Trust him.

Trust him like you trusted your Daddy (if you had a good one) or like you wished you could (if you had a bad one).
Trust him to care, trust him to listen, trust him to love you, trust him to need you, trust him to romance you, and most of all trust him to make decisions.

Trust him, because when you do, you set up the best possible pattern for your marriage. You set up this pattern: This marriage has to have a leader. You are the leader. I trust you to be a good leader. I trust you to think things through. I trust you to do your best. I trust you to have good intentions. I trust you so I don’t have to worry about it.

Perfect Is Not Part of the Equation

Now, of course, he will mess up. He will make silly decisions, spend money on stupid things, rush into things or wait too long and miss opportunities. That doesn’t matter. There are very few messes he can make by a bad decision here or there that are as far-reaching and serious as the one you can make by refusing to trust him.

Let me say that again:
It’s more important that you trust him than that you have perfect finances in perfect order, the best car for the best value, the best house in the best school district, the ideal job, the better salary, the church that really fits you, the friends who really get you.

Why? Well, you plan on staying married, right? You signed up for life? Your marriage, God-willing and the creek don’t rise, will outlast financial problems, debt, broken cars, leaky houses, screaming babies, pooping pets, ugly furniture, a wardrobe of fat clothes, several years of bad hair days, in-grown churches, mooching friends.

That other stuff is circumstantial, situational, here today and a sweet or sour memory tomorrow. But while that stuff fades, you’ll still be waking up next to him. Him, the guy you married, the guy who probably didn’t know much when you married him, the guy who is learning about life with you. He knew enough to marry you. He’ll figure the rest out.

When Things Don’t Look Good

Trust him so he can. Trust that he has good intentions. Trust that God will protect you and provide for you. Trust that you are strong enough and wise enough to choose what matters and handle the storm that might arise because of your choices. And there will be a storm, probably many. There will be storms of condemnation and criticism (Why didn’t you stop him? Don’t you two know any better?); there will be storms of fear and worry (What will happen to us?); there will be storms of guilt (I should have told him not to do that…); there will be storms of hopelessness (Will he ever change? Will he ever get it? Will we ever get out of this situation? Will things ever get better?).

A storm is violent and furious and over in a few moments. Hold on, hunker down, and outlast it. You’re woman enough for that.

The more you trust him, the more he becomes worthy of your trust.

Do you want a wise husband?

One who thinks about the future, who has a vision for your family, who guards your heart, who provides for your needs, who acts on truth? Then trust the husband you have.
Trust him as if he is wise and watch as he becomes wise.

—

This post is linked up with Fimby’s (brand-new!) Friday’s Flowers.

Images

1. Bouquet of wildflowers that look like daisies – mine.

2. Have white doves follow you courtesy of H.KoppDelaney on Flickr.

3. Hold his glowing hand courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt (Pink Sherbet Photography) on Flickr.

It’s not a good thing.

Men like to be taken care of. It’s relaxing and easy for them to become apathetic. It’s easier to let somebody else be in charge of those irritating little daily parts of life. The medium-sized parts of life. And while you’re at it, go ahead and take care of the big stuff, too.

The Big Toddler Syndrome

Here’s an example. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

“Sometimes I feel like Boseephus gets home from work and instead of my best friend – an ADULT – it’s more questions (where is this, where is that, what did you do here, what is going on there, have you done this, can you help with that, etc.) and more needs and more messes. And I just want to scream. I have been a Mommy all day long. The last thing I need is someone else to take care of.”

Does anybody have any idea what this lady is talking about? Ever been there? Felt that way?

Here you are, trying to be a good wife, trying to have a better marriage, a Biblical marriage, trying to help out and keep being in love… And this. This is not helping. This is not what you need. Where did your husband, that strong, capable man, go? Why did he disappear? And where did this adult-sized, toddler-brained look alike come from? And how do you fix it?

And how do you fix it? You?You aren’t the one who needs to fix it, that’s how.

Step away from the grown-up toddler.

How It All Starts

Men want their wives to be happy, so they sacrifice their own desires for their wives.
“Most women do not understand how much it pleases a man to please a woman, specifically how important it is to the man in her life to please her. Furthermore, a man does not simply want to please her — he lives to please her” (1).

They start asking instead of telling, getting the wife’s opinion instead of just making the decision, asking about our preferences instead of just doing things their way. That’s very nice and sacrificial and loving of them. Unfortunately… something gets lost in translation. We take in all the checking and asking as uncertainty (at best) or cluelessness (at worst).

The wife thinks, first, something like, “Wow, he really needs me, isn’t that sweet?” Then she thinks something like, “Wow, I have to babysit him.” Eventually it becomes a simple habit: “I have to tell my husband how to do everything.”

Meanwhile, the husband is thinking, I wouldn’t do it that way but because she requested it, or because I know she prefers it, or because I think it will make her happy… I’ll do it for her. So the husband lets her be in charge to accomodate her. The wife assumes that if she doesn’t take charge then he just won’t do anything. Soon he starts to resent the way she bosses him around. Soon she starts to resent the way he’s totally passive.

How It All Gets Worse

She may not have meant to, but little wifey took advantage of her husband’s willingness to let her make the choices and have her own preferences. A heart to help becomes twisted. It’s easier for the guy to let the woman take over; then he becomes apathetic in the areas in which she takes over, and then she takes over all the other areas. It quickly spreads.

That’s why the laid-back husband might start establishing these “hidden” areas, addictive hobbies, an obsession with sports, hours in front of the screen, etc. It’s just to establish something in his own life over which his woman cannot establish/maintain control… That’s why he gets so defensive about it, too, when the woman questions: Why do you spend so much time on the golf course/watching football/on the computer? The man is thinking, This is the LAST and ONLY thing which I have kept for myself, which I haven’t changed or given up in order to please you. Would you just leave it alone!

How It All Needs to Stop

Somebody needs to step back and create some space here. We wives often won’t get out of the way long enough to give them room to lead. We get so used to being consulted, accommodated, in charge, that we make it nearly impossible for our husbands to do things without “checking” first. We don’t want to be in charge, really, but they don’t know how to take charge again without offending us.

My recommendation for the wife of Boseephus – or the wife of any man who has reverted to toddler-like behavior - is this:

• Get busy with your own responsibilities, hobbies, and stuff so you’re not just sitting around looking available to do/control/critique his responsibilities, hobbies, and stuff.
• Give him a little downtime when he first gets home from work to unwind. Everybody unwinds differently. Maybe he likes to chat, be silly, rough house with the kids, zone out on the computer or in front of the tv, be alone for a few minutes, tackle a physical project. I know, I know: you want to see him, you want to talk to somebody over the age of 10, you need to unwind too. You’ll get your chance! Just hang in there a little bit longer. Try it. See what happens.
• Use these three magic words for those questions you shouldn’t have to answer (e.g. where is my wallet?, or, have you seen that random thing that fell out of my pants pocket, sat on my closet floor for three days, and has now disappeared?): “I don’t know.” Be nice, now. You could even say, “I don’t know, honey.”
• Don’t get upset when he starts making some decisions without consulting you first. It’s kind of a package deal. You don’t get to say I’ll be in charge of areas x, y, z, and you be in charge of areas a, b, c, but please ask me about d, don’t do e without checking first, and for pete’s sake remember how I prefer f to be handled! Come on. Chill out a bit. Try new things. It will be good for you. Weeeeee!
• If you’re up for extra credit here, try this too: start asking about his preferences and opinions. That doesn’t mean you have to custom-cater everything to his whims. But it’s kind of nice to know what he likes, isn’t it?

-

Images

1. Toddler in the bath courtesy of Jolien Vallins on Flickr.

Sources

1. Patricia Love, Ed.D, and Steven Stosny, Ph.D. How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It. New York: Broadway Books, 2007. Page 66, quoting research by Patricia Love and Jo Robinson for the book Hot Monogamy in which 1500 couples were interviewed regarding relationships.

When we were engaged, my husband bought a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Now, if you know my husband, you know he’s not so much a poetry reader. This was a pure act of love for me, his bride-to-be, who was (and still is) an avid poetry reader.

I tell him about sonnets.
He tells me about mechanical workings, string theory, economics, and how to get from Point A to Point B.

We learn things from each other like that. It’s a nice argument for bringing back the bartering system.

So, SuperMan, here’s my trade for the day: a little poem Ms. Dickinson wrote. You are the atom I prefer.

Of all the souls that stand create

Of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;

When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;

When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away,—
Behold the atom I preferred
To all the lists of clay!

–

Sources

1. Emily Dickinson’s poem “Of All the Souls That Stand Create” taken from this website.

Images

1. “fresh love” from viZZZual.com on Flickr.

You need friends besides your husband. You need girlfriends and sisters and preferably a mom or two (whether biological or not). You need women in your life, because those friendships provide understanding, comfort, inspiration, and camaraderie in a way that is different from what you’ll develop with your husband.
And you need to hold on to interests that are your own, unique and special, whether hobby or craft or pastime or work or passion. Those are important. You shouldn’t let go of the things you love, the things that are fun for you.

However, I believe that those girl-friendships and those personal-interests should be second fiddle to your husband. In what should be a normal marriage, you should be closer to your husband, spend more time with your husband, and have more fun with your husband than you do being with anyone else or doing anything else. This is ideal, though it’s not always reality.

It’s not always reality because sometimes we get so serious about marriage that we make it all a chore. We get really intense about having time together, about talking and sharing, about growing our relationship, bonding, building intimacy. Sometimes we forget to just relax and have fun.

I got lucky. My husband is one of those crazy-fun, life-of-the-party, always-has-an-idea kind of a guys. If I want to have fun, I just clear my schedule and wait around for what he comes up with next. I’ve learned that you can do almost anything and have fun. (Almost is a key word here. Anything involving excruciating physical pain is difficult to fit into the fun category. Childbirth, for example: not fun.)

My tendency is to give practical tips, and I want to start writing a paragraph about the elements of fun times, or 55 fun things to do together, but I think that just won’t work in this case. You don’t need me to tell you how to have fun, or what to do for fun. I think the best advice I can give is to loosen up. Maybe clear your schedule a bit, shorten your to-do list, so you can have guilt-free time for fun, so you won’t be so hurried and stressed that you’re virtually unable to experience fun.

Laughing together builds intimacy faster than anything else.

I think most of us don’t need deep conversations with our husbands as much as we need to laugh at their jokes and tell a few of our own. Maybe let’s start renting comedies instead of dramas, and then we’ll have more comedy and less drama. Next time you’re in the middle of an argument, stop and tell a knock-knock joke. Or get in a tickle war. Or smear chocolate icing on his face. (That last one has personally worked for me to defuse the tension, so I can recommend it. Just be prepared for retaliation.)

Life is serious enough without us adding to it.

Sometimes, I confess, I am not quick to have fun. Like that time I had fallen asleep on the couch and my husband squirted Cheez Whiz all over my face. I awoke with the cold light of fury in my eyes. Then I got him back. Then I told him how rude he was. Then, later, I laughed…

Fun is pretty simple, though. It’s just a little twist on the everyday stuff. It’s laughing instead of grunting. It’s telling a joke instead of complaining. It’s being hokey enough to pretend everything is an adventure even when it isn’t. It’s being humble enough to look stupid. It’s being confident enough to try new things.

And I’m really interested in how other people have fun. If you have a minute, could you answer two questions? 1) What “special” things do you do for fun with your husband/family? and 2) How do you make the normal, daily stuff fun?

Now go have some fun, you crazy kids!

-
This post is linked up with Se7en’s Fabulous Friday Fun.

While we were engaged, innocent young lovers who hadn’t yet kissed, we got lots of marriage advice. Sport a ring and a goofy look and you’re just too obvious a target, apparently. The advice usually ran along these lines:

• Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.
• Oh, look at you now, but just wait till the honeymoon’s over.
• Soon it will just be fight, fight, fight.
• You’re so young to get married! (I was 24, he was 23 when we got married.)

We happily disregarded the doomsayers, bought flowers, (oh no wait, that was Dad), bought a cake (oh wait, that was Dad too), invited our 200 closest friends and relatives, and got married. It was lovely.

Then the honeymoon ended and, well, we were still happy. We made a few minor discoveries. Ah, well, we thought. It’s all part of the adventure. And while now, instead of counting the days until we got married, we started counting the number of times we looked at each other and said, “Huh?” in complete bewilderment, we were still pretty starry-eyed. Young love.

Then we didn’t get pregnant, and that was stressful because I started thinking of all sorts of things that might be wrong and what would it be like if we couldn’t have kids and oh-no and what will we do and we’d better get health insurance, fast and then,

We did get pregnant, and Joe was the perfect husband and rubbed my back and rubbed my feet and told me I was beautiful when my belly button disappeared, and when my ankles disappeared, and then,

Mara was born. And we realized how very, very foolish we had been all that time before she was born, taking sleep for granted the way we had. But we loved being parents and so,

We got pregnant again.

I could go on. The point is, the bad marriage advice never came true. Life happened. The honeymoon ended. We had kids. We lived together. We experienced joy, grief, loss, regret, and that was just in the first three months of home ownership. We won’t even go into real grief, loss of family, tight budgets, job changes, stress, pregnancy, post-partum, life with a baby, life with a baby and a toddler, life with a baby and a toddler and a preschooler.

The other point is, the bad marriage advice did come true, kind of. The underlying statement behind all those negative predictions was this: “You kids think you know each other and you think you’re in love and you think you’ll be happy; but you don’t really know each other, and once you do, you’ll realize you’re not in love and you’ll be terribly unhappy. The end.”

And truthfully? We really didn’t know each other. The simple truth is that no matter how in love you are, how thoroughly prepared, how close… you are two different people and marriage will make that obvious in ways nothing else can.

Our advice-givers made a correct assumption (we didn’t really know each other the way we thought we did) but they drew an incorrect conclusion. We did find out a lot of things about each other, and not all of them were, well, love-inducing. For example, did you know that

• Joe’s belly button will collect lint every single day without fail, even if he walks around stark naked?
• men have a genetic mutation that prevents them from accurately estimating the distance across the room to the laundry hamper, which will invariably result in a pile of dirty clothes placed six to eighteen inches around the hamper?
• women can blame PMS and hormones for everything?
• I have a really good whiny-annoying “baby” voice that sometimes manifests itself without my prior knowledge or consent?
• Joe likes Hamburger Helper? Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Gross. Ew.
• I can easily spend $50/week on coffee and coffee-related, uh, accoutrements?

I kid you not, my friends. These things are true and yet our marriage has survived. In fact, not only has it survived, it has been awesome. Strange and shocking, sometimes, yes. But strange and shocking aren’t so strange and shocking once you get used to ‘em. Really.

In marriage, you can’t dwell on the differences. If you do, your common ground gets smaller and smaller, and that’s when you start asking yourself those questions. Why did I marry him? What do we even have in common? Do I even know him? Is he anything like me? Silent but deadly, those questions, like the smell in the room after a meal at White Castle. Just don’t even go there – to the questions or to White Castle.

Instead, get over it. (And cook something better at home, like beans.) Emphasize the common ground. Accommodate the differences. Seek out the strengths. Overlook the weaknesses. Balance each other out; that’s why God brought you together in the first place.

-

Image courtesy of Made Underground.

There are two kinds of women in the world: those who can wear high heels and those who can’t.
But that has nothing to do with this article. Let’s start over.

There are two kinds of women in the world: those whose sex drive is weaker than their husbands’ and those whose sex drive is stronger than their husbands’.

There’s a possibility of a third, minority group of women whose luck in life is to have a sex drive exactly matched by their husbands’, but I’ve yet to meet one. Or maybe I’ve met one and I just didn’t realize it, because that’s not the sort of thing you write on your name tag. “Hello, I’m Louise and I’m one of the few happy women whose sex drive is spot on with her husband!” Yeah. It would make for a large name tag, and they always make your lapel look goofy as it is. If you’re wearing something with lapels, that is, which these days is as rare as a steak that’s still mooing.

Anyway, back to the two kinds of women.
Right off the bat you know which one you are, don’t you? That’s okay, though, you don’t have to tell me. I’ve conducted a survey, and according to the non-scientific results of my poll, it seems that each scenario is equally common. Yeah, you read that right, you sex-crazed women.

You’re not weird or anything, we’re just dealing with the residual effect of a fifties-Americana housewife stereotype. You know, the gal who was always baking a pie or vacuuming or holding her new wonder-cleaning product in well-manicured hands. The one whose smile always had that gleaming tooth. The one who most definitely never initiated sex. That one. I just have one thing to say about her:
Why do you think she was always wearing a skirt?

Ponder that.

There’s no real rocket science to this subject matter. It’s really just another look into the way you’re different than the man you married. Either he wants sex more often than you do, or you want sex more often than he does. And, as with all differences that exist between a woman and her husband, this one is superb for generating miscommunication, hurt feelings, anger, frustration, and large expenditures on new lingerie. Not that the last one’s a bad thing, necessarily…

Here’s where it gets touchy, though. (Touchy… get it? Ha, ha, ha…wait. Why am I the only one laughing?) People seem to have a hard time talking about sex. (Hard time… get… oh never mind.) Well, people talk about sex all the time, actually. They make jokes about it, have casual conversations about it, make endless innuendos about it… but when it comes to a real, honest talk about it with their mate-for-life? AH! Shame, embarrassment, chagrin, fear, stress. The crassness of our culture gives us an infinite supply of dirty jokes and sexual stereotypes, but it doesn’t give us any real ways of talking about sex.

Try having a serious conversation about sex and see how many terms come to mind that are demeaning or humorous or just make you feel like a 5th-grader.

The thing is, sex makes us vulnerable. Our culture treats it lightly (and crassly) as a way of covering up the vulnerability without abstaining from the sex. Well, that’s great for them (though I have my doubts about the effectiveness of the method) but for two people who are married, vulnerability isn’t something we need to avoid. And if we could come to terms with being vulnerable, we could have the conversations we need to have.

Something like this:

The wife whose husband wants sex more often than she does might say, “Honey, I love you and I want you, but I don’t want you all the time. I don’t know how to explain that because I’m afraid you’ll feel hurt or rejected or unwanted, but that’s not it at all. I’m just not built the same as you, and sometimes I can’t respond the same way you do. I need you to give me a way to be who I am without feeling guilty, angry, and resentful. I need you to help me find the time and the way to switch from being busy, working, stressed to just being with you. Sometimes it takes me a while to get there. It doesn’t mean I don’t want or need you, it just means I need your patience and understanding.”

The wife whose husband wants sex less often than she does might say, “Honey, I love you and I know you want me, but when I initiate and you’re not interested I feel so rejected. I know we’re different people, but my self-esteem and identity as a woman is all tied up in how sexy you think I am. When you’re not interested in sex and I am, I feel rejected not just as your wife but as a woman. I start questioning everything about myself – my looks, my body, my desirability, your love, my sex appeal. I really need affirmation from you. I need help to understand that you still find me appealing and desirable, but you need time to switch gears, too.”

I don’t know. What if we could have conversations like that? What if we could broach the subject without being silly or oversensitive? Would that change things? Would it improve our relationships? I think so. I think it would remove much of the stress. And I think if some of the stress were removed from the whole subject, we would have a lot more fun.

Fun is good.

Oh, by the way, did you figure out which kind of woman I am?

–

Images courtesy of mistress_f and x ray delta one.

Okay, actually further back than that, in the 1980s, when a very young Joe had a crush on the little red-headed neighbor girl, and a very young Annie, miles away, decided she wanted to marry a brown-eyed Italian boy when she grew up.

Then they met.

They were both 14, or thereabouts, full of awkward adolescence, trying to be cool. Joe was a kind but rebel skateboarder, with deep brown eyes and an Italian mama. Annie was an earnest but skeptical Southern girl, with fair freckled skin and red hair. He watched her, she watched him. “Hm,” they both thought. “Hmm. Interesting.”

Then our fanatical parents decided to become even more fanatical by doing a home church together. Home school, home church, why not? And, actually, it was great. And he was there, with his family. I was there, with my family. We tried not to stare at each other while we were supposed to be singing.

That went on for about 4 years, all through high school. Our families were good friends, and Joe and I became good friends too, as much as you can when you really really like each other but you’re trying not to acknowledge that. I talked to my parents about him. Once I even talked to his parents about him (one of the hardest things I’ve ever done). And, unbeknownst to either of us, our parents talked to each other about us. No, no betrothal or arranged marriage or anything like that. Just a kind of nice conversation along the lines of… Hey, if they’re ever interested in each other, we think that’s great!

Ever interested in each other? What an understatement! Meanwhile, we invented “full-contact basketball” and enjoyed a few games before a random parent walked out to the driveway mid-game. That was the end of that. Home school kids can get creative, and not always in a good way.

We were strange little teenagers,

but we were sincerely trying to follow God. And for both of us, at that time, it meant “just being friends” and trying (though we failed miserably many times) not to flirt, not to go where we shouldn’t. Did we know we liked each other? Yes and no. I knew, but I was afraid to really believe. What if I was wrong? What if I counted on him liking me and I was just way off? And he thought, he hoped, but he wasn’t sure either.

Then I graduated high school (I’m a year older than he is) and then we moved. Away. Back to Mississippi. 500+ miles away from Joe. A thousand little signs that could be interpreted as “I like you, I love you, please wait for me” but no actual conversation along those lines. I started college, he finished high school. I met a lot of nice college boys, some of whom were quite distracting. Then Joe and his family would come down to visit (because we were all good friends), or we would all go to St. Louis, and suddenly those nice college boys were just not so interesting. They were nice, but Joe was more. He was unique, he was deep, he was funny, he was adventurous, he wasn’t just like everybody else.

One day I was at the bottom of

the lowest of emotional lows.

We had just seen each other, and once again it was the most exciting, heart-wrenching experience. I was 20 or 21, I don’t remember the exact date. But I do remember sitting on the floor with my Bible, crying and crying out: “God, just tell me. Just tell me. Do I need to let go? Is this wrong? Am I wrong? Or is he the one, the one from You? Do I just need to wait, to hold on?”

I opened my Bible and read the story of Abraham going on a journey. Going on a journey down to the South. Sojourning there. And then returning to the place where he “had been at the beginning… to the place of the altar which he had made there at first” (Genesis 13:3,4). And as clear as if a voice had spoken from heaven or a finger had written on the wall, I knew. I knew my part was just to wait, to hold on. I knew God would take me back, back to St. Louis, back to Joe.

And He did.

There are intervening years, circumstances, signs, stories, tears, prayers. But in the space between that moment of knowing and the moment Joe proposed on a Florida beach at sunrise, I didn’t doubt anymore.

We got married on September 5 of 2004 in my parents’ backyard. Three kids and almost six years later, it is still

the best reality I’ve ever known.

What’s your story? I’d love to hear it. Do share.