Finding Joy and Building Stronger Connections
Do you feel like there is a monster who’s sucking the joy right out of you? Instead of allowing this guest to ruin your life take some beautiful steps to find your joy.
When Joy Feels Out of Reach
Several years into my marriage I felt this way. I was resentful toward Mike for the choices I had made. I knew that I would be staying in western Kansas when I married him. I made the choice anyway. Now I was unhappy about it.
This makes for a very stressful relationship. I was never happy. I remember one time after a horse show located east of us. I was with a friend from Colorado and wanted to bypass Oakley to continue the journey with her.
One of the things that brought a lot of tension to our marriage was our personality differences.
Specifically, the way we treated time. Mike would say he was going somewhere and would return in a few hours. To me, a few hours was three. To him, it could be the rest of the day.
By the time he got home, I’d be raging. I’d yell at him for being gone so long. Neither one of us knew how to resolve this problem and it continued.
One time when we lived at my grandparent’s farm about 45 miles from Oakley he’d been to a dart tournament in Oakley. He didn’t come home. Our first son was just a baby, and I feared the worst.
The next morning, I called my dad. He went to the bar where the dart tournament had been to see if his pickup was still there. I think he called or went to the police station to see if there had been any accidents although he was the doctor and would have known if someone had been brought to the hospital there. Now he was livid. How dare his only daughter be treated this way!
Then Mike drove in. He said that he’d gotten stuck in the mud and had walked to a buddy’s house that was about halfway between Oakley and the farm. I asked why he didn’t call. He did have access to a landline at his friend’s. He didn’t want to disturb me. It probably disturbed me more that I didn’t know if he was in a ditch somewhere, dead or hurt.
The Turning Point: Finding Clarity Through Understanding
There was a point in about 2010 when I heard a woman talking about having what looked on the outside as the perfect life. She gave it all up for the life that was perfect for her. It occurred that Mike was the perfect mate for me. Had I followed the path I thought I wanted after high school I probably wouldn’t have horses. Marrying Mike and staying in western Kansas allowed me to follow my passion with horses.
Then when I studied Gestalt and typology, I saw the differences in our personalities. I saw how and why we behaved the way we did based on our personality types. It all made sense. It made it much easier to understand and ask for clarification.
Our relationship had gotten much stronger before he got sick. Knowing this earlier would have helped more even then.
Would you like to construct better relationships? Whether it’s personal or business knowing each other’s typology and how the other person responds will help. The horses and I have many tools to deepen relationships. Click the button below to schedule a no-obligation Zoom to see if we’re a fit for you.
Make a Connection in the comments below.
Onward!
