SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

Download the questions as a pdf. Free! Just because I like you! And because making random pdf files makes me feel productive! Because it's really just all about me being happy, anyway... But that's not important... er... Nevermind.

I'm not sure where he got it, but back when my husband and I were just my "potential husband" and I, my Dad [bonus points if you can figure out which one in the list he is. Hint: my maiden name starts with N] produced a list of questions. 68 of them.

Joe and I lived 500 miles apart, so we spent a lot of time on the phone. Hours and hours and hours. And I still have this list of questions with little doodles and circles and one word answers and phrases and underlining...

So I've compiled, from this source and out o' my own brain, a list of questions, pre-marriage questions, so other young couples, miles apart, phone pressed up against their now-deformed and 120-degree ear, can enjoy the same experience.
I mock (a bit) but these are good questions. I'm glad we talked about them, and as I read over them now, I see a lot that it would be good or fun or both to talk about again. Pre-marriage or relationship refresher, they work both ways.

As I recall, we started our discussion with question #36. Our answers have since altered.... But that's another story.

65 Pre-Marriage Questions

(or Post-Marriage Questions for spurring on great conversations)

1. What were your childhood vacations like?
2. What were your family's holiday traditions?
3. Do you have a large extended family? Are you close to them?
4. Do you have any regrets about relationships within your family?
5. How do you deal with hurts, resentment, bitterness, etc., in family relationships?
6. What makes you depressed? How do you handle depression?
7. What is your ideal life, or life calling, or vision for the future?
8. How do you know (regarding #7)?
9. When attracted you to me?
10. What have you heard about me?
11. What do you think about my family?
12. What are your concerns about our relationship?
13. What is your relationship history?
14. What are your regrets about past relationships?
15. What are your favorites? (Color, food, movie, vacation, restaurant, book, sport, band, etc.)
16. What are your pet peeves?
17. What are your music tastes? How important is music to you? How does music affect you? What kind of freedom will you give your children in what music they listen to?
18. What is your taste and preference as far as the appearance of the opposite sex?
19. What is your personal style?
20. Who are your closest friends?
21. What energizes you: being around people or being alone?
22. What does "quality time" mean to you?
23. Are you a private person? Do you share things freely or prefer to keep things to yourself?
24. What do you do in your free time?
25. What is your personality?
26. What is your spiritual gift?
27. What are your main strengths and weaknesses?
28. What are your main goals in life?
29. What three things matter most in building a successful marriage?
30. What do you see as my blind spots?
31. How will you train and discipline your children?
32. What should the spiritual structure of a marriage look like? Who is the spiritual leader? How would you lead/submit?
33. Are you a spender or a saver?
34. How would you manage money?
35. What are your preferences and style when it comes to home decor, interior design, colors, etc.?
36. How many children do you want to have? When? How close together? What do you think about birth control?
37. What are your fears or insecurities? What do you worry about?
38. How do you handle correction from others (parents, boss, friends, church leaders)?
39. What makes you angry?
40. Are you a jealous person? Do you get jealous? How do you handle jealousy?
41. What encourages you?
42. What discourages you?
43. What do you wish you could change about your past?
44. What do you hope to accomplish in your future?
45. Do you find it easy or difficult to ask for help?
46. What do you see as my strengths and weaknesses?
47. Is it hard for you to figure me out? Do you feel stuck on surface things?
48. What is your relationship with God like? What do you believe? Why? How do you live out your beliefs?
49. Name three major victories in your life.
50. Name three major failures in your life.
51. What do you believe about the major social issues of our day?
52. What should a wife be like?
53. What should a husband be like?
54. What does a wife do in the home?
55. What does a husband do in the home?
56. If a husband and wife disagree on something major, how should they resolve it?
57. Do you tend to go with the flow or stand on your own?
58. What social subgroup do you identify with?
59. Is being in style, trendy, culturally current important to you?
60. What is your preferred form of entertainment? What are your favorites in that kind of entertainment? (Music, movies, sports, etc.)
61. What books have made a major impact on your life? Why?
62. How did your parents handle conflict?
63. How do you handle conflict?
64. Are you healthy? Have you had any health problems? What do you think about natural health vs. traditional medicine?
65. Will you make the bed every morning, or will I?

{irritating questions intended to spur discussion}

I mean, wait, this is just a heartfelt informal poll.

MARRIED FOLKS: what questions should be added to that list? Any? I mean, what is really important to know about each other before you get married? Or is this all a waste of time because you can't really know a person until you're married to him/her?
UNMARRIED FOLKS: what stupid mistakes do you see married people making all the time that you wish you could correct? Here's your chance; play nice, but tell us from your on-looker perspective what seem like the common failings to you.
EVERYBODY: who should make the bed every morning? Really?
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Image courtesy of Helga.

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...
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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.

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!

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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.

I feel a little funny writing an article about having fun together. Questions assail. First, do I know enough about having fun with my spouse to actually give people advice on it? Two, after a bunch of far-more-serious articles about respect and trust and intimacy and the like, will people get this? Will it come across as flippant? Is it flippant? And most of all, this problem: fun is a relative term. What is fun to me is boring, strange, unnerving to a lot of people. So I'm not sure how to introduce the concept and give help that might be practical on a topic that is so subjective and preferential. But here goes. Read the rest of this entry »

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?

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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 »

A problem shared is a problem halved.

Pull Out the “FAIL” Stamp

I am the worst person in the world to be writing any sort of advice about how to be transparent. I'm an introvert (mostly). My counterpart in the animal kingdom is a clam. I am really good at hiding my feelings, so good, in fact, that sometimes I don't even know what I really feel. Crying for no reason, to me, is the equivalent of a big fat FAIL stamped on my forehead.

Transparency, to me, seems like the worst kind of weepy emotionalism in the world.

But somehow the alternate titles I had didn't fit.

• Marriage Key: Isolation
• Marriage Key: Avoidance
• Marriage Key: Stoicism

Yeah.

How Do They Do That?

Even though I don't like the emotional woman stereotype, and even though I kind of laugh at my more, er, expressive friends, to be quite honest (or transparent), I'm kind of jealous. I wish it were that easy, that natural for me to show emotions. I wish I didn't have to actually make the conscious decision to let my guard down.

But I do. That's me. And it's a work in progress.

From the Trenches

All I can do is offer you some advice from the trenches. I don't know much about transparency, but I do know this: if you want a happy marriage, you better start figuring out how to be transparent with your spouse.

You can't build trust and intimacy when you're not willing to let yourself be seen and known for who you really are. But that's what is so difficult, because I know that who I am isn't all that great sometimes. And to be transparent means to be vulnerable. It means that I let someone important see all the ugliness, all the pettiness, all the mistakes and pride and manipulation and jealousy and what-have-you.

Ech.

Real Love Welcomes You

The one and only reason I'm still pursuing this transparency concept is this: when you let yourself be known as you are, and you find that you are still accepted, you begin to experience love as you never have before.

If you've been holding your husband at arm's length, stop. If you've been hiding who you really are behind no emotions or some sort of showy, shallow display, stop. Be real. Stop cheating yourself out of real love.

5-Minute Marriage Check

It's tempting, oh so tempting, to use anger as a self-protective tool. We get emotional, and we show it, and then we feel vulnerable, so we get angry to cover up our own raw emotions.

Anger works really well.

Why is it so difficult for us to say calmly, even sweetly:

That hurt my feelings. I'm sad. I'm upset. I'm lonely. I'm confused. I need help. I'm uncertain. I have no confidence right now. I need a hug. I need a friend.

5-Minute Action Point

Your assignment is to pin your emotions down in that instant before the anger-drive kicks in and clouds everything. In that instant, define what you feel. Then share it; right away, if you can, or later, if you need a little while to turn the anger switch off.

Let your husband know what's going on in your heart and in your head. If you can't say it, write it down.

Whatever you do, be honest. Don't let the instinct for self-defense keep you from the beauty of intimate, vulnerable, honest transparency.

Image courtesy of Janine.

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This post is {day 29} of the Build a Better Marriage Challenge.

It's a 30-day challenge to be deliberate about building a better marriage. We'll talk about some of the common obstacles to a better marriage (marriage killers) and some of the important habits for a successful marriage (marriage keys). We'll also work through some of the misconceptions that affect our marriage, faulty thinking we've picked up from our culture, our pasts, and maybe even from the church. Each day's reading will end with a 5-minute marrige check and a 5-minute action point, so you can take it on home.

Join in via the Mr Linky on the challenge page. You can also just read along, but remember that all challenge participants will receive a free copy of the ebook at the end of the challenge.

Here's to better, stronger, happier marriages!

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