I'm an expert firewife.
It's true. I've been married for 20 years.
Dictionary.com definies expert as possessing special skill or knowledge; trained by practice; skillful or skilled.
I've been practicing being a firewife for 14 years. Pretty sure that makes me an expert on the subject.
You too can become an expert. If you won't want to become one then we need to have a talk.
Becoming an expert means asking questions. Researching answers. Most of all, using the resources around you.
It's quite easy since you are going to become the expert firewive of YOUR marriage. Not mine, not your neighbors, not the new girl in the group or department. You need to be the expert in what makes your marriage work.
Even though I'm an expert, I can't tell you want will work for you. I'm more than willing to tell you things that have worked for me. But even those things change over the years based on new life experiences.
Ways to become a firewife expert
- Talk to your firefighter. I don't mean huge major discussions here. I mean when they get home, start small talk. It's amazing how few people start off with the simple,”How was your day?”
- Learn to read signs and body language. I'm lucky that I can generally greet my FF at the door when he gets home. That point from the truck to the door says a lot about how shift went. But pick up on other things. Are they doing something out of character? Ask some simple questions to see if they want to talk about anything that happened.
- Don't hit them immediately with everything that went wrong while they were on shift. I know this is hard not to do. Beyond hard! BUT, they need to decompress and switch roles from all the negative they just went through. If you hit them with a ton of negative immediately then you just took away a safe spot.
- I know a lot of people aren't blessed with kick ass firefamily like I have. I love having local firewives I can connect with. If that's not an option, then you definitely want to find some other wives online. It makes it easier to get through shift days. It will also help you not need to hit him with all the bad stuff when they get home. You can tell your online friends and the vent is already over 😉 We have a FB group for that! lol We also have a community here on the site.
It's not that difficult to become an expert in your relationship. You just have to decide that it's a priority.
Sarcastically working through the craziness that is life as a FireWife! Hope you also join us on the social media accounts where we chat all night long!
Website: → Wife Behind the Fire
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Asking him how HIS day was rather than going into the craziness that was my schedule when the kids were growing up was something I needed to learn to work on but definitely made a difference once I did. I think it made him feel “safe” telling me what happened and how he felt about it. It’s something I still need to remind myself about on occasion.
When you wrote the walk from the truck to the door says alot I swear it was Ike a bell going off in my head. I thought I was the only one who could watch how long he took to get out of the vehicle, what he did when he did get out and how he walked to the door and know if it was going to be bad. Body language is such a tell particularly in men that don’t want to burden you with their hurts or anger or just exhaustion.
Once again you’ve made me realize something about my marriage that I hadn’t thought of…thanks.
Thankfully FF was the one that told me not to bombard him when he got home. This was before he got on the dept even 🙂
So true! I also learned years ago I had to stop texting or calling him with all the things the kids were doing to drive me crazy when he was on shift. That’s a stress he didn’t need when he was on duty. And now I realize it was never that bad that I had to bother him with it.
I still find myself texting him unnecessary info at times. The good news is, you and I are aware of what we are doing and can catch it. There were days that I was having a bad day and texted non-stop with everything that was going wrong. UGH, who wants to hear that at work all day? lol