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Marriage, Where’s the Manual

December 18, 2011 by
 

Pass the Instruction Manual

Oh wait there isn’t one? Why is marriage so hard is a frequently asked question the answer isn’t easy but then again, maybe it is. Marriage is hard because there are no guarantees.

When we marry, we are binding ourselves to one another, body and soul and all the other important bits. It  may seem body and soul should be the most important, but reality bites. It is rarely lack of love that causes marriages to crumble; money, career and family pressures are often the reasons why marriages dissolve. Love alone simply does not conquer all. Couples today, whether young or older, face so many outside stressors and that, along with the combining of two or more lives, is what makes marriage hard.

Why is marriage hard? Because it is impossible to be prepared for the reality of marriage.

When you marry, it should be because you can see yourself in the future with the other person just as they are, but older. You appreciate who they are and enjoy their company.

My Parents

You value them as a friend, a lover and desire them, as they are with all their quirks and idiosyncrasies. In short, you like them just as they are. When you marry, you shouldn’t marry with a list in your head of how you are going to change them, tweak them so they will be perfect. You should think their imperfections make them perfect for you.

When we marry it is the partnership of two adults. Today people are waiting to marry until later in life, thus they have the opportunity to form their personalities and their personal living styles to a much greater degree than in the past. Unless the couple has lived together for some time prior to marriage, many of the day-to-day quirks will come as a surprise to their new partner once the honeymoon is over.

The Honeymoon is Over Now What?

What do I mean by living styles? These are the day-to-day quirks we develop. The habits that become ingrained as we mature such as how we maintain our homes or whether we watch television in bed, sleep with a light on or off. From the mundane to the truly trivial things that never bothered you, maybe you even found endearing during your courting days now annoy the hell out of you; they all become fodder for the list of annoyances you might build in your head. The question begins to arise, “what have I done?”

Do you speak out early and find compromises? Do you dampen down your annoyance until

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it rushes out during an argument about something else entirely? Surprising how the little things in life can add up during a marriage so over time they become a herd of elephants in the living room each with a name from your list.

Did I do it Right or Just Ignore the Obvious?

Finally there is the Big Kahuna, Money. One of the more difficult discussions to have is the finance talk. Without frank discussion eventually this one will rear its head and it can

Money Wars

be ugly if there hasn’t been honest disclosure prior to the marriage. How individuals handle money can be a source of great contention, which is especially true for those couples who marry later in life. Agreement on how to handle money within a marriage is something to do prior to the “I Do’s” not after the fact. Agreement on what is “yours, mine and ours” will create early trust and establish the boundaries of financial responsibility.

Why is marriage hard? You tell me.

The Family Blend In-Laws & Out-Laws, Part Two of Why Marriage is Hard

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Family Ties

December 17, 2011 by

Family ties what are they and how do they affect our lives for good or ill. There are any

The Nelsons_MuseumTV

number of books we can read, television shows we can watch, even movies we can see depicting both the ideal and the dysfunctional. In the 50’s there were the Cleavers of Leave it to Beaver, the Nelsons of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and the Andersons of Father Knows Best. Although in the 60’s and even in the 70’s there continued to be idealized versions of families portrayed on television and even in movies these classics taught a generation what families were supposed to be.

The Juggling Act – Our New Reality

Jump to reality and it doesn’t seem these portrayals are achievable in today’s highly volatile society; truthfully, perhaps not even desirable. In an age where we regularly relocate families across country and even across the globe we lose touch easily with our

Juggling_Wookey.Co.UK

extended families for weeks, months, even years at a time. With the advent of women in the workplace, two income families just to pay the bills, reproductive choices and women waiting longer for both marriage and children there are changes to how we view family and our ties to them. Add the other side of the coin, the number of single parent households most of them led by women, and finally the number of grandparents raising children today. What we have today is anything but the stylized ideal of the past.

What does this mean in relation to family and how we define them today?  

My family is an amalgamation of biological members, adopted members, married in members, and step-members. I have different relationships with each and with some, I have made a conscious decision to limit my relationship. Others have made similar decisions to limit their relations and contact with me. So again, I have to ask how meaningful are family ties versus other relationships.

My answer is that they are what we choose them to be.

Throughout the years, we form relationships, friendships and lovers come and go. Some stay longer than others and become part of our extended families through marriage or otherwise. In the world today, we no longer stay in one place our entire life, we move for

Blending Together (Google Image)

work, to marry, to attend school. We are besieged with the countless objects we must juggle day-to-day simply to so our lives run smoothly. Unlike past times, we frequently do not have extended family to support and assist us in emergencies; instead relying upon friends or even paid for services.

Family ties, what are they really? Do we create families as we progress through our lives, piecing them together with friends and relations? I have other relationships that I would more easily call family than those related to me by blood, marriage or family history. I don’t believe that we owe love, allegiance, or even respect to those who don’t treat us well simply because they are family. Ultimately, we create our family made of people who we care for and who care for us. Those ties of love, care, sacrifice, and yes-shared laughter are what keep us bound together, these are the true family ties.

More to come.

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What we Forgot to Tell You

November 22, 2011 by

Did we forget to tell you?

The number one reason we married you wasn’t for your sparkling wit or your dimples either, those certainly caught our eye but they weren’t number one. It wasn’t for your six-pack, neither the one you proudly show off at the gym nor the one you pick up from the corner store on Monday nights. It wasn’t for the TGIF dinners you bought us or the occasional Chick Flick movie you suffered through on Saturday night. It wasn’t even that you make nice with our girl friends to make a good impression or that you try hard to get along with our family.

What we must have not told you when we agreed to spend our lives with you is this.

Image Google.com

We married you because we saw something in you we didn’t see in all the other boys that did all those things during their hot pursuit.

We agreed to marry you and spend our life with you because of all the opportunities we had we thought deep down in our hearts that you were the one. The one that would step beside us, not in front of us but beside us.

You made us laugh, you made us feel safe, you made us feel smart, beautiful and mostly you made us believe together we would achieve greatness. Does that make sense? When we walked that aisle after being pronounced husband and wife we didn’t meekly follow you we walked side-by-side and that was how we expected to live our life with you. We married you because we thought we would be your partner.

Did we forget to tell you what we wanted?

This is the only explanation there can be for the strange and utterly inexplicable changes our marriages seem to take after the vows. Being women we tend to look to our own failures first rather than any of yours, we gather into ourselves for deep examination anything we might have done that would cause this baffling change in the dynamic of our relationship.

Image Google.Com

Where once you were our White Knight, our romantic hero and our friend, now you are something entirely changed from the man we said yes to what seems to be an eternity ago. This change can only be due to our failure, we think. Our failure to communicate to you our desire to keep the person we married at least somewhere we can find him. More importantly even to keep ourselves from disappearing too.

We ask ourselves countless questions during this time of examination. Questions that hurt us deeply because there are no real answers.

Why aren’t we laughing at the same things anymore? Did we forget the fundamentals that brought us together or is it that we forgot to tell you they were important to us in that forever sort of way. What happened to the man who would laugh when we forgot the punch line, not at us but with us. Where did that man go, the one who was willing to tell us about his foibles and fears, the one who was willing to be vulnerable with us now and then? The guy who would sit for hours and share intimacies as if they were invaluable gifts between us to be handled with great care, where did he disappear to?

Did we forget to tell you before the vows were read, before we said yes that we wanted there to be an “us” not just a you and an I.

How did we suddenly end up on opposite ends of the couch? Did we forget to tell you that part of what made us so happy was touch, just that random snuggle that didn’t lead to anything else.

How did the bed suddenly get so big? Why have you moved to Siberia? Why is there your side and my side now instead of us piling into the middle of the bed like puppies randomly wrapped around each other. Did we fail to tell you that was the way we wanted to wake up with you, wrapped around you and in your arms? The air conditioner isn’t broken so your excuse that it is to hot can’t be right. I am certain you aren’t suffering from hot flashes, what has happened since we said “we do” that we don’t unless it is part of the post-coital moment and even then it truly is only a moment till you roll over to your personal Siberia, your side of the bed.

Image Google.com

What have we forgotten in our march to the alter of forever, what did we fail to say to you?

It wasn’t “I love you”, those words tripped off our tongues thousands of times, perhaps to easily to thoughtlessly. Conceivably we didn’t tell you what that meant to us, when we said “I love you” did you understand it meant all the parts of you, both what we see and what you thought was hidden, that we are in it forever even when it feels like we are on top of Everest and we can’t breathe?

Did we fail to tell you there will be days we don’t like you much, we still love you.

Did we forget to tell you in our breathless joy at becoming your wife what we already knew about marriage and you didn’t; marriage is hard work, never easy. That it takes two strong people willing to go the distance every single day to make it work. Not one person willing to go half way most days but two willing to bust through all the hard stuff every day.

Did we forget to tell you even though we love the White Knight we don’t need him. Even though we love the idea of the Romantic Hero, we don’t really want to be married to him every day just once in a while we would like for him to show up and sweep us off our feet. Did we fail to tell you what we really wanted is for you to be fully in the moment, all of them every single day. Everyone changes, everyone grows we just want you to change and grow with us not apart from us.

When you say to us, we have grown apart our hearts break, all we can think is we forgot to tell you something important.

We forgot to tell you we love all the bits and parts of you. We forgot to tell you to be part of something you have to stay in the moment and stay part rather than apart. We forgot to tell you it was important to us you stay so instead we watched you drift your own way. Once you had us we became less vital to your and we forgot to tell you we were still here.

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Dirty little secrets of happy marriages or things your mother never told you

November 22, 2011 by

This is for all the men out there, you know who you are; you jumped from mama’s house into marriage thinking it was one and the same thing. Your mother had you convinced the sun rose and set on your smiling face and she happily followed you from the front door to the back room picking up the mass of unwashed, stinking sweaty clothing you dropped on your way to the X-Box.

From the time of your birth, through your angst ridden teens and into your adulthood you were petted and pampered, your butt was cleaned with only the softest towels, your plate was filled twice before being left in the sink for someone else to scrape and place in the dishwasher. Your clothing was washed, folded and put neatly away, when it could be found in the piles you left throughout the house. As if you were paying for five star

Images via Google....Who said Freud was Wrong

accommodations, your sheets and towels were regularly changed. Yes, indeed your mother treated you well and it is likely you didn’t have to do a thing in return other than the occasional “Love you Mom” which made her day.

Now that we have established you are the end all be all, the light at the end of the tunnel, the crème in the coffee, the marshmallows in the hot chocolate; you are all that and a bag of chips truly you are. Now that we have correctly identified moms view let’s disabuse you of this inflated ego of yours.

While it may be hard for you to hear, your mom lied. You are none of those things, not a single one except to your mother who has no choice but to believe them. She was provided with maternal instincts to prevent her from eating her own young, this instinct allows her to see past all of your flaws and continue to love you. Further, as your mother she instinctively wishes you cling to her and will find fault with any mate you choose. Because of this, she has quite naturally raised you without the necessary skills and competencies you need to be a successful mate, thus assuring your return to the nest.

Things your mother didn’t tell you about women.

Our happiness is directly connected to whether we feel heard, specifically by you.

Our happiness is directly connected to whether we believe we are being partnered and cared for.

Our happiness is directly connected to whether you are fully participating in our marriage.

What does this mean? What didn’t your mother tell you? What did you miss while you were being coddled and convinced your farts didn’t stink?

Women’s libidos, big word I know, are directly tied to their emotions. When we are happy, we are far more likely to be horny or at least receptive to your clumsy overtures. If we feel particularly cared for, particularly loved, we might even initiate an evening of hot sweaty sex with you.

Image from Newswire....Happy Women say Yes more Often

Your mother failed to tell you that about women and the link between sex and emotional happiness, didn’t she? The thing your mother lied about was what women really want from their man! She probably didn’t tell you about chocolate either, that is something for a different day though.

This is the big lie, the one thing your mother didn’t ever tell you.

You don’t have to love the things we love. Indeed, we don’t expect you will love everything we love, after all, you are a man and we are women. We are by our very nature designed differently and our mothers raised us differently from the time we were born. All we ask is for you to love us enough to try to meet us half way.

Mother’s lies you need to unlearn:

  •  It isn’t unmanly to do the dishes, push a vacuum or make the bed when you are the last one out.
  •  It doesn’t make you less of a man to put the toilet seat down.
  •  It doesn’t undermine your manhood to listen to how our day went without telling us how to fix our problems. Honestly? It is unlikely you know more than we do about our jobs so try for simple listening just once.
  • You are in no jeopardy of losing your man card if you clean the bathroom now and then without your woman asking. It is surely obvious to you it needs it and if you are the only man in the house, clearly those yellow dribbles down the outside of the bowl aren’t your woman’s misses. Remember your woman doesn’t stand above the bowl playing target practice in the morning.

Your mother didn’t tell you the truth about women.

She didn’t tell you the simplest truth about a happy partnership and that is that it really is a partnership between two grown-ups.

If your biggest complaint about the woman in your life is the sex stopped after marriage, you need to stop and think about what else changed. Ask yourself why. Is your woman getting what she needs? What are you doing or not doing. Do the words “that is women’s work” ever trip over your tongue? Worse yet do you find yourself uttering these mood killers, ‘I never did that when I lived at home’, if the answer is yes then you know why your sex life is like the Sahara and you have only yourself and your mother to blame.

This isn’t mama’s house and the sun no longer rises and sets on your happy ass. Your wife isn’t your house servant, she is your partner not your mother. Want a happy marriage? Get with the program and start listening even to those things she might not be saying to you, this means listen with your heart now and then. Try to determine what your wife needs from you, maybe even what she wants but is tired of telling you and as Nike says ‘just do it’  without being asked.

Your mother lied.

She probably didn’t lie with malice. She lied because she wanted to keep you close; it is the nature of mothers. Now you need to man up and be the husband she didn’t intend you to be so your wife has the husband she deserves and your future sons have an example to follow in the future.

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