Why is it Never Okay to Make Mistakes in Marriage?
Right now I'm reading through a book on marriage by one of the ladies Lori Alexander loves to cite, The Peaceful Wife. Yes, she's also written a book, like Lori did, on marriage. So far the book is filled with less disgraceful language, but the exact same toxic ideas Lori loves to promote.
Example: The book introduction. It is filled with three stories from marriages. The author does not state which of the stories is from her personal marriage, but it's not too hard to see the ridiculous marriage damaging lies in those first three strawnmen.
Husband and wife #1 involves the husband grilling amidst beaucoup flies and asking the teenage son to fetch a flyswatter. Not an unreasonable request to be made of anyone, right? But momma tells the boy that daddy is being ridiculously pussy about the flies and to ignore him, Kid does. Daddy sulks.
Husband and wife #2 have guests, relatives of the husband, and the wife is up trying to get ready for work and fix breakfast for the relatives and asks freewheeling husband for a hand. This spirals into a ridiculously petty argument that likely ate up even more time than likely could have been put to good use getting the breakfast ready.
We all know what Lori Alexander would have said about that scenario in the first place, that it was clearly a sin of the wife because she wasn't supposed to have a job in the first place, or needs of any sort.
The final scenario involved a wife coming home to a dinner cooked by the husband. Dishes galore piled in the sink, so she makes a big deal over those dishes, and how now she'll have to use up precious time after her work day doing his dishes.
Insert a huge sigh here. ALL of those things are so petty and immature as the basis for a fight. In each case it ended either with an argument or a man running off to sulk. Attention! Any man offended enough that you said he didn't need a fly swatter, or starts a fight the minute you have a reasonable request for help is not mature enough to be married period! If you like to pick fights over these things you likely should not be married either. Two very immature individuals marrying just spell misery.
Someone cooks you a meal at the end of a long hard work day? Say thank you and be happy you merely have to load the dishwasher later instead of cooking the meal yourself. Your husband wants a flyswatter? What's the harm in just sitting back and letting Junior get that flyswatter without your commentary? The breakfast situation, why not just taking the husband''s suggestion and let the guests fend for themselves instead of investing time and emotional energy before work in a fight?
I still do not get why in Evangelical Quiverful everyone is fighting over so many things in marriage. I don't get why it's always a battle without adult conversation. But I had something of an epiphany about those marriages last night when my husband pushed all my buttons down at the same time.
Here it goes. It's just not entirely possible to not disagree with your spouse sometimes over stupid petty things. It's also not the end of the world, or determinant of the marriage.
Let me just state officially for the record that while there may be a sliding scale of cleanliness in the rest of the house depending on the day, what we're doing, what the maid is doing and how sick I or my husband are one of the things that is an absolute with me is that I make sure I keep our bedroom and master bath immaculate.
Jim does not care if I clean or do not clean the house. He does not care about my desire for a certain thread count of sheets, or my insistence on the 'right' feel of towels. It matters little to him if there's a clean bathmat in our bathroom, or if I use the good French milled scented soap. He'd live like a bear with furniture happily. I cannot. I like nice things, and I use my china, fancy towels, good soap and scented candles as I please. There is no saving for later or better occasions. I like to live well.I like to enjoy myself.
Life is so much more tranquil when your bedroom is a clean place to retreat when you are having a moment.
Yesterday morning I went to make the bed around 8 am, discovering Jim flopped out on the bed sleeping. He'd had insomnia badly the night before, and was having unbeknownst to me an after breakfast nap.
Like the bear with furniture he is he had his old work shoes on laying down on the middle of the unmade bed. I pointed out immediately that shoes had to be removed asap and taken outside to the mat where all our outdoor shoes live. We only use inside flipflops or go barefoot around the house. I didn't make a big deal about it, just pointed out that dirty outdoor shoes must stay outdoors.
I don't know exactly what he has done to these shoes. The soles are flapping. They are ancient and they reek! They smell like they may have held giant slices of Durian in them at some point, mixed with even worse smells. Awful! Stinky!
Jim did as I requested, took the shoes off and I ferried them back outside on the mat.
Fast forward to 3 pm. Jim decides to take another nap since he'd gotten two hours the night before and that hour nap after breakfast. I wave him off, say have a good sleep and continued on into my sewing room to work on a large batik quilt for our bed. I don't bother looking at his feet, but I should have.
Nine pm rolls around and now Jim is online. He'd been napping and painting trim off and on all day, dressed in his grubby painting clothing and those shoes. I grumbled a little about the shoes as I went past and he removed them and carried them outside.
When I went into our bedroom the bed simply reeked! It was obvious that during his three hour afternoon nap he's slept in the bed with those stupid stinky shoes on. The entire bed smelled like Durian, used diapers and vomit, so so bad!
I came out and yelled at him to never wear those shoes into the house ever again because now my workload had increased dramatically. I had to strip the bed completely, spray the mattress with lysol and air freshener, remake the bed with all fresh bedding including the quilt, drag the bedding into the laundry room and start washing it immediate to kill the funky smell. The scent lingered in the bedroom for a little while until I completely recleaned it and mopped thoroughly.
I had just cleaned, mopped and changed bedding the day before.
When I was finished Jim apologized for his actions. I apologized for hollering at him like a fishwife, and that was that. We talked anew about the need not to wear shoes we go outside in inside of the house. No arguing, no fighting, no stomping off to pout by anyone.Just twol old adults adulting like pros.
There are times when you are just going to be miffed at your spouse. It happens. It's normal. What's not normal is where these people in the books go to is a stupid dramatic place every single time. Every single small thing, like flyswatters and who is fixing breakfast are really not the hills you want to die on.
Jim slipped in following a house rule he actually came up with to reduce the amount of mopping in the house and to keep down the allergens tracked into the house for my asthma. I know in the future I am going to slip and do stupid things. It's just human nature, apologize and move on, don't fight like you are back in middle school and somebody smeared ketchup on your favorite white blouse. Am I going to stop reminding him not to wear his shoes into the bedroom? Of course. Is he going to remind me to put the hose back and the spray head when I'm finished watering the garden. Probably so and that's okay.
Don't live your life like you're selling wolf tickets at the WWE events, and don't be a smiling doormat. There has to be give and take, apologies and forgiveness in this small stuff. And it is all small stuff.
Example: The book introduction. It is filled with three stories from marriages. The author does not state which of the stories is from her personal marriage, but it's not too hard to see the ridiculous marriage damaging lies in those first three strawnmen.
Husband and wife #1 involves the husband grilling amidst beaucoup flies and asking the teenage son to fetch a flyswatter. Not an unreasonable request to be made of anyone, right? But momma tells the boy that daddy is being ridiculously pussy about the flies and to ignore him, Kid does. Daddy sulks.
Husband and wife #2 have guests, relatives of the husband, and the wife is up trying to get ready for work and fix breakfast for the relatives and asks freewheeling husband for a hand. This spirals into a ridiculously petty argument that likely ate up even more time than likely could have been put to good use getting the breakfast ready.
We all know what Lori Alexander would have said about that scenario in the first place, that it was clearly a sin of the wife because she wasn't supposed to have a job in the first place, or needs of any sort.
The final scenario involved a wife coming home to a dinner cooked by the husband. Dishes galore piled in the sink, so she makes a big deal over those dishes, and how now she'll have to use up precious time after her work day doing his dishes.
Insert a huge sigh here. ALL of those things are so petty and immature as the basis for a fight. In each case it ended either with an argument or a man running off to sulk. Attention! Any man offended enough that you said he didn't need a fly swatter, or starts a fight the minute you have a reasonable request for help is not mature enough to be married period! If you like to pick fights over these things you likely should not be married either. Two very immature individuals marrying just spell misery.
Someone cooks you a meal at the end of a long hard work day? Say thank you and be happy you merely have to load the dishwasher later instead of cooking the meal yourself. Your husband wants a flyswatter? What's the harm in just sitting back and letting Junior get that flyswatter without your commentary? The breakfast situation, why not just taking the husband''s suggestion and let the guests fend for themselves instead of investing time and emotional energy before work in a fight?
I still do not get why in Evangelical Quiverful everyone is fighting over so many things in marriage. I don't get why it's always a battle without adult conversation. But I had something of an epiphany about those marriages last night when my husband pushed all my buttons down at the same time.
Here it goes. It's just not entirely possible to not disagree with your spouse sometimes over stupid petty things. It's also not the end of the world, or determinant of the marriage.
Let me just state officially for the record that while there may be a sliding scale of cleanliness in the rest of the house depending on the day, what we're doing, what the maid is doing and how sick I or my husband are one of the things that is an absolute with me is that I make sure I keep our bedroom and master bath immaculate.
Jim does not care if I clean or do not clean the house. He does not care about my desire for a certain thread count of sheets, or my insistence on the 'right' feel of towels. It matters little to him if there's a clean bathmat in our bathroom, or if I use the good French milled scented soap. He'd live like a bear with furniture happily. I cannot. I like nice things, and I use my china, fancy towels, good soap and scented candles as I please. There is no saving for later or better occasions. I like to live well.I like to enjoy myself.
Life is so much more tranquil when your bedroom is a clean place to retreat when you are having a moment.
Yesterday morning I went to make the bed around 8 am, discovering Jim flopped out on the bed sleeping. He'd had insomnia badly the night before, and was having unbeknownst to me an after breakfast nap.
Like the bear with furniture he is he had his old work shoes on laying down on the middle of the unmade bed. I pointed out immediately that shoes had to be removed asap and taken outside to the mat where all our outdoor shoes live. We only use inside flipflops or go barefoot around the house. I didn't make a big deal about it, just pointed out that dirty outdoor shoes must stay outdoors.
I don't know exactly what he has done to these shoes. The soles are flapping. They are ancient and they reek! They smell like they may have held giant slices of Durian in them at some point, mixed with even worse smells. Awful! Stinky!
Jim did as I requested, took the shoes off and I ferried them back outside on the mat.
Fast forward to 3 pm. Jim decides to take another nap since he'd gotten two hours the night before and that hour nap after breakfast. I wave him off, say have a good sleep and continued on into my sewing room to work on a large batik quilt for our bed. I don't bother looking at his feet, but I should have.
Nine pm rolls around and now Jim is online. He'd been napping and painting trim off and on all day, dressed in his grubby painting clothing and those shoes. I grumbled a little about the shoes as I went past and he removed them and carried them outside.
When I went into our bedroom the bed simply reeked! It was obvious that during his three hour afternoon nap he's slept in the bed with those stupid stinky shoes on. The entire bed smelled like Durian, used diapers and vomit, so so bad!
I came out and yelled at him to never wear those shoes into the house ever again because now my workload had increased dramatically. I had to strip the bed completely, spray the mattress with lysol and air freshener, remake the bed with all fresh bedding including the quilt, drag the bedding into the laundry room and start washing it immediate to kill the funky smell. The scent lingered in the bedroom for a little while until I completely recleaned it and mopped thoroughly.
I had just cleaned, mopped and changed bedding the day before.
When I was finished Jim apologized for his actions. I apologized for hollering at him like a fishwife, and that was that. We talked anew about the need not to wear shoes we go outside in inside of the house. No arguing, no fighting, no stomping off to pout by anyone.Just twol old adults adulting like pros.
There are times when you are just going to be miffed at your spouse. It happens. It's normal. What's not normal is where these people in the books go to is a stupid dramatic place every single time. Every single small thing, like flyswatters and who is fixing breakfast are really not the hills you want to die on.
Jim slipped in following a house rule he actually came up with to reduce the amount of mopping in the house and to keep down the allergens tracked into the house for my asthma. I know in the future I am going to slip and do stupid things. It's just human nature, apologize and move on, don't fight like you are back in middle school and somebody smeared ketchup on your favorite white blouse. Am I going to stop reminding him not to wear his shoes into the bedroom? Of course. Is he going to remind me to put the hose back and the spray head when I'm finished watering the garden. Probably so and that's okay.
Don't live your life like you're selling wolf tickets at the WWE events, and don't be a smiling doormat. There has to be give and take, apologies and forgiveness in this small stuff. And it is all small stuff.
Comments