Camping and Your Marriage

I keep seeing these tee shirts and tote bags that say,

"I'm sorry for what I said while we were parking the camper."

Every time I see one I think I should buy them for both Jesse and me. They're funny and we could be twinsies, which would be fun. But there is some truth to them; they wouldn't be as amusing if they didn't have an element of familiarity. Parking the RV is, and I'm not exaggerating here, one of the most challenging things we have ever done in our 17 years of marriage, not because of the difficulty of maneuvering 60 feet of rig into tight spaces, but because of what doing so brings UP.

The first time I realized that we had some issues to work through was the night we got to Ohio. We had driven almost 600 miles that day, from Wisconsin, through Illinois and Indiana, to Cleveland. It was a stressful day. We had been crawling toward Cleveland for weeks at that point, so we planned the shortest route, but did not realize that we would end up paying an insane amount of money for tolls and super expensive diesel.

We were making excellent time until just over the Ohio border, when we got a flat tire in a very inconvenient spot. Not that there is ever a convenient place to get a flat, but we couldn't open the trailer door, which meant we had no access to a bathroom or kitchen while stopped. We stayed calm and kept the kids happy, but still had to wait several hours for roadside assistance.

Once we were on the road again, we were feeling optimistic, and looking forward to our campsite, but it was a lot farther to our campground than we had anticipated. By the time we got there we were out another $20 in tolls, it was nearly midnight, and it was pitch dark.

As anyone who has ever done it can tell you, parking an RV in the dark is rough. But parking an RV in the dark,

--after 18 hours in the car with four children,
--after spending $200 on tolls,
--after skipping dinner out because you spent all your travel day funds on toll roads,
--in the mud,
--with a huge tree in the way,
--on a spare tire,
--on a bloody hill

is AWFUL.

In short, it was the perfect storm. Jesse was asking me to guide him, and I was trying, but we were not communicating well. I didn't want to raise my voice because it was midnight and he was frustrated because he couldn't hear me. I thought I was being very clear with the flashlight and he disagreed. Blessedly, a neighbor came out of his tent and helped Jesse back into our spot.

As fights go, it was very mild. We said, "I'm mad at you, and this is why!" grabbed some dinner out of the fridge, watched an episode of The Office, and went to bed.

But it did spotlight some problems in our marriage that had been there for a long time. Namely,  that I felt like Jesse didn't listen to me when we were trying to do something hard. It seemed to me that he did what he thought was best, and I was annoyed that he continued to ask for my help when he wasn't listening to what I had to say. Jesse thought that I wasn't doing my most effective work, which turned out to be true because I thought it wasn't really needed.

It was a small argument and a small issue, but it was important for us to work it out, because we learned more about each other and how we think. We also were reassured, through this conflict, that we have the same goals and intentions. We both wanted to get the trailer parked safely. We both wanted our extremely cranky children to go to sleep. We both wanted to eat and go to bed. It is good to have a partner that shares your objective, and it was beneficial to us both to see that we did.

A fight is not a bad thing if it's constructive and useful. We have come back, several times since, to the lessons we learned that day. Jesse listens to me more closely now, and if he asks for my help, I assume he really wants it and give him my best.

We both still hate parking the trailer, though. I don't think that's going to change.