How to Survive a Move With Your Marriage (and Spouse) Intact

Full Disclosure: We are not completely done with the move yet. But we’re to the point where there’s nowhere to sit and nothing in any of the cupboards and even the microwave is gone, so I’m going to take a risk and post this a few days early.

Not too long after we knew we were going to be embarking what would likely be a HIGHLY stressful period, Noah and I started talking about how to keep it from having a negative effect on our marriage.

I don’t remember where I heard it, but I’ve always remembered the sage advice that to keep a relationship healthy in difficult times you must turn TO each other and not AGAINST each other. And that’s what we strive to do.

So, because our marriage is perfect in every way and we follow all these tips all the time, we are going to share all of the wisdom of our many years of nuptial bliss with you all.

Just kidding!

We do invest a lot of time and effort into keeping our relationship strong, but it’s a day by day journey and we are by no means experts. However, these are some of the things that have worked well for us, especially over the past couple months.

1. Point out your weaknesses.

One area that we knew from previous experience that we do not work well together in is doing manual tasks. Noah is totally skilled in all things construction and I’m, well… not. Even though I might have images in my head of us painting and cleaning things together joyfully, the reality is that I fling paint at the wall haphazardly while singing off-key until Noah sees my work and immediately snatches the brush away in frustration so he can redo it.

We talked about this sore spot before launching into all the work on the bus and as a result I think that we were both on our best behavior when there were tasks that we HAD to do together. He had to remember to give me pointers and tips patiently and I had to remember to take them gracefully.

2. Divide and conquer

As with many couples, Noah and I sometimes channel Paula Abdul’s song “Opposites Attract”. As obnoxious as that might be at times, if we step back from our personal preferences, it actually works out really well because we have complimentary strengths.

As noted above, Noah can do pretty much anything with his hands, whereas I am much better with finances, paperwork and PR. I handled all the paperwork involved with changing our address, notifying the utility companies, talking to our new neighbors about the impending Busosaurus moving into the neighborhood, etc.

We assigned and took care of tasks based on each of our strengths and everything got done. Eventually.

3. Assume positive intent
There are those times when we were both (so far beyond) tired and yet still had to be up and about and moving and accomplishing things. That is the DANGER ZONE. Nerves are shot, the snark factor is through the roof and if we’re not careful we can tear each other to pieces simply with off-the-cuff sarcastic remarks that only the person saying them thinks are funny.

The biggest thing that we have learned (are still learning) is to give each other grace and not to take everything as a personal attack. Sometimes words just come out wrong or we are merely arguing about methods when it doesn’t really matter how we get to the end result.

Even just having the wherewithal to step back for a minute and say “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that like that” can go a long way towards keeping feelings from being hurt.

So, that’s how we survived this move: by being frank about our weaknesses, playing to our strengths and cutting WAY back on the sarcasm when we’re most likely to be sensitive (actually, we both agree that sarcasm probably shouldn’t have a place in our marriage anyway. We’re working on it.)

For more marital resources:

-Sheila Gregoire’s blog, To Love Honor and Vacuum, addresses a lot of relationship issues very frankly.

-John Gottman’s book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work was excellent on all fronts.

-Noah and I took a class based on Emerson Eggerich’s book Love and Respect before we were even engaged and continue to use tools that we learned from it.

What about you? Can you relate? What tools and resources do you recommend for keeping your marriage strong stressful times?

Original post http://www.littlebusontheprairie.com/survive-move-marriage-spouse-intact/