The Compliant Spouse
22 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
Chances are, you know one. He’s usually not yours, but some other seemingly fortunate wife’s husband. They do everything together; they share common ideals. They’re the couple that says that they rarely argue. When a disagreement comes up, they talk it out and they come to a compromise. And they live happily ever after.
And you think, “If only I found my perfect match, I wouldn’t have marital problems.” While I’ll readily admit, there are bad matches, good matches, better matches and best matches in marriage, many smooth-sailing marriages usually have one thing that makes them oh, so easy: a compliant spouse.
A compliant spouse—husband or wife—is content to let the other spouse lead the way and make the decisions. He or she isn’t necessarily a doormat, but he usually wants to keep the peace more than have his way. Often times, he’ll suggest ideas but if his spouse shoots them down, he’ll just shrug his shoulders and go with the flow. There isn’t much true “compromise” going on: He just gives in. He takes direction well, and completes his honey-to list when asked. Leaving decisions to his mate allows him freedom to pursue other interests while relieving him of weightier responsibilities, too.
Is a compliant spouse the perfect spouse?
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard women swoon over someone’s compliant spouse. And I guess I have to admit, I have done it, too. When your own husband has an irksome bull-headed streak, a complaint spouse sounds terrific. But do you really want a compliant spouse? The reality has its drawbacks:
All the responsibility falls upon your shoulders. Everyone knows who wear the proverbial pants in the family. You’ll have to take the fall for unpopular decisions or bad news that comes from you and your husband. Let’s face it: We all like to conveniently have our spouses to blame for something we want to opt out of, like a child’s party or weekend with the in-laws.
And you’ll usually end up making all decisions, from major to irritatingly tedious. “Can you please just tell me where you want to go for dinner tonight?” “I don’t care what brand of shaving cream you get!”
Compliance is boring. It’s nice when a spouse brings his own ideas into the mix. It’s exciting to hear, “I have a better idea.”
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Now and then, a little giving in—for you—is good for the soul. It takes humility and love to be able to back down and let the other person get what he wants, even when it isn’t what you want at all. If you’re used to getting your way, be sure you aren’t turning into a total dictator or a spoiled brat—unless he likes it that way.
Some compliant spouses give in but hold resentments. These are the spouses that suddenly up and leave after long years of marriage, to everyone’s shock and surprise. They were quietly compliant but not happily so.
Frequently, a wife will turn her husband into a compliant spouse, and then lose respect for him. It’s no wonder why husbands complain that they can’t figure out what their wives want! Most wives want a delicate balance between a man and a manservant. I suppose it’s akin to that old men’s adage of wanting a cook in the kitchen, a lady in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom. Women have their own sexist desires: We want an obedient caretaker around the house, a tycoon at the office and a he-man in the bedroom. And ya, and one who cares about starving children and saving the planet and promoting world peace while he’s at it. Sensitive but manly. One without the other just doesn’t work as well.
In my personal circle of friends and family, there are good examples of the compliant spouse syndrome. Their marriages are intact, of course. Of them, two are mutually content, one holds in resentments, while the other three wives have lost all respect for their mates. Their relationships have turned into mother-child interactions, and that is a topic for another article.
If you have a compliant spouse, be sure to address his or her desires. Solicit his or her opinions and take them. If you keep dismissing his ideas, choices and opinions, for whatever reason however logical, he will stop offering them. Appreciate that your marital road is smoother than most, but give credit to the one who paves that way.
The Dirty Little Secret that Happy Wives Keep
10 Sep 2009 2 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: articles about marriage, how to make marriage work, humor essays, humorous essays, husband and wife, marital advice, marital relationships, marriage communication, marriage essays, real life marriages, relationship advice, secret happy wives keep, working marriages
When it comes to being a great wife, my great aunt was an inspiration. She was the quintessential Japanese wife. In addition to fulfilling the usual wifely duties with aplomb, she quietly served her crotchety husband without voicing a single word of discontent. And to say he was not an easy man to live with would be a drastic understatement. Everyone marveled at her cheerfulness, industriousness, dedication and long-suffering. Today, she has two children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
One day, I asked her how in the world she managed to live with a difficult man and stay happily married for so long. She said something in broken English that shocked me: “Some days, I like shoot him.”
Comics quip,“Divorce is not an option. Murder, maybe.” And we laugh at that joke. But one of the dirty little secrets that happy wives keep is that there are days when your husband drives you to the edge of the law. Oh, we’re generally content with our spouses and marriages. He’s the love of our life and yadda yadda. But some days, we wish we could throttle him. Rare, if not mythical, is the happy wife who coos contentedly throughout the long years, never to entertain a single thought of frustration or anger toward her husband.
Living with unresolved resentment can be detrimental to your mind and body as well as your marriage, but most of the time those thoughts of aggravation, assault and homicide are fleeting. And silly. Psychologists might assert that these thoughts are not to be taken lightly and that they are serious signs of deep-seeded trouble. In some cases, it’s true.
Serious vs. silly
The ex-husband of a recently divorced friend of mine was a good example of serious resentment. They were married for over 20 years, most of them clearly unhappy. Unwilling to split half their assets or pay alimony and child support, he didn’t seek a divorce. But he stewed. And stewed. Until one day, he exploded with an ominous threat: “If you don’t watch out, you’ll end up like Laci Petersen!” He alluded to the murdered wife that had been in the news.
This was not something to ignore. She is safely divorced from this angry, resentful man who had a pattern of cynicism and anger toward life in general.
On the other hand, passing resentment is natural and benign. It occurs in close relationships and not only marriage. There are occasional conflicts between business partners, co-workers, family and friends. Healthy, mature people know how to get over the differences between them. Resentment or anger is worked out in the mind and let go. Is your anger or resentment a threat to your marriage? Here are questions to consider:
1.How frequently do you have feelings of anger or resentment toward your spouse? If you seem constantly or consistently resentful, you need to review the causes and come to terms with them. Are they issues you should learn to accept and tolerate or do they require compromise and counseling?
2.How heated is your anger? Feeling angry is natural. But if you find your anger reaches a rage-like level, you might consider seeking counseling. Do you have an anger management problem or is your rage a sign of how increasingly intolerable your situation is?
3.Has your anger escalated over the years? If so, you’re not able to let go of resentments and that is unhealthy.
4.Do you feel remorseful or silly afterward? Out-of-control or irrational thoughts sometimes are followed by remorse and guilt. Outlandish thoughts, on the other hand, usually make you giggle afterward. They were just plain silly and you’d never act upon them. (“I wanted to wring his neck!”)
5.Is your marital relationship generally happy and healthy? Threatening thoughts in an angry marriage should be taken seriously. They are a barometer of marital contentment—or lack of—and indicate the urgent need for help. However, happy marriages with only rare or occasional resentful thoughts that pass are fairly typical.
Put up, shut up?
Happy spouses realize that in many cases, it’s better to keep the peace by the generations-old adage of “putting up and shutting up.” Some things just aren’t worth the trouble. But all the putting up and shutting up can get wearing. To keep things from blowing up, consider the following tips:
1.Pick your battles. You’d be surprised to learn how many marriages dissolve over small matters. Use conflicts as opportunities to grow, to learn patience, to be the better person.
2.Accept what you can’t change. No one is perfect and never will be, including ourselves. Why or why do we expect our partners to work toward perfection? We may not like all of our spouses’ traits—we might even disdain them—but it’s important to remember that there are plenty of traits we DO love about them and focus on those.
3.Realize that you aren’t perfect either. How would you like it if he constantly harped upon your faults and failings?
4.Vent to the right people. Venting is like letting out steam in a pressure cooker. It keeps you from building up silly thoughts until they become irrational thoughts. Use caution when choosing to whom you vent. Never vent to your spouse who can’t help but take your comments personally—they’re about him! Family and in-laws are absolutely the wrong people! Family and in-laws are too close to both of you and will choose sides and hold grudges. Friends as well. Counselors, clergy and online forums are safe and objective.
Another grand old lady with a happy, 50+ year marriage revealed to me her marital secret: “To have a long and happy marriage, you have to put up with a lot of crap.” It’s the best marital advice I’d ever heard and one day, I’ll have it cross-stitched to hang above my mantel. Have I myself ever had any fleeting thoughts about shooting my husband? Of course not. I’m a rational wife. After all, who’d have to clean up afterward?
Prozac Paradise
08 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: articles about marriage, husband and wife, marital relationships, marriage communication, marriage essays, relationship advice
I don’t often write when I’m mad. First of all, too many emotions converge upon my brain from all directions, bottlenecking at my fingertips where thoughts must flow in a neat, linear fashion in order to be placed upon a page. Second of all, what would come out wouldn’t be very nice.
And, I was taught that if you can’t say anything nice, you’d better not put it down on paper for it to haunt you, blackmail you, or otherwise cause you great regret. Your own not-so-nice words will turn on you like that. Private journals are precisely kept for this purpose. They lock up our fiercest feelings so no one else will find them. To me, words are to communicate. Holding them private defeats their purpose. So to be polite—and safe—I’ve kept my published words in line, behaving nicely for the most part.
Until now. I’m mad.
Unfortunately, I am mad at the very person who usually brings me a sense of belonging, the best grilled steaks in the world, and warm feet in bed. Any other time, you’d hear me even utter words like “soul mate” and “kismet.” But not today. He’s the person I’m stuck with, for better or for worse, and today is for the worse.
Stop! I tell myself. Stop writing! Log out of this word document before you say something utterly mean and unretractable. What if he reads this? What is your mother-in-law reads this? What if you read it and believe it and then have to face some of the repressed truths you feel but never admit?
I shall spare you the sordid and petty details of what brought me to this. Suffice it to say that it had something to do with, of all things, a burrito. But of course as with all marital spats, it represented so much more. After arguing on and on, leaping from one seemingly unrelated grudge to another unresolved grudge, our accusations aired our frustrations, disappointments and disillusionments about each other. Then, we realized that this blasted burrito represented serious fundamental differences and soon, our twenty-three-year marriage seemed as brittle as Tijuana pottery.
“Are you taking your Prozac?” he asked, derisively. The tone was the insult. It is true that I do take prescribed antidepressants with no shame. But because I do, any time I disagree with his godly opinions, he thinks I must be off my medication.
“Why?” I said. My own tone dared him to say one more offensive thing. Go ahead, knock off this Prozac tablet off my shoulder.
“It’s just that I become such an a-hole to you when you’re not taking your medication.”
“You are an a-hole,” I replied. “It’s just that my medication allows me to tolerate you better.” There was some truth to this snide remark. He did engage in a-hole-like behavior while I often referred to Prozac as my Stepford-wife pill. It mellowed me into nice wifely compliance. Anything you say, dear. Anything you want, dear. He loved that.
“Maybe you should just give them to me and I’ll take them,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.
“Maybe you should.”
That would he be like if he were on Prozac? Compliant? Unselfish? A Stepford husband? I slept on the sofa that night, feeling relieved for some personal space away from his stifling presence. No tug-of-war with the blankets. No twenty-four-hour glow of the television set that he likes. Dark. Silent. Peaceful. It felt good to be alone. I fell into a deep sleep and dreamt of my new life without him that had a thousand possibilities. Nearly all of them were good. Only one had any sort of violence in it.
Maybe I’m older or just plain old too tired for jealousy, anger, and vindictiveness but my mind craves peace. So my ultimate dream had us moving onto new relationships with nice people. It seemed strange to start over, building a new history with someone else that didn’t include milestones like first apartments, new careers, and children. We were cordial to each other’s new partner and even went on joint vacations together. We had become friends. What was irritating to me was just fine with his new mate. She brought out the better man in ways I could not. And with my new partner, I did not require medication. With him, there was peace and sanity.
But then I woke up. Working at marriage, enduring, tolerating, growing, learning, whatever euphemism you use to keep at it … it’s all so mind-blowingly, soul-erodingly exhausting. Walking away could be so much easier. Quicker. Instant relief.
My sister reminds me of the happy times I share with my husband. “You love each other,” she says. I shrug, too mad to value that truth.
“Does it make up for all the other crap?” I sneer. Anger makes one think, do and say stupid things.
“It does.” Older sisters are wise, although we don’t admit it when we’re young or when we’re angry. Her advice at least keeps me from a rash decision and over the next two days, my husband and I fall back onto the habits and traits that molded compatibly together over the course of twenty-three years. It wasn’t all bad or even all that bad. The anger was gone. My love for him was back. My sister was right: it did make up for all the other crap.
I still wonder why I have to be medicated in order to stay happily married. But for now, I’m grateful for Prozac. For growth opportunities. And most of all, for the delete button.
The Language of Sighs
03 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: body language, humor essays, husband and wife, making marriage work, marriage communication, marriage essays, real life marriages, sighing
If men and women don’t speak a common language, it is the language of sighs. Any woman knows that a sigh isn’t just a sigh. It’s a sign. There are many different sighs that communicate specific feelings. It’s mostly a contextual matter, reinforced with body language. And like most men, my husband finds it a hopelessly foreign language.
Why do women sigh when humans invented words and verbal language? Maybe because we know that some feelings can’t be expressed—or shouldn’t have to be expressed—in words. Or perhaps, words were already uttered but were entirely ineffectual.
Women sigh out of irritation, resignation, sadness, fatigue, relief, contentment, and sexual fulfillment. To tell where on this spectrum a particular sigh comes from, one must be keyed into the situation at hand, the sigh tonality, and the sigher’s body language that accompanies the sigh. It sounds far more complicated than it is. You simply have to be able to read a woman’s mind.
Because I am highly attuned to the language of sighs, I not only use sighs liberally in communication but I also listen carefully to the sigh communication of my husband. “Are you okay?” I ask after one of his particularly long and plaintive sighs.
“I’m fine,” he said. I was unconvinced.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“You sighed.”
“I’m just letting out air. It doesn’t mean anything.”
My silly husband insists that he is merely breathing. I’d buy this but he normally breathes pretty much without any sound of forced exhalation, except for in the middle of the night when his nasal passages wheeze. It could be that, as doctors say, it’s his lungs’ way of getting in a deep breath after too many shallow breaths deplete his oxygen supply. But I don’t fall for any pseudo-physiological mumbo jumbo. So I go down my usual checklist.
“Are you upset with me? Sad? Tired? Relieved? Contented? Sexually fulfilled?”
“I’m fine, really,” he says. “I’m just breathing. It keeps me alive.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure breathing keeps me alive.”
“But do you have to sigh like that.”
“Sigh like what?”
“Deeply, as though you’re upset about something.”
“If I’m upset about something I’ll just tell you. Men are straightforward like that. We don’t base our understanding on conjecture but statistics.”
“You make men sound like robots. But robots don’t sigh, and you sighed.”
And then he sighed.
“Like that. You just sighed again and this time, you weren’t just breathing.”
He sighed again.
“Aha! You did it again. You’re irritated.”
“I am now. I have to be careful about how I breathe in case you misinterpret how I breathe.”
“I just want you to be happy, and I look for signs that you aren’t, I suppose. Is that so wrong?”
“Honey, I’m happy. I need to breathe. Would you prefer I stopped breathing?”
And then I sighed.
“So what did your sigh mean?” he teased. But I already knew. “That meant, “Now you’re just being condescending and making me feel ridiculous for even trying to read too much into your sighs and body language because I care about your happiness, but now I will no longer do so.”
“Wow,” he said. “All that in one sigh?”
Clearly, he is an amateur. Then, with a deep, rattling suction of air, his chest drew in and then blew out a loud rush of breath. “There,” he said. “So what did that sigh mean?”
I studied him carefully and reported, “That sigh meant, “I think all this sigh business is stupid but if I say so, I won’t get any sex tonight.” His face grew pale. I smiled. The rest of the trip home was both wordless and sighless, even though his breathing was shallow. Kind of like when you’re watching a scary movie.
Did I really know that’s what his sigh meant? Did I really read his mind? Nah, it’s a matter of statistics really. According to neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, men think about sex approximately every fifty-four seconds. Our conversation continued for about five minutes so far which meant he must have thought about sex at least five and a half times. But if he wanted to believe that I could read his sigh that clearly, that was fine with me.
Later that evening as I plopped into bed and switched on the television to catch the news, the fatigue of the day caught up with me and I let out a long sigh. He looked at me sideways.
“Are you upset with me?”
I suppressed a smile and said innocently, “No, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Are you sad, relieved, tired, or sexually fulfilled?”
“Nope. None of the above.”
“Well, what did that sigh mean then?”
“I was breathing. Women breathe, too.”
“Okay, now you’re just toying with me.”
And I was. To his credit, the guy was trying. A while later in his arms, I let out a deeply contented sigh, and he smiled because this time, he knew exactly what it meant.
For Richer, For Poorer
02 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: for love or money, for richer for poorer, marriage and money, marriage essays
My father had four daughters. To his misfortune, the days of arranged marriages were long gone. He found he had little say over our choice of husbands. One by one, we got married. For the first, he threw a lavish church wedding and reception dinner. His first son-in-law was not wealthy but he was gainfully employed. What more could he ask?
His second son-in-law had known my sister since they were in middle school, and I was still in elementary school. I grew up thinking he was like the brother I never had. My father loved him like a son even though he, like son-in-law number one, was not rich.
Son-in-law number three also didn’t have much money. He and my sister met at the local community college. My father frowned to learn he had a low-paying job, but he was going to school and that provided some hope. But then, they divorced. Her second husband was a bellman.
When it came time for me to marry, my father decided to dole out some wisdom. “Lori, it is just as easy to love a rich man as it is to love a poor man,” he said. I loved when he tried to give us advice. He always used age-old adages. His favorites were from Benjamin Franklin. I regret that in my naïveté, I considered these good talks to be opportunities to spar instead of to learn. But when he brought up loving a rich man, for some reason, it offended me deeply.
“What?” I cried. “How can you say that? I want to marry for love. NOT for money.”
“But why not marry someone you love who has money?”
“Rich men are materialistic,” I scoffed. “They only want arm candy and then they throw their women away when they get old just to get younger arm candy. I’d rather marry a poor man who loves me.”
He gave up.
True to my word, I married for love and not for money. The proof: my husband didn’t have money. And as we slogged along, scraping by with a growing family and a meager salary, I learned why my father put such importance on money. The stress and strain of making a small paycheck stretch to cover the rent, cars, electricity, gas, food, and medical bills was overwhelming. The worries over whether we’d be evicted or if we had the money to wash our clothes at the laundry mat this week made me question if I did the right thing by opting to stay home full-time with the kids instead of going back to work.
I realized, to my chagrin, that I had entered the ranks of the poor. Not that I’d ever been rich. Most of my life, I considered us in the lower middle-class rank. Nothing to boast about, but we were mostly content. We had a house of our own, food on the table, cars, clothes, and money for college. But now, as I listened to an apartment neighbor talk about her monthly “Mother’s Day” gift, I realized she was talking about her welfare check. And another young mother tried to “help” me out by connecting me with a friend who could shoplift baby clothes from an upscale department store. For a small cut, she said, I could return my “purchases” for cash. It sickened me. How low had we sunk?
I had a college education but wasn’t using it. I insisted on not missing a minute of our children’s childhood and it came at a price. My husband was working as hard as he could and it wasn’t enough. But somehow we made it.
The kids grew. Today, we look back and see the remarkable values gained by going through those lean years. My children are not materialistic. They never thought they were poor growing up because we always managed to give a little bit of food, money, or clothes to the “poor.” They are not brand conscious nor are they greedy. They were content with the simple things in life that come free: A beach day, a horsey back ride from daddy, a story and a back scratching from mommy, pillow-and-blanket tents in the living room.
We had our worries, but we still treasured our very favorite part of the day when we’d snuggle under the covers and talk about our future, the kids, and how much we loved each other … no matter what. Sure our financial troubles caused a lot of fights, but we held onto each other and were thankful that our kisses were free.
As the children grew, so did our income. We began to live a modest but better lifestyle. We moved to a better community with good schools for the kids. And soon, we’ll face a new challenge with wealth. But for richer and for poorer, I vowed, so I think we can manage.
My father went to heaven years ago. And now he knows I made the right choice. We take the love we gather here on earth, but there’s no money in heaven. When my husband goes, he’ll be one of the wealthiest men there. And my father will be so proud of him.
If My Husband were Made of Chocolate…
02 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
Everyone has her coping mechanisms. I bypass the alcohol, drugs, divorce court and even the psychiatrist’s sofa and instead play out my frustrations in bizarre ways. There are days when I lapse into a thousand absurd daydreams. But it helps me get by.
For example, when my husband gets especially horrible, I dream he is made of chocolate. Imagine a husband-shaped piece of chocolate. Soothing. Scrumptious. Portable. And if I’m especially irritated, I can bite his head off.
Do I really wish him to become an inert food substance? My friends remind me of his non-nutritive values. My grandmother pointed out how handy he is around the house. He is a handy man, I admit, but he’d be even handier if he were made of chocolate. Instead of exacerbating my PMS as he often does by asking me if I’m PMSing, his chocolaty goodness would quell my jangled nerves with a single lick. And did I mention that I could bite his head off?
Before you poo-poo my fantasy as ridiculous, consider that all men really are like chocolate. I’ll bet if you were honest with yourself, you’d realize that your past lovers could fall into one of the following categories:
For show. There’s the type of chocolate that is so pricey you only buy it to give as a gift. Mainly to impress someone with your good taste. And while we acknowledge all the premium ingredients that go into such chocolates, we’re not so in love with the actual flavor. I once had a boyfriend that I am ashamed to admit I dated mostly because all the other girls wanted him.
Better than nothing or is it? Then, there’s chocolate that is cheap and waxy. After eating it, you realize it was wholly disappointing and not worth the calories. Like a hollow chocolate rabbit. You kick yourself for not having chosen something else. A man who is cheap and lacks character is never worth your time. I know because I’ve wasted two years with such a person while turning down opportunities with better quality people.
Your favorite. The best type of chocolate is the kind you look forward to savoring all by yourself. Just the thought of it makes your heart flutter. It doesn’t matter that others may think it’s an ordinary or premium brand because to you it is completely satisfying. Heady. Delicious.
My own husband would be made of rich milk chocolate. Smooth and sweet. With plenty of nuts for a crunchy surprise. The kind of chocolate you’d like to eat every day. At the park. On the road. At a party. He’d be welcome anytime and any place.
Once I made the mistake of crossing the lines between fantasy and reality when I licked his face and purred, “Mmm, if only you were made of chocolate…” He looked at me with alarm.
“Do you want to be with a black man?”
“No,” I laughed. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind being with a black man if I wasn’t married to you, but that’s not what I meant when I said ‘if only you were made of chocolate.’”
“Oh.” His relief was short-lived. “What did you mean?”
“I meant that it would be really nice if you were made of chocolate. You’d be luscious and sweet, and I could bite your head off when I’m mad at you.”
He sat there, thoughtfully. “Well, if only you were a good beer. You’d be full-bodied with a frothy, bubbly head….and you’d sit silently in a frosted glass while I watched a football game.”
After nearly 24 years of marriage, he’d become good at lapsing into his own bizarre fantasies.
Later than night, we surprised each other with a box of See’s chocolates and a six-pack of Sam Adams ale. After all, we’re everyday sort of folks just getting by. I ate my chocolates silently while he drank his beer and watched a football game. A chocolate husband would be no good anyway, I mused. He’d melt when I snuggled in his arms, and a headless husband is just plain creepy.
It’s Not Easy Being Green – When You’re Married
31 Aug 2009 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: being green, converting your spouse to green living, environmental essays, going green, green living, humor essays
I’ve always felt that it was our responsibility to care for our planet. So, like many like-minded souls, I adopted a new earth-friendly lifestyle. But like Kermit the Frog, I soon learned quickly that it’s not easy being green.
My first mistake was trying to make a radical change overnight. Going from the typical consumer to an eco-savvy citizen should be gradual. Instead, in my sudden fervor to keep the world from descending into the muck of human refuse, I wanted to be green all the way—and now. Of course, being married meant that my husband was going to have to go along with me. That was mistake number two.
My husband adjusted fine to tossing cans and bottles into the new recycling bin in the kitchen. We switched our light bulbs to CFL (compact florescent light) bulbs, a good trade that rendered cost savings as well as conserved energy. I went about the house flipping off lights and unplugging appliances that weren’t in use. Our new cleansers lacked the same cleaning oomph of our usual toxic brands, but scrubbing harder was well worth avoiding a future generation of mutant flora and fauna.
So far, so good. I was learning new green lingo and we were doing the Three Rs: reduce, recycle, and reuse. But it wasn’t enough. After all, the rate of global warming exceeded our snail’s pace conversion to greenhood. So, I pressed onward.
I tossed out cosmetics that tested on animals and for once felt relieved that my husband was too cheap to buy real leather. The kids and I even made our own solar cooker out of cardboard and foil and a vermicompost bin, where red worms ate, or rather recycled, bits of celery ends and carrot tops while I envisioned a garden that would provide all our nutritional needs. And speaking of nutrition, one of the greenest things we could do, I decided, was to become vegans. Mistake number three.
For the uninitiated, there are different levels of vegetarianism. Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat eggs and dairy but no red meat. The pescetarians abstain from all animal flesh except for seafood. Vegans refuse any animal flesh or commercial goods made from any animal byproducts like milk or fats. And now, there are flexitarians who are vegetarians most of the time but who will eat meat on occasion. That would have been the wisest choice for newbie greenies like us, but I wanted to be a dedicated greenie, so there was no other choice but veganism for us.
My family loves vegetables, so one wouldn’t think veganism would be a problem, except for one major obstacle my husband was born and bred a Texan. He was weaned on beef. Something needed to have died a violent death for his meal or it wasn’t dinner. I began with not-so-obvious vegan dishes like bean burritos, vegetable curry, and high-fiber vegetable stir-fry. It took him a few days before he realized that he hadn’t been eating any meat, but soon his biochemistry detected a total lack of decayed flesh in his intestinal system and it began to balk.
“I’m getting constipated,” he announced. In our household, bowel movements constitute breaking news.
“You need to drink more water,” I said without mentioning the sudden enormous increase of fiber in his diet. He shrugged and drank a glass of water as I secretly added prunes to our grocery list.
“I feel like eating beef,” he announced. In our household, in addition to bowel movements, food cravings constitute news as well as a family decree. So that night, I cooked up some delicious vegan chili, hoping he would not notice that the chunky texture in the spicy mixture was not beef but a delightful medley of summer vegetables … actually, just zucchini. Zucchini chili admittedly lacks the appeal of “Savory Vegetarian Chili,” so I just plunked down a bowl in front of my husband without an official introduction. He shoveled in the first mouthful and a curious look crossed his face. He peered into his bowl. Darn that Texan in him. He could taste beef—or the lack of it—no matter how well disguised it was.
“This is not chili.”
“It is chili.”
“Where’s the beef?”
“Living peacefully somewhere on an open plain where it belongs.”
“I knew it,” he groaned. “You’re going through one of your vegetarian phases again, aren’t you?”
I’d attempted several times in the past to turn us all into vegetarians, but it never lasted more than a week. His taste buds were developed completely around the flavor of animal carcasses of every kind: cattle, pigs, deer, lamb, chickens, and ducks. Converting him was like feeding hay to a lion. Those who know their Bible stories believe this is possible because Noah allegedly did not feed meat to the animals on his ark for forty days and forty nights. But it doesn’t actually state that in the Bible. Maybe a few pairs of animals didn’t make it to dry land after all. In any case, my husband would have abandoned ship long before the rainbow appeared.
Before he could rage on about not wanting to give up meat, I quickly reminded him about global warming and how grain-fed cattle consume our dwindling resources of oxygen and release more methane gases.
“Do you know how much methane gas I’d release into the earth’s atmosphere if I had to eat beans instead of beef?” he snapped. I tried to console him with some soy ice cream, but apparently, he can taste the lack of animal byproducts as well because he spat it out and pouted for the rest of the night.
Now I’m all for preserving our planet, but what good would it do to save the earth for tomorrow’s generation if today’s died of starvation? The next day, we went out for burgers. I was very careful to place the paper bag into our recycling bin, so why did I feel guilty?
I think that the vegetarian community was wise to accept the flexitarian category of vegetarianism to encourage people at least to reduce the amount of animal flesh in their diets. Why doesn’t the green community consider a category for those who live green most of the time but who occasionally lapse by tossing a piece of foil into the trash or eating an occasional steak? This would encourage more people to keep trying to live green rather than shaming them into the resignation of being earth destroyers.
Like vegetarianism, there are many levels of being green. Most of us switch our light bulbs and recycle our aluminum cans and call it a day. Others will shop for products that use less packaging and aren’t animal tested. Still more dedicated souls will change their dietary habits and lifestyles to sacrifice modern conveniences like disposable diapers, gas-guzzling vehicles, television … and, gulp, the Internet. And if that isn’t the greenest of greenies, there are those who live nearest to the land: the digit cleansers.
No, they are not a cleaning crew devoted to cleaning the numbers posted high on the gas station signs. What is digit cleansing? Hint: you have ten digits, or fingers, on your hands. You need to clean a certain part of your anatomy of your waste without using any disposable paper products. Yup, call it digit cleansing or bum thumb, but that calls for some serious eco-dedication.
“Digit cleanse? Wouldn’t it be less wasteful to use a few squares of biodegradable paper made from sustainable trees than to use a hundred gallons of water and soap to wash all that crap off your digits?” He made a good point.
I learned that day the true reason why we could not be completely green. We were raised amidst too much civilization to return to our primal beginnings, and it boiled down to one factory-manufactured product: toilet paper.
Digit cleansing might not be a problem for my husband. He is constipated, after all. But no matter how green I get, I could never digit cleanse. If the world should run out of toilet paper, I’ll use leaves. That should render at least one part of my anatomy green.
What’s a Husband for? To Kill Bugs, Of Course!
23 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: bug-killing, humor, humorous essays, husband and wife, marriage essays
I don’t expect much from my husband in the way of chivalrous deeds. As a contemporary woman, I open my own car door, balance my own checkbook and navigate around the mud puddles of life fairly well. But there’s one act of heroism I need from a husband: bug killing.
This bugs–no pun intended–my husband, who appealed in vain for logic the day a spider decided to nap on my keyboard.
“You’re a million times larger than that bug,” he said.
“What’s your point?” I replied.
“It can’t hurt you.”
“But, it’s…ugly.”
“Ugliness can’t hurt you,” he said. “Use logic here. How likely is this bug to hurt you in any way?”
Somehow, he just didn’t get the point and was unwilling to help, and I was desperate to get that spider away from my computer. Blowing really hard didn’t work; it clung to the shift key. Picking up the keyboard to shake him off almost worked, but it made him lurch in a menacing manner as though he was going to jump onto my hand.
My final attempt to shoo the spider failed when I used an old envelope to scoot the wispy creature off the key. One of his spindly legs got crushed, and now all seven remaining legs flailed creepily, sending chills over my entire body.
“OK, you win!” I said. “Please just get this hideous thing off my keyboard so I can work.”
He smiled as he nonchalantly swiped the keyboard with a tissue.
“Oh, and while you’re at it, can you get the fly that buzzed in when the dog opened the screen door?”
“A fly? Surely you can manage a fly,” he said condescendingly.
“Look,” I said. “I can earn money and balance a checkbook. I can contract a gardener to mow the lawn as easily as you can. Why do you think I need a husband around here?”
Thwwap!
The plastic fly swapper bashed into the cabinet with a meteoric force that shook the house.
“Whoa! Speaking about logic: Why does it take a million pounds of force to squash a fly?”
“I just want to be sure I got it,” he said.
“Does hitting it harder increase your accuracy?”
He put down the fly swatter and I immersed myself in my work. I tapped until, from the corner of my eye, I noticed him sitting quietly, then making jerking movements. He stared straight ahead, in still repose, then thrust his right hand into the air as he attempted to cath a fly with a pair of chopsticks.
I watched in curiosity. “What are you doing?”
His Zen-like behavior did not cease.
“I…am…catching…the…fly,” he said in halting English, as in a really bad episode of “Kung Fu.”
“Why?”
“Because…the Master…does not…wish to kill them…herself.”
“It’s so annoying.”
“A man who can catch fly with chopsticks…is…is…I cannot remember. But it is an honorable thing, I think.”
“A man who catches flies with chopsticks gets fly guts in his food, is how it goes,” I said. “Don’t believe all the Asian philosophy you get from TV. Besides Buddhists don’t believe in killing anything, including bugs. Bad karma, you know.”
This concerned him enough to break from his meditative state. “So you make me kill them? Well, the bad karma is on your hands. You’re putting the contract out on them.”
Our argument was interrupted by a stream of ants scurrying toward the dog’s dish. At this point, we felt as though bad karma had returned to haunt us for every bug we had every squashed, smashed, sprayed, stepped on or chopsticked.
He gave a war cry and courageously swathed their path with bug spray. “There, that’s done.” He capped the can and walked away.
“Wait!” I cried. “You’re not done! You have to clean them up.”
“They’re dead. Just wipe them up.”
“I can’t. They’re still gross.”
He signed. The angst of bug killing can get wearing, I suppose. He pulled out the vacuum and started sucking up dead ants.
“What are you doing? Don’t vacuum them.”
“Why not? They’re dead.”
“Their corpses will rattle around in the bag. Dead and buggy.”
He looked at me as if I were the most illogical person on Earth. Even if there might have been some truth to that, it wasn’t the point. The point was that there were ant corpses in the vacuum bag.
I knew I was making this difficult, but bug killing, I’m convinced is not a flatten-and-flush matter. There are many different means of getting rid of a bug.
“Why don’t you just open the door,” he said, stomping over to the screen door and–with a dramatic flourish–sliding it wide open,”…and announce that visiting hours are over and you’d like it if they all went home for the night?”
He was pretty pleased with himself for making me look silly until out of the corner of his eye, he saw something writhe across the patio.
“Oh, no! It’s lizard!”
“A lizard? Is it poisonous?”
He slammed the screen door shut, then the glass door. He flipped the lock, and then stood behind a chair to get a better look. “No, they’re not poisonous.”
“Oh. Well, it’s not the type that can hurt you.”
“But it’s a reptile,” he said.
“So?”
“It’s ugly.”
“A once-credible source told me that ugliness can’t hurt you,” I retorted smugly.
Silence.
“Maybe I’ll just keep the lizard in the house so it can eat the bugs and you won’t have to be bothered,” I offered, pretending to open the door.
“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t do that!” he said.
“Let’s discuss the logic here,” I said. “You’re much bigger than that bitty lizard. Why can’t you just pick it up and toss it over the fence?”
“Look, I can zap my own microwave dinners, pick up the kids from school and shrink my own laundry just as easily as you can. What do I need you for but to get rid of lizards on the patio?”
Just then our oldest son walked in. “Hey, look, a lizard!” he said joyfully. He opened the door but the lizard slithered away.
“Now I get it,” my husband said. “That’s what kids are for. I was wondering when they would come in handy.”
He went to the kitchen for a snack, muttering about how the hunter-hunted instinct makes a man hungry. Our son looked at him quizzically. I laughed.
“You know, honey,” I said as I left to join my hunter in the kitchen. “It’s a good thing you’re not ugly.”
My son thinks he has the most illogical parents on Earth. But that’s not the point.
Shopping, Gathering and Looking Good – Or Not
22 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: bad dressers, clothes, fashion and marriage, husband and clothes, husband is a bad dresser, marriage
Shopping fanatics used to annoy me. How materialistic does one have to be to scour department store ads, line up at pre-dawn sales and continually glean through endless clothing racks just to bring home a bargain? No matter how beautiful, discounted or name-branded an item, it isn’t worth my time. Or so I thought.
Now I see that from an evolutionary viewpoint, today’s shopper can be compared to the successful gatherer in our prehistoric hunter-gatherer days. Those who traversed farthest retrieved the choicest nuts, berries, shellfish and other life-sustaining vittles for their tribes. If I lived in those days, my tribe would have been malnourished as we ate whatever crawled within a 12-foot radius of our cave. We would have become extinct long before the Ice Age. I now admire and envy the endurance of today’s savvy shopper.
My sister is a prime example. She and her family look marvelous. We, on the other hand, look like we dressed ourselves with the picked over scraps on the fashion carrion. My disdain for shopping forces me to wear whatever crosses my path. I buy something new only when I need it for an upcoming occasion. I don’t mind looking less than stylish but somehow my husband’s complete lack of fashion decorum bugs the Prada out of me.
Forget last year’s clearance items, he’s content to wear Stone Age coverings. Too tattered and too small to clothe only but the bare necessities.
“You’re such a caveman,” I said. “You’d rather wear a loin cloth than shop for clothes.”
“To cover my manhood, I’d need to hunt a Woolly Mammoth.” He grinned at his own immodest joke. Yet, last night proved that I’m getting better at helping him evolve.
“Are you wearing that shirt to dinner?” I asked. Translation: “Don’t wear that shirt to dinner.”
“Yes, I am wearing it,” he said curtly. His eyes didn’t move from the replay on the television.
“It’s wrinkled.”
“It’ll straighten out in a few minutes.” He must be confusing this shirt with the new self-ironing type he saw in a Sci-Fi movie.
“It has a stain and a hole in it, too.”
He looked down. “Rats.” His eyes returned to glowing screen. Clearly identifying the offensive stain and hole was not enough to convince him to change.
“And it’s too small. It doesn’t cover your stomach.” I poked the sliver of pale flesh that protruded below the shrunken cotton tee. He batted away my hand, shouting out at a bad call by the ref.
The front door banged open and extended family rattled in with foil-covered dishes, boxed fruit pies and bagged ice while clamoring, “Where do you want this?” “Is it okay if I parked in the driveway?” “Can I use your oven to reheat this?” “Is mom here yet?” “Hey, don’t let the dog out!”
“Hurry up and change your shirt!” I begged. “Everyone is here.”
“It’s fine,” he insisted, slightly annoyed. In desperation, I went for the jugular: public humiliation.
“Doesn’t Uncle Scott look like Gus Gus in Cinderella?” I asked my young nephew, referring to the rotund Disney mouse whose gut ballooned out from a tight shirt. My sister’s kid eyed my spouse’s midsection, giggled and nodded. My husband went upstairs and changed his shirt.
Cruel but effective. Hey, if I were a cave woman, I would have used a spear.
Surf and sand
22 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment
Despite my anti-bikini-friendly shape and disdain for ultraviolet rays, I come alive at the beach. Unfortunately, my husband would rather be skinned with a butter knife than sit on a beach, and this contention alone threatened our marriage.
Can a marriage survive when two people are such polar opposites in likes and dislikes? Or would our marriage crumble away like an ephemeral castle built on sand? For it was sand that fueled our divisive argument.
The beach would be fine, my husband says, if not for the sand. Without it, I counter, the shoreline isn’t a beach. My kids feel the same as I do, although I had the early advantage of indoctrinating them during babyhood.
Living in Southern California has many advantages, including being near that glorious stretch of natural sandbox that lines the coast. I’d tote along the kids with a cooler of drinks and a tube of sunblock, and we spent many mornings awash with sunshine, sea spray and sand.
Unlike my husband, my children love the sand. I watch as they burrow deep into the powdery grains like happy chinchillas talking a sand bath.
“Bury me!” my little girl begs. She is satisfied only when a Cheshire cat grin is her only visible part peeking from underneath her sandy blanket.
We’ve built the requisite sand castles and animal shapes with more imagination than skill. Moats. Battle pits. Turtles. Rabbits. All rinsed away for a fresh start at another masterpiece.
On the days we coax my husband into coming, he is as miserable as a moist tree frog on a hot skillet. And he croaks about this the entire time. But one strength of our union is that we all enjoy each other’s company no matter what the environment, so we coax and compromise.
On one outing, he lugged a suitcase-size cooler over the sand to our chosen spot. Puffing and sweating, he grunted, “This is another reason why I hate the beach! We always have to carry the whole blasted house with us.”
As my daughter and I scratched the family names in wet sand, he watched from his perch atop the cooler. He was fine. Until the inevitable happened.
“Hey, you kicked sand on the towels!” he accused my son. “Brush it off!”
Now, if you’ve ever tried to brush sand off a damp beach towel, you know how futile it is.
“You’re getting more sand on the towel!” his voice rose with concern.
“Honey, we’re at the beach. There’s sand everywhere,” I intervened. “It won’t hurt anything.”
“It’s so blasted uncomfortable,” he retorted, flicking off individual grains of sand as though they were bloodsucking ticks.
“It gets everywhere. In my sodas, my eyes, and every crack and crevice in my body!”
“It likes you!”
“It isn’t mutual,” he said stiffly. I sensed my Pollyanna approach was annoying him so I diverted everyone’s attention to lunch, but the knock-and-block commentary continued.
“Oh, god, another gritty soda.”
“Get another.”
“Man, this stuff won’t come off.”
“Shake it off.”
“It’s wet.”
“So wait ‘til it’s dry.”
One of the kids grabbed a towel underneath his folding chair and bumped into his paper plate. His Original Recipe chicken wing took flight and crash landed onto—you guessed it—the sand.
He stared at me wordlessly. I replaced his empty plate with another piece of chicken sans the extra crunchy coating but too late. He had lost his appetite.
“Just consider it fiber,” I quipped, but clearly his annoyance was now down-to-the-bone misery, and I felt selfish. “Let’s go home, honey. You’re miserable.”
Then, my son saved the day.
“Dad, show me how to boogie board,” he pleaded. Now my husband isn’t exactly the surfer type, but his paternal instincts took him to sea. And the water worked its magic.
It carried away the fettering sand that clung to him like suffocating tar. It soothed the burn of the relentless sun. The gentle waves bobbed the two of them up and down for a lilting ride. He waved to us shore bound creatures.
He paddled farther out, disappeared under the foam and popped up again shaking his sea-drenched hair from his eyes. Like a carefree teenager, he flashed that dimpled smile that melted my heart years ago.
Then, I remembered why God put the surf next to the sand. Alone, they overwhelm. The sea swallows; the sand parches. Together, they temper each other and blend to form a new and wondrous entity. Like marriage.
By the time he washed onto shore again, he looked refreshed. “I forgot how much fun the ocean is,” he gushed. “How ‘bout coming in with us?”
My previously patronizing air vaporized. It was my turn to resist. “The rocks on the bottom hurt my feet.” “My contact lenses might wash out.” “What if I get caught in a riptide?”
He held out his hand. A new bride will latch onto her husband’s hand with blind eagerness. But I am no new bride. After years of marriage, we’d been through many threatening waters. Yet love and compromise always brought us safely to port.
I placed my hand in his outstretched palm, not with blind eagerness but with the trust of a seasoned wife, and together we entered the water.
All at once fearful and exhilarated, I loved him for enduring my seaside passion, for still discovering new experiences for us to share, and for holding my hand through the years as we navigated the unpredictable waters of our lives.
Complaints are few now when we return to the beach, this magnificent place where we remember how surf and sand complement each other, and all of our differences seem all right.
