Too Busy to be Married?

IMPATIENCE
Most of us want what we want now. We can’t wait. So we overextend our budgets, our credit and our calendars.

This same impatience infects our relationships, especially our marriages. We expect our spouses to do what we want when we want.

We grow weary of waiting, even for a moment, if he or she is a bit late. Impatience steals intimacy from our relationship by infusing it with intolerance, irritation and annoyance.

“Serenity now!” If you were a fan of the 1990s television phenomenon called Seinfeld, you immediately recognize that phrase.

The episode featured a subplot about Frank, the father of main character George. Whenever Frank feels tense, he is to lower his blood pressure by calmly saying, “Serenity now.” Frank, unfortunately, doesn’t get the idea that this phrase is to be said slowly with a deep breath for a soothing effect.

Instead, whenever he is frustrated, he shouts out the phrase in anger. Like a lot of us, he’s demanding to have “serenity now!” No time to cultivate it. No time to wait.

Don’t allow yourself to get caught in the same trap. Impatience corrodes your time like few other poisons, eating away at what could otherwise be a pleasant moment.

It’s tempting to justify impatience by telling ourselves: “This is just how I act when I’m in a hurry. The real me, though, is more loving, and my spouse knows that.” Are you sure?

Take a good look at this “temporary” trait and be sure it isn’t becoming a permanent resident. Giving impatience the boot may be one of the most important things you can do to reclaim the time you’ve been missing from your marriage.

THE CLOCK
We have nothing against clocks. In fact, we have a huge clock in our home that nearly every guest comments on.

We’re not fanatical here. We only want to tell you a story. It’s an old tale of a village that bought a fancy clock tower. Sometime after it was installed, a visitor to the town discovered that all the people were sleeping during the day and working at night.

When he questioned them about this, they answered: “We have the most unique town in America. After we got our new clock, we began to notice that the sun kept rising earlier and earlier every morning. Finally the daytime hours were dark and the night hours were light. We are petitioning the president for special recognition as the only town in America with such a situation.”

As it turned out, the new clock had been running slower and slower because sparrows were roosting inside it. The point? The people of the village were so enamored by their clock that they allowed it to control them instead of the other way around.

And that’s the potential problem with clocks. If we aren’t careful, they can make us their slaves. We can’t extinguish our reliance on timepieces. We’d have chaos. But if we surrender completely to the clock, it spins our relationships out of control as well.

Don’t always give in to the tyranny of the clock. Linger over a latte together every once in a while. If you have a deadline to meet, don’t be irresponsible, but don’t be a time tyrant either. It’s a fine line to walk. It requires balance-something those driven solely by the clock seldom have.

OVERACTIVITY OK,
we said there were four sneaking time bandits we wanted to highlight. But we want to squeeze one more onto the list here to illustrate a point. Pushing one more thing onto the agenda is exactly what this brazen time bandit requires.

Overactivity, the close cousin of overcommitment, is the most obvious time bandit around. “We’ve just got to make this work,” we say as we hurriedly make new arrangements and move things around in our date book, as if it were an unexpected guest looking for a place to sleep.

Allow us to make a fundamental point that may be just what you need to hear to keep this one from robbing you blind. If your family car has become a taxicab for running kids to church activities, school events and children’s sporting events, realize that you don’t have to do it all. Nowhere is it written that to be a good parent you have to sign your children up for everything and spend all your free time shuttling them around and attending each and every event.

Examine what you might drop from your list. Hold a family meeting to talk about what regaining this time would mean to all of you.Don’t feel guilty about trimming the activity list using your own good judgment.

STEAL YOUR TIME BACK
None of these will steal your time unless you decide to do nothing about them. What choices can you make to steal back your time? The following questions can help you get started:

Has technology deluded you into thinking you’re saving time for your marriage when just the opposite is happening? If so, how?

When are you most likely to become impatient and why? Can you think of a time when your impatience actually ended up costing you more time than you thought it might save you? What can you learn from that incident?

What have you done to bring closure to unfinished business in your own life? You can no longer wonder how you got so busy. Own up to the choices you’ve made, or the time bandits will keep ripping you off. Don’t let them. Regain the moments together you’ve been missing.

Les Parrott, Ph.D., and Leslie Parrott, ED.D., are authors of several award-winning books. Visit them online at RealRelationships.com.