This Brutiful Life

The following words were written by the best husband in the world:

The last 5 months have been . . . let’s just say . . . interesting, difficult, and hopeful all wrapped in a nice little messy package. In March of this year, I had reached my breaking point of frustration with one of my wife’s practitioners. I thought this individual was being dismissive of my wife’s medical needs and more committed to a binary mindset. Rather than changing course when initial protocols were not working, this practitioner was committed to finding ways to force his protocol onto my wife. She spent many appointments sharing her symptoms, what was not working (frankly, it was everything), and that she, in fact, felt worse under his care. He was unclear in his communication for why we were doing some things, leaving it up to us to research his recommended next steps on our own. As one can imagine, this left us feeling unseen and frustrated. For me, it dug up old emotions related to all of my wife’s previous practitioners who conducted themselves in similar ways.

Unfortunately, I did not handle this situation as well as I would have hoped to handle it. Rather than identifying my feelings at each step and sharing them with my wife along the way, I unwittingly allowed them to simmer just below the surface. The day I became aware of my simmering feelings, I approached the topic with my wife without the care and consideration it deserved. I reverted to my black and white way of thinking and expressed myself in that manner. I was ready to blow it all up (the plan) and go back to other healing modalities that were unsuccessful for us in the past. In my dysregulated state, I felt like anything had to be better than this joke of a practitioner. Of course, my approach did not achieve much of anything except to cause emotional pain and confusion. My wife was shocked and left speechless by my “burn it all down” mentality since I gave her every indication that we were on the same page throughout this process. Sharing our feelings at each step along the way is something we prioritize in our relationship, and I hadn’t done that, so she felt blindsided and betrayed by my lack of follow through. The problem was that I wasn’t even aware of my feelings until that moment, and therefore, wasn’t able to share them with her at each step along the way. I wasn’t utilizing the tools I had learned to keep myself from suppressing my emotions and erupting in this way out of nowhere. I had become complacent. I let the buildup of frustration dysregulate me, and in turn, I opted to feed the dysregulation with rigidness.

If you know one thing about me, it’s that I am fiercely loyal to my wife and extremely protective of her, so I am starting to understand how this all happens inside of me. I look back at my 2024 blog post about learning to feel more of my feelings. At that time, I didn’t realize that feeling more of my feelings could have the opposite effect if I didn’t continue expanding my window of tolerance. Feeling so many feelings at once can swing the pendulum from avoidance to feelings of overwhelm and powerlessness. If feeling more feelings is not handled with care, those increased feelings can bring back old coping patterns, including black and white thinking, rigid mindsets, and digging one’s heels into the ground to make a point. Not great, right?  

I have said it a million times, and I will say it again: My wife has always made me want to be a better person. This situation is no different. For those of you who know my wife well, she is an amazing teacher through her own pain and grief. She has been patient with me since my little “outburst” in March as I work to get back on track and manage my own nervous system. I have not been the best teammate, though. I have been slower than I prefer in doing the work to better understand what happened in that moment 5 months ago. I have danced around it, but I haven’t been consistent in my commitment to the process. I have just kind of let things come at their own time, all the while, missing how this type of complacency continued to hurt my wife. She had to continue to do the majority of the emotional labor in our relationship until I woke up and truly committed to the work once again. And, she has enough on her plate and shouldn’t have to wait for me to jump back into the mud with her. As difficult as this time in our lives is for me, she is carrying the brunt of it, and she should have a partner who can emotionally tap in at an even greater degree when the shit hits the fan. I never struggle to be supportive in the outward ways, but she deserves someone who can also feel the emotional stress and dive right in.

I have finally started to kick it into gear. I won’t make excuses, because there are none. My wife deserves better, and I’ll always strive to be the very best partner I can be. She deserves a partner in her health journey, and in life, who does not stop striving for growth just because improvements have been made. When things get hard, being complacent is only going to make things worse. Most recently, I have been focusing on becoming even more aware of my emotions and their origins. I believe this is the key for me to be able to process my feelings when my nervous system is dysregulated. I have gone back to journaling, and I have recently added a Feelings Wheel to the inside cover of my journal. The Feelings Wheel helps me determine which feeling is most prominent and then distill it down to the deepest, most accurate feeling. I have always been able to feel and articulate when I am sad, happy, surprised, fearful, angry, or disgusted, but I have not been good at digging beyond those six core feelings. I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but I didn’t really see the reason to distinguish between saying I feel powerless when I can just say I feel sad. I now know why this matters. I am able to identify the feeling, understand where it is coming from, and process it in real time in order to regulate myself.

My wife should not carry the emotional weight for the both of us during the most difficult times of our lives. She needs to have a partner and teammate who can share the load. I am grateful to be back on track and doing the work. I will continue to strive to find consistency in using those tools that help me stay grounded and bring emotional clarity. This is when I’m at my best. And, my wife deserves me at my best during both the best of times and the worst of times. She has had my back in the emotional labor department, and now it is my turn. That is what I require of myself to be a great partner and teammate.