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Have you ever left something broken because it’s slated for replacement? Or it’s not right but sort of works, and it will be gone in six months, so you let it be. You put up with something annoying because you don’t want to put in the time or money to fix it when your efforts will be wiped out later.
Lori and I are years into a very slow building process, and we’ve faced a lot of these issues. One of them, I don’t recall what it was, got so annoying that I did a halfway fix. It took a fraction of the time and money I would later spend to do it right, but it made our lives so much easier until I got to the real fix. I told Lori it was two-year temporary, and the term stuck.
Two-year temporary acknowledges that there will be a major rework down the road. It’s better than duct tape and bungees, but not too involved or expensive. Most importantly, it reduces an ongoing frustration a great deal. For us, two-year temporary has to be safe, functional, and not ugly. And at least once, it was just about covering up something ugly that would later be removed. The ugly was still there, but we didn’t have to look at it.
How could you apply the idea of two-year temporary to your marriage? An easy example would be if one of you was finishing school while the other was working a job they didn’t like. It’s not the life or marriage you will have. But that doesn’t mean you have to just put up with everything. Pick a couple things that really bother you and figure out how to easily and inexpensively make them somewhat better for now.
Having a baby creates a similar situation. A difficult teen is another one. Other examples are a long-term illness or having to care for an ageing parent. All of these things can derail your life for a season.
You have to do what needs to be done in difficult times, but don’t surrender completely to circumstances. You may not be able to do what you want the way you want, but you can find a way to have something along the same lines.
If your spouse needed the bedroom and bathroom to be wheelchair friendly for a year, you would get that done for them. How do you do the same for your relationship? How do you meet the emotional needs you both have? How do you remain emotionally intimate? What changes do you need to make?
Ironically, we are more likely to do these things if our situation has changed permanently than if the change is for a season. Fight that tendency. Short-term fixes can be very good things, and half of what you want can be more than enough.
~ This is Paul, and sometimes Doing Marriage Well means doing what you can.
Starting to feed sunflowers to birds and bunnies.
The turkeys were unaware it was food.
Image Credits: First image © Paul H Byerly created with Nano Banana 2 Second image © Paul H Byerly
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