How do you not know what I want?

One of the things I love about marriage is I am constantly learning. Learning how to communicate, care for Jeff, support him, love him and many more things. There is one specific topic that continues to come up for us and that is being able to communicate what I need and want.

A great example of this would be a conversation we had about a week and a half ago. Let me set the stage...Jeff had been working all week then left on Friday morning to go on a guys camping trip through Sunday afternoon. In the middle of the week I came down with a cold and wasn't feeling super hot. Then as the weekend got closer Miss Raegan also started getting stuffed up and not feeling too well. Because of this and some other reasons we basically didn't leave the house for 48 hours which, if you know me, was quite hard. Then Saturday night she was up every couple hours because she had a fever. So by the time Jeff got home on Sunday I was ready to have a little break. :)

He got home and we visited for a while then I said, "Hey, I was thinking we could get a babysitter and maybe go grab dinner and go to church tonight." He didn't really feel up for it since he had just gotten home so I said, "Maybe at least we could get some take out for dinner because I don't really feel like cooking." We kind of went back and forth and by this point I was getting a little upset. I didn't want to make dinner and I really wanted to get out of the house. He wanted to stay home and have a salad. :) So I got a little more frustrated as time went on and decided to just make something frozen we had here. At the end of the night I realized that I never communicated exactly what I wanted and needed. I Just hinted at things I wanted and suggested different things we could do, expecting Jeff to figure it out. That wasn't fair to him. I ended up apologizing and saying I really had wanted to get out of the house and at least go to dinner and spend some time with him and that I was sorry I didn't communicate it more clearly and instead got frustrated.

Sorry for the long story but I feel like it's a great example of how I often expect Jeff to know what I want without me clearly communicating it to him. Then I get resentful and bitter when if I would have just told him in the first place what I wanted the conflict could have been avoided.

Oh the joys of marriage :) It has helped me grow and change so much.