Handling change

[Liz]

I find change hard to handle. I like variety in life, but I also find security in some things being constant, in putting my roots down somewhere. In our first year of marriage, we managed to move twice including moving back to England from abroad and an additional short stay in a hotel. For a while we lived out of boxes with a lot of our stuff in storage. We bought our first home which needed a lot of maintenance even to make it tolerably comfortable. We both changed job. I changed career direction and started to learn to drive. Add to this adjusting to married life and I think the first year of our marriage was pretty stressful. As I've got older I like change less and less.

Has anyone else had a stressful start to their married life? How do you cope with change?

[Debbie Allen]

Yes, I can relate to problems starting out in a marriage, in a new relationship and in new in-laws, jobs etc... My husband was 37 when we got married. I had been married before and hve two college students. He has never been married and has no children of his own either. Being new to marriage and child rearing (if you can call it that when they are almost grown) was difficult at best. He wanted all the control and I didn't want to give him all the control. WE got married and two months later I lost my secure job. He got a new job (which was stressful in itself). Then through the two short years that we are married, I lost a total of five jobs, not keeping any for more than 3 months and started my own business. He is the type that wants me to have a job and the security of a regualr paycheck. I have given up on that and would rather work for myself. We had dissagreements over that. Now I find that he might lose this job that he loves and we might have to move. We went on a Consumer Credit plan to reduce out debts that both of us brought into our marriage. Now everything is topsy-turvey. I don't mind change as long as I know where it is going. Right now I don't and it bothers me even if I can't do anything about it.