A crisis point in my marriage occurred a few months ago that has come full circle lately. I was on my way home from a business trip and gave a call to the wife to say "good morning" and "I'm about to get on a plane." Just a quick call. Sadly, I called at the wrong time and basically the wifey didn't have time to talk and blew me off and hung up on me. Fireworks. The problem was that those fireworks had to wait until after a three hour flight and a one hour drive home to be resolved. The fireworks only got worse with age.
What's the point?
A while back I heard and had the chance to use the adage, "Love is spelled, T-I-M-E." If you want someone to feel loved and needed you should give them them gift of time. Make that person higher in the priority list than other things. If you don't at the very least make time for that person, they're going to get the message that they don't matter in your life.
I think about vendors and clients at work. Clients get an immediate call back. I need them to realize they are worth my time. They are high on the priority list. Not all vendors get a call back. If I don't call a vendor back, if I don't return their email, it is a way of saying "you are so low on my priority list, I really don't care if you stay or not, and truthfully, if you don't write back it might make my life easier." How do I know this? Because as a vendor myself, I get blown off and I get the message too.
At the point of those fireworks with my wife, she was showing me that I was not as important to her as all the other hoi polloi in her life. At the time of that call she was thinking about work. That tells me that her work was more important than I was. This came up in the fireworks. I remember telling her that her company won't be there when she's 70, whereas I, her husband will be. Which should be given the gift of her time and being higher up on her priority list.
Guess what's gone from our lives now. Her job. The company is gone. It's not an "I told you so" moment, instead I see it as a lesson to both of us to not miss the forest for the trees. Know what's important in your life and understand what your action may be saying and how they are interpreted.
Should there be more important things in our lives than our primary relationships? Of course. Business calls come up. Other things happen that must be addressed. But are we showing those we care about that they are high on our priority lists? Are we showing them love through time? That's the question we should always ask ourselves.
