Tag Archives: marriage

  • Understanding Forgiveness - 101 Blog.

    I Need an Editor. Or Something. . . Forgiving. For Real.

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    A few years ago, I was writing an obituary for a friend’s father who had passed away suddenly.  As many of you may have noticed, I do alright with the writing part of things most of the time, but I’m not quite so skilled as an editor*.  So, you shouldn’t be too surprised at the fact that I accidentally put the word “believed” where “beloved” was supposed to go.  So the first line read: “Mr. Bob Kennedy, believed father of Teddy and Linda Kennedy. . .”  Suddenly it seemed like not such a bad thing that Mr. Kennedy’s ex-wife hadn’t shown up to help her children handle the arrangements. 

    (I spent the weekend with Mr. Kennedy a couple of years earlier when his son Teddy got married.  We were both just-outside-the-inner-circle participants in the wedding.  My ex was the best man and Mr. Kennedy was the now sober  and present father.  I am quite certain that Mr. Kennedy absolutely laughed his ass off over the whole thing.  I mean, he valued his children more than men who never went without them sometimes do.  But the whole thing was pretty rich.  He would have seen the humor.)  

    I keep thinking about that story, because I keep thinking about her – the former Mrs. Kennedy.  Continue reading »

  • Couple-Arguing

    Being right is not the most important thing

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    Shortly after I got married, a girlfriend passed on this advice: “Sometimes you have to ask yourself if you would rather be right or you’d rather be married.  Because you can be right all the way to divorce court.”  The is the best advice for life I have ever heard.

    We humans have a strange obsession with being right.  Not only do we tend to think we’re always right and be very resistant to thinking otherwise, we even think that being right should change the way our lives work.  If we are right, everyone should get in line with us and life should go well for us.  Of course, it rarely works that way.  So we get all bent out of shape.  But when relationships are being destroyed and hearts are being broken, being right means nothing.  Holding onto it is choosing the petty over the important.

    Think of an ongoing disagreement or conflict you have with someone in your life – big or small (starting small is usually easier).  Decide to let go of trying to convince the other person that you are right – no matter how right you are!  Instead, decide to focus on convincing them that you love and cherish them and see what happens.

  • difficult-coworker

    Anyone know a difficult person?

    December 6, 2010

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    Or perhaps you are the difficult person.  Most likely both have some truth in our individual lives.  It seems like everything that could be said about dealing with difficult people has been said, but this article on the notion of “Invalidation” as a tool frequently used by difficult people is really well done, imo. 

    I’m afraid I haven’t been blogging much because I’ve been SICK as a dog!  Blegh.  Hopefully I’ll recover soon and back to posting more often.  In the meantime, poke around – there’s a lot of stuff on the blog from the past that you might find interesting.

  • I’m driving my husband crazy

    June 27, 2008

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    There are people who have habits – ways that they do things day after day.  These are people who put things back in the same place each time they clean them up.  Those who follow routines in their daily lives.  Then there is me.  I don’t have habits – I have tendencies.  I could take the same path to the store everyday for 5 years and then change it one day without it bothering me in the least.  Left to my own devices I would get up at a different time everyday, eat at odd hours, shower at random times as it suited me.  I was probably one of those babies who never settled into any discernible schedule and drove her parents nuts.

    My husband on the other hand, is a creature of habit.  He has rituals and routines.  When these rituals and routines are disrupted, he gets crabby, upset and has a hard time functioning.  He forms habits in days, not the weeks or months it takes most people.  If he takes a 3 day business trip, it will be weeks before he can wake up to the sound of an alarm clock because on his trip he got used to being woken up by a phone call at the hotel.

    Normally we limp along together the best we can.  I try to keep things less chaotic for him and he tries to appreciate the “organized” aspects of my chaos.  We may have hit the wall, however.  It has come to my attention that my husband is contemplating sending me somewhere for rewiring after trying to find his way around our kitchen.  He can’t find anything in it, it seems.  I have tried patiently explaining that each item can be found in one of about 3 or 4 potential locations, but he’s not buying it.  For some reason, he thinks that all of the measuring cups should be together in the same drawer all the time.  I think they like being scattered around three separate drawers so they can visit the other wandering utensils.  Likewise with the roving sugar bowl.  Who am I to deny it its wanderlust as it drops in on cabinets with dishes or cans or the top of the refrigerator?  (What is funny about all of this is that my husband is far more likely to lose things than I am.)

    But I really am driving my husband crazy.  I keep trying to explain to my husband that his form of order is as hard for me to manage as my organized chaos is for him.  He recently told me, “it’s not like I’m asking you to change something fundamental about your personality.”  Ha!  If only.  I suppose since I’m the flexible one, I’ll have to bend and standardize the kitchen. Otherwise my husband may decide to make good on his idea of renting an efficiency apartment for himself where everything will be in order and where he left it last.   I could see him going there to get dressed in the morning and to prepare meals.  But it would probably be cheaper and less traumatic for the children if I just kept the measuring cups together in one drawer.

  • Adventurous Marriage?

    June 16, 2008

    1 Comment

    There’s an article at Christianity Today about marriage which I found kind of intriguing.  It’s called “Just Because”.    In it, the author talks about how her husband has a habit of bidding on large items on ebay which are “pick-up only” and are located across the country.   So they end up making weekend trips across the country to pick up motor homes, home gyms, motorcycle trailers, etc.  (These are obviously people with more money and several fewer young children than myself.)  The first time her husband bid on a pick-up only item 5 states away, she resisted the urge to throw a fit and shut him down.  Now it’s become a way for them to occasionally get away together and just hang out and have fun.

    Which is all well and fine for people not tethered to the house by kids who have money to blow.  However, her larger point is that we can become so practical minded, that we pass up opportunities to just have fun with our spouses.  I know I’ve been guilty of this.  My husband is more of a dreamer than I am.  I tend to have an exhaustive list of reasons why something won’t work and doesn’t make sense.  I’ve worked very hard at toning it down over the years because I know it bothers him and is a kill-joy.  However, it is really, really hard for me to do.  Some of the best advice I’ve gotten about this came from my mom who said, “that’s when you say, ‘it would be great if you could do that’ and then go say a prayer that he doesn’t actually try.”  :)

    Of course, it does go both ways; further into the article the author says:

    Good marriages have husbands who have said yes to shopping and the opera and hitting every historical marker along the side of the road during a vacation (if that’s their wife’s “thing”). Good marriages have wives who have said yes to fishing and drag racing and investment seminars and auto shows and Civil War reenactments and the Sybaris.”

    I was all ready to be crabby that my husband is unwilling to participate in things that I enjoy like hiking and gardening (I can hardly get him to even come out to look at my garden – he keeps saying, “can’t you buy this stuff at the store?”).  After all,at least I will go with him to his cigar shop to hang out!  Then I got to this:

    Throw out your scorecard. The reality is that while you may say yes, your spouse may still seem to always say no. Keep saying yes. The point isn’t keeping score; it’s celebrating the joy of connecting as a couple.”

    Ah, the score card.  The destroyer of marriages and willing spousal servitude everywhere.  So self-satisfying.  So evil.  Sigh.

    Anyhow, it was a thought provoking article.  It’s a reminder to be more aware and more careful to find those points of connection, even when they’re not my style or impractical.  And maybe I’ll just forward this article to my dear hubby to see if we can prod him into doing the same.  Not that I’m keeping track or anything ;)

  • Government Policies and Marriage

    March 8, 2006

    1 Comment

    On of the topics I have brushed on here is how the government can/should change policies in order to encourage family formation and make it easier to maintain families. Unfortunately, whenever government and policies appear in the same sentence, people may assume I’m referring t new big-government programs. This is not the case at all. In The National Review Online today, one of the authors of the study I reference below is interviewed regarding his work. In response to the question of what policy changes we should make in light of his study, he responds as follows:
    I think we should give couples and families the ability to make choices about work and family that best suit their own needs. Among other things, this means adjusting the tax code so that child-care tax credits do not reward one model of organizing family and work.
    I also think we can reform divorce laws so that spouses who commit themselves to marriage do not find themselves holding the bag when their spouse thinks they have fallen out of love or finds an attractive alternative. For instance, court decisions regarding child custody and property division should take into consideration the responsibility that each spouse bears for the divorce. As a matter of simple justice, innocent spouses who do not wish to divorce should not lose primary custody of their children or primary control of their property. Of course, spouses who are the victims of adultery, abuse, or abandonment should be able to get a divorce promptly.
    Finally, because many of our tax and welfare policies – e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid, etc. – are means-tested, they end up penalizing marriage among low-income couples with children (    see). To strengthen marriage for all Americans, federal and state policies must be reformed to stop penalizing low-income couples who are considering marriage or who wish to remain committed to their marriages.
    This is exactly what I have been talking about. We really do need our lawmakers to stop claiming that every pro-business move they make is also pro-family (it may or may not be) and start looking at the nitty-gritty of what the government is already doing which makes family formation and maintenance harder than it needs to be.