Twenty-nine years married, three daughters raised through it, and I’m still learning that the most useful skill in a marriage isn’t the ability to fix things — it’s the ability to just listen without immediately trying to.
That doesn’t come naturally to someone who’s spent thirty years diagnosing problems for a living. Every conversation starts to sound like a support ticket. Something’s wrong, so find the root cause, propose a fix, close it out. My wife has spent almost three decades gently teaching me that people aren’t tickets.
My daughters have taught me the same lesson from a different angle — that showing up and paying attention usually matters more than having the right answer. I’m still working on it. I expect I will be for a while yet.
TXMerak's thoughts and musings 