Motivation Kickstarter Day 7: My Struggle

As part of my quest to find my motivation, I've accepted the 30 Day Writing Challenge.  Each post will be added to the main post HERE

With What Do I Struggle?

How do I begin to answer this?  I mean, it's not like I have just one struggle.  Who does?  Do I just pick one?  Do I try to identify the biggest?  Oh, whatever, I'm just choosing.

With what do I struggle?  Being my husband's wife.

I am a far better mother than I am a wife.  Specifically, I struggle being the wife of my husband.  He has borderline personality disorder and a hearing impairment.  Anyone familiar with borderline personality disorder knows how much of a struggle personal relationships can be, in part due to communication issues, so add in a hearing impairment and communication can sometimes feel impossible. Years of that has worn down my patience and tolerance, qualities never too fat in me anyway.  

My husband's reality and my reality can often be world's apart, neither understanding the other's.  I too often focus on those differences rather than on our similarities and love.  It can be so easy to hone in on the negative and forget the positive.  When I'm not mindful, that happens all to frequently and easily.  

Momming is much easier for me.  I think part of it is that I have a finite amount of patience and tolerance to give out every day (spoons, if you will) and they go first to my son before they go to anyone else.  If he's required more of me that day, I may have nothing left to give to my husband.  If he's going through a growth spurt or particularly difficult developmental phase, he's likely to use up all I have and dip into my reserves as well, so my husband finds himself out of luck in the wife department.  

As you can imagine, my husband requires a fair amount of spoons from me himself, so unless I'm flush with those offerings on any given day, something has to give and that something is a something between us.  I do love him, though, and the struggle is worth it, so we continue to fight through (sometimes literally, most times figuratively).  And I continue to struggle.