So I did something really dumb about 10 days ago. I checked my husband’s email. That wasn’t the dumb part… we have an open-door policy on all of our email/myspace/facebook accounts – he’s given me his usernames and passwords, I’ve given him mine (though I’m pretty sure he can’t remember them since he can’t even remember our online banking info), and while I don’t usually check his email very often, since I have enough of my own accounts to keep up with, I did go in on this particular day to see if he’d had any responses to our job search that’s underway right now for him (his position is being eliminated at the end of June due to budget cuts…)

Well, I didn’t see any job updates, but I did see an email from a girl he used to work with who he’s friends with….

“M” is a photographer and she had sent my husband a link to some photos she apparently had taken of him. So naturally, I clicked on the link.

What was this? There must have been 25 or 30 pictures, all of my sweet husband in different poses, different outfits. My first thought was he had done this for his job search, maybe for the marketing website he was talking about doing. But why hadn’t he told me about it? Why had he kept the fact he’d spent at least a couple of hours with another woman from me? And why hadn’t he asked me for my opinion on these photos? And why did he never smile like that for me when I took his picture?

Oh, my brain was just a whirlin’ and by the time the appointed hour for my husband to get home from work had arrived that night, I was in the mood. Not THAT mood, but THE mood. The mood that says a woman scorned is not a woman to be messed with. The mood that makes you decide to put on one of your cutest outfits, put make up on with extra special attention and then vow to be as cold and “Mean-Girl” as possible. The mood that means business.

Lucky for me, though, that my husband can always tell when something is bothering me. (I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact that I refuse to look at him, I won’t smile at him and I answer in one-syllable monotones that gives it away? Hmmm?) Lucky for him that I hate keeping anything from him.

So I let it out. All of it. Why did he take those pictures and not tell me? Did he not trust me? Did he not love me? Did he like being with photographer-girl more than me?

And my husband did what he does best. Instead of getting mad at me, he smiled. And then he laughed. Hard. And when he finally came up for air, he looked at me with the sweetest grin on his face and lovingly took my hands in his.

“Sara, did you notice all of those shirts I was wearing in the pictures?”

“Yes,” I said, wiping tears off of my face. “I like all of those shirts.”

“Yes, yes, you do,” Cliff said, still smiling. “That’s why I was getting pictures done… so you would have pictures of me in those shirts which I was going to give you for our anniversary that’s coming up.”

Oooohhhhh. That’s right. Our ten-year anniversary is coming up.

So then the tears flowed even more, I apologized profusely for ever doubting him and my husband now has one to hold over me for the rest of our lives.

Communication is so important in marriage. So is trust. If it’s hard when we’re together, how much harder is it when we’re going through deployments?

So this week we’re going to talk about marriage and communication, intimacy and sex. The great, the good and the not so good.

Have you ever had a moment like the one I did? Share it and let’s get some discussion going!

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