I haven’t always been introspective, or maybe I was but just didn’t have a word for what I was experiencing internally. As I have grown older, I have become more conscious of my thoughts and emotions and how they impact my relationships.
I met Ben a little over a decade ago. Getting married was always on the cards for me. As a young girl, I played house a lot and I would dream about having a husband and bearing children and taking care of a home.
After my husband proposed to me in the most unconventional way, a story for another day, we began to plan our wedding. The rigmarole invariably involves informing friends and family about your decision to be married. Social media was beginning to catch on here in Uganda and, because we each had a bit of a public profile as journalists, accounts of our friendship had spread long before we got engaged.
We interacted with two categories of people as we planned the wedding. The first group was of those who were elated for us, wished us well, and even thanked God that Ben was going off the list of eligible bachelors. You know, in the African sensibility, society begins to get concerned for a man when he is still single at thirty. If you’re not married and settled with a family, what’s wrong with you? That Ben, who was past thirty when he took me as his wife, was tying the knot was very good news indeed, at least his aunts thought so.
The second category of people was the cynical lot. They always started by recognizing that we were in love, which is expected of an engaged couple, but then continued to put a ticking clock, or perhaps a time bomb, on our love. They would say things like, “We are giving you three months, six months if you’re lucky, and then we shall check on you.” Far from annoying us, their comments we found amusing and, far from being distracted, we concluded that they were projecting their unhappy conditions onto us.
The marriage institution has received a bad rap in recent years. Divorce rates are at an all-time high, the concept of side dishes has become more commonplace and right in your face. The truth, for me, is that marriage requires effort to keep going and remain fulfilling, and that is true whether or not there are side dishes in the picture. This is probably what our skeptical friends were trying to tell us all those years ago, in that awkward way of theirs that proffered a hopeless vision for the future.
I always speculated about what it meant to cultivate one’s marriage, so I worked on my own based on what I had read in relationship articles or heard from marriage seminars. You see, I am passionate about communication and I visualize myself as a communicator. My profession in fact is to communicate and I am often paid to communicate. Yet that doesn’t necessarily mean I was an excellent communicator as a married woman, first and foremost with myself and then, crucially, with my husband.
As a so-called introverted feeler, it had taken a fair amount of unlearning and adjusting in order to share my life and my space with another individual. I wear my emotions on my internal sleeves. My thought world is quite active, but I never had to pay much attention to it until I got married. One of the things I have found isn’t emphasized to young couples is the work that happens on the inside, not in the sexual sense but in the way in which it can be possible, spiritually if not logically, to look in the mirror. The examination or observation of one’s own mental processes is such a powerful tool for one, especially one who has decided they will live with another as one. Introspection has the potential to unlock an understanding of why you are the way you are while allowing you to empathize and give grace to those around you.
To look inside is to take account of your emotions and to recognize that sometimes your feelings are self-inflicted. Often we are quick to blame everyone except ourselves and, granted, sometimes our emotions are a direct consequence of other people’s deeds and misdeeds. Still, rarely do we turn the gaze inside and come to the conclusion that perhaps we are responsible for how we feel or that, in some subliminal way, we contributed to an undesirable outcome. Maturity is at the heart of introspection. When you become aware that the world doesn’t revolve around you and you aren’t always a victim then the introspection of which I speak serves as a true north in a marriage.
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I became aware of my ability to nurture introspection for the good of my marriage not too long ago. It came deliberately but naturally for me, like an active volcano that erupts when it must erupt. Well, even when we attempted to live together in harmony as a young couple, we stepped on each other’s toes a lot. In this way, of course, we are not strange, as this is the natural state of many marriages: the good intentions that can prove hurtful, the lovely deeds that can provoke anxiety.
Men and women are different innately, in personality and in background. You would think this is obvious as we commit to each other in holy matrimony but, alas, it isn’t! So, as we adjusted to living together, fights became inevitable, disagreements were unavoidable and, now more than before, we have had to figure out how to resolve our differences.
In my opinion all of our differences and disputes were my husband’s fault. As ridiculous as this sounds, I believed it and lived with this truth for a considerable number of years. As I reflected on our arguments I always concluded that he was the reason we could never agree, that he was the reason we were always at an impasse. This I believed with all my heart. I considered myself a good girl, having grown up in the church and having attended a fine Christian school in an environment that emphasized traditional values. Gayaza High School emphasized academics but also groomed us to be wives; we were taught to keep ourselves for the right person. Our housework involved kitchen chores like peeling matooke, potatoes, and cassava. They taught us home management while at home my mother stressed cleanliness, taught me how to cook and how to take care of a home. I hadn’t dated much, and I got married while a virgin. In the eyes of those around me I qualified as wife material by all standards. My friends and my relatives
recited glowing testimonies of my character, saying they had no doubt I would make a good wife.
When I considered my goodness I concluded that I could do no wrong. This isn’t something I vocalized, it was a sense I had developed overtime internally. If ever something went south in my marriage, as it sometimes did, my interpretation of the matter was riddled with sadness, self-pity, and sometimes even regret. I always wondered how ridiculous my husband was, for what he did or didn’t do. I griped about what he said or didn’t say, I reflected on how much I had done for him and how somehow his actions were a direct attack on me. I thought about the ways I could get back at him, not to him. If my mind wandered into the belief that I might have contributed to an altercation, I quickly dismissed it and slid back into victim mode, because I am a good girl, remember, and what hurt can good girls impose? I laugh even now as I write, for it is everything I know isn’t true.
I had an epiphany shortly before the COVID-19 phase came around. I had come to the end of myself emotionally and I was looking for a better way of doing life with my partner. I had attempted everything I knew how to do domestically and none of it seemed to be working. I had tried everything, except genuinely looking within me to ask myself tough questions. I didn’t understand how someone could fail to make it work with a good girl. I turned to the one thing I had relied on pretty much my entire life: my faith. In desperation I sought a tool, a strategy, that would help me understand my partner better. I began to look within — to recognize that I am most definitely imperfect, that I still have flaws however good I am, and that my intrinsic weaknesses in one way or the other contribute to the overall health of my marriage.
At the same time, I stumbled upon a question somewhere that asked, “Have you considered what it’s like to be married to you?” It’s a simple but interesting question because we often think we would be fine only if the other behaved the way we want them to behave. Thus, in our certitudes, we tend to blame our actions or inactions on our partners, taking it for granted that it’s because of them that we react the way we do. I find, these days, that the lack of self-reflection in relationships exposes couples to unnecessary fights, fights that have no purpose, fights that only serve the purpose of condemnation instead of reconciliation.
No one really cautions us to look within, to observe and question our motives and attitudes. All we see, many times, is a victim-and-villain scenario. Without self-reflection you will always find yourself in the same setting, perpetuating the same miserable scene in which you suffer at the hands of your spouse.
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In most of our cultures a bride is prepared to be able to satisfy her husband sexually and to look after the home. She is cautioned to respect her husband and to never divorce, a term known, almost laughably in the Luganda language, as okunoba. Among the Baganda people, the bride is prepared for marriage by her senga, the paternal aunt. Emphasis is placed on bedroom matters as well as food, which all of us are advised is the way to a man’s heart. Perhaps that is all good, but who trains new couples that in order to take care of the other, they must start by looking after themselves? Or, rather, by looking into themselves? Who speaks to them of introspection?
Unless, of course, your goal for marriage is the attainment of someone who looks after your physical needs, the perspective must be different and the canvas larger. If you desire something deeper, you must dig deeper as well. I truly believe that many marriages today are ending not because someone’s life is under threat, even though that may be the case sometimes, but because many of us have failed to internalize our relationships. It is so much easier to point an accusatory finger at your partner than it is to inquire of yourself. If we got off our moral high horses we would be more open to feedback, and we would spend more time reflecting on the self rather than criticizing and judging our partners.
I often sit on the porch to reflect on my marriage, and one particular instance of domestic strife comes to mind. Because I grew up seeing my father return home daily with milk and bread in a kaveera, I expected the same of my husband. This provoked one of our biggest fights as a married couple when he returned home one day and asked for a cup of tea. I asked him, “Did you buy milk?” To this he responded, “How was I supposed to know we didn’t have milk?” Without realizing it, we got into an argument as he insisted that the home was my domain, my responsibility, and that I had to inform him of what we needed. At the time, I thought only of how unfair he sounded. Much later, my mother assured me that she always told my father about what groceries he should bring on his way home. Not only did I owe my husband an apology, I realized that I had fallen into the trap of imposing my upbringing on him, something that many of us do thoughtlessly.
It is often said that when we get married we enter with baggage — baggage from our upbringing, baggage from our past relationships, and baggage from the sum of our experiences. Our life before marriage informs our character, our reactions, our actions, and our outlook on life. A traumatic breakup before marriage might leave you guarded, angry, or less trusting. Sometimes these reactions are openly expressed and other times they lie in wait in your subconscious until they are triggered by events with your partner. Your partner becomes the punching bag for your emotions that have not been dealt with internally. You shoot blind, groping in the dark and hoping your spouse will change while you stay the way you are.
So much could go wrong in a seemingly loving relationship if self-reflection isn’t part of your daily arsenal. This process, when practiced honestly and regularly, allows us to extend grace to others. When we carefully consider our desires and expectations, we are more likely to extend empathy for what we might perceive as our partners’ overreaction or oversensitivity. To be immersed in the workings of one’s soul is to be in touch with one’s sense of being, and for some it also may open a path to the feelings of others. The question, therefore, of what it’s like to be married to me isn’t academic. It applies in a strange way to my concerns, hopes, and needs and how I am conditioned by them. How I react to that cocktail of my innermost emotions no doubt influences whether or not I am able to be a positive, life-giving partner.
Since being intentional about my own introspection journey, I have found that I spend less time criticizing my partner. It’s a daily journey for me because I feel strongly as an individual and my sensitivity to words, actions and anything external is quite high. I never go to bed without reflecting on my emotions, needs, dreams, and desires. I want to understand my own actions, why I did what I did and the purpose it served. It’s not always easy and the opportunity may not arise every day, but before I lash out or assert blame I want to be sure I am not overreacting.
We sometimes understand a thing by describing what it’s not. Self-reflection isn’t self-pity, it’s not regret, and it’s not spending time thinking about how terrible your partner is and how you are suffering. It is not ruminating on your partner’s shortcomings and articulating his behaviour towards you. For all practical purposes, introspection is considered a sign of growth, like the development of breasts or the deepening of a voice. Relationships thrive on maturity. No one wants to carry the other’s burden in a relationship. Not only is it unfair, it denies one the opportunity to understand oneself better.
In the end, as in the beginning, one must return to the question of who we are and whether we know who we are. Introspection, as I have said, comes naturally to me, but it has proved useful to me in recent years as a married woman with an intentional gaze. So, yes, I haven’t always been introspective, or maybe I was and I didn’t have a word for what I was experiencing internally. But I know that, as I have grown older, I have become more conscious of my emotions and how they impact my relationships.
This understanding unlocks parts of me to the rest of the world, parts that may be ugly but when acknowledged and worked over shine a light unto others, parts that grow my ability to empathize, parts that enable me to appreciate how my inner core connects with the world around me. My husband, of course, is the one who sees everything.