Is your busy life hurting your relationship? What are you avoiding?

I recently read an older book by Geneen Roth called Appetites.  She is known for her writing on compulsive eating, but this book had a broader scope which got me thinking about relationships.

sometimes our spouse looks like this!

You see, Roth was contending that you get really busy (compulsively eating, trying for perfection, overworking, etc.) as a way to avoid really looking at and feeling the good and bad of life.  She makes the point that life has difficult and disappointing aspects to it which you deflect through busy-ness.  I saw this in the clients struggling with eating disorders whom I worked with- their eating disorder is a way to evade the feelings of not being enough.  (Which we know is poor self esteem)

And it also happens in relationships.

The honest truth is no one relationship can do everything for you.  There will be disappointments, unhappiness, and disconnections.  Where the trouble comes in is when you are avoiding those feelings.  If you don't let yourself feel them, address the issues, and move on, they will appear in some negative way.

Life is not perfect and neither are relationships (or people.)  Elizabeth Moon said, "People are people, messy and mutable, combining differently with one another from day to day - even hour to hour."  The question is what you do about this messiness.  Here are some unhealthy options:

• Become wrapped up in your kids so you don't have to think about the unhappiness with your spouse
• Focus incessantly on your new business and ignore your spouse most of the time
• Get involved in a new hobby and work long hours perfecting it
• Obsess over your body and making it the "perfect" shape/weight/size/tone
• Fall into an addiction or eating disorder
• Spend tons of time with family and friends and little time alone with your spouse

You see how these busy things can keep you from really approaching the issues that are difficult?  You may even believe keeping busy is a good way to cope with things, but it isn't.  Here are some healthy options:

• Talk with your spouse about your disappointments
• Forgive yourself, your spouse, and your relationship for not being "perfect"
• Emphasize the things you do have in your relationship
• Mourn the things you don't have and learn how to let them go
• Spend time with your spouse exploring what is good between you

Your courageous work is to slow down and stop using busy-ness as a way to skirt the real pain that comes from being in a relationship.  It is in those moments of true relational bravery that you may find you have a better relationship than you thought.

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