the ironing board incident

Family expectations are real. So are the expectations we quietly place on each other without ever talking about them. Young couples often walk into marriage carrying assumptions they didn’t even know they had. They assume holidays will work a certain way. They assume family obligations are obvious. They assume their spouse sees situations exactly as they do.

Most of the time, they don’t. Amy and I certaintly didn’t. And we have the stories to prove it.

Amy: We call this “The Ironing Board Incident.” No irons or humans were harmed in this story.

Nathan and I had been married almost a year. I was eight months pregnant. I was tired and swollen everywhere. Even my earlobes felt swollen. It was hot, and I was basically an oven running at 425 degrees.

Nate’s mom called earlier that day and invited us to see some family freinds for a little impromptu BBQ — which wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

But I was not interested.

I felt insecure about how I looked, I had nothing to wear, I was tired, and I did not want to go put on a show face. While Nathan was trying to convince me to go, I happened to be standing at the ironing board, ironing the one shirt that still fit and it’s matching capris. It wasn’t that cute. I have to ask…who was designing maternity clothes back then? They were plain awful. I just wanted to look cute, and the fashion industry was failing all of us in the early 2000s—especially pregnant women.

Nate kept trying to convince me, giving all the logical reasons why I should want to go.

“They’re our dearest family friends.”

“They want to see us.”

“They hardly got to see us on our wedding day.”

“They came all the way here from out of town.”

I said tiredly, “Nate, you should go. I’ll stay home. I really don’t feel great, and I have nothing to wear.” He rebutled.

About this point I was getting really annoyed. I felt like he wasn’t listening to me. He wasn’t sympathizing with how I really felt. Like, in his mind, the way I felt wasn’t as important as eating burgers with these people. My pregnant mind interpreted his, “yes”, as, his family and their wishes were more important than me feeling too sick and exhausted to do anything other than sit on the couch with a fan and watch the hit show Laguna Beach. I had nothing in me except this big baby and even she didn’t want to go. It was the two of us against Nate.

I. JUST. DIDN’T. WANT. TO. GO.

He pulled the dreaded “My mom wants us there.”

And then it happened. I don’t know what possessed me, but in that moment, with the hot iron in my hand, and my big belly tipping the ironing board over that stood between us, I shouted, “I don’t care! I’m not going! You can go!”

He yelled back, “We are going! We’re leaving here at three! Get dressed!”

This was our first EPIC battle, in our first year of marriage, and we were getting ready to welcome our first child. At the same time, we were discovering familial expectations. We knew our families shared a lot of common ground, but how they got there looked very different. Neither of us wanted to disappoint our families, or their good intentioned expectations.

We’ve since learned that sometimes…you just do.

I looked at him, and with a roar I didn’t know could come out of my very pregnant body, I screamed,

“F*** you, Nathan Wood! I hate you!!

I said the mother of all cuss words in its full form. I couldn’t believe I had just said this to my husband. I don’t think Nate had ever heard me curse before that moment.

In all my dramatic glory, I remember thinking: “I hope this puts me into labor so he feels bad for forcing me to go to this BBQ!”

It did not put me into labor.

Nate: It was the summer of 2003. We’d been married about eleven months, I think. Amy was around eight months pregnant with our daughter, Laela. As best as I can remember, it was just an ordinary day. But if you’ve ever lived through a pregnancy, you know that “ordinary” doesn’t always mean emotionally uneventful. Amy was having one of those days where everything felt like something.

My mom called and told me that some of our oldest family friends were in town and wanted to see us. My memory is a little fuzzy on the details, but I remember Amy standing at the ironing board, ironing a shirt or something similar. The ironing board was set up in the dining room just off the kitchen, the iron was in her hand, and I walked in and casually informed her that my mom had called and the Fitch’s were in town. We needed to get ready and head over soon.

Amy stopped ironing and looked at me with more than a little frustration.

“I’m not going anywhere today,” she said. “I really don’t feel like it, and I don’t have anything to wear.”

In my mind, this wasn’t even a discussion. My mom had asked us to come. These weren’t people we saw every day. We didn’t have anything important planned. It seemed obvious to me that we should go.

Feeling completely confident in my flawless logic—and equally confident that I was obviously right—I calmly informed my eight-months-pregnant wife that we were going.

Looking back…

That may have been a mistake.

The discussion quickly turned into an argument, and the argument became a full-blown shouting match.

Now, before any of you starts judging us too harshly, remember that we were young. We were passionate, and neither of us had handled Amy’s first pregnancy particularly well. She had been sick and emotional for months, and I was far too young and far too clueless to be the husband she needed in those moments. On top of that, Laela was going to be the first grandchild in either of our families. Everyone had expectations of us, of our time, and of what we should be doing. We hadn’t yet learned how to balance all of that together.

Then, in a display of youthful arrogance that still makes me cringe, I raised my voice and declared,

“That’s enough! We’re going, and that’s final! We leave at 3!”

Amy lost it.

She slammed the iron down and shoved the ironing board over, sending the iron and everything else crashing to the floor, stormed out of the room, and yelled,

“F*** you, Nathan Wood! I hate you!”

I just stood there.

In all the time I’d known Amy up to that point, I had never heard her use a curse word. Not one. I’d certainly never seen her lose her temper like that.

I honestly don’t remember much of what happened next. I think I apologized. I probably tried to put the pieces back together. Mostly, I remember standing there in complete shock.

Somehow, we still ended up going to see our friends. As strange as it sounds, we actually had a pleasant visit.

Amy: Eventually Nate came into our room, laid down beside me, and somehow still magically convinced me to go. He can still do this magic trick today. Want to know what it is?

Kindness. Kindness kills fights.

Did we end up at his parents’ house at three? No. We got there around four. We had a BBQ. I wore a pink stretchy T-shirt and a pair of stretchy capris. Spending time with them all, I completely understood why his mom wanted us there. They are wonderful people, and our families still see each other as often as possible to this day.

Amy, pregnant with Laela in the summer of 2003.

Nate: The real value of that day didn’t come from the visit. It came from what we learned afterward. What started as an invitation to visit friends wasn’t really about visiting friends at all. It exposed expectations neither of us had ever discussed. It exposed exhaustion, stress, family pressure, pride, and two people who hadn’t yet learned how to communicate through any of it.

No, I’m not recommending our 2003 ironing board strategy for conflict resolution. But I am thankful for what it taught us.

Don’t leave important things unsaid.

If something could become a problem, talk about it.

If it’s already a problem, for the love of all that is holy, talk about it.

If you can imagine it becoming a problem someday, go ahead and talk about it now.

Misunderstanding almost always comes from your silence. Communication doesn’t guarantee you’ll never disagree, but it keeps disagreements from becoming unnecessary battles.

We also learned something else that day. The moment you get married, your spouse becomes your primary relationship. That doesn’t mean your parents stop mattering or your family suddenly becomes unimportant. It means every expectation from the outside has to be be filtered through the covenant you’ve made with each other. Family isn’t the enemy. Friends aren’t the enemy. The problem comes when outside expectations begin making decisions that should belong to the two of you.

For us, what looked like a disagreement about visiting family friends was really a lesson about learning to become our own family. We had to learn to stop assuming and start talking. We had to learn that neither of us should commit the other without a conversation first. Most of all, we had to learn that protecting our marriage sometimes meant disappointing someone else.

That’s one of the hardest transitions in marriage, especially early on. But it’s one every healthy couple has to make.

The Bible says that when a man and woman marry, they “leave” their father and mother and “hold fast” to one another [Gen 2:24]. That leaving isn’t just about where you live. It’s about priority. From that moment on, your marriage comes first. Every other relationship has to be filtered through the covenant you’ve made with your spouse. Healthy marriages don’t happen because couples never face outside expectations. They happen because husbands and wives face those expectations together.

And if you happen to own an ironing board…

Well…try to keep it standing.