As some of you know, my marriage hasn't been exactly blissful this year.  We've had months where we just can't seem to get along, no matter what we do.  We don't have big knock-down-drag-out-fights, we just bicker back and forth and generally get on each other's nerves.  It doesn't make for a happy atmosphere at home, especially for our kids.  It wasn't until our son made a comment about it that we realized just how bad it had become - and we decided to do something about it.

Neither of us really wanted to go to counselling.  We tried that years ago and it really didn't do much for us - I don't know if it was the counsellor or just us being difficult, but it seemed to cause more issues than it solved, so we were really reluctant to do that again.   Besides, we weren't at divorce's door - we had decided that divorce simply wasn't an option - so we felt that counselling wasn't the way to go.

So, we racked our brains for a solution to our problem....and came up empty handed.  It wasn't until I was writing an entry in my journal that it came to me:  a shared journal.  We've always found that we can communicate better with the written word than with the spoken; it helps us say what we really want to say without interruption and without all the emotion.  I thought that it was a fantastic idea, so I found a new journal and wrote an entry in it, outlining what I wanted to do and how I felt about it, and I gave it to Dave.

He rolled his eyes and sighed.  I told him to stop being so melodramatic and read what I had written.  When he had finished, he asked me if he had to write something in it every day.  I said no, that he could just write in it when he felt like it, that that was what I was going to do. 

He agreed to give it a try, and wrote his response to my entry the next day.  A few days later we were bickering again, so I decided to put the shared journalling to the test and wrote an entry telling him how I felt and why I felt that way.  I left the journal on his pillow so he'd see it, and then I went and cooked supper.

The next day I found the journal in my knitting bag.  He had written a response....I'm not going to go into too much detail, but it was very informative and made me see his point of view regarding the issue we were bickering about.  I could understand why he did the things he did and why he said what he said more clearly than when we tried to talk about it (actually when we yelled about it). The journal was working.

It's still working.  It's a very, very helpful tool.  We've written more entries since then, some of which haven't been as a result of a fight or a spat....they've been entries telling each other how much we love and appreciate each other and how proud we are to be the other's spouse.  I've been surprised a few times; I've opened the journal just to re-read what we've said and there's been an entry in there that he's written without having to be prompted (either by me or by an entry that I've written).  Like I said earlier, writing our thoughts down give us a chance to say what we have to say without being interruped by the other, and also without the emotion that so often turns a little flame of a spat into a raging inferno of a fight.  It's also easier for him to express his emotions - like most men, he's not very vocal about his love for me, but when he writes about it....well, it's just wonderful and I cherish those words and entries.

Shared journalling is an incredibly helpful thing and I highly recommend it - even for people who aren't fighting or having marital issues.