Lots of books and blogs have been dedicated to helping people have happy and successful marriages but what about those masochists out there who enjoy struggling and beating their head against the wall? Well, I have a handful of easy things you can do that will be guaranteed to make you and your spouse miserable and best of all they are things we all do naturally on our own. The key is keeping your focus in the right place and you won't be burdened by peace or fulfillment ever again.
1. Focus on your own needs and desires - Make sure you take every opportunity you can to let your spouse know how they are failing you on a regular basis in case they forgot how inept at marriage they are. Describe in detail what it would look like if they were to fulfill all of your wildest dreams and desires, feel free to reference your friend's spouses, exes, or even your parent who did things the right way. The good part is if you each are focusing completely on your own needs and desires then you'll be too busy to actually meet the other person's needs. It's like each of you writing out a super long wishlist for Christmas gifts and then giving them to each other instead of any actual gifts - imagine the disappointment potential!
2. Focus on their flaws - Sure you have much more of an ability to change things in yourself than someone else, but honestly, who wants to take time looking at their own junk when there is so much to point out in your spouse? The great part is this is super easy as, unless you are a priest and are married to Jesus, you have a sinful flawed human being in your house who screws up on a regular basis. Pointing out when they mess up is as easy as pointing out when they breathe. If you ever get around to fully chronicling and categorizing all of their shortcomings you can start looking at yourself, but honestly you could spend a lifetime just studying every nuance of their failure.
3. You can't have too much criticism - Don't just hold all of that frustration about their flaws inside, make sure you say it loud and proud and remember tone of voice and timing are important here. Make sure they are already in a foul mood or even better wait until the middle of an argument to start airing your grievances. Also whenever possible make sure you criticize them in front of others, like at a dinner party you could publicly humiliate your spouse for extra points or do that fun thing where you act like you are talking to your kids but your are really making a jab at your spouses character like "Now Johnny, I sure hope when you grow up you get a great job so you don't have to live in squalor like we do, thanks to your lazy dad" or "Suzy, you need to ask with manners, you don't want to grow up and be an ill-tempered dictator like your mom do you?" Make sure you disregard anything that might lead you to develop appreciation as that can throw the whole thing off, best to filter every bit of data recording all they do poorly and deleting all they do well.
4. Never, ever let it go - When people tell you not to keep score in marriage they are trying to throw you off so you won't be able to win, because winning means remembering every single offense in vivid detail. Keep a secret journal of when the last time you had sex was or take pictures of messy spots around the house to shame them on Facebook. Rookies start with the very first thing their spouse ever did to hurt them and catalog everything moving forward, but if you want to do it right you can use stuff from before you ever met them like how they grew up, mistakes they made in other relationships, you can even count offenses from other people if you lump them into categories like "Men are always..." or "Women aren't happy unless..." Don't forget anything and definitely don't forgive anything because you are likely morally superior to them in every way and don't need grace yourself. You'll become bitter and apathetic, dying from the inside out and they will start seeing the entire relationship through your resentful glasses as well so it is a gift that keeps on giving.
5. Make sure you keep a fixed mindset - Everyone knows you are either just naturally good or marriage or you aren't, you can't learn how to be a better spouse or how to better love them and they definitely can't change either. You are who you are, women have been that way going back ten generations and it's your god-given right as a man to talk like that from time to time. Throw out things like "You just need to love me the way I am" so you don't have to see change as a possibility. Give them a mixed message of complaining about stuff wanting it to change, but attacking their character at the same time so they know they are really just too stupid, lazy, or morally bankrupt to ever pull it off anyway. It's not like people can learn and become better at things so what applies to school, sports, hobbies, and the rest of life has to apply here as well - you are either born with it or you aren't.
6. Don't ever let the blame fall on you - It's like a fun game of hot potato where you can point fingers back and forth until the other person is stumped or runs out of ways to redirect fault. Since most marital problems are circular instead of linear in that they just keep looping in cycles the fun really never has to end. Don't ever apologize or even hint at the possibility that you might share some responsibility, its like being a good negotiator you have to start at the far extreme and when you get worked down to the middle it makes them feel like they got something when they really didn't.
7. Give your spouse exactly what they deserve - This one is key, and can't be repeated enough. Marriage isn't a place for mercy, grace, or understanding, the most important thing you can fight for is fairness. Before you decide to do something nice for them make sure they have done enough nice things for you, but if they aren't meeting all of your needs then make sure you withhold some things from them or else it will never be fair. If she is being critical and nagging then just stay late and work and ignore her, if he is raising his voice in conflict just get louder, don't just get mad, get even! Getting your spouse whipped into shape is like training a dog, don't bother with the positive reinforcement and don't reward anything other than perfection on the first try - heavy handed punishment is the key. If they hurt you, make sure you hurt them back a little more, it's in the Bible that we are supposed to gouge out someone's eye if they poke ours right? This creates a place where perfect people deserve a perfect spouse but the rest of us shouldn't get any breaks, and so the marriage will be fine until the first person has a bad day or makes a mistake and then, like dominoes, everything else will come crashing down. Nobody deserves love, so why give it freely away when it is a valuable commodity to be hoarded?
The sarcasm is pretty thick through here, but for those who may not catch it I feel I should spell it out that these are the approaches I see all the time that give the same miserable results in marriage every time. The key to improving your marriage is keeping the focus on what you can do to make things better, since that is all you have any control over.
Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Apologies
Well, since it has been five months since I last blogged and it's New Years I guess I should try and throw up something and I'll even try to do what I've been trying for a while, write something shorter so people don't fall asleep halfway through! So today I will talk about how to apologize well, since most of us are pretty bad at it. We tend to do a quick 1% apology up front followed by 99% of justifying, explaining, excusing ourselves, and even blaming. We learn to apologize while fighting with our siblings or on the playground and the forced apology we learn at that point often sticks as our only way we know how to apologize.
So most people apologize something like this:
"I'm sorry, but really I would have never yelled like that if you weren't being so darned stubborn. I wish we didn't have to fight like that but if you would just listen to me and hear what I am trying to say I wouldn't have to yell. Pretty much anyone in my situation would have responded the way I did and really it becomes completely involuntary at that point. I come from a long line of yellers and between my red hair and being an only child I don't think you could expect much different. In fact, lets just stop dwelling on stuff from the past, can't we just move on or do you just enjoy holding grudges? So what, I yelled, big whoop, you are a big boy you will get over it, or you can just keep trying to make me out to be the bad guy who always does everything wrong. So I guess I am just the worst wife on the planet because I yelled once, huh? I mean compared to the way you yelled at me last week, or do I need to remind you of my mother's birthday? You've done far worse than just yell and it is just all forgotten when you catch me yelling. So, you knew what you were marrying and you were OK with me then, guess you'll have to be OK with me now. I'm tired, I don't feel like talking any more about this."
A good apology is basically the opposite of that and has three main parts to keep in mind - Accept responsibility, Acknowledge the impact, and Speak to the future. First make sure you take full responsibility for your choice, you could have chosen to act or respond in hundreds of different ways but your choice hurt the other person. It didn't have to be purposeful harm or even conscious, but you did something that caused pain and you can apologize for it. No blaming, no justifying, just accepting that you did something that caused pain or disappointment. Second you make sure and acknowledge that there was hurt or pain rather than minimizing it or comparing it to pain you have felt. They aren't just making a big deal of nothing and if you don't understand what damage was done then ask with a open heart and humility to hear. And then finally speak to the future of how you would like to avoid hurting them in the same way in the future. This isn't a grandiose promise to never hurt them again, which you both know to be a lie, it is taking their pain seriously by trying to find a way to prevent it in the future. "Maybe we can figure out a way to call a time out when we start getting agitated so I don't ever get to the point where I am yelling that way, because I want to make sure when we disagree that I am able to do it in a way that always honors you."
Keep all three parts in mind and you will actually leave the other person feeling cared for rather than even more angry than when you started apologizing.
So most people apologize something like this:
"I'm sorry, but really I would have never yelled like that if you weren't being so darned stubborn. I wish we didn't have to fight like that but if you would just listen to me and hear what I am trying to say I wouldn't have to yell. Pretty much anyone in my situation would have responded the way I did and really it becomes completely involuntary at that point. I come from a long line of yellers and between my red hair and being an only child I don't think you could expect much different. In fact, lets just stop dwelling on stuff from the past, can't we just move on or do you just enjoy holding grudges? So what, I yelled, big whoop, you are a big boy you will get over it, or you can just keep trying to make me out to be the bad guy who always does everything wrong. So I guess I am just the worst wife on the planet because I yelled once, huh? I mean compared to the way you yelled at me last week, or do I need to remind you of my mother's birthday? You've done far worse than just yell and it is just all forgotten when you catch me yelling. So, you knew what you were marrying and you were OK with me then, guess you'll have to be OK with me now. I'm tired, I don't feel like talking any more about this."
A good apology is basically the opposite of that and has three main parts to keep in mind - Accept responsibility, Acknowledge the impact, and Speak to the future. First make sure you take full responsibility for your choice, you could have chosen to act or respond in hundreds of different ways but your choice hurt the other person. It didn't have to be purposeful harm or even conscious, but you did something that caused pain and you can apologize for it. No blaming, no justifying, just accepting that you did something that caused pain or disappointment. Second you make sure and acknowledge that there was hurt or pain rather than minimizing it or comparing it to pain you have felt. They aren't just making a big deal of nothing and if you don't understand what damage was done then ask with a open heart and humility to hear. And then finally speak to the future of how you would like to avoid hurting them in the same way in the future. This isn't a grandiose promise to never hurt them again, which you both know to be a lie, it is taking their pain seriously by trying to find a way to prevent it in the future. "Maybe we can figure out a way to call a time out when we start getting agitated so I don't ever get to the point where I am yelling that way, because I want to make sure when we disagree that I am able to do it in a way that always honors you."
Keep all three parts in mind and you will actually leave the other person feeling cared for rather than even more angry than when you started apologizing.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Women Are a Mystery?
How were the pyramid's built? How many decimals does Pi go out to? How do teenage boys eat so much? These are all mysteries of the universe, but maybe understanding what is going on inside the brain of a woman is the greatest mystery of all for most men. I get the benefit of working with hundreds of married couples acting as a translator between the sexes and over time see the same basic desires expressed over and over by most women and figured I'd share what I've gleaned.
The first thing I've discovered is that the deepest desires of a woman are a mystery to men partially because they are a mystery to the women themselves. I really have to push women to admit this, but after lots of "He should just know" and "Women are just complex" bluffing I usually get shrugged shoulders. There often seems to be an inner desire to be cared for like a baby, you should just be able to whine and cry and an all powerful being will come in and determine what you need and make it all better. This works as an infant as there are like four possible things wrong and so if they smell you and look at the clock they can pretty much figure out what you want, but as a full grown woman with approximately 9 trillion possible dilemmas most of which without a fix expecting mindreading doesn't work as well. The problem is that women are far more likely to be in touch with their emotions than men as well as more open to communicate them so you get a steady slew of expressed frustrations and concerns with tons of vagueness - kind of like getting a daily job performance review from your boss with absolutely no tangible suggestions for improvement. This results in confounded men who would love to help meet your needs but hear cultural lies like it is just an unknowable mystery so just give up.
The second thing I have discovered about the innermost needs of most women I talk to is that they don't occur to most men simply because we really don't need them that much. It is kind of like when I was caring for an infant for several hours while my wife was at work, I had to make sure I remember to feed the baby on a regular basis because they get hungry a lot more often than I do. I can't just think about what I need waiting on my own stomach to rumble, I have to think through what someone else needs even if it is different from anything I need (another way being a parent helps you become better in other relationships). If we, as men, need a, b, and c to feel fulfilled in a relationship we'll readily give them out, but often if we don't have the need, we don't think to provide it for someone else.
So what is it that most women want that I speak with and help them put into words? Three basic things, to be pursued, to be validated, and to be reassured. Most men don't really care whether it was you or me who set up the time to eat lunch, just that it happened. Most women, however, take it as a sign of being valuable and important that you were the one to call them, set something up, and made the arrangements. This is even true in their friendships; when was the last time you heard a guy complain that he is the one who is always having to call his friend, Bob, and how he wonders why Bob just cares so little for him because of this. It is the basic premise of most every fairy tale, book, or movie that has ever been that a man will put forth an immense amount of effort and endure danger to relentlessly chase after the woman he loves either to rescue her or win her back. The harsh reality is that within most marriages the woman waited a really long time up in the tower and by the time she gave up and hunted the prince down he was unconscious in the recliner in front of a football game with Cheetos all over his chest and by the time she makes her appearance SHE is the dragon to be slain. Maybe it's planning a date night and actually arranging childcare and having an opinion as where to go. Maybe it is taking the lead in making sure there is ten minutes a day to communicate on a deeper level, instead of the usual 80% of marital communication being initiated by women.
Most men are able to have a conversation with another man without even a shred of validation and it is OK, we each say our opinions and how dumb the other person's opinion is and then we are good. For women it is pretty important that they feel like we get what they are saying and see validity in it. There are plenty of stupid jokes out there that say men should just smile and nod and say "yes, dear" to whatever she says, but that is condescending to both men and women and really doesn't make a women feel truly validated, just more of a bully. You don't have to agree with everything they say, they don't have to be right about everything, but everything can be heard, accepted as a valid perspective, and empathized with. Even if afterwards you have to tell them you disagree or that you feel they are sinning in the situation and need to repent, as any good leader would need to do at times, you can still validate that they aren't an insane crazy-woman with ridiculous thoughts, beliefs, interpretations, and perspectives.
Men tend to see relationships as static, they just are - Bob, Frank, and Jimmy are my friends and Betty is my wife of twenty years. Women tend to see relationships far more accurately, as eternally dynamic, constantly shifting and growing closer or further away. Jenny is my newer friend who is really getting closer to me while Rita and I have been growing apart for years, while my husband and I are drifting further and further apart for the last few months. There is a need for men to grow in relational awareness in order to not feel like their wife is just complaining when she is simply sounding the alarm that your Titanic is heading for an iceberg and only a fool would ignore that. What it also means is that men need to make sure and reassure their wives on a regular ongoing basis that they still find them attractive, still love them, and really value their marriage as well. We tend to think that if we said at some point in the past that we love our wives and "I do" then that should be the point of reference moving forward in case there is any doubt. Unless there are major issues we don't usually question how our wife feels about us, like we don't question that the next time we look at our grass it will probably still be green. We figure if anything changes we can send our wife a memo, but otherwise we shouldn't need to keep repeating ourselves. The problem is that in the midst of that silence tons of doubt creeps in and it means a lot for our wives to be daily reminded that we are still committed to them and love them more than we ever have, and that we still get giddy as a middle schooler when we see their beauty, and that we are proud to have them as our wives. Silence isn't seen neutrally but rather as a lack of value and importance for them and the marriage.
So unless your wife says my list is crap and wants to fill you in on their core needs just assume that if you are being graded on your husbanding skills it is likely how well you are pursuing, validating, and reassuring. If you are a wife and your husband is randomly pushing buttons like a monkey trying to please you, but frustrating you both in the process please share this or your own desires with him, you'll be glad you did.
The first thing I've discovered is that the deepest desires of a woman are a mystery to men partially because they are a mystery to the women themselves. I really have to push women to admit this, but after lots of "He should just know" and "Women are just complex" bluffing I usually get shrugged shoulders. There often seems to be an inner desire to be cared for like a baby, you should just be able to whine and cry and an all powerful being will come in and determine what you need and make it all better. This works as an infant as there are like four possible things wrong and so if they smell you and look at the clock they can pretty much figure out what you want, but as a full grown woman with approximately 9 trillion possible dilemmas most of which without a fix expecting mindreading doesn't work as well. The problem is that women are far more likely to be in touch with their emotions than men as well as more open to communicate them so you get a steady slew of expressed frustrations and concerns with tons of vagueness - kind of like getting a daily job performance review from your boss with absolutely no tangible suggestions for improvement. This results in confounded men who would love to help meet your needs but hear cultural lies like it is just an unknowable mystery so just give up.
The second thing I have discovered about the innermost needs of most women I talk to is that they don't occur to most men simply because we really don't need them that much. It is kind of like when I was caring for an infant for several hours while my wife was at work, I had to make sure I remember to feed the baby on a regular basis because they get hungry a lot more often than I do. I can't just think about what I need waiting on my own stomach to rumble, I have to think through what someone else needs even if it is different from anything I need (another way being a parent helps you become better in other relationships). If we, as men, need a, b, and c to feel fulfilled in a relationship we'll readily give them out, but often if we don't have the need, we don't think to provide it for someone else.
So what is it that most women want that I speak with and help them put into words? Three basic things, to be pursued, to be validated, and to be reassured. Most men don't really care whether it was you or me who set up the time to eat lunch, just that it happened. Most women, however, take it as a sign of being valuable and important that you were the one to call them, set something up, and made the arrangements. This is even true in their friendships; when was the last time you heard a guy complain that he is the one who is always having to call his friend, Bob, and how he wonders why Bob just cares so little for him because of this. It is the basic premise of most every fairy tale, book, or movie that has ever been that a man will put forth an immense amount of effort and endure danger to relentlessly chase after the woman he loves either to rescue her or win her back. The harsh reality is that within most marriages the woman waited a really long time up in the tower and by the time she gave up and hunted the prince down he was unconscious in the recliner in front of a football game with Cheetos all over his chest and by the time she makes her appearance SHE is the dragon to be slain. Maybe it's planning a date night and actually arranging childcare and having an opinion as where to go. Maybe it is taking the lead in making sure there is ten minutes a day to communicate on a deeper level, instead of the usual 80% of marital communication being initiated by women.
Most men are able to have a conversation with another man without even a shred of validation and it is OK, we each say our opinions and how dumb the other person's opinion is and then we are good. For women it is pretty important that they feel like we get what they are saying and see validity in it. There are plenty of stupid jokes out there that say men should just smile and nod and say "yes, dear" to whatever she says, but that is condescending to both men and women and really doesn't make a women feel truly validated, just more of a bully. You don't have to agree with everything they say, they don't have to be right about everything, but everything can be heard, accepted as a valid perspective, and empathized with. Even if afterwards you have to tell them you disagree or that you feel they are sinning in the situation and need to repent, as any good leader would need to do at times, you can still validate that they aren't an insane crazy-woman with ridiculous thoughts, beliefs, interpretations, and perspectives.
Men tend to see relationships as static, they just are - Bob, Frank, and Jimmy are my friends and Betty is my wife of twenty years. Women tend to see relationships far more accurately, as eternally dynamic, constantly shifting and growing closer or further away. Jenny is my newer friend who is really getting closer to me while Rita and I have been growing apart for years, while my husband and I are drifting further and further apart for the last few months. There is a need for men to grow in relational awareness in order to not feel like their wife is just complaining when she is simply sounding the alarm that your Titanic is heading for an iceberg and only a fool would ignore that. What it also means is that men need to make sure and reassure their wives on a regular ongoing basis that they still find them attractive, still love them, and really value their marriage as well. We tend to think that if we said at some point in the past that we love our wives and "I do" then that should be the point of reference moving forward in case there is any doubt. Unless there are major issues we don't usually question how our wife feels about us, like we don't question that the next time we look at our grass it will probably still be green. We figure if anything changes we can send our wife a memo, but otherwise we shouldn't need to keep repeating ourselves. The problem is that in the midst of that silence tons of doubt creeps in and it means a lot for our wives to be daily reminded that we are still committed to them and love them more than we ever have, and that we still get giddy as a middle schooler when we see their beauty, and that we are proud to have them as our wives. Silence isn't seen neutrally but rather as a lack of value and importance for them and the marriage.
So unless your wife says my list is crap and wants to fill you in on their core needs just assume that if you are being graded on your husbanding skills it is likely how well you are pursuing, validating, and reassuring. If you are a wife and your husband is randomly pushing buttons like a monkey trying to please you, but frustrating you both in the process please share this or your own desires with him, you'll be glad you did.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Keeping Score
Lots of couples keep score in marriage, I'd wager to say that most everyone who has ever been married has kept score at some point and probably routinely. By keeping score I mean holding on to some sort of measure of fairness in the marriage based either on number of times the other person has screwed up, number of times they have let you down, or how long it has been since a desired action or behavior has occurred. Men are quick to accuse their wives of this as they are usually pretty good about ignoring the 49 things fully accomplished on the to-do list and focus in on why exactly the toilet didn't end up getting cleaned when they have never been the one to get urine anywhere other than in the bowl. But then I have also found that most every husband on the planet can give you how many days/weeks/years/minutes it has been since the last time their wife had sex with them, data which they are pretty sure is scientifically reliable but almost always errs on the side of exaggeration. Most of this comes from always having a front row seat to observe what we are doing but only occasionally seeing what they do, knowing full well how many times we held our tongue but only having access to the data of when they don't. Whether it is how many times I have done the dishes because you forgot or how many times you have said you are sorry in the last year or the last time I felt like you called me at work and didn't have a complaint from me we all seem to have a running internal scoreboard that is constantly updated. The problem with this scoreboard is that it is rarely even remotely accurate and even if it were it all is a push for fairness in a marriage - and fairness is something that should have been crushed in Kindergarten but seems to survive for most of us.
I touched on this idea here: http://pilferedwisdom.blogspot.com/2011/08/compromise-key-to-marriage.html in talking about the myth of compromise, but fairness doesn't just infect decision making, but our general stance towards the other person. Either they are doing a sufficient job at pleasing me (Because my happiness IS the supreme ruling force of the universe to be striven after by all, not the worship and glorification of our creator and savior...) and I feel like the scales are balanced, or I am doing the lion's share of the work, responsibility, and sacrifice and therefore I am owed a debt. But if doing things for the person we love and have pledged our life to produces resentment or an invoice then what are we saying about them but that they are really just an object and not a person to be appreciated and loved? Love doesn't expect to be paid back, an exchange does, and if you are part of an unchristian, legal-document, formal contract arrangement then your work and effort needs to be compensated, but if you are loving someone then just shut up and do it. If loving someone who can't love you as well in return makes you foolish then Christ is the biggest fool of all. Maybe you are a part of a relationship with your creator and savior who knowing full well you couldn't begin to pay him back for the lavish love he decided to pour out on you still decided to enter a relationship with you and will never back out. If so and you call yourself a follower of Christ then love deeply and foolishly and pray that your idiocy brings God more glory. If you exist in a world where you are what is most important than by all means squeeze every bit you can out of your spouse, use them up and spit them out, guilt and manipulate them into giving you what you want and throw them to the curb when they stop producing. If loving someone causes resentment because you don't feel paid back then you need to reassess whether you even know what the word "love" means, because apparently you are treating them like a retirement account - you put stuff in and invest so that eventually you can get even more back out.
I've had a relatively easy and trauma free life but I've often thought that Viktor Frankl must have had a hard time biting his lip as a therapist when people came in to complain to him. Probably could have gone like this:
Client: "Yeah, my wife is getting fatter and I'm just really not attracted to her any more. It's just not fair, I make lots of money and she just lays around eating bon-bons all day..."
Frankl: "Hmmm, yeah I had a wife once. Her, my mom, and my dad were all murdered by the Nazis in a concentration camp I only survived because I was a doctor so I was useful. They needed my psychiatric skills to calm down the cattle that were being lead to the slaughter. I'm sorry, what were you saying?"
While I am pretty sure this never happened, he did have the ultimate trump card for peoples complaints and in a way the Bible gives similar advice - gratitude and appreciation are pretty important and you only get them with perspective. Are you worried? The Bible says when you stop to appreciate what you have and how God has always provided for you it gives you the perspective to trust him. Are you in an unfair relationship? The Bible says if you are in relationship with Christ it is far more lopsided and unfair than any other relationship you have but you like it that way.
You see, when people tell me they just want fairness they don't really mean it, they want more and better, even more than they deserve. You want fair? The average family income in America is $31,000 a year, so it would only be fair to be given that to work with as a couple. But then internationally you are considered statistically in the "rich" category if you make $8,000 a year so really it's "unfair" you have so much money. One in four women and one in four men will be sexually abused at some point in their life, so fair means you should have to throw that into your marriage and see how that affects things. 22% of wives are abused by their husbands, as high as 42% in other parts of the world so fair would say that you should spend at least a fourth of your marriage cowering in fear of retribution. 30-60% of marriages involve an extramarital affair, etc, etc. The truth is you don't want fair because your wife gaining weight is a burden the vast majority of the world would have a hard time sympathizing with you for as 925 million people do not have enough to eat. Bickering about who has to clean the house you actually own when warlords and corrupt governments make that difficult in some places, who should get to drive the "newer" car when people walk miles to the nearest semi clean water, and how often your husband wants to have sex with you when millions of women and girls around the world are sold into sex slavery and forced to have sex with 40-110 "men:" a day seems like we could all use a bit of perspective. Because it is only with a healthy perspective that we can see the immense blessing that our spouse is and how blessed our lives are, and it is only by deciding to stop manipulating our partners to get what we want that we open ourselves up to truly loving them.
Best line from a sermon I've ever heard was "Fair died on the cross." We don't want fair, we don't want what we deserve, we want some counterfeit myth of the perfect husband or wife we were promised by a deluded society.
Fair died on the Cross
I touched on this idea here: http://pilferedwisdom.blogspot.com/2011/08/compromise-key-to-marriage.html in talking about the myth of compromise, but fairness doesn't just infect decision making, but our general stance towards the other person. Either they are doing a sufficient job at pleasing me (Because my happiness IS the supreme ruling force of the universe to be striven after by all, not the worship and glorification of our creator and savior...) and I feel like the scales are balanced, or I am doing the lion's share of the work, responsibility, and sacrifice and therefore I am owed a debt. But if doing things for the person we love and have pledged our life to produces resentment or an invoice then what are we saying about them but that they are really just an object and not a person to be appreciated and loved? Love doesn't expect to be paid back, an exchange does, and if you are part of an unchristian, legal-document, formal contract arrangement then your work and effort needs to be compensated, but if you are loving someone then just shut up and do it. If loving someone who can't love you as well in return makes you foolish then Christ is the biggest fool of all. Maybe you are a part of a relationship with your creator and savior who knowing full well you couldn't begin to pay him back for the lavish love he decided to pour out on you still decided to enter a relationship with you and will never back out. If so and you call yourself a follower of Christ then love deeply and foolishly and pray that your idiocy brings God more glory. If you exist in a world where you are what is most important than by all means squeeze every bit you can out of your spouse, use them up and spit them out, guilt and manipulate them into giving you what you want and throw them to the curb when they stop producing. If loving someone causes resentment because you don't feel paid back then you need to reassess whether you even know what the word "love" means, because apparently you are treating them like a retirement account - you put stuff in and invest so that eventually you can get even more back out.
I've had a relatively easy and trauma free life but I've often thought that Viktor Frankl must have had a hard time biting his lip as a therapist when people came in to complain to him. Probably could have gone like this:
Client: "Yeah, my wife is getting fatter and I'm just really not attracted to her any more. It's just not fair, I make lots of money and she just lays around eating bon-bons all day..."
Frankl: "Hmmm, yeah I had a wife once. Her, my mom, and my dad were all murdered by the Nazis in a concentration camp I only survived because I was a doctor so I was useful. They needed my psychiatric skills to calm down the cattle that were being lead to the slaughter. I'm sorry, what were you saying?"
While I am pretty sure this never happened, he did have the ultimate trump card for peoples complaints and in a way the Bible gives similar advice - gratitude and appreciation are pretty important and you only get them with perspective. Are you worried? The Bible says when you stop to appreciate what you have and how God has always provided for you it gives you the perspective to trust him. Are you in an unfair relationship? The Bible says if you are in relationship with Christ it is far more lopsided and unfair than any other relationship you have but you like it that way.
You see, when people tell me they just want fairness they don't really mean it, they want more and better, even more than they deserve. You want fair? The average family income in America is $31,000 a year, so it would only be fair to be given that to work with as a couple. But then internationally you are considered statistically in the "rich" category if you make $8,000 a year so really it's "unfair" you have so much money. One in four women and one in four men will be sexually abused at some point in their life, so fair means you should have to throw that into your marriage and see how that affects things. 22% of wives are abused by their husbands, as high as 42% in other parts of the world so fair would say that you should spend at least a fourth of your marriage cowering in fear of retribution. 30-60% of marriages involve an extramarital affair, etc, etc. The truth is you don't want fair because your wife gaining weight is a burden the vast majority of the world would have a hard time sympathizing with you for as 925 million people do not have enough to eat. Bickering about who has to clean the house you actually own when warlords and corrupt governments make that difficult in some places, who should get to drive the "newer" car when people walk miles to the nearest semi clean water, and how often your husband wants to have sex with you when millions of women and girls around the world are sold into sex slavery and forced to have sex with 40-110 "men:" a day seems like we could all use a bit of perspective. Because it is only with a healthy perspective that we can see the immense blessing that our spouse is and how blessed our lives are, and it is only by deciding to stop manipulating our partners to get what we want that we open ourselves up to truly loving them.
Best line from a sermon I've ever heard was "Fair died on the cross." We don't want fair, we don't want what we deserve, we want some counterfeit myth of the perfect husband or wife we were promised by a deluded society.
Fair died on the Cross
Friday, November 4, 2011
Listen Up
Most of our parents did a pretty good job of teaching us how to talk but few did as well at helping us learn how to listen, a skill that most of us struggle with. Some of this comes from when our parents tell us to listen to them they really mean obey, they aren't just as happy if we were to say, "Father, I know you worked hard to provide the money for my hard working mother to purchase and prepare these brussel sprouts, and that your desire is that I eat them all. I regret to inform you, however, that I have chosen not to eat them, but to wait for the ice cream later." We sort of grow up believing that listening automatically implies obedience, and often this is poison in our other relationships, because when people feel they are not being heard they tend to either get louder or repeat themselves - or both. It happens all the time in marriage counseling that a spouse says to me something like, "My husband just never listens to me. I've tried talking nicely, yelling, repeating myself, and nothing gets through!" I then ask the other spouse what it is that their partner is trying to get them to hear and they almost always can parrot back exactly what it is - they have heard what was being said. Then a foreign concept is introduced where you have to help a person understand that just because someone hears what you are saying, it doesn't mean they will agree with it or be willing to submit to your demands.
So then, how do we become better listeners, and help others understand that we are listening without just placating and agreeing to get them off of our back? It first starts with reminding ourselves that core truth about marriage that 70% of what we are going to argue about over the course of our marriage are perpetual issues that will never be resolved, but still need to be discussed. He will always be late, she will always have a lower sex drive, they will never be best friends with your dad, and they will never be able to hold onto cash in their pocket for more than a day, and no amount of deeply hearing your brilliant wisdom on life will change these things. So most of our conversations about frustrations, disappointments, and hurts will best be handled by really hearing the other person's perspective, validating and empathizing with them, and reassuring them of your love and commitment, not fixing them so they never do it again.
The second thing we have to do is learn to temporarily shut off our self-centered brain long enough to truly put ourselves in our partner's world and experience long enough to get where they are coming from. This requires two difficult tasks, shutting our mouths, and shutting down our internal conversation where we are fact-checking their statements, determining if we agree with them or not, and figuring out how to counter their obviously flawed viewpoint. This takes metaphorical muscles inside our brains and wills that for most of us are extremely weak and atrophied. We have to get to a point where we care at least as much about hearing the other person as we are about being heard.
Once we get those two things down it gets a lot easier and you can then just make sure you are internally hearing the content, perspective, and emotions behind what is being shared as well as externally reassuring our partner that we get those three things. Mirroring or reflecting content is the first of the three and it is crucial to get before you can really do the other two, or else you will each be having two different independent conversations with each other. Often we assume we know what our partner is saying or what they are REALLY trying to say rather than just working to hear exactly what they are actually saying. Once you have the actual content you are less likely to remember each other having said different things down the road, "Remember last week when you said X? No way, I said Y..." The second part is to make sure you get their perspective by validating them, letting them know that even if you disagree or did not mean for your actions to be interpreted the way they have, that you can see how they view it that way from their point of view. They aren't crazy or irrational, just rationally convinced of a different perspective. Then you finally can make sure you reflect their emotions through empathizing with them, picking up on how the situation makes them feel and letting them know you understand. If you assume it is possible to have a disagreement and don't feel you need to bully the other person into agreeing with your perspective, can shut up and focus wholly on the other person, and let them know you get the content, perspective, and emotion behind what they are saying then you are listening. They will feel heard, be more likely to be OK with you having a different perspective, and actually curious to hear what it is, rather than just having the usual control battle about who will be heard.
So then, how do we become better listeners, and help others understand that we are listening without just placating and agreeing to get them off of our back? It first starts with reminding ourselves that core truth about marriage that 70% of what we are going to argue about over the course of our marriage are perpetual issues that will never be resolved, but still need to be discussed. He will always be late, she will always have a lower sex drive, they will never be best friends with your dad, and they will never be able to hold onto cash in their pocket for more than a day, and no amount of deeply hearing your brilliant wisdom on life will change these things. So most of our conversations about frustrations, disappointments, and hurts will best be handled by really hearing the other person's perspective, validating and empathizing with them, and reassuring them of your love and commitment, not fixing them so they never do it again.
The second thing we have to do is learn to temporarily shut off our self-centered brain long enough to truly put ourselves in our partner's world and experience long enough to get where they are coming from. This requires two difficult tasks, shutting our mouths, and shutting down our internal conversation where we are fact-checking their statements, determining if we agree with them or not, and figuring out how to counter their obviously flawed viewpoint. This takes metaphorical muscles inside our brains and wills that for most of us are extremely weak and atrophied. We have to get to a point where we care at least as much about hearing the other person as we are about being heard.
Once we get those two things down it gets a lot easier and you can then just make sure you are internally hearing the content, perspective, and emotions behind what is being shared as well as externally reassuring our partner that we get those three things. Mirroring or reflecting content is the first of the three and it is crucial to get before you can really do the other two, or else you will each be having two different independent conversations with each other. Often we assume we know what our partner is saying or what they are REALLY trying to say rather than just working to hear exactly what they are actually saying. Once you have the actual content you are less likely to remember each other having said different things down the road, "Remember last week when you said X? No way, I said Y..." The second part is to make sure you get their perspective by validating them, letting them know that even if you disagree or did not mean for your actions to be interpreted the way they have, that you can see how they view it that way from their point of view. They aren't crazy or irrational, just rationally convinced of a different perspective. Then you finally can make sure you reflect their emotions through empathizing with them, picking up on how the situation makes them feel and letting them know you understand. If you assume it is possible to have a disagreement and don't feel you need to bully the other person into agreeing with your perspective, can shut up and focus wholly on the other person, and let them know you get the content, perspective, and emotion behind what they are saying then you are listening. They will feel heard, be more likely to be OK with you having a different perspective, and actually curious to hear what it is, rather than just having the usual control battle about who will be heard.
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