Renegotiation

There is a bench on a berm in Woodstock, VT, across the street from a Carribean bistro that serves amazing fried plantains. My husband and I sat on the bench on a summer night in late June, 2011. I can remember all the colors of green, the air being warm and cool at the same time, and the way my dress covered my toes.

We sat on that bench and had one of the most illuminating conversations of our marriage. For the first time in our relationship, it felt like we had reached a point where life just wasn’t working. We loved each other and our babies, but everything felt hard and discombobulated.

We had a newborn and a two-year-old, and there were so many circumstance that were making life different than it had ever been before. And we realized that so much had changed, yet we were trying to do everything the way we always had. We were trying to connect in the ways we had always connected, we were filling the roles we had always filled, we were expecting the things we had always expected. But nothing fit that mold any more. It wasn’t working.

As we talked, we decided it was time for a renegotiation. We needed to figure out new ways of being that fit our life in that season. We needed to find new ways to connect with each other. We needed to reorganize who did what in our home, and we needed to alter our expectations for ourselves and each other.

That evening on that bench was the start of months of conversations, as we renegotiated our roles and expectations. It was the start of something good. It took time to shift and to figure it out, but that conversations opened the door that we needed to move forward.

Since then, we’ve had several seasons where we’ve had to do it all again. When we had our third baby, when I got sick, when we moved across the country, when we changed jobs. Each major transition presented the opportunity and the need to renegotiate how we worked as a family.

I used to think that at some point we would figure our rhythm and dance out, that we would find a way of life that worked for us and stick with it. But I’ve learned that the rhythm is always changing. Nap schedules, work schedules, the health and needs of each family member. The rhythm changes and we need to change the steps to keep up and adapt.

It seems so obvious now, but I had never thought about it before that day on the bench. Before kids, we could sit for hours and talk, uninterrupted. With small children, time to connect needed to look different. Our expectations and practices needed to change. I had always done the grocery shopping, even though it was a chore I particularly loathed. My husband actually enjoys grocery shopping, and we decided that he would be in charge of grocery shopping for that season. We decided we start sharing laundry duty. We had to evaluate and talk through what we expected of ourselves and each other and what it looked like to be partners in this new season of life.

Sometimes relationships hit roadblocks because the season has changed but the roles and expectations have not. When that is the case, we need to hit pause and talk through how we are operating and what new ways of operating may help things work better. It’s time for a renegotiation.

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