My Father-in-Law's Death Exposed My Weaknesses as a Husband

Being mindful of the additional burdens weighing on our partner’s minds and hearts is one of the most effective ways we can show love

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Spending enough time discussing and paying attention to romantic relationships and life partnerships has a similar effect as staring at those Magic Eye dot-filled autostereogram images—once you get your eyes and brain to see the hidden image, it becomes much easier to see and much more obvious moving forward.

And one of those once-hidden-but-now-obvious to me lessons learned from the past decade working in the relationship space is that the “extra” things in life are the events and moments that tend to push relationships to the brink or break them.

Our brains are optimized for routine. So, most of the time, we are generally comfortable with what we consider to be the normal ebb and flow of daily life. And it’s in our comfort and busy daily routines when we sometimes (or often) do things which our relationship partners experience negatively.

The all-the-time stuff. The regular, routine, blind-spot stuff.

Dishes by the sink. Socks on the floor. Pee dribble stains on the toilet rim. Being someplace on time.

These and a thousand other things emerge as little papercut incidents in our relationships. Tiny micro-wounds that seem to subtly chip away at the foundational integrity of our marriage or committed partnership.

But then the extra things happen. On the low end of the extra-things spectrum, they emerge as a reminder for one or both partners how hurt or how unhappy they might feel within the relationship. On the high end—the potentially super-painful, total shit end—everything can end.

The ‘Extra Things’ That Can Derail Your Marriage

The beginning of the school year, a short illness, the holidays—these are the times and types of moments that expose the small things we’ve neglected with our spouses.

•         A short illness.

The flu. Covid. Strep. Something that might result in someone not being able to go to work, care for their children, or perform their typical functions or duties at home in the manner to which everyone is accustomed. They tend to be moments that highlight the degree to which one partner can trust the other to manage duties in their absence.

•        The end or beginning of the school year for families.

Any significant change or transition to the rhythm of life qualifies as an “extra” thing. There is stress when the school year ends, and the kids are now home every day and a new work and/or day-care routine needs to be coordinated and executed. And there is also stress when the new school year begins, and the morning routine changes, and kids need a bunch of things (bookbag, school supplies, new clothes, signed school forms, etc.).

•         Holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries.

There are both visits and visitors. There are things to buy and pack. There are rooms to clean. There are gifts to acquire and plans to make. There is no greater predictor of new relationship coaching clients for me than the big holidays on the calendar each year. Big family days can rip open the tiny micro-wounds that have been subtly chipping away at the foundational integrity of a marriage.

One spouse or partner often feels as if they are abandoned to manage all of the planning and the effort and organization required to execute the plans.

And then there are the higher-end extra things. The bigger stuff that can turn our lives from comfortable and predictable to shit-shows and chaos in as short of a time as a phone call.

My Marriage Failed After These Two Hits to the Chin

Sometime in October 2009, after already experiencing what was supposed to be a temporary 10-percent pay cut, and with a 1-year-old boy at home, my bosses called me into the office and informed me that my newspaper reporting job would be eliminated on January 1, 2010.

We’ll call it a major reduction in financial income.

I may have been oblivious to the so-called “little things” that had been eroding trust and connection and intimacy in my marriage for the first five or so years of it, but this job layoff was the first of the two major blows we suffered.

The second came with an unexpected phone call.

The caller ID indicated it was my wife’s cousin. She had never called me before.

She was calling to tell me that her uncle, my father-in-law, and most importantly, my wife’s dad, had been found dead.

He’d had a heart attack while repairing some swimming pool equipment on his property. His wife, my mother-in-law, and most importantly, my wife’s mom, had found him.

Telling my wife this news was one of the most difficult and uncomfortable and poorly executed moments of my life. I remember sitting quietly for a couple of minutes trying to gather myself.

Everything’s about to change. Everything’s about to change. Everything’s about to change.

Just be there for her.

And I tried. I tried so hard.

While I was a serial invalidator in my failed marriage anytime my wife was thinking or feeling something which didn’t align with my thoughts and feelings, there was no mystery to me surrounding how she must be feeling at the sudden loss of her father, while trying to manage being a mother to a young child, and trying to manage being a daughter to a grieving mother, plus me, plus work.

I might have buckled under the weight of all of that.

She did not.

But I think our marriage did. I can’t pinpoint the precise moment, but I’ve come to believe that it was during the grieving of her father’s passing when she fully discovered just how incapable I was of providing emotional support to her.

And I don’t mean that I lacked the personal skills. I had those. I mean, the trust, connection, intimacy—the total integrity—of our marriage had eroded so much over the years because of all of the so-called small moments of disrespect and thoughtlessness and invalidation, that I had simply become to her someone whose company did not result in comfort. Me offering support didn’t actually result in her experiencing support.

I had long ago demonstrated that I could not be trusted to speak and act in a manner that resulted in safety and trust for her.

…

And this is more or less what happens to most marriages that end (and many that don’t).

The little things peck away at safety and trust each and every day. The dish by the sink. The socks and shoes in the living room. The toilet seat being left up.

All of the things that communicate: They don’t think about me or care about how I experience this stuff at all.

And then the “extra” things emerge. The family member in the hospital. The week-long vacation. The holidays. The job loss. The unexpected death of a friend or family member.

And these extra things magnify and exacerbate the pain and stress people feel in their marriages and partnerships. And sometimes—often, really—when the erosion has gone on long enough, or when the extra thing is painful enough, it all falls down.

…

The work isn’t noticing the big things. Those are easy enough to see. The work is noticing the little things. The stuff we’re not paying any attention to which is resting on the shoulders of the people we love.

When those things are seen, then our people are seen. When people are seen, they no longer feel invisible, or like an afterthought. When people are seen, they feel heard. They feel known.

In our busy, distracted lives, we often are not delivering that experience to those we care about most.

But we could be.

We should be.

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Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.