Becoming Your Spouse's Better Half (2 page)

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Authors: Rick A Johnson

BOOK: Becoming Your Spouse's Better Half
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Sometimes I look at an attractive woman and then look at my wife. I am always astonished at how beautiful she still is, even in comparison to much younger women. She’s charming, and her emerald green eyes sparkle with electricity when she’s being flirtatious. Every so often I look at her and am stunned speechless when I see a vision of the young girl I married who has ripened into an even more glorious version of womanhood. When she laughs at my jokes, all is good with the world. Her peals of laughter warm my insides like a cup of hot cocoa on a frosty winter’s day. Our bodies fit together like a pair of comfortable old Levi’s. She truly is what makes my world go around.
Differences—Strengths or Weaknesses?
 
Despite all that, we are two separate beings with individual backgrounds, tastes, experiences, and personalities. This merger of individual identities is the confluence that blends two separate streams of consciousness into the river of marriage. Even though I respect and admire her more than anyone I’ve ever met, she still frequently frustrates me to the point of exasperation. She is a bewildering mix of quandaries, enigmas, contradictions, and vexations. And I’m no better. We are two unique individuals with opposing personalities and habits.
One glaring example would be the time we spend in the bathroom. I typically shower, shave, and slap on some Old Spice, and I’m good to go. Give me another minute or so to slip on jeans and a T-shirt, and I’m ready—a total of ten minutes tops (fifteen if I’m taking my time) from start to finish. Suzanne, however, uses a considerably greater amount of time and resources preparing for the day. I’ve never actually timed her with a stopwatch, but I’m pretty sure that even under times of great urgency, she’s never broken the one-hour barrier. And that definitely does not include getting dressed. Of course, the end result is a whole lot more spectacular than how I turn out, but the amount of time spent seems a little excessive to me.
In almost everything, we are diametrically opposed. For instance, I can guarantee that anywhere we go in the world, the absolute strangest person in the room will come up and talk to her. She draws those people like a magnet. Then she enjoys spending time chatting with the “different” kinds of people who approach her. Perhaps that is what makes her such a great special-needs teacher. I, on the other hand, tend to try to discourage those kinds of individuals from latching on to me. Frankly, they make me a little nervous.
In addition, Suzanne is bizarrely unorganized; I like to know where everything is. She is incorrigibly late; I believe anything less than five minutes early is disrespectful. She likes vegetables; I like meat. She is very relatable in one-on-one situations; I teach well in front of large groups. She is more loving and intuitive; I am more analytical and logical. She is flexible to change and comfortable in the face of surprises (in fact, she appears to relish chaos); I need to be prepared and organized in order to be comfortable.
However, because we have recognized the value of these differences, we are able to use our strengths to compensate for and even complement the other’s weaknesses. It makes us a formidable team, both in ministry and in our marriage. We believe that as a team we are greater than the sum of our parts. While her differences may annoy me from time to time, I have come to understand the value they bring to our relationship. We have worked out our roles in marriage so they are complementary, allowing us to thrive by working together instead of against one another.
This doesn’t mean that we are not equal partners, or that one is more dominant than another. Equality in a relationship does not mean sameness—it means each person is valued for the contribution they bring to the table. In fact, the very differences we have are perhaps our greatest strengths when they are recognized and used effectively instead of being at odds with one another.
Why You Chose Who You Chose
 
Did you ever wonder why you were attracted to the person you were, and why they were attracted to you? Not only that, but remember how exciting it was when you first met your spouse-to-be? Life was fun and you felt alive! What was that all about?
Harville Hendrix, in his classic book
Getting the Love You Want
, explains what happens during the attraction phase of a relationship:
The brain releases dopamine and norepinephrine, two of the body’s many neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters help contribute to a rosy outlook on life, a rapid pulse, increased energy, and a sense of heightened perception. During this phase, when lovers want to be together every moment of the day, the brain increases its production of endorphins and enkephalins, natural narcotics, enhancing a person’s sense of security and comfort.
1
 
Most lovers report going through phases where they feel that they have always known the other person (even when having just met), that the other person is easy to talk to, and that they couldn’t live without that person. Hendrix purports that when we meet someone having negative characteristics that remind us of our parents or childhood caretakers, a portion of our brain is unconsciously and instinctively attracted to that person as a way of trying to “go back” and meet certain basic needs that were not fulfilled during childhood. The unconscious mind is trying to repair our wounds by attracting us to people who have the same compilation of bad characteristics as those who wounded us in childhood.
One reason we feel so good at the beginning of a relationship is that part of our brain believes we have finally been given a chance to be nurtured and become whole again—the way God created us. This may work out great, or it may result in disaster, as neither we nor our mate are conscious of this desire to get these needs met. The greater the damage done during childhood, the needier and more dramatic our desire for fulfillment becomes. And since our mate is not the offending parent, he or she will probably not be able to fill that void left over from childhood.
During courtship, this unconscious drive in our brain frequently causes us to be in denial regarding many of the negative traits of our mate-to-be. Because that need for wholeness is so powerful, we are tempted to overlook or even deny the existence of characteristics that later on tend to annoy us. They seemed cute at the time but drive us crazy once the bloom of romance has worn thin.
Additionally, have you ever noticed that most people marry someone with the opposite qualities and characteristics they have? For instance, if someone is introverted, he or she generally marries a person who is an extrovert. Someone who is messy frequently marries a person who is highly organized. This is because during childhood, certain traits or facets of our psyche and personality are unhealthily repressed, denied, or lost, creating a false self-image or at least a partial psyche that we present to the world and even to ourselves. So when we meet someone who possesses those traits we have repressed or lost, we are naturally drawn to them as a way of vicariously attempting to regain our wholeness. We feel comfortable, for that person’s strengths round out our being, and thus we are drawn to them.
Realizing this can benefit both partners and the relationship. The problem comes when both partners expect and need the other to fix their needs, but neither knows what those needs are or how to meet them.
2
But a healthy marriage can heal our wounds and help bring us to wholeness. Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott say, “Wholeness is found in an
interdependent
relationship, in which two people with self-respect and dignity make a commitment to nurture his or her own spiritual growth, as well as his or her partner’s.”
3
Why Marriages Falter
 
Marriage today seems less binding than a cell phone contract. The average first marriage in this country lasts seven years. The average second marriage lasts five. As if the challenges of a first marriage weren’t tough enough, anyone who has been in a blended family will tell you about the myriad of additional trials this scenario presents: two sets of kids; two separate histories; two completely different life philosophies, parenting styles, and sets of baggage. And when two sets of careers and monies are mixed in along with the obligatory prenuptial agreements, it’s almost like admitting that the marriage is doomed to fail anyway.
Because of the legacy they’ve observed from their parents’ generation, most young people today are fairly pessimistic about the chances of a marriage lasting a lifetime. If you talk to them about marriage, you can see that they yearn for the kind of intimacy possible only through a long-lasting relationship, but they have little hope of having one themselves. Couples may spend hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars on the actual wedding day, but no energy, resources, or forethought whatsoever toward the marriage that follows.
Many people quickly discover that being married and staying in love are just plain hard work—too hard. Combine that intense struggle with our society’s instant-gratification mantra, the court’s “no fault” divorce laws, and a cultural legacy of relative truth, and you have a recipe for divorce. Our Western culture does not like to suffer, so we shy away from anything that is uncomfortable or difficult. When marriage is tough, many people just think it’s broken and then go look for another mate who won’t be so much work.
Unfortunately, the problem is generally with us and therefore follows us from relationship to relationship. I recently told a friend that a first divorce we might be able to blame on our partner, but any divorces after that we need to look in the mirror to see where the problem lies. And one fact that almost no one wants to admit is that the person we fell in love with is at the same level of emotional maturity we are. Look at your spouse and know that they are probably just as emotionally mature as you are, all your protests notwithstanding.
Also, the expectations each partner brings into a relationship make a huge difference in how successful that marriage will be. Unrealistic expectations that cannot be met by either spouse can make both partners miserable. Discussing numerous relevant topics such as religious expectations, number of children, parenting styles, familial obligations toward extended family, sexual expectations, and the roles and duties of each spouse (to name just a few)
before
entering into marriage is a crucial factor to preventing problems later on.
So, if God ordained marriage as the way a man and woman should live together as one flesh, then there must be some way he designed that to happen. What guidelines did he provide to help us understand how to keep from killing each other or, even worse, creating families just to turn around and tear them asunder? What types of things do couples who have been married for a long time say are important, and what advice do they give to create longevity in a marriage?
In my research for this book, I discovered that men frequently operate on an objective-based, goal-oriented system, while women more often incorporate a whole-world view in their thematic approach to life. These observations can best be summed up as a husband’s “seven modes” and a wife’s “seven moods.”
Guys tend to operate in modes, which allows them to compartmentalize the different areas of their life; women tend to be driven by moods or emotions. Males are able to separate the various components of their life and forget about some while concentrating on others. Seldom does one area of life bleed into the others. Women, on the other hand, tend to view life as an overall “whole” with every area of their lives interconnected and interrelated. These differences alone are baffling and often confusing to the opposite gender. Bill and Pam Farrel describe this as women thinking like a pot of spaghetti, where everything touches everything else, and men thinking like waffles, where each element of their life is in a separate box.
4
Helen Fisher, in her book
The First Sex
, says women tend to think in terms of “interrelated factors, not straight lines,” whereas men use “compartmentalized, incremental reasoning process.”
5
When a husband understands and appreciates his wife’s moods, and when a wife recognizes and respects her husband’s modes of operation, marriage becomes a wonder instead of work, fascinating instead of frustrating, a commitment to intimacy instead of a settling for “just staying together.”
People want an easy marriage. They don’t want love to be so much work. Two people start out with their hearts melting as one in a natural way, but they’re living on the high of bliss-filled hormones. This will carry them for a while, but people can’t live on bliss; there will always be a “coming down,” or crash, from the high. When that happens, and they are unprepared for the daily labor of love, they will soon be hitting their heads against the walls of each other’s hearts.
When we’re willing to put forth the effort to understand our mates and help our mates understand us, this softens our hearts and opens the door to intimacy. When we don’t make this effort together, usually one partner will stop banging his or her head against the wall of the other’s heart and give up. While fighting can be a red flag, a relationship reaches a critical stage when one spouse or the other stops trying and gives up.
When you have the key, it’s easy to go in and out. You don’t have to knock the door down or break a window. You just walk in. But without the key to understanding, marriage is hard work.

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