My almost-18-year-old sister Karin has a “boyfriend” named Cameron who will be leaving to serve a two-year mission in Argentina in a few months. The serious mulling she indulges in over whether or not she likes him “that way” makes me hope I was never that silly. (I probably was). The other day I tried to convince her to take a break from pondering the unponderable; it doesn’t matter right this minute anyway. She is too young to be concerned about whether it’s True Love or not. She said if she met someone at BYU this fall she would be ready to get married– I hope she was kidding. I had to tell her the sad truth, which is that once you are married it is all downhill from there.
And it’s true. The only thing worse than being married would be not being married. Kind of like what Maurice Chevalier said, “Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.” But now that we are married (Dick and me), you’ll (Grampa) be glad to know that we’ve finally watched the DVD that will save the marriage that unfortunately we were not aware was in such danger.
I always worry about people who build a career on having been successful at something that depends entirely on another person’s cooperation. Mark Gungor’s biggest qualification for marraige guru-ness is that he has been married for 32 years — what happens if he gets divorced next week? (He’s also a pastor, but based on his suspect interpretations of various scripture passages … well, let’s just say I won’t be switching denominations any time soon). And ever since I dated the manic-depressive motivational speaker in college, I just have this twitch against being impressed by gurus in general.
About fifteen minutes into A Tale of Two Brains from the Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage seminar, I was wishing for a Cliffs Notes version; I’ll provide it for you here, because another thing about gurus that bugs me is their ingratiating, sometimes self-deprecating, often trivializing of women (in this case) humor; it just takes so long. Perhaps I am a man, because I would prefer just the facts, ma’am.
Shockingly: men are takers, women are givers; men are single-taskers, women are multi-taskers; men want solutions, women want sympathy; men compartmentalize, women connect everything; men want s*x, women want love; for men 5 minutes = 5 minutes, for women 5 minutes = eternity.
Now for the real excitement: How To Get a Man To Do What You Want
- Ask him more than once (nag, nag, nag; don’t worry, everyone loves to be nagged)
- Ask him in the right way (don’t insult; insults are not motivating to men; instead, plead in an appropriately supplicant manner until you are utterly demoralized and he condescends to become a HERO for picking up his own dirty underwear from the bathroom floor.)
- Train him with positive reinforcement (you know, make a sticker chart or give out candies; see ideas in the Potty Training for Two-Year-Olds manual)
- Barter with him (if you kill those spiders for me, we’ll have s*x the likes of which you’ve never dreamed)
The guiding principle to remember here is that you shouldn’t care whether he wants to do the dishes or if he will do them because he loves you, you are only interested in the result of him actually doing the dishes. Because, naturally, you cannot change a man. Oh, and he cannot change himself either. A woman, being more evolved (I would say more motivated to have a good relationship) is quite capable of learning how to train her husband (learning to change the way she interacts with him), but a man is quite incapable of change.
So here is where I know that I will never be baptized into the Mark Gungor “New Beginnings” church. I thought that the whole point of Christianity, you know, that whole Atonement thing, was that men can change. Can have a change of heart as well as a change of action. But then, I am not a scholar, nor a guru.
My final questions for Pastor Mark are: Can you have an adult, satisfying relationship with a mental two-year old whom you have to reward with s*x for basic courtesies? Since s*x (the judicious granting and withholding of it) is the only tool a woman has to train her husband, what happens if you are in a marriage in which the wife is as or more interested in sex than the man? Is their relationship doomed?
The viewing of this DVD did engender a longish conversation as Dick and I lay in bed last night (no s*x I’m afraid; so much talk of it as a bargaining chip had somehow tarnished the romance momentarily). One realization we came to (and when I say we, I mean me because, if you’ll remember, Dick is a man and men are mental 2-year-olds according to Pastor Mark) is that (thanks to Brock and Melinda for the human development lingo to describe this) Dick needs to learn stop behaviors to get me to stop using the mean voice (among other things) and I need to learn start behaviors to get Dick to do all the things I think he needs to do. In other words, I get frustrated by what Dick does not do and Dick gets irritated at what I do do. I wonder if that sort of division of irritation is a common man-woman difference.
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I liked Dr. Phil’s Relationship Rescue where he says that you train your spouse to treat you in a certain way. If you change how you treat him, he will have to respond to you in a different way.
Here’s an excerpt from his book, starting with the 10th relationship myth he identifies:
“Myth 10) YOUR RELATIONSHIP CAN BECOME GREAT ONLY WHEN YOU GET YOUR PARTNER STRAIGHTENED OUT.
Truth: If your relationship is not everything that you want it to be, then it’s your thinking, your attitudes, and your emotions that need challenging. You have flaws, fallacies, and characteristics that either destructively stimulate your partner, or through which you destructively respond to your partner. As I have said, you have chosen to live a lifestyle that leads to a bad relationship. You have chosen the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are creating the pain in this relationship. At some level these characteristics or interactive patterns have provided you with a payoff that has reinforced the recurrence of these behaviors. If you find the payoffs, you have found the lifeline that keeps the destructive behaviors alive and recurring. Once you identify the payoffs, you can shut them off and remove them from your life. Instead of waiting for your partner to change, you can and will serve yourself much better by looking at yourself instead of your partner. So you can either stay self-centered and keep blaming your partner, or you can make the choice to be self-directed and start working for real change. You either can fill yourself up with anger at your partner, or you can choose to get busy and stimulate your relationship to get headed in the right direction. You can either let your partner dictate your behavior, or you can own your own thoughts and attitudes, both of which will be chosen with a clear objective in mind. Never think that it’s up to your partner to make your life better. You are in charge of yourself.”
Now, to figure out all the ins and outs of your relationship and figure out how YOU (and I) can personally put some more health into your interactions is the real challenge.
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Oh, Shannon!
If only we were born knowing such things!
I am having a really tough time the past couple of weeks because I keep figuring out and then, promptly, forgetting such gems of knowledge.
I have to learn to accept that Harry is Harry (by which i mean he is now a part of “Harry and Sophia”). Life is life, I cannot control everything. I cannot force someone to love me or to do the things I wish, or even what I believe is morally correct.
BTW I am very happy for you that you guys had a talk about marriage stuff, it’s good to not live in a fog where you ignore things that might become big issues down the road.
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In one of my classes at BYU my teacher said that before you get married, you and your fiance should sit down and talk about stuff like the division of labor in your homes. I thought that was kind of funny because that is probably one of the last things on a couples mind at that time. But I am beginning to think it is really important. S*x and money are two of the most frequently fought about topics between couples. I would guess that the division of labor (or lack thereof) is probalby close behind.
I wrote in my MMSM post about thresholds or the idea that the person with the lowest threshold for a clean house is the one that will end up doing the cleaning. I think it applies here. I think that the only way to get a husband that is apathetic (or just doesn’t think about it) to help out more is for the apathy to change to interest. When Mike realizes how important it is to me that he helps me, he tries to be more interested. He still doesn’t care as much as I do if the dishes are done or the boys have matching clothes but he cares about me and therefore, puts effort into doing things for me. I’m not saying that he suddenly becomes aware everytime I need something but that he tries to understand why it is important to me and tries to help me more.
We are talking about husband helping us more but it can go the other way. Maybe I’m alone in this but there are definately things that Mike cares about that I just don’t. He would love it if I cared more about it and would do those things without him having to press me. And it’s the same solution here. My apathy changes to interest when I recognize that it is important to him.
I see no problem with praising my husband for helping me. I don’t think that makes him a child. I often feel that it would be nice to have the same praise so I recongnize the frustration in having to praise your husband for doing something you do on a normal basis. But, I don’t normally say to my husband when he comes in the house, “Wow. You are so awesome for going to work today.” I guess what I’m trying to say is that he does things everyday that go unnoticed and does them anyway. That isn’t to say I don’t appreciate that he does them or tell him sometimes how thankful I am that he works so hard so that I can stay home. I’m just saying that I think both husband and wife have things that they do normally that continue to get done without praise.
I personally think there should be a lot more praise going on all around.
Just as a sidenote, I don’t think s*x should ever be used as a bargaining device.
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Why does one spouse have to “train” the other at all? I don’t think marriage involves “training,” that word implies imbalance, an unequal distribution of power and influence. It’s harmony and compromise that we’re going for, not making our husbands salivate at the sound of a certain bell a la Pavlov. When Brad does something that bothers me, I think of all the things I do that must bother him that he says nothing of. He spends way too much time on his video game, but just when I’m about to complain, I remember that he started to play this game to help him quit smoking, and it worked. I am grateful for that, so I back off. I really hate the sex as a bargaining chip (and why do you spell it s*x? it’s not a naughty word
) idea. Sex is a part of marriage, but just as it is our job to provide it, it is also our job to back off if the spouse doesn’t want it. If I’m going to provide him with sex now and then, I expect him to leave me alone now and then in turn. Where are my sexual rights? Is he the only one with such rights? How would that be an equal relationship? I have a very low libido, and I’m lucky to have a husband who is sensitive to that. The thought of sex as a chore makes it even worse for me. It’s hard enough for me in the first place to get the job done without the concept of sex as obligation hanging over my head. I know a lot of women (many without such libido problems who therefore probably don’t understand my point of view at all) would tell me to buck up and just do it, for someone like myself that’s like telling a vegetarian to just go ahead and eat that hot dog, it’s not so bad! Anyhoo, I’m rambling now so I’ll stop.
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Ok, funny, Marie, I spelled s*x that way so that weirdos would have a harder time getting to my website by googling s*x. i haven’t really experienced too much of the bad that can happen on the internet, but when I was writing about cir*umcision, I did get a couple comments from people who were not understanding the perspective and purpose from which I was discussing the whole issue.
i don’t like s*x as a bargaining chip because, from what i’ve gathered in talking to other women, i have a rather high libido, so i just don’t have the interest in withholding it that i should in order to make it an effective incentive (besides the whole Pavlovian analogy you give that is right on! and the whole trivializing of something that should be a bonding experience into a monetarized bartering tool).
Tom and i make goals for our selves and family on a regular basis, sometimes even weekly (it seems like we’re in the mood for this kind of planning, etc on Sunday evenings). sometimes we’ll ask each other (this was Tom’s idea) what one thing the other person does that bugs us most, and then we make goals to work on those things. we’re not so great at following through–obviously, or we wouldn’t need to set more goals every week, but i think that kind of communication is great.
Adrianne — of course you’re right. there should be a lot more praise going around. the thing about not thanking my husband each day for going to work is something i’ve thought about before in talking about this. i am probably too interested in the “fairness” of things.
before i wrote this post i looked up Dr. Laura online bec. the training thing reminded me of her book. she says (elsewhere?) that the 3 As that justify divorce are adultery, addiction and abuse. i would add Apathy, but a real, long-lasting, all-pervading apathy. can you imagine anything worse (besides the other three A’s) than an apathetic spouse who wouldn’t take your needs or desires (great and small) seriously and try to meet them? and probably one of the best signs of how healthy a marriage is is how aware each spouse is of the other’s needs and how motivated they are to try and meet them.
Gladis — i am thinking of you. so sorry to hear that things are rough. i think what you say is really smart. if only we never forgot all the little epiphanies we have, and if only it were easier to act on what we know. being here in utah we’ve caught up on a LOT of gossip, mostly dealing with divorces that have come about because of of those 3 A’s of Dr. Laura’s (and i still add the apathy one).
one woman whose husband decided he was gay after they had 4 children together (and after he exposed her to STDs) has had a really hard time. we were talking about it in the context of them both being Mormons(Christians) and married in the temple (which should mean they’re extraordinarily committed), and she said that no matter where or how you get married or think your life is going, the other person always has their own agency or free will to act for themselves. you’re right — we can’t force anyone else to do anything.
but what you’re doing is, i think, the right thing for you and your kids. keep it up!
Marcy — i think Dr. Phil has a lot of great stuff to say. he’s usually right, imo, about relationship stuff.
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