We are all advised…
to not sweat the small stuff. We all know what the small stuff is, but let’s go over it just for fun.
The small stuff can be things like leaving the toilet seat up, forgetting to put the garbage cans out, seeming to pay too much attention to someone else in your partner’s presence. Getting caught in a white lie. Being turned down for sex because of a headache or fatigue. Forgetting an anniversary or birthday (because you have been together for sooo long) things like that.
Things that we are supposed to let go, forgive, overlook, and learn to live with, because it’s petty and childish to point out and worse to hold on to.
Most of us know that the small stuff is usually a result of ignoring the big stuff. I also think that the small stuff can be a miscommunication or misunderstanding that is like a spark that can ignite something bigger.
I Think About Cutting It Every day
For example, when I was a teen, my stepdad raved about my hair. How important it was for a girl to have long hair. Especially for me because I had small breasts. According to him, I might be mistaken for a boy.
So, I cut it off. All of it. It was as short as I could get it without shaving, and he hated it! He would point to my graduation photo, lovingly, where my hair was long and feathered framing my face. That’s how your hair should be he would lament.
Throughout the years I have struggled with my hair and how it fits in with my identity, if at all, and have had hair past my bottom as well as short as a “boy.” I felt most like myself when it was short. It was short when I met my husband.
However, my husband not only loves long hair, but he also believes that all women should have long hair. It’s a mystery as to why he was attracted to me in the first place.
I don’t like to have hair ties, clips, or scrunchies in my hair. I like it to be short and free. Currently, it’s just past my shoulders. I think about cutting it every day. And I do wear a scrunchy if only to pull it into a bun, away from my face, to make it feel as short as possible.
If You Love Me
My stepdad was very superficial, and I could never measure up. He was so focused on my hair, and outer appearance, that he never really got to know and love the real me.
It shouldn’t matter if my hair is long or short if you love me.
My husband never complimented me on my hair when it was short or long. He would just point out when it was growing out.
His comments were like a downed power line that flailed about all around us. Obviously, a trigger for me because of my hair history, his words, or lack of, translated in my mind into him thinking that I did not measure up.
It’s Just Hair
If my husband and I would have talked about it from the beginning, that for me it shouldn’t matter the length of my hair if you love me and for him that he was afraid to compliment me for fear of losing me (an old man myth that he learned from his dad) then maybe we could have avoided years of discussions over my hair and the importance he placed on it.
In retrospect we both thought of the topic as inconsequential, it’s just hair. Nevertheless, everything in a relationship has the potential to have weight, girth, and endurance. Everything.
The small stuff has to be squashed, and left behind, or re-defined to expose meaning, if any, and then move on, hopefully together.
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton
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