I hate to admit this, but today, my husband and I had a run-in. I’m not proud of it, I’m not proud of the way I acted, and it definitely was a huge series of miscommunications. But I’m sharing this for anyone else out there who may struggle with the same thing.
Now, my husband is not my manager nor my business partner. He’s really more of my personal trainer. But the aforementioned names popped up from a tv series I sometimes watch called, “The Divas”. If you haven’t seen it before, the “Divas” are the females of the WWE. The show more or less follows their lives, no different than the Kardashians or some other show. Anyways, one of the “Divas”, Eva Marie, has her husband as her manager, which seems to work well most of the time. However, in one episode, she was struggling with something, and she yelled at her husband saying that sometimes he just needs to be her husband and not always her manager.
Now, imagine the struggle. Their lives are literally personal and work intertwined all the time. There is definitely a need to draw the line of when it is appropriate to be a husband, and when it is appropriate to be a manager. Work does take up a majority of people’s lives, but it’s important to just be with each other and forget work for awhile.
Thankfully, my husband is only my personal trainer at the gym. And quite honestly, though we’ve struggled training together in the past, I’ve really enjoyed training with him the past week and a bit. I will admit, I complain every once in awhile about too many sets or reps, or exercises that I absolutely hate, but overall, it’s been good. I’ve actually had fun with him and he’s done so well at learning to ignore my complaints because that just tells me I need to do it regardless of what I think. It works for me. I need that tough attitude in the gym sometimes.
However, today was a different story. I put in a HARD leg workout on Monday. We then stupidly worked out after midnight last night doing chest, and I was a little upset that he made me change my grip and I know my chest didn’t get the same stretch that it usually does, plus my shoulders were more tired today from the odd grip. So let’s just say we went to bed around 2 in the morning.
We were back in the gym by 11 this morning. I was tired, not feeling 100%, and my legs are so sore. We get to the gym, and the first thing he tells me to do is more squats. I was a little ticked because he knows my legs are killing me already. But I didn’t throw that much of a fuss (ok, a small one), and stormed off and did them. I actually was thankful for doing them by the end, not that I wasn’t a stupid kind of sore, but my form felt better than it has in awhile for some reason. So it actually was ok.
After squats, we began the back workout, except he started me right off with one set of deadlifts with the heaviest weight I could. Now mix tiredness with soreness with already knowing my body is not in tip top ability shape. Had I done 1 or 2 more reps than I did, I’m pretty sure my back would be seriously injured. That just set me off. And for some reason, instead of ignoring me today, my husband wanted me to tell him what was wrong. So I told him about the squats and then thanked him, but then told him about the deadlifts and how I should have built up rather than going to my heaviest right away, and then told him how back day was too close to leg day because I could tell it was affecting my workout. This did not go over well, and I was more than visibly upset for the rest of the time in the gym.
Towards the end of our workout, when I was doing my bicep exercises, my husband came over and apologized to me. I still was in a bad mood though because by this point, not only was I feeling everything else I mentioned, my back was a little tender, my rib problems were annoying me, my wrists were cracking, my forearms were sore, and I literally felt like I had nothing left to give in the gym; I was honestly on “zombie” mode. My brain had shut out a long time ago. My body was just going on its own. My form suffered, I had to lift lighter, and when I finally was doing my last set of barbell curls, I only made it to 7 reps at a lower weight range than normal, ended up dropping the barbell and ran to sit down to hide my face to stop myself from crying. I literally had nothing left to give. My body was done.
Now, my husband didn’t know I was on the verge of crying; he just knew I was ignoring him, wouldn’t look at him, and he left to go to the car. I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want to cry at the gym.
There are so many things that went wrong in this story. There are miscommunications, there was the fact that bringing up things at the gym is one thing my husband asked me not to do because it’s his stress-free place, and I definitely and visibly did not make it stress free today. There’s also the fact that of any day, I wish my husband would have been more of my husband today and realized that it’s been awhile since I’ve been at the gym, and my body is not up to the recovery level it used to be. Just so many things gone wrong…
The thing is, we came home, we talked it out, and everything is ok again. My mood was just too toxic to have a healthy conversation at the gym. I needed to replenish some of the energy stores in my exhausted body, and he needed to cool down from the attitudes he received from me. We’re ok. It’s just learning the fine line of what we each expect, what we want, and how to know when to be that personal trainer, manager, or business partner, and when to be the more sensitive husband. I will admit, it’s not the easiest, especially when I ask him to not give in to me at the gym. Today was just a different story.
So ladies and gentlemen, remember that even if you do ever get into some type of work-related situation with your spouse, make sure you know when to be that loving spouse, or when to act in a business way. It’s important and necessary to keep your relationship functioning in a healthy way.
Calm in Christ and Fitness 