Love Dare Day 28: April 17, 2020
What is Day 28 about:
If you have made it this far in The Love Dare, then you chose to sacrifice 28 days to improving your marriage, congratulations. This chapter asks the question of how well are we at sacrifice versus putting our needs before our significant other’s.
What do I think about the material:
I grew up in the construction business. Most of my uncles either owned a construction related business or had a specialty of their own. My father was no exception. For the majority of my childhood, I remember him working as a tile setter for different companies through the years.
Often, on Saturdays he would bring me and my older brother with him to be his helpers. As the years past, we became more valuable to his operation and we were given real tasks and eventually real pay.
The more time we spent working with him, the better we got at anticipating his needs. We knew how much tile to stack and in what locations. Getting all the tools and placing them appropriately on the job site and setting up for the day all became second nature.
What I enjoyed the most was trying to anticipate his needs before he asked. For example, if he was laying tile and some thinnest got over the top of the tile, I would grab a wet sponge and hand it to him as he turned to ask for it. Now he will have to comment on whether or not I was any good, but in my teenage mind, I killed it.
I know what you are thinking, how does this apply to marriage and today’s chapter? In this chapter it discusses how if we sacrifice our needs before the needs of our spouse, we will get better at anticipating their needs before they even know it. Brewing that cup of coffee in the morning before they ask for it. Taking out the trash when it fills before being asked to do it.
Or, anticipating when they are needing love and protection from you before they have a chance to go down a dark path. How cool would it be to be able to walk into a room with your spouse and know her expectations before she utters a word?
Take this one step further. What if we got so good at anticipating their needs that we could actually understand the source of the need. Talk about taking your love to the next level.
My task and how did I perform the task:
Today’s challenge was to find one of your spouse’s greatest needs and see if there is something you can do to alleviate that need. Jess will contest, that I am good at anticipating her needs before she has them, so I want to give an example of when I didn’t do a good job, but I fought through.
About two months ago, we went to the North Town Mall on Division St. in Spokane, Washington. We decided to eat at the food court, which is not usual for our family, so we wanted to make the right choice for both our money and satisfaction.
We chose to get a family size sausage and cheese pizza. Twenty minutes later our pizza was ready and I went to pick it up. I checked the pizza before sitting down and noticed they forgot the sausage. No big deal right? I asked them to fix the mistake and we would wait.
Oddly after about 3 minutes it was ready again. I check and sure enough the sausage was there. But then, we took a bite. The sausage was cold. They had taken cold sausage and put it on top of our hot pizza hoping that would be ok. I frustratingly took the pizza back and asked them to fix it once again.
They took our original pizza and put it back in the oven and basically heated it up for us. Now, I have worked in the food industry since I was 16 and this behavior is not acceptable, but I was tired and didn’t want to put up a fight.
Jess, on the other hand, was livid and wanted to complain. The day was long and I really didn’t want to deal with her anger towards it all and threw her a little attitude. It didn’t take much from her for me to realize I was in the wrong. How was I being a good husband by not letting her deal with the frustration she also experienced.
I don’t like to make a scene or create chaos in these types of cases, but that is my own selfish wants. Sitting in silence, I took a moment internally and made the choice to support her frustration and come up with the best way for her to vent.
That was tough. It was tough because I had to ignore my desire to just move on and be done with the situation. I wanted to get back on the road and go home, but that was my wants and not her needs.
Jessica’s reaction:
Her initial reaction to my selfishness was what you would expect. She saw no sacrifice on my part and only a selfish man trying to shut her up. However, when I realized my stupidity and supported her, she was able to work through her frustrations.
We worked together to come up with a review we could post on social media and visit the company’s website to give our feedback. Did we get anything free out of it? No, but that wasn’t the point. We were able to put the situation behind us and move on with our day. In fact, the day ended up being really good after that. If I hadn’t worked through my own nonsense, the day could have very well been ruined.
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