Week 8- Stress

 This week we talked a lot about stress. Stress is something that we all deal with. Some people stress less than others, and some people who have anxiety seem to stress all the time. Since everyone has this emotion, it can have an impact on a marriage. There are a lot of stressful things in marriage such as planning a wedding, finding a place to live, having children, finances, etc. I have anxiety so I tend to be stressed a lot more than my husband does. I find myself freaking out about things even when I don’t know what I am stressed about. It’s important that we know what to do when we find ourselves in stressful situations, and how to comfort your spouse when they are stressed. 

One thing that was really stressful for my husband and I was finding housing in Rexburg. So many people get married at BYU-Idaho, so housing is tricky. We thought we would get ahead of the game and look a whole year in advance. We got on as many waiting lists as we could and waited to hear back for months. We think we might have been too early and the housing companies forgot about us. It was summer time and we called all the places we previously contacted and they said nothing was available. This happened over and over and everything was filling up and we were a nervous wreck. We had just barely gotten married so we never really dealt with something like this before with each other. We were so stressed that I could feel the tension between us and it became a conflict. We were both having strong emotions and it turned into a disagreement. We blamed each other for reasons I don’t even remember why but we were both just really upset and taking it out on each other instead of working together to solve a problem. It took us a minute, but we calmed down and realized we needed to work together instead of turning on each other. This was a big learning experience for the both of us. We ended up calling one more place and they told us we were 60th on the waiting list, but one apartment just became available and they were about to send it to the next person on the waiting list, but since we were already on the phone they would just give it to us. We wanted to jump for joy. We were so happy. 

There was another instance the same summer. Our first home was an RV in the woods on his parents' property. It was great and we love the RV life, but it was hard for me being right next to his parents house. I love his family so much, but it did not really feel like we were living on our own. He always wanted us to go hangout at the house instead of our RV. I don’t blame him since it’s his family and of course we want us to spend time with them, but it was hard for me since we had just gotten married. I wanted us to have our own time together and it just felt like we were living with his family. I was stressed a lot during the summer because I was so worried about what his family was thinking of me, and I was stressed that if I wasn’t spending a lot of time at their house then they would think I was being antisocial. I became upset with my husband and told him I wish we had our own place. It became a whole discussion but the moral of the story was he was stressed too because he was trying to please me and please his family and was trying to make sure we had time to ourselves but also spending time with them. We both had a lot of stress, but we ended up moving to Rexburg for school and things got so much better. I should have just expressed my feelings to him instead of getting upset. 

From these experiences, I learned a lot about stress in marriage. There are going to be lots of stressful things we have to go through, but it will be so much better if we choose to go through it together instead of trying to take over or blame the other person when things go wrong. Stress is a powerful thing, but communication skills are even more powerful.