Bad Marriage Advice

Recently I was reading some advice on how to have a happy marriage. Most of it was really good --i.e., spend time with each other, be kind to each other, don’t flirt with other people, et cetera-- but there was one item I could not agree with.

I don’t want to hurt this well-meaning writer’s feelings, but I would term this one bad advice:

“Be honest with each other. Is there someone

of the opposite sex within your circle of friends

to whom you might be attracted? We are all

human and even when we are in a solid and

loving marriage relationship, we are all going

to be tempted at one time or another. If this

happens, be honest with your spouse. It may

be that you’ll have to cease having a friendship

with that person, if either of you feel it is a

possible threat to your marriage. Your spouse

should be a priority in your life and your heart.

Don’t allow anyone outside of that to pose

even a possible threat to your marriage relationship.

This may be very difficult, especially if you are

faced with talking to that person and explaining

why the friendship has to end, but isn't your

spouse worth more than a friendship

with another person?”

(http://busylilhomemaker.blogspot.com/)

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!

How EXACTLY would these conversations GO?

Wife: Gee, honey, I really think our neighbor Bob is super-hot. I feel my attraction to him threatens our relationship. I don’t think we should hang out with him anymore.

Husband: What?

Wife: Yeah, I mean when he’s out mowing his lawn without his shirt… YOWZA! But I really want to make my relationship with YOU a priority. So I think we shouldn’t speak to Bob anymore. Okay?

Husband: O…kay. Just excuse me while I pick up the shattered pieces of my ego here…

Wife: Great! So while you do that I’ll just pop on over to Bob’s and let him know why we won’t be talking to him ever again. I’ll try not to drool over him too much while I do that. I hope he’s wearing a shirt, or I might not be able to control myself….

Husband: (sobbing in fetal position)

(Wife heads next door)

Wife: Hi Bob! I just came by to let you know we’ll be severing our relationship with you.

Bob: Um, what?

Wife: Yeah, see, I’m really attracted to you. You know, physically? Like the other day when you were trimming the hedge, all sweaty and everything…WOW.

Bob: Um, you’re really making me uncomfortable.

Wife: Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. I totally can’t restrain my rampant desire for you either. So I think it’s best for all of us if I don’t see you anymore.

Bob: Right. I’m closing the door now. Goodbye.

Wife: I’m so glad you understand.

Bob: I think I’m going to check on the restraining order process….

Okay, I think you get the idea.

So people, just so we’re clear: Date night? Yes. Brutal honesty? No.

A Dinner Challenge

So yesterday I was sitting on the couch watching Barney with the twins before supper.


You’ve got to get them introduced to high culture when they’re young.

Then my husband came in and said he was going to work out on his stationary bike. I said, “Before dinner?’ And he said, “Yeah, I’ve got time, unless we’re eating within the next forty-five minutes.”

Apparently he thought I was slacking off in the food preparation process, what with the sitting on the couch and all.

I looked at my watch; it was 5:30. “Well, actually, I was planning on us eating at 6. That’s when I told the girls to come in from outside.”

He looked at his own watch. He said, “You know, you always say we’re eating at 6, but really it’s more like 6:15 or 6:30 by the time you get it on the table. So I think I’ve got time.”

I said, “Is that a derogatory comment about my tendency to lateness?”

He shrugged. “Just an observation,” he said, and went off to do his workout.

Well, it seemed the gauntlet had been thrown down.

Just a little history here: My husband’s comes from a family of Super Punctuality. I mean, we are talking Always on Time (If Not 15 Minutes Early) No Matter What. My family is a little different.

As an illustration, when we were kids and the family would go on vacation it would be like this:

His family: We plan to leave at 6 a.m. The car is packed and all preparations made the night before. We wake up at 5, all dress and pile into the car with incredible organization and precision, and pull out of the driveway by 5:45 to begin our trip.

My family: We plan to leave at 6 a.m. We wake up at around 6 and begin loading the car. We wander around in a confused manner for a couple of hours, packing all kinds of last-minute things we‘ve forgotten. We smash ourselves into the heavily-laden car at around 8 and drive out. We come back at 8:15 to (a) retrieve something we left or (b) let someone use the bathroom who forgot to go before. We begin our trip around 8:30.

So I could see what my husband was saying during this little conversation about dinnertime.

And it was: “You couldn’t put supper on the table by six to save your life, you Tardy Tessie!”

So my mission was clear.

As I got everything ready in my normal, as twin-proof as possible, fashion --i.e., cook only on the back burners, set only the center of the table, keep all food away from the counter edges-- I considered that the polite thing to do would be to hold dinner until my husband was done with his workout. After all he HAD told me when he would be finished, so shouldn’t I just wait for him?

Nah.

Not after that challenge; there was no WAY I was backing down.

The kids came in from the playground just before six, and I told them to wash their hands.

When everything was ready, I stuck my head out onto the back porch where my husband was toiling away on his bicycle to nowhere.

“Dinner’s ready by six,” I said smugly.

He checked his watch and said with equal self-satisfaction, “6:05.”

Ouch!

Advice...or something

The Best Advice Ever Given? Well..not exactly. I just liked this book cover.

But after attending my nephew's wedding, and seeing my newly-married cousin over the weekend, I was thinking about advice for the new bride.


So I was reading a few articles recently (I told you I like to read magazines) about “How to Get Your Husband to Do Stuff You Want.” There's a title to grab you, right?


Most of the advice from the magazines seems pretty obvious to me now, but I do remember a time when I thought he should just do what I want because he LOVES me. And wants me to be happy. And can intuit my wants through our magical psychic bond.

Yeah, THAT didn’t last very long….

One of our big fights when we were first married was about how to do the dishes. He thought you needed to wash dishes before you put them in the dishwasher; I thought that it was the POINT of having a dishwasher for IT to do the work. Call me crazy.

And then there was the issue of when exactly is the dishwasher considered FULL? According to me, it was when you couldn't possibly cram one more thing in there, but my husband had other ideas.

But anyways, there was a lot of, “You’re doing the dishes wrong;” “ No, YOU’RE doing the dishes wrong,” for a while. Until we both learned something, that I will illustrate here with a little parable. Wow, it’s almost like Sunday School, isn’t it?

True story: A few years ago my neighbor was going out of town, and at the last minute asked me to have my daughter (who was about nine or ten) come feed her dog while she was gone.

Actually, now that I think about it, she was already GONE, and she had asked me only to have my daughter come feed her fish before she left, but then suddenly it’s: Oh yeah, there’s a dog too. She had not offered to pay my daughter anything for the fish, and she did not offer to pay her for feeding the dog. But I didn’t want the dog to starve to death, so I said okay.

So for about four or five days I had to take my daughter over there, unlock the door, make sure she fed the dog and walked it and make her clean up if it had pooped the house, which it HAD most days. It was annoying, but I did it, as a favor to my neighbor. Also, I paid my daughter myself, to make sure it got done.

Then my neighbor came back in town and called me.

To say, Thanks for feeding my dog; I really appreciate it? Or to say, Let me give your daughter some money for her trouble? Oh nooooooo.

She said the dog had thrown up and she wanted to know WHAT exactly my daughter had fed it.

Uh, the dog food you left? I said.

She said we must have fed it too much, or at the wrong time or something, because now it was sick. She said the food bowl was too full and that if the dog ate too much food it would throw up. So WHY, she demanded, did we feed the dog wrong?

I was actually speechless here, but what I wanted to say was, You’re WELCOME!

I mean, first of all, the dog had not thrown up the whole time she was gone, because we didn’t see any barf; we had only had a few poop accidents. Besides, if the dog has food issues, shouldn’t you have told me that BEFORE? When you asked me to FEED it?!

But mostly I said nothing. And the next time she asked me to feed the dog while she was gone --oh yeah, she DID ask me again!-- I said I was busy. For the rest of my life.

So my point is, When you ask someone to do something for you, DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT THE WAY THEY DO IT! Or they won’t ever want to do things for you again.

And that’s why these days when my husband does the dishes, on rare occasions, I do not say, “Why did you run the dishwasher with three forks and five plates in it?” or “Why are half the dinner dishes still in the sink when you said they were done?” I say, “Thank you,” and leave it at that. (Oh, and complain about it later on my blog, but that’s just a technicality, right?)

And there’s some advice for the new bride. For whatever it’s worth.

How-To Books, Just For Fun

Although I said in my last post that life with five children is never dull, that is not entirely accurate. In fact it can get quite boring, because while I have plenty to do, much of it is repetitive and uninteresting stuff: cooking, cleaning, etc.

So every once in a while, I get the urge to spice things up a bit. And no, I don’t mean anything weird by that--this is strictly G-rated here. Sheesh, people!

So I was in the library and I saw a book called “How to Change Someone You Love,” and my first thought was, That would be an annoying thing to catch your spouse reading. And then I thought, Maybe I’ll check it out, and leave it lying around, and see what my husband says. Just for fun, you know? So I did.

Now, this is a real book. I am not kidding. Check it out at left there! It promises “Four Steps to Help You Help Them.” This seems so obviously aimed at gypping gullible women out of $24.95. (Because who wants to change the one they love more than women? I ask you!) First off, if there’s only four steps, why does it take you almost three hundred pages to tell them to me? And second, isn’t it IMPOSSIBLE to change someone else? It seems a little irresponsible to me to give someone false hope that they can change another person. But I digress...

So anyways…on Monday I checked out the book and put it on the kitchen counter. It sat there all afternoon. While I was dishing out Jell-O after dinner (it’s almost like fruit, and therefore healthy, right?) my ten-year-old daughter saw the book. She said, “Why would you want to change the one you love?”

Ah, the innocence of youth! One day you will know, my child.

All week I moved the book from the dining room table to the kitchen counter and back, trying to get my husband to notice it. But he had no comment. Either he didn’t see it, or he’s been intentionally ignoring it, which I think is more likely. At this point, when it’s been almost a week, I pretty much have to either say straight out, “Did you see this book?” or forget about it. But I think mentioning it would kind of take the fun out of the whole thing.

So I guess my experiment is a failure.

Oh well, at least I got a little extra exercise this week, moving a book around the house at random, right?

Maybe I’ll write a book myself: How To Eat Jell-O and Lift Books for Fun and Profit! Anybody got an extra $24.95?