Becoming Your Spouse's Better Half (24 page)

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Authors: Rick A Johnson

BOOK: Becoming Your Spouse's Better Half
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Talking
 
Does anyone doubt that women talk more than men do? A woman speaks about twenty to thirty thousand words each day, compared to a measly ten thousand words spoken by the average man—and that’s counting grunts and mutters. Plus, men typically speak more in public and less in private, while women are just the opposite. Therefore, logically, men cannot possibly compete with women in the area of conversation. This is where girlfriends come in handy. One woman said it like this: “My husband is my best friend, but my girlfriend knows me better than my husband and she is a woman, so she can understand ‘woman’ things better than my husband does.” Seems simple enough to me.
Sometimes on a Saturday my wife will be getting ready to go shopping or hiking or out to lunch with her friends. (I don’t know exactly what “lunch” means, but they must eat slowly because it always takes a long time.) She will be all in a dither and will start warming up her conversation skills on me. Of course, I am counting the minutes until she leaves and I can watch the ball game in peace and quiet. And because female time is different than male time, her girlfriends will inevitably be late, causing me even greater duress.
I’ve observed my wife or daughter when they haven’t been around each other or one of their friends for a while. When they get together, they each start talking so fast they can hardly understand one another. The words and gestures and emotions are spilling out so fast that they can’t control them. I’ve seen women who were good friends just start bawling under those circumstances. The need to talk is so powerful that they’re overwhelmed.
I’ve also noticed that women who have not seen each other for a while will huddle together and get away by themselves for a period of time—usually in the kitchen. When friends come to visit, that is usually the first place the women head off to. After they have sated their craving for female bonding, they are able to be more convivial in a group of mixed company.
One woman from a workshop expressed her need to talk this way:
I get together with a group of ladies to scrapbook, and it is always the same. We drag all of our billions of photos and stickers and paper to one house where there are no husbands or kids in sight! We absolutely love to scrapbook, but I think that the scrapbooking is mostly just a cover for girlfriend time.
As a mom, you sometimes feel the need to give a reasonable excuse to have “girlfriend” time. We use scrapbooking because it’s something for our family. But really it’s for us. We need a break. We need time to laugh about the things our kids did and the erratic things we did because we had to ask our husbands to take the trash out fifty-seven times! Sometimes I get in the mood to just talk about random stuff that doesn’t really have any point at all besides talking, where one topic runs into the other until you can’t even remember what you started talking about.
 
Talking apparently leads into one other area where girlfriends come in handy—the bathroom.
The Bathroom
 
Lastly, girlfriends are good for your wife because it gives her someone to go to the bathroom with. One of the great mysteries of life is why women feel compelled to go to the bathroom together. Frankly, I don’t know what goes on in there, but again, it seems like a female bonding ritual that all women fall prey to. I’m sure all kinds of mysterious rituals and ceremonies take place in the bathroom. I can honestly say that in my entire life I have never asked another man to accompany me to the restroom. That would be a good way to get punched in the nose.
Men are quite curious as to what the inside of a female restroom looks like, though. We envision these exotic palaces with all kinds of elegant fixtures, pillows, and opulent furniture overlaid with the swirling scent of spices and perfumes—sort of a sultan’s harem quarters. Furnished with plush velvet “fainting” couches and stocked with warm hand towels, it is a place for women to be pampered and rejuvenated before coming back out into the harsh light of reality. Why else would they be in there so long?
I’m sure reality is much more disillusioning, but we prefer to maintain our fantasies.
 
Guys, your wife needs healthy girlfriends in her life, especially if you have young children. It’s important that you make sure she gets alone time with her girlfriends. It will make her healthier, happier, and more willing to meet your needs—definitely a good trade-off from my perspective. And since relationships are important to women, make an effort to get to know the husbands of her girlfriends. Spending time together with other couples is fun and invigorating to your relationship. It’s either that or going shopping.
 
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
—Love the fact that God made her so different.
Women process information and emotions by talking with other women.
Women like to talk.
Women need the company of other women.
A woman can share all her internal complexities and needs with a girlfriend.
Girlfriends are like sisters, only better.
 
Get inside Her Head
No one can understand what I’m feeling except my best friend.
I am so lonely without any friends or family around.
How come my husband won’t open up and share with me like my girlfriends?
I can’t wait to go shopping with my friend!
 
Words Have Meaning
 
Words That Heal
“I’ll watch the kids; why don’t you go have lunch with your girlfriends?”
“Hey, why don’t you see if your friend and her husband want to get together this weekend?”
“That’s exciting! Why don’t you call Sally and share it with her?”
“I’m glad you have such good friends.”
 
 
Words That Hurt
“I can’t stand your girlfriend.”
“Your friend is a bad influence on you.”
“You listen to your girlfriends more than you do me.”
“This is a good career opportunity for me. You’ll make new friends.”
Wrap-Up
 
What if God didn’t design marriage to be “easier”? What if God had an end in mind that went beyond our happiness, our comfort, and our desire to be infatuated and happy as if the world were a perfect place?
Gary Thomas,
Sacred Marriage
 
 
O
ne of the greatest fallacies we buy into is that there is the “perfect” person out there just waiting to make us happy for the rest of our lives if we can only find them. Many of us spend our entire lives, including our marriages, dreaming of a person who would complete our life and make us happy and content. I’m convinced that person doesn’t exist and that our marriage is more about what we make it than any predestined or preordained match made in heaven. The myth of the “soul mate” has been foisted upon men and women like bad cake at a wedding.
Another error that people buy into is the illusion that love means the absence of conflict. Just as people want to believe that pain and sadness should be avoided at all costs, they believe that love means no conflict.
1
If you believe that the right person will come along and make you happy, you are deluded. You, not other people, are responsible for your own happiness. Every relationship, especially one of love, is painful and often difficult. That’s why it is worthwhile. With the beauty and fragrance of a rose come the thorns that scratch and sometimes draw blood. Going through the struggles of life together brings you closer and bonds you deeper. Those relationships without conflict and pain are dead, cold, and passionless. I say rejoice in your conflicts because it means your marriage is alive and growing!
One of the ways we deal with conflict is through effective communication. Some people will have read this book and say that I forgot to include the most important aspect of a healthy marriage—communication. Communication
is
important—very important—to any relationship, especially marriage. In fact, the way you speak to each other actually determines the quality of your marriage. If you speak to each other in a respectful, loving, affirming manner, then those feelings will follow and be ingrained in your relationship. But if you speak words of spite, contempt, and anger, then those feelings will rule, and eventually destroy, your relationship.
The truth is that this entire book is about communication. It is about understanding the language of your spouse in order to satisfy his or her needs. However, communication is not the problem in most marriages. Dr. Laura Schlessinger says, “I don’t think that many marriages are stuck on communication problems, whatever they are. I think most marriages are stuck on people needing or hurting so much (from their childhoods, primarily) that they forget to or resist giving love.”
2
If that is true, then what does make the difference between a healthy marriage relationship and a destructive one?
Our daughter recently mentioned to my wife that she wanted a love like we have, that we still acted like we were on our honeymoon. I don’t know whose house she’s been living in for the past twenty years, but I don’t often feel like we’re still honeymooners. But in hindsight, perhaps because my wife and I still frequently hold hands, hug and kiss, and even dance together in the living room, our daughter feels we have a great love. We like to travel together, and we enjoy each other’s company (she’s probably the only one who could put up with me). We speak respectfully to each other and try to be cheerleaders for one another. Our actions and words not only direct our feelings but also signify to others our love and passion for one another. In short, we are good friends. That friendship fuels our love for one another and carries us through those rough spots when one of us is feeling disagreeable or fed up with the other.
Many young couples today are frustrated with each other and their marriage because neither partner knows how to relate to the other. No one has ever taught them the fundamentals of building an intimate relationship, so they are starting from scratch, guessing at how a marriage works. This confusion causes arguments and disagreements. According to Robert Lewis and William Hendricks, “What these young people don’t realize is that
behind much of their quarrels and dysfunction and anger is what they don’t know,
not
who they’re married to
.”
3
This lack of taught communication skills (which were often never modeled for them in their parents’ marriages) creates tension and prevents intimacy in a relationship.
But perhaps of more importance than even communication in a marriage is love—love that is not a feeling or an emotion, but one that is a verb, an action word. If we take loving
actions
in our relationships, the
feelings
of love will follow. There’s an old adage that thoughts become actions and actions become feelings. Your attitude is everything.
Noted psychologist Erich Fromm calls this kind of love an “art,” a learned and practiced skill just like painting, carpentry, or music.
4
As he says, the problem with most people is that of
being loved
, rather than that of
loving
, or one’s capacity to love.
5
Most people are more concerned about how to be loved than how they can give love. They are more concerned with having
their
needs met than meeting the needs of their spouse.
The practice of any art has certain general requirements, whether it is the art of carpentry, medicine, or love. First, the practice of an art requires
discipline
. Without the discipline to practice and memorize, a musician could never become adept at playing the piano, an artist could never learn to paint, and a doctor could never learn to heal people. Without discipline, we are easily swayed into wallowing in our own narcissistic needs rather than focusing on the needs of our spouse.

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