was AMAZING. I highly recommend going to see this movie especially in 3-D at the IMAX because it is so cool. I've always loved that story since I was a child, and it was great to see it come to life on the screen. We had an excellent dinner at Gloria's in Addison on Saturday night, and yesterday we spent running errands and packing up for our big move. One week from Friday and we'll be in our nice big new apartment - can't wait! :) And we have all our fun new stuff from the wedding to get to use and we purchased a Tivo yesterday since we won't have a cable box any more at our new place (it's included in the rent!) so that's exciting. So much to look forward to - just need to make it through this week with my dance rehearsals and performances and then keep on packing! :-)