This Halloween we took our children out to trick-or-treat as usual. Going door to door, many of the houses had their lights out, and I could tell my children were a little disappointed this year. They had expected the streets to be lit with houses and tons of other children walking from one house to the next exclaiming “Trick or Treat!” as their baskets were filled with loads of goodies to take home and fuel the next month’s-worth of sugar highs.
This year, that wasn’t the case.
This was the first year my 3-year-old was really old enough to have fun with it, and she was beyond thrilled to be going out and enjoying the holiday. After trick-or-treating for a while, she was definitely the most let down. She kept walking from house to house with her brother and father at her sides excitedly giving hardy “trick-or-treats” to everyone who opened their doors. With so few houses partaking in the Halloween tradition, my daughter hadn’t even collected enough to fill a quarter of her tiny pail. She kept looking up at her daddy with puppy eyes as they searched for another welcoming porch light saying, “But my basket’s not full yet?”
It was this Halloween that my young daughter taught me a thing or two about true honesty. I seriously admire young children and their fearlessness about being completely truthful. They show no reservations about telling others how they really feel and what it is that they are thinking.
This made me think about what would happen if couples would share their feelings and needs with one another when times are rough and their baskets aren’t full yet.
Everyone has a basket to fill…an emotional one. I realized that if every person could openly tell his or her partner when “the basket” feels empty, and why, with the candid, fearless honesty that a child has, the lines of communication would open up. Then, they could share some great conversations as to how they could each fill each others’ basket.
After being married four years, I understand that every marriage takes continuous effort to keep things moving forward. If you can’t approach each other with complete honesty and understand why and how you feel the way you do, it makes it that much harder to keep a healthy marriage going.
Every marriage is going to have its highs and lows. If we each could just tell one another when our baskets aren’t full and work on filling them together, it will make the highs in a marriage that much happier and the lows that much easier to weather.
How do you tell your partner that your basket isn’t full? Do you keep it to yourself and hope he or she senses that the empty space, or do you muster that youthful moxie and let your feelings out?
Photo: flickr.com/photos/25785/5681402443/
Sometimes, we wonder where the romance has gone in our relationships. We reminisce fondly about the dating years, and often blame our partners, for the changes in our romantic relationships. Maybe we need to take a second and rethink what’s been happening on our end. What’s changed with us since the carefree, dating days?
When I was a freshmen in high school, I joined the track team. I learned a lot about myself and others during this time, like, for example, just how stinky a high school weight room can get and that the young men didn’t seem to notice.
