3 Things My Husband and I Learned the Hard Way

Larry used to have a saying he would pull out when I was upset about something he didn’t understand. He would lean back, look at me, and in a very exaggerated southern drawl say, “It ain’t no big deal.”

Now, let me clarify something. Larry is not from the South. This accent appeared purely for dramatic effect.

Unfortunately, the dramatic effect it created was not calming.

In fact, it had the exact opposite result.

When he said, “It ain’t no big deal,” it made me want to scream. And sometimes… I did.

Because here’s the thing.
If I was upset, it was a big deal… at least to me.

And when something that mattered to me was dismissed, even unintentionally, it didn’t calm the situation. It escalated it.

To Larry’s credit, he eventually realized that this tactic was not particularly helpful. In fact, he learned that minimizing something that mattered to me only made the situation worse.

But he wasn’t the only one learning.

There were also things that mattered deeply to Larry that I didn’t initially take seriously. Sometimes I brushed things aside or didn’t give them the attention they deserved. Over time, I began to realize that I was doing the very thing that frustrated me when it was done to me.

That was a wake-up call.

Marriage has a way of holding up a mirror.

I began to understand that love means caring about what matters to the other person, even when you don’t fully understand why it matters.

You don’t have to agree.
You don’t even have to fully understand.
But you do have to care.

Over time, we both grew in this area.

Now, instead of minimizing, we listen.
Instead of dismissing, we lean in.
Instead of saying, “It ain’t no big deal,” we ask, “Help me understand why this matters to you.”

That shift changed our marriage.

Because when something matters to the person you love… it becomes a big deal.

You don’t have to like all the same things

During one season in therapy, my counselor gave me an assignment to list the goals I wanted to work on in our sessions. For several areas of our marriage, I wrote that I wanted to develop “coping skills.”

After many years of marriage, I had begun to assume certain things were simply set in stone. I didn’t expect change. I just wanted to cope better… manage better… survive better.

When I shared my list, my therapist looked at it and said something I will never forget:

“I don’t give coping skills.”

I have to admit, that startled me.

For a brief moment, I felt a wave of fear. I thought, If she doesn’t give coping skills… then what does that mean? Am I just destined to live out my days in a miserable marriage?

So I asked her, “What do you do when someone has these problems?”

Without hesitation, she said, “I help them learn how to thrive.”

That one sentence shifted everything for me.

She made it clear that we would not treat these areas as permanent problems or hopeless patterns. We weren’t going to manage them. We were going to address them. Work through them. Believe for change.

It was a completely different mindset.

Up until that point, I had quietly accepted that some things would never improve. After all, we had been married for decades. I assumed we were simply learning how to live around certain frustrations.

But that day, I realized something powerful:

Just because something has existed for a long time doesn’t mean it has to exist forever.

That moment shifted my thinking… and it began to shift our marriage, too.

3 Things My Husband and I
Learned the Hard Way

If it matters to your spouse, it needs to matter to you

You don’t have to like all the same things

Don’t settle for coping when you can thrive

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