“Small Holes in My Marital Ship”

 

The Small Holes in my Marital Ship

Living with your spouse for decades can sometimes feel like playing a video game.

Just when you think you have understood the rules, Level 7 suddenly appears.

And you realise—you never received the manual.

For years, I have lived with unpredictability.

Not necessarily the dramatic kind that makes for a movie. Something much quieter.

Meal timings that are never quite predictable.
A simple need that suddenly becomes an urgent need.
A small thing missed—a salad, perhaps—and an unexpectedly large reaction.

To someone watching from outside, these may sound ridiculously small.

“So what if the salad wasn't there?”

Exactly.

The salad isn't the problem.

The problem is the hundred little adjustments surrounding the salad.

Waiting because someone else's timing is more important.

Putting your own plans on hold.

Remembering things that perhaps shouldn't require remembering.

Learning to read moods.

Trying to prevent the next irritation.

And slowly, without realising it, becoming a person who is always on standby.

For years, I wondered whether I was making too much of these things.

After all, there was no single catastrophic event.

Just little things.

But recently I found a metaphor that made sense to me:

They are small holes in my marital ship.

One small hole doesn't sink a ship.

But keep making small holes for years, and the person inside the ship eventually gets tired of bailing out water.

Perhaps this is what many women experience but don't know how to articulate.

It isn't always about cruelty.
It isn't always about a “bad marriage.”
Sometimes it is simply about an unequal distribution of emotional adjustment.

One person's timetable becomes the household timetable.

One person's mood becomes everyone's weather.

One person's preferences quietly become everybody else's responsibility.

And the other person keeps saying:

“It's okay. It's a small thing.”

Until one day she realises that her life has been made up of thousands of small things.

I am learning something rather late in life:

Small does not mean insignificant.

And accommodating does not have to mean disappearing.

Perhaps the answer isn't to abandon the ship.

Perhaps it is to stop pretending that the holes aren't there.

Some need repairing.

Some need boundaries.

Some need a conversation.

And some simply need us to stop taking responsibility for every leak ourselves.

Because marriage should not require one person to spend her entire life standing with a bucket.

She deserves to sit on the deck too.

And perhaps, after all these years, I am learning to do exactly that.

Love Juju.