My husband thinks I’m perfect.

Seriously. Sometimes I say, “Hey, honey, is there something I could change, do differently, you know, anything I’m doing that annoys you or you wish I wouldn’t do?” He always says something along the lines of, “No, baby, you’re perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”

Now, I know and you know that I’m not perfect. My blinded-by-love husband, though… he doesn’t see the flaws. Or if he does, he thinks they’re cute. And we’re past the honeymoon stage; at least we’re supposed to be. We’re six years, three (and 1/3) children into this thing. We’ve done stupid stuff, said stupid stuff, made mistakes, and we’re still figuring this whole “life” thing out as we go. There’s been more than enough imperfection on my part. But he doesn’t see it.

Sometimes it’s tough having a husband who thinks I’m perfect.

Really. He does something minor like come home late from work and I am well on my way to working up a good, satisfying MAD… One of those seething, cupboard-door-slamming mads where you can grit your teeth and feel justified because of the wrongness of it all. Except then he walks in the door and says something like, “Hey, baby, I’m sooo glad to see you and the kids. So sorry I was late tonight, I had to finish a work project and then help a crippled man across the street and then stopped to fix an old lady’s car on the way home. Can I help with dinner?”

How the heck can I be mad after that?

Impossible. Though I’ve tried. Trust me. Because I enjoy a good mad just as much as the next girl.

But, alas, I am married to the Good Samaritan.

He is an infinitely capable Good Samaritan, too, because he knows how to fix stuff. Cars, lawnmowers, go-karts, bicycles, tire swings, dryers, dishwashers, highchairs, boats, chainsaws, lights, chairs, scraped knees, me…
Honestly, the only good reason for a mad in six years of marriage that I’ve found is this: sometimes he helps other people when I want him to ignore all those other people and pay attention to me. Only me.

And if I tell him that, he does. He pulls in, slows down, says no. Pays attention.

I’m not a naturally merciful or generous person. I lean more to the “prophetic” side of things (thanks, Dad!), as in, if I see a bum on the street with a cardboard sign, I think, “Hey bum, go get a job and then you won’t need other people’s money!” I don’t think,

• “Poor guy. He’s probably had a tough life.” I don’t think,
• “Hmm, we should be generous to the poor.”

I roll up my windows. I don’t carry cash. I drive on. I don’t even feel guilty.

Generosity is still not a natural instinct,

but in the six years of being married to the most generous and merciful person I have ever known, I’ve learned a little bit:

• It’s fun to be generous. Even when you can’t afford it. Especially when you can’t afford it. It’s a risk you take, offering out of the little you have.
• It doesn’t matter what the person does with your generosity. That’s not your part of the picture. Your part is just to be generous.
• Giving isn’t just about giving money; it’s about giving time, giving resources, giving energy, giving help, giving service. When you clutter up your life with obligations that don’t matter, you end up with nothing left to give other people.
• There is a priority in giving; you shouldn’t give what isn’t yours to give, for instance. You should meet your responsibilities. You should make sure your family has their needs met, but the thing to remember is need isn’t the same as want. We can all live with much less than we think we can.

Last week a lady knocked on my car window

in the parking lot of St. Louis Bread Company. She launched into a somewhat reasonable explanation of why she was asking for money. I stopped her. I didn’t really care what her reason was. I gave her the $20 I had in my wallet, prayed for her, and when she left I wished I’d had more to give.

Maybe she’s a drunk. Maybe she’s a drug addict. Maybe she’s somebody’s daughter and she’s had a tough life. I don’t know, and I don’t need to know.

You know why my husband thinks I’m perfect?

Because he has what I understand now as generosity of the spirit; he doesn’t just give the cash he could use for himself. He doesn’t just give his time or his abilities. He gives grace, freely, recklessly. He gives enough grace to me to cover all the times I’ve been mad, or rude, or ignored him, or messed something up, or forgotten something important, or hurt him, or demanded, or controlled, or manipulated, or accused, or proved in some other inexcusable way how imperfect I really, truly, deeply am.

His generosity is what causes him to love me as much as he does. It’s not me. I’m not perfect. I don’t deserve it. I didn’t earn it. But I receive it, with open arms. And that’s why, sometimes, when I think, “Darn it, I wish Joe would quit offering to help, I really just want a weekend at home!” I try to stop before I say it out loud. Because when I put words out there, he will listen. And he will downsize his own generosity in order to make me happy.

And then he might figure out I’m really not perfect.

Image by Kjunstorm.

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.

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!

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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.

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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?

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Images courtesy of mistress_f and x ray delta one.