SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

What

It's the best thing you can do for your marriage. It's simple. You already know how.
It is the Art of Listening.

Why

• It's a basic (though often lost) courtesy of human interaction.
• Your husband is the most important person in your life. When you invest in him by listening, you invest in your own life.
• You don't know everything about him. He can surprise you. You just need to give him a chance.

What It's Not

1. Nodding, smiling, and saying "Mmmmhmm," and "Sure," and "Yes, of course," while your mind wanders over the 1000 things you haven't accomplished today.
2. Letting your eyes glaze over while he describes some technical/mechanical/sports-related item that you don't understand or care to understand.
3. Having a running internal commentary of snide remarks that you won't let yourself say out loud.
4. Interrupting.
5. Giving him the cues that say, "I'm really too busy for this, could you please hurry it along?"
6. Finishing his sentences.
7. Thinking of what you'll say next when he finally stops talking.

What It Is

• Saying "I want to hear this, but I'm very distracted right now. Could we talk later?" when you are distracted by valid concerns, interruptions, children, etc.
• Following up on that by actually making time to sit down and talk, even if that means staying up later than you like, or skipping the tv show, or not getting to next chapter in your book or blog in your reader.
• Making eye contact.
• Acting like you have all the time in the world, whether you do or not.
• Asking questions.
• Employing the 5-second rule: wait 5 seconds after he finishes talking before you respond. Try it. Really.
• Looking for the real story.
• Leaving your assumptions behind.
• Showing that you are interested in what he says, in what he is interested in, just because of who he is. Even if you hate sports. Even if you don't get how the gears fit together.
• Responding.

Go forth and listen!

If there were one thing and one thing only I could tell every newbie wife it would be this. Now I'm only speaking from almost-six years of marriage experience. Maybe my one piece of advice will be totally different when it's ten or twenty years. Probably, because last week I know my one piece of advice was to accept him as he is. (How's that for a wallop of advice?) But this week it's different. This week I've got it. This is the important one.

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.

For as long as we have been married, I have been able to silence (into deep, utter, uncomfortable, frozen silence) my normally upbeat and energetic husband with just five little words.

Honey, we need to talk.

Why Do Men Hate Talking?

It doesn't matter what we need to talk about. It could be a good thing, or just a circumstancial thing I need help sorting out, or just my own feelings about... whatever. Not necessarily marriage-related, you understand. But it has never failed that when I utter those words, or something like them, Joe's handsome, happy face morphs into this deer-in-the-headlights terror. I can see an inner struggle. He's enough of a man that he tries - really, really tries - to respond positively. But I can see that he has to make himself.

For a while, that fact itself hurt my feelings. Why doesn't he want to talk? If he loves me, why wouldn't he want to spend time with me? I'm not mad at him. I just want to spend some time together. I just want to share. I just want to connect.

Why Do Women Lo - o - o - ove Talking?

So I did what any rational woman would do. I said, Hey, we need to talk about talking.
Wow. What a perfect solution. I'm sure that idea lit my husband's heart with cheer and anticipation.
Hey, since you don't like this whole talking thing, let's take an hour or two to just talk through that dislike and once we talk enough (about talking) I'm sure we'll get past it and you'll probably like talking! And then we can just talk some more! All night, even! Wow! Won't that be great?!

Bless him. He didn't run away, screaming.

Recently I picked up this book at the library because, well, because of what I've just described above. The title: How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It.

The funny thing is, we've come a long way in our talking (or not talking) and how we approach it and why we both react the way we do to each other. Joe was able to finally help me understand that my phrase and tone and even my facial expression all made him feel like he was thirteen again and just got called into the kitchen for a lecture from Mom. Wow, that's not what I was trying to do... (Was it?) And I was able to help Joe understand that when he avoided talking to me, it made me feel instantly and unequivocably rejected.

Blame the Cortisol!

But this book - seriously - everyone who is married should read this book. Some of it I skimmed over, but a few sections I stopped and reread. Like this one:

"When it comes to relationships, women often mistake this guarded response, which many males retain throughout life, for lack of interest or even loss of love. Most of the time, he hasn't lost interest; he's merely trying to avoid the overwhelming discomfort of a cortisol dump... Cortisol is a hormone secreted during certain negative emotions. Its job is to get your attention by making you uncomfortable so that your discomfort drives you to do something to make the situation better. The pain a woman feels when her man shouts at her is caused by the sudden release of cortisol. A man feels this same discomfort when he is confronted with her unhappiness or criticism. He may look like he is avoiding her, but he is essentially trying to avoid a cortisol hangover for the next several hours" (1).

The whole situation of talking in our marriage is so stereotypical it's kind of embarrassing. But this information is news to me. If it's true (and their research seems valid), then Joe is actually made physically uncomfortable by my "we need to talk" statements because he interprets them as unhappiness and/or criticism (which, let's be honest, a lot of times they are).

Not that this means he gets out of ever having one of those talks again... but maybe I will be a little more sympathetic. Or maybe I will tie him to a chair first...
-

Images

1. Couple kissing courtesy of Jolien Vallins on Flickr.

2. Couple almost not kissing and talking instead 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. Pages 12-13.

Well, I can't say that this little experiment is going the way I want it to. I haven't gotten a nice long solitude-soaked walk every night this week, as I've quit trying to demand (me! self-care! me!) and started trying to let myself be taken care of. Some things, just circumstances and busyness, got in the way, some evenings when we were simply too busy with friends or obligations.

Ignoring Self-Preservation Instincts

My instinct (the self-preservation one, I guess) is to find a new plan, one that doesn't involve me depending on Joe to make it happen the way I want it to. He doesn't need any more pressure, I tell myself. He's got enough going on. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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.) Read the rest of this entry »

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.

The story of our marriage begins back in the 1990s.

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.

Every happy couple looks different.

Your version of wedded bliss isn't the same as mine. (Good thing, huh?)

But all the happy couples have at least one thing in common: they make sure that the things they love about each other take up more space than the things they don't like. Read the rest of this entry »