“It shouldn’t be hard,” was my mantra for early relationship selection, as soon as things became difficult, I ‘bugged out.’ The logic being that relationships should be easy and enjoyable. If you were sinking too much effort into maintaining them instead of enjoying them, you weren’t doing it right. How quaint?

This unfortunately was my motto for a number of things outside of my personal life and while saving me from potentially disastrous relationships, it isn’t a catch all for other areas of your life. As a matter of fact, I was unknowingly blessed throughout my life in that there wasn’t much that I would’ve claimed was ‘hard.’ Maybe I just didn’t care about as much as I do now. Wife, family, home, car, work, lawn, garden… the list of things I care about keeps going on and on.

We all go through challenging times, it just isn’t feasible to ‘bug out’ when things start to get tough.

Due to some mutual decision making, I’ve found myself as primary caregiver, entrepreneur, and husband with enough time to handle one of those efficiently. I feel the tug of work when I’m watching the kids, the tug of family when I should be working and my wife and I get to see each other for five minutes before we both pass out at night. Having a conversation when we are together is a struggle between the kids for who can capture the spotlight of attention.

Nowhere to be found is the carefree kid who took the path of least resistance and who would ‘bug out’ at the first sign of trouble. My wife and I have dealt with a lot and will continue to work towards a common goal between gasps of air as we drown in the ‘challenging times’ of day to day married life. Our stated mutual goal of raising our kids to be “people we want to be around” is all worth it in the long run, Right?

As far as I’m concerned, that is our lot in life. Raising well behaved, well groomed, polite kids is an all encompassing activity and we rely heavily on grandparents and leverage our ‘us’ time to make it happen. I don’t see me picking up and leaving anytime soon, but maybe we start sharing some of the burden with the grandparents a bit more in the coming months…I’ll keep you posted.

Being Nice to Them…wife, kids, other people.