by Gladys Diaz

The other day, I experienced some really frustrating moments. Thankfully, they were not related to my relationship, but, as usual, I still had the chance to learn a great lesson about how to make a relationship work!

After my husband had spent hours working on a creating a new web page for my business, we found that it was suddenly GONE!  All of the work we’d done, even our ability to access the administrative site was completely gone!

I panicked! I was on a deadline and was already behind schedule.  I didn’t know what to do, and neither did my husband.  Immediately, my husband went online to try to find a way to fix it.  What did I do?  I called someone I knew who works with websites.  It was going to cost us $60/hour just to have him take a look. I reached out to someone else I knew, but she wasn’t responding to my message.  Then I went online to try to figure out how to fix it myself.  The problem? When I read information about websites, html code, plugins and widgets, it sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher (“Waa-waa-waa-waa-waa!”).

I collapsed in a heaping pile of nerves and tears.  How was I going to fix this?  What was I going to tell the people waiting for me to deliver what I’d promised?  Why couldn’t I figure this out?

I called my sister and hysterically explained what happened, and she managed to help me calm down.  That helped me think and listen to what was going on inside of myself a little more clearly.  And what I heard was eye-opening for me.

My husband said he would figure it out.  He’s downstairs right now, working on it.  

What am  I doing?  Why am I trying to fix this myself?

Why can’t I just let go and trust him to take care of this?

Realizing that I had jumped into “control-mode” was eye- and heart-opening, to say the least.  My fear had caused me to ignore the fact that my husband was downstairs trying to solve the problem for me.  My need to know how things were going to turn out had me step in, knowing full-well that I didn’t know what I was doing, which only made me feel more anxious.  More importantly, I saw that there was still a fear of completely trusting my husband to take care of the situation… to take care of me!

I took a deep breath… and I let go.

I started working on something else, gave it my full attention, and felt the fear and anxiety begin to fade.

A few hours later, my husband texted me to go ahead and reach out to the guy, because he couldn’t figure it out.  He told me he’d pay for the services.  Then he apologized for letting me down.  WHAT?!?

I told him he hadn’t let me down. I thanked him for the hours he’d spent trying to fix the problem and said that I’d reach out to the guy, but that I’d prefer if he spoke with him, because I didn’t understand all of this techie stuff.  He agreed (helping me solve another problem).

The next day, my husband had several conversations with the guy and everything was taken care of.  He rebuilt the website and sent me the link so that I could see it was up and running.  When I texted him with “I love it! <smiley face>,” he responded: “That’s why I don’t give up.  That smile, right there!”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: My husband is my hero!

So, what were the main lessons I learned?  It all comes down to trust!

1. Trust him to solve some of your problems.  Many people associate trust in a relationship with loyalty and fidelity, and that is certainly part of what makes a relationship work. But there’s another level of trust in a relationship.  The one that allows you to trust and believe that there is someone else there to help, support and take care of you – not because you are incapable of taking care of yourself, but, because in a relationship, you no longer have to.

2. Trust that he has your best interests at heart.  Men want the women they love to be happy and to know that they had something to do with that happiness. If your guy makes a decision that ends up not having the most desirable results (he loses some money in an investment, he makes the wrong turn when you’re already late to an important event, he chooses to start his own business and ends up making less money than he used to), trust that he didn’t intend to disappoint you.  Trust that, if he could have, he would have avoided disappointing you.

3. Trust that everything will work out in the end. When I think back to the other day, I realize that things were not as “bad” as they occurred for me that day. There was a back-up on the server, so we were able to get back most of the information we’d lost.  I had people around me who were trying to help: my husband, my sister, the web guy, and my coach’s virtual assistant, who was amazing in telling us what we needed to tell the web guy.  I wasn’t alone.  It wasn’t so bad, and things worked out in the end.  If I’d trusted that it would work out, I would have saved myself a lot of stress, anxiety, and wasted energy!

Learning to trust is one of those relationship skills that takes repetition to “build the muscle,” but the pay-off are so sweet: knowing someone is there who wants to help and has your best interests at heart, and the reassurance that, in the end, no matter what happens, you still have each other!

Questions?  Comments?  Let us know below!  We love hearing from you!

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