Recently The Engineer took the morning off work, and we went to lunch as a family before he headed into the office. Nothing fancy, just Del Taco. What a nice way to spend the middle of the day, right?
Except it wasn't.
As we sat there, he brought up something that bugged me. It doesn't really matter what it was; it wasn't that big of a deal. But it pressed one of "my buttons," and I really got on his case about it.
I explained why I disagreed with him. Why he should have handled things differently. I'm sure my blood pressure and heart rate went up. And I probably didn't fully appreciate my gourmet taco meal.
After that lunch, it hit me.
I don't want to nag my husband.
Not Nagging my husband is bad.
Not I'm a horrible wife when I nag.
But I don't want to nag my husband.
See, I'd put a big black cloud over a perfectly nice family lunch date, by making an issue out of something that didn't really matter much at all in the long run. And I realized, I don't really like how that makes me feel, and how it makes my husband feel, and what it does in our marriage.
So I decided I wanted to mostly stop nagging. I say "mostly" because if we stay healthy, we have several more decades of marriage in front of us, and there's no way I'm making a promise to myself to never nag again. I'd break that promise.
But I just decided I really didn't want to do it anymore. Nagging doesn't work.
So I've mostly stopped nagging. Not out of some sense of guilt or obligation, but because I don't want to do it anymore.
And it really does feel so good. I've let go of the responsibility of changing things in him that bug me, a responsibility that shouldn't have been mine in the first place. I have plenty of other jobs; it's really nice that I've got that whole nagging thing off my to-do list.
And best of all, ever since then, Del Taco has been a lot more fun.
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