When/under what circumstances, are you most likely to touch your bride? And when are you least likely to touch her?
What does when you touch, and when you don't, say about you? More importantly, what do you think it communicates to her about you, and about how you feel about her?
This is a follow up to a comment on yesterday's tip.
prov9_18_19 said: "I realize that I have preferences with cleanliness. But I also know that too much clutter in particular places makes me irritable and I can’t stand to be in certain rooms in the house."
It is certainly important to know our limits, and to learn to deal with things before we get to the point of being irritated, upset, distant, or otherwise something our bride should not have to put up with. We also have to learn how much being tired or stressed lowers the threshold on these things, so we can avoid being blind sided.
The real issue is learning how to communicate these things in a loving and fair way. One thing that has helped my bride and I is learning to give examples that mean something to the other. For example - I have very good ears, and rattling sounds in the car drive me nuts. My bride on the other hand finds it very easy to tune out such noises. A noise that does bother her is noisy eating. So when I got very focused on finding a noise on a long drive, and she felt I was too obsessed, I said "Imagine a long ride with someone eating in your ear the whole way." She replied that would not happen, as she would throw the person from the car, and she clearly had a better understanding of why it bothered me so much.
When you live in close contact with others (we are 5 in about 1000 sq foot for the last month, and for about another week) you see a lot of variations in what is important to folks. For example, I find it fascinating what we all "need" to have clean, and what is less critical for us. I'm not talking about neat versus messy - rather that most folks have something they want very neat and clean, and something else they almost don't care about.
When preferences are really just that, how you would prefer it, rather than something based on a real need or some safety issue, try to be a bit less rigid. Accept that your preferences are that, and that your bride also has preferences - preferences which are no more nor no less valid and important than your preferences. Decide which of your preferences are most important to you, and let her know. Find out which of her preferences are most important to her. Then learn the art of give and take.
Beyond that, you can serve her by working to give her most of what she prefers, and/or by trying to back off on any of your preferences which are a sore spot or difficult for her.
Finally, don't expect her to work to fulfil any preferance of yours if you make it more difficult - for example, if having the floor clean is important to you, take your shoes off when you enter the house. Tracking in things and expecting her to vacumm more often is neither loving nor wise!
I was at the laundry mat today. (For the moment we have two families on one well, and we feel it's wise to limit water use rather than find out the hard way how much we can draw.) My bride did the laundry mat run last time; I did it this time because she has a great deal of bookkeeping to do after the day job conference.
I am about done when a woman comes in, and before she can get her stuff into washers her phone rings. It is her husband, on his way home from work. She asks if he is going to stop on his way home and help her with the laundry. I don't know what he told her as why he was not going to join her, but she replied "Fine, I'll do it - AGAIN - even though I worked twelve hours today." He apparently tired to convince her she was being unreasonable, but she quickly ended the conversation and started slamming clothing into machines.
I have no more information than this. I do not know how many hours a week they each work, what each of them does for the other, or how they split up the family chores. Maybe her side of the phone call did not give me the whole story; maybe I would see things differently if I heard his side of the story. However, her perception is that she is doing more than he is, and that he does not care enough for her to help her out. And be it accurate or not, that is her perspective, and it is reality to her - it is what she is thinking, and feeling, and it is what she bases her decision on about her marriage, and her husband, and how much to put into each.
What is your bride's perception of you, and of your marriage? Be it right or wrong, it is reality to her, and it is what she bases things on. Don't ignore her perception just because you "know" it's wrong. You are living with the consequences of her perceptions, so I suggest you deal with them. If her bad perceptions are wrong, how can you show her they are wrong? If her bad perceptions are based at least in part on truth, how can you change?
Seth recently had some wisdom about "Critics that matter":
Some critics matter. (Your biggest customer, for example). Some are merely loud. Others are just difficult.
<snip>
The challenge is in figuring out which kind of critic is worth paying attention to as you create your product or service. In a business to business setting, pleasing the gatekeeper and the bill payer is essential. On the other hand, pleasing an angry blogger might not matter at all.
In our desire to please everyone, it's very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre. Far better to please the right people.
In life we have critics, people who judge what we do, and tell us how they think we should do things. Who do we listen to? Who are the "right" people when it comes to matters of marriage?
It seems to me we should listen to those who have fruit we would like to have, and ignore those who have fruit we do not want. When my bride and I were having trouble early in our marriage, one couple who wanted to help us had a marriage neither Lori nor I wanted to have - and so we said "no thank you". Perhaps they could have helped us with some issues, but we were unwilling to risk trading our problems for the one's they had.
Of course I am not saying we should only receive from those who are perfect - if that is your goal then you should certainly stop reading what I have to say! I think of it this way - does that person seem to be someplace I want to be, or have they been where I want to be, or are they well on their way to where I want to be? If the answer to any of those is yes, then they may well be able to help or guide me. If the answer to all of those questions is no, then they have nothing to offer me. On the other side, is there anyplace the other person is or is going that I know I do not want to be? If the answer to either is yes, then I need to be very careful if I choose to receive from them. It's not as easy to pick and choose as we want to think - we pick up things both good and bad from those we are around, and when we open ourselves to receive from someone we are unlikely to be able to filter and just get the good.
When she is on her period, something is probably hurting. The lower back (or lower back and upper buttocks) is common. Breast discomfort is also common.
Learn where her "period pain" is, and how you can rub or massage her to reduce this pain. You will have to really listen to her, and back off at any hint of "too much" as the line between "that helps" and "that makes it worse" can be razor thin. Once you know what to do, don't wait for her to ask - do it as often as you can.
This morning, after posting what I did for Monday, I read an article entitled "For some people, optimistic thoughts can do more harm than good". The bottom line is that a cleaver study showed that giving someone a positive message that was somewhat more positive than they saw themselves helped them feel better about themselves, but giving them a positive message that significantly differed from their self-image was actually harmful to how they felt about themselves.
So, telling her she is very friendly, when she is not very friendly, will very likely make her feel even less friendly than she already feels. Same with what you say about how she looks, her intelligence, her ability as a mother, and so on. What's more, if she decides you are lying to her, then everything you say becomes suspect.
So it seems my comment that you can "nudge her in the right direction" was spot on - we need to nudge, not shove. Figure out how she wrongly sees herself, and gently nudge her from that towards the truth.
I've had it easy as far as bridal hormones. Over all Lori has had fairly mild PMS and menopausal symptoms. But I have seen the extremes - a girl friend and a few female friends when I was in high school showed me how bad that can be, and I know women loosing their minds over the hormonal changes that can accompany moving from fertile to non-fertile.
First and foremost, I want you to accept the reality that hormones are able to literally rewrite your thoughts and emotions. Do you recall puberty, when a glimpse of a female body, or a stray thought of a girl, resulted in an erection you did not want and could not get rid of? You were powerless to do anything other than hide or walk with your books in front of you. Do you remember the bursts of aggression, energy, and really stupid ideas that came out of no where and got acted out before you had a chance to think through it?
All of that was the direct result of testosterone on your body and brain. You went from virtually no testosterone to very high levels practically over night, and that sudden change was impossible to deal with calmly and rationally. The gradual improved control over time was not because your testosterone levels dropped significantly, but rather because the levels became stable and you learned how to deal with it.
Teen age girls have it worse - because they have several hormones, and those hormones change regularly, in cycle that is not nearly as set or uniform as a regular period makes it seem. Just as the sudden change in hormones made you crazy at times, the sudden changes of hormones each month make her crazy at times. And she is not dealing with one, but rather with several, some going up while others are going down. It's a wonder we men are not all killed in our sleep!
Menopause is even worse - the hormonal fluctuations become even greater, and the cycle becomes less predictable. Depression is common, and recent studies show that memory suffers for a few years. Energy levels and sex drive can also be impacted, sometimes mildly, but in some women to great extremes. Bursts of anger, sadness, and depression can show up without warning, and may last a few hours or a few months - or more.
How does any of this information help you? If it causes you to treat her hormonally caused gyrations as real and valid, that will deeply bless her; and that should make your life a bit easier. Beyond that, you will do very well if you can avoid saying or doing things that will come back to haunt you after her hormonal haze clears. It's easy to reply to her as if what she is saying or doing is what she really thinks and feels, but it's not the best or most loving plan. You know how she really feels, even if it's been a couple of years - react and reply to that person, not the one who temporarily has taken control of your bride's body. Just avoid belittling or mocking, that won't help.
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