A husband is busy working in the other room. Suddenly, he hears his wife screaming for him. He comes running to where she is to see what happened. When he gets to the room, he sees her on a chair and she looks at him and in a very scared, lively voice says, “Over there! There’s a spider!!!!!!” He turns and looks to see a small, harmless spider. He casually walks over, squishes the bug under his shoe, grabs a napkin and throws it out. “Happy now?” he calls as he shakes his head and storms out, getting back to his work.
The wife is relieved and glad she has a knight in shining armor. But should she have called him over a spider?
The husband is annoyed for bugs are bugs, it was just a small bug, and he was working! Did the husband have the right to be so callous to her?
We each wear different colored glasses. Mine might be pink, yours might be green. Mine might have a crack through them, while yours might be smudged. What I see through my glasses are my truth. What you see through your glasses is your truth.
The issue between the husband and wife was not the spider. The issue is that they need to put on the other’s glasses.
If the husband would put on his wife’s glasses, he would see that hers magnify the bugs. To her, the bugs are not just scary, but terrifying. If he would wear her glasses and understand that to him, bugs are bugs and so what, but to her, to his wife, to the love of his life, they are scary, he would have more compassion.
The same for the wife. It’s easy for a wife to tell her husband to “just make pasta for the kids for supper and then put them to bed,” as she goes out on an errand and then get annoyed when she comes back and “nothing was done.” If she would put on her husband’s glasses, she would find that making even a simple supper and putting the children to bed is so overwhelming for her husband.
It’s not that one is right, and the other is wrong. We have to understand that what is easy for one is not necessarily easy for the other, and we are here to help the other person. When a husband can pause after killing the spider and ask his wife if she is feeling okay now, and the wife can either prepare the supper for her husband or be understanding and help him put the children to bed when she gets back, not only will they each become a more caring, empathetic person, but they are showing their spouse that they are very important to them.
When we can understand and internalize, and be accepting of the fact that what is easy for one is not necessarily easy for the other, we can cultivate a closer bond with our spouse and our love becomes much deeper. 💖