I Know right away some of you have clicked on this to come at me with guns blazing ready to argue with me. To let me know how wrong I am, how young I am so how could I possibly know, and to tell me how I am anti feminist or in an unhealthy marriage.
I am going to tell you that you are wrong.
I am going to stick to the statement I made in this blog post title.
And I am going to ask that you hear me out. Read this until the very end and than tell me you don’t think and feel the same way.
My marriage and why you should even read this
I am going to get very personal in the post. I am going to talk about some deep things that have happened and are happening now in my marriage and how not viewing my marriage as 50/50 and equal is how we are still together today.
After meeting right out of high school at 18, getting engaged after only 6 months and moving i with each other, getting married after 4 years and now being together for 13 years ( married for 8) not having this 50/50 mindset is a key factor to us still being together today.
Unlike so many around us that have already divorced or will be soon. And we have outlived the national average for a marriage of 7-8 years and beat the statistics so far of meeting as teens and being too young to stay together.
It has not been all sunshine and rainbows and we more than understand ups and downs in marriages. How hard they can be to navigate, how you can get disconnected and/or grow apart or start to venture down different paths. We have been thru many things life has thrown our way and things we have done to hurt each other. But, all of that will be for later posts.
My marriage never would have survived being 50/50
What we are going to focus on in this post is this idea I keep seeing blowing up on social media; that marriages and/or partnerships if they are healthy are equal and/or 50/50. I get the appeal of thinking like that and I get the idea of how this is thought to be healthy.
But, man am I so thankful my marriage doesn’t function this way.
My marriage never would have made it this long if we had this mindset.
We would have been doomed from the start and set up for failure and I would not be who I am today as an individual nor would my husband if we had this 50/50 mindset.
With this mindset my husband should have left me a long time ago.
And let me tell you why.
What does this 50/50 mindset actually mean?
Like I touched on before I get the appeal of this mindset. I 10000% understand that equal share of responsibility, support, and dealing with life with your partner sounds like and feels like the most balanced way to go through life with a partner.
It seems fair. Let me tell you why it is not.
That isn’t the definition of fair.
Fair doesn’t mean equal like so many think it does. I myself was included in this until a therapist of mine taught me otherwise.
Fair means that something is impartial, just, and not achieving an advantage over another.
For something to be just is going to be subjective based on the people, places, and events involved and it will change and fluctuate all the time.
This fluctuating and subjectiveness is exactly why our goal and my goal is for things to be fair and not 50/50. It gives room for grace in your marriage/ partnership whereas the 50/50 mindset does not.
50/50 leaves no room for grace and support
Grace is critical to a marriage/ partnership. Both giving/ showing your spouse/partner grace and them being able to reciprocate for you when you need it.
And being in a 50/50 mindset leaves no room for grace to be in it.
50/50 means 50/50 no matter what at all times.
It means each person has their own weight to carry, their equal share of the responsibilities and its up to them to carry it so their spouse/ partner can carry theirs. It’s some peoples definition of teamwork.
With this rigid look on duties, responsibilities, and teamwork how could there be grace and true support when its needed? And without that how would you ever expect a relationship to last?
I can tell you with 100000% certainty my husband should have left me, my marriage should no longer be intact and I myself in all honesty may not have lived this long to give birth to my son, go thru therapy and treatment, hold my husband in grace now, and be writing this blog post now for you to be reading.
So, what is grace in a marriage/partnership?
I keep saying my marriage or any marriage won’t make it without grace in it which is why a 50/50 relationship doesn’t always set you up for success.
So, what is grace in a relationship?
Grace in a relationship allows for support. It allows goodwill to enter the marriage/ partnership.
It allows for one spouse/partner to be able to have bad day. It allows for give and take.
It allows for one partner to say ” my load is too heavy right now, I can’t carry it all. Is it okay if I don’t take this on right now? ” It allows for your partner or you to ask for help from the other and know you can get it.
It allows for you to be able to say you need support, to ask for it, and to receive it.
It allows for a partner to say ” hey I need you to carry 80% today I can only handle 20%.” and for the other partner to be willing and able to do that knowing that when the scales tip the other way the same amount of grace will be given to them.
It allows to truly build a team, a life, and marriage built on support.
How can not being 50/50 in a marriage look like in use and its impact
What does this look like in an actual marriage/ partnership? Let me tell you about its biggest impact on mine. How its kept us together and even me alive.
This mindset in our marriage really got put to the test shortly after I turned 25 so about 6 years ago, shortly after we got married and had been together for about 6 years at that point.
I had a quarter life crisis at the point, I completely broke to the point where I almost was or maybe should have been hospitalized. I couldn’t even leave my home, literally. If I tried I’d curl into a ball on the floor in front of my door shaking and crying in a panic attack.
It was my lowest point in my life.
I’ll have a blog post coming soon to dive really deep into that topic.
If we had the mindset of 50/50 and equal at this time my husband should have left for what happened next and the weight he carried for me and for the length of time he did it.
I lied to him about going to work, used all my time off, fmla etc, and had gotten fired.
I than spent the next three years in such a bad depression and having other mental health illnesses causing more instability, My husband was the only one who could work and we eventually ended up homeless because not even that could bring me back to carrying my own weight.
And thru it all my husband carried almost all my weight we were easily 80/20 or 90/10 no matter what he had going on because I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t carry a larger amount than that.
And he did so for over 3 years! Without resentment, without blame, and without pressure to push me back to carrying a larger amount of the weight. And doing so allowed me to have time for so much reflection, growth and therapy and I’m in a place we both never could have dreamed to be in.
That grace and willingness was possible because we both knew than and know now that every single day we take a look at it and see how much of the total weight we each are able to carry and in what areas.
It made it possible for me to hold him in the same space now as he goes through what I did and now it’s his turn to heal and grow while I carry most of the weight and hold him in grace and support.
Some days we are 60/40, some days 50/50, some days 80/20, and others 95/5.
Some days my husband carries more weight and others I do.
In some areas he takes on more and in others I do.
We both know that we are there to carry whatever the other needs us to in order for us to be a team truly, to grow together, and support each other when we need it, how we need it, for how long we need it for.
We both know we have a true partnership, and team and know how to truly give and take in a relationship, to be fair, and supportive of one another.
Graduated DBT
