Feeling "Supported"

A few days ago, I posted about the pleasure of learning to make "grown-up" decisions with Adam. The most difficult part of learning to think like a team has been learning to "own" each others decisions. We both tend to blame decisions that don't quite work out on each other, so it's been an interesting learning processing accepting someone else's ideas as our own decisions.

As for me, I like to blame boring evenings on Adam--"if we'd listened to me we would have had a lot more fun," etc. For Adam, learning to take responsibility for money we both spend has been more difficult. It's not that he's a cheapskate, but we need to be careful right now and he gets irritable when he thinks we aren't being. That's why I was especially nervous about asking him if we had the money for me to seek treatment for the chronic pain in my shoulders. Having tried everything else I could think of, I was ready to try acupuncture. I wasn't sure at all what Adam would say about such an expensive and somewhat questionable treatment.

I wasn't giving Adam enough credit. He completely accepted my need and my desire to try acupuncture. We sat down and talked about how to cut back on the budget and that we could afford a few visits to the acupuncturist before my job started. As I should have known, he never grumbled or complained about a legitimate expense.

But he didn't just support my decision financially--he invested himself in it. He actively encouraged me to find a doctor. He even came to the appointment with me--having him sit through my interview with the doctor and listen to my medical history was a surprisingly intimate experience. He sat in the room with me, calming my fears about needles. He even lay on the floor to talk to me through the hole in the table. (He said I looked like a chubby astronaut.)

I guess I learned from this experience that, even though we might fight about incidental expenses (which do, of course, add up), I should trust Adam to be willing to spend money where it is important. I learned to appreciate how supportive he is of me--financially, personally, physically, and spiritually. We're a team, partners. If we can learn to make responsible decisions without arguing in large matters, perhaps we can learn to make them in small matters, too.