Practical Change Coaching
  • Home
  • What you'll get
  • Book a session
  • Podcast
  • Survey
  • Blog
  • Contact

Darrin Stephens Is Living In My Brain

3/21/2023

 
Hi Honey, I’m Home! What? No dinner?

Sometimes my brain is a real asshole.

I wrote this in my journal last night: “I was up at 6 am, worked all day, ran 3 miles after work, took a shower. I am not sure what Jenn [my wife] did all day. At 7 pm she suggested I could have a pouch of Indian food and she could have leftover pizza or leftover mac & cheese. Seriously? Instead of that, I made new food that I can eat. Aaand, now Jenn’s eating that.”

It was like Darrin Stephens, the husband on Bewitched showed up to tell me it was 1966 and that I should be able to expect my wife to cater to me. Don’t I do enough around here?

Some facts my brain omitted:
  • Jenn is getting over covid. Covid hits everybody differently and can kick your ass in the energy department
  • We hadn’t discussed who would be doing what, and we do not have a standing agreement about who cooks (and I like to cook)
  • She knows how much I appreciate when people who live here eat already existing leftovers, and the leftovers on hand are things I can’t eat because I have celiac disease
  • I work from home, so it’s not like I’d had a grueling commute
  • It was my decision to postpone my run from my lunch hour to after work

So why the Bewitched routine?

It’s because I couldn’t access those bits of info while I was in the middle of feeling put upon. I could only see evidence for how I was right and Jenn was wrong.

Did I start a fight? No (thank goodness, because it would have been a really dumb argument.) Did I sulk? Yeah, I sulked for awhile. But I’m really glad I took the time to make some notes in my journal, taking a beat to sort myself out before I launched into a martyr-fueled rant.

To be sure, responsibility for a good marriage falls on both partners, but I’ve learned that I need to approach the “what I want” conversations with Jenn when I don’t have a bunch of weird Darrin Stephens crap that is all my own, coloring the conversation.

That’s a gift of coaching. Because I coach, I’ve developed techniques to get to a level of clarity before I create a situation that is much harder to sort out. And I help my clients develop their own set of techniques to get clear on what they want and get themselves sorted out and then have those conversations with their spouse to get to a happier, more satisfying relationship.

If you want to be happier in your marriage, sign up for a free one hour coaching session today. Don't be Darrin Stephens. It’s not too late to begin making it better.
Picture
ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    May 2023
    March 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    December 2020
    January 2019
    December 2018
    February 2018
    August 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    May 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    March 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010

    RSS Feed

Subscribe

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Practical Change Coaching:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Picture
© Practical Change Coaching. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us
  • Home
  • What you'll get
  • Book a session
  • Podcast
  • Survey
  • Blog
  • Contact