As every long married woman knows, one of the secrets to maintaining a successful marriage is learning when to hush and walk away. To keep talking when he’s no longer listening is like speaking to a locked door and expecting it to open itself. No amount of reasoning or logic will persuade the door to unlock on its own. Same with darling hubby. Sometimes you have to let him figure things out for himself…
Such was the case last summer when we were working on a fixer-upper project… Vandals stole all of the copper piping/plumbing lines from under the house; they also cut the electrical wiring up to the floor joists in order to strip out the thin thread of copper inside. As a result, we had to rewire nearly the entire home…
Part of our undertaking included the replacement of the ancient baseboard heaters and decrepit air conditioning with a centralized system. Apparently there was a miscommunication between John and the electrician; while running the lines for the new heat pump, he removed the old circuit dedicated to the window unit, leaving us without air…in July…in Charlotte…with a ton of work yet to be done.
We realized what had happened about ten minutes after the electrician left; John tried to turn on the a/c to cool off and nothing happened...
I begged him to call the electrician right then so he could come back and fix the mistake, but John was in no mood to be reasonable...
I suggested purchasing a small window unit to use while we finished our to-do list; again, no go.
The last option available really wasn’t a good one: we could go ahead and install the new system, but then it would be at risk for theft or vandalism, which we couldn’t afford to have happen, so…
We completed the renovation while temperatures averaged above 90 degrees, including the stretch of days when it was 100-plus… It never dropped below 80 inside the house; we kept the ceiling fans on high and moved two box fans from room to room as we worked. By the time it was done, we were finished in more ways than one…
John will freely admit now that he should have done something to resolve the problem, other than be hard-headed about it; after all, who really paid the price for his stubbornness? Clearly, we didn’t have to labor in the heat…
Sometimes figuring things out can take a while…in this instance, it took about six weeks.
As for me, I’ve kept my mouth clamped tightly shut and left the entire debacle in the past; there’s nothing to be gained by saying “I told you so”…
Besides, I know it won’t be long before we go through something like this again. I’ve realized his behavior is nothing personal; he just can’t help it-it’s the way he’s wired. Bless his heart…
“In a successful marriage, there is no such thing as one’s way. There is only the way of both, only the bumpy, dusty, difficult but always mutual path.” –Phyllis McGinley
Wishing you many blessings and hope…tg
Tammy will update her blog twice weekly…
