Wifey Wednesday: Hope in Change

I found this sticky note on my desk. I don't know where the idea came from or if it is a quote, but I obviously wrote it down for myself as an encouragement. This is what it says:

If you don't change, nothing will.

This maxim can apply to most every aspect of life. If things are going badly it is very rare that you can change anything but yourself and your participation in the problem. How often are we able to rewrite our job description, makeover our coworkers or our children to make the situation better? Rarely! Almost never, in fact.

Most problems are only solved by a reworking of ourselves. So in any given situation we must ask ourselves:

How can I change?

We can usually change our attitude, our actions, or both. In fact, changing our actions often leads to a change in attitude, so it is often best to focus first on our behavior. In a marriage, this is a vital piece of information to have--especially in those "for worse" moments our vows talk about. You can change your attitude by changing your behavior.

Really? Yeah, really. Just try it some time.

In fact, try it for simply two weeks and see what happens. Pick some little something that your spouse has asked you repeatedly to do that you've not bothered to ever do. It might be to put the toilet paper around on the holder in the other direction. It could be to brush your teeth before coming to breakfast. It might be to actually stop and listen when he's talking instead of simply pretending to listen. For two weeks, do that thing, whatever that thing is.

But don't do it resentfully. Don't begrudge the toilet paper it's new position every time you have to grab it. Do the new deed generously with the intention to please your spouse. That's what I mean. Let yourself feel a bit of a thrill of generosity and good-deediness as you brush your teeth half an hour before your usual time. Pat yourself on the back for being a good spouse while you put down that iPhone and give your full attention to your beloved. Say to yourself, "See? I'm a good listener!" and then listen.

 You'll see in that span of two short weeks that you can power your way through the behavior change. You can feel, rather quickly, that your heart will be softened a bit toward your spouse. But, in two weeks, you won't see any real changes or any real healing in any given area.

That sort of work takes time, effort, and much prayer. But this sort of change in so short a span of time should be enough simply to give you hope that in more time and with more effort things can really change. Knowing that you are the instrument and the object of the change that has to occur is truly empowering. Old habits have massive inertia and marriages can get ground up beneath them, but if two weeks can make even a small dent, just think what you and God can manage with a little more time and effort.

There's a lot of hope in the fact that if you don't change, nothing will.

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2 Quick Cures for Your Moody Marriage

Marriage has its moods over the years just
like you and your spouse do from day to day. So how you feel about your marriage at any given moment is not necessarily how you will feel about your marriage down the road.

That sounds like very good news if you are in the doldrums or the argue-about-everything season, and yet it sounds a bit ridiculous when you are in the warmth and satisfaction of the honeymoon season. With a marriage so new and fresh you can't imagine ever feeling anything but a happy love for your beloved. (Yes, newlyweds, we oldlyweds remember!)

The takeaway here is that your feelings about your marriage will change, so don't rely on them to judge the health of it. It is perfectly normal for every marriage to have its ups and downs, even the healthy ones. A happy marriage is one that is generally happy, not specifically happy in this particular instant in time. So, newlyweds, as you transition from a newlywed to an oldlywed, don't forget this!

In your own brokenness you give and receive love.
Your marriage is no different.

Always remember that your feelings are not the arbiter of the health of your marriage. Don't panic if you feel less enthusiastic about things from one day to the next. Marriage is one of those lifelong tasks. In fact, marriage is a vocation. As such, God is using your marriage to transform you into the person He created you to be. That takes time. That takes effort. That effort creates discomfort. Discomfort breeds discontent. Therefore if you are feeling unhappiness or worse about your marriage, it is very likely that some heavy duty work is being done in your soul. In that case, here's a couple of quick cures for what ails you:

1. Stop complaining!
Don't complain about your feelings to your spouse, your friends, or even to yourself. Complaining is a bad habit that we fall into and it does more harm than good. When you are complaining you are not looking to solve any problems but are instead merely trying to blow off some emotional steam. Complaining won't relieve your feelings. Instead complaining reinforces and underscores negative feelings and so increases and breeds them rather than relieving them. Complaining will only bear bad fruit.

To break the complaining habit, substitute it with prayer. When you feel the urge to complain tell God you are being tempted to complain. Ask Him to help you through the moment and to transform your outlook so you can stop feeling so frustrated about things.

2. Start rephrasing!
If you are tempted to complain to or about your spouse, it may be a sign that there is a problem. The root of the problem may not ultimately be a communication issue, but working at communication will certainly help the problem. So the next time you are discussing that particular issue you are tempted to complain about focus on what you need to hear from your spouse on this issue rather than what you need to say about it. Rephrase what you think they are saying and ask, "Is this what you mean? Help me understand what you are saying."

Both of these "Quick Cures" will help you to get outside of your own head and out into the fresher air of reality. We get so caught up with our own interpretation of facts and events that we sometimes need to step back in order to gain perspective. By transforming complaining into praying you are inviting in the heavenly perspective. You are welcoming God back into the covenant you made in His name. By focusing on your spouse's attempts to communicate you are gaining perspective into your spouse's take on any given problem. You will be surprised at how much different the situation will look like from those vantage points.

If anything, God and your spouse will remind you of the love you feel underneath all those other emotions. That always helps.


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This has been a Wifey Wednesday post. For an even wifier Wednesday click on over to To Love Honor and Vacuum!

Marriage Doesn't Fulfill You, It Transforms You

When I was only 14 my great grandmother gave me the greatest piece of advice I ever received about marriage. She said, "You don't start being married until you threaten to go home and he threatens to let you. Then you settle in." From that I learned that it's tough, but that it's also doable. I also learned that a sense of humor about it all never hurt either.

Nowadays, we have many silly ideas about marriage. We think that it is going to fulfill us, complete us, make us happy, and if it doesn't we're free to go. It may surprise you to learn marriage isn't designed for fulfillment. Marriage is a vocation, not a hobby or a real life version of a feel good summer movie.

Marriage is designed to tear down all your imperfections and build you into a new being: a married person. Marriage was meant to completely transform your heart from its self centered, self serving existence into a heart who loves and serves Christ first and Christ completely via service to a spouse and then via service to the children that come of the union.

We modern thinkers have forgotten that heart surgery always hurts. Always.

The good news is that you can and will find all that fulfillment and happiness you are looking for. The bad news is that you won't find that person who meets your every need and completes you in your spouse. You'll find that in the Eucharist Lord and in prayer and nowhere else.

What you will find in your spouse is a flawed human person. If this person is willing to hold your hand when you get that 3 a.m. phone call (those are never good) or who will scrape the ice off your windshield each and every winter, you've got something pretty good. So what if the trash never makes it to the curb on time on trash day?

If you take your marriage as the gift that it is rather than the ideal that you want, you just might discover you have something everyone else is longing for: a person committed to a life with you. You are loved and you love. That in itself is a miracle. The vows you took ensure that two flawed people can manage to pull the rabbit out of the hat day after day. That's really the magic of a life long marriage: the ancient art of never ever stopping being married.

My advice might not be as good as my great grandmother's, but it's this: don't expect so much from your marriage. Expect the best from God and make room for all the rest. You're a flawed person married to another flawed person. This is a person you can love and honor and serve all the days of your life because you love God so much that you'll keep your promise to Him through him.


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This has been a Wifey Wednesday post. For an even wifier Wednesday click on over to To Love Honor and Vacuum!

40 Days and 3 Ways to Improve Your Marriage

My husband has this amazing fall back position that I admire greatly. When the going gets rough, he gets polite. More accurately, he stays polite. He practices niceness. Raised like I was in a culture of self-indulgence, he practices self control.

This could be my husband's mantra!

More often than not, if tensions are running high and my manners have flown out the window in a huff, he's as polite and kind as ever. It's rare that his emotions get the better of him.

In our Modern Life, where Emotion is King, that sounds so unfeeling. Media pushes emotionalism. Pop psychology lauds it. Our commercial culture wants us to react to every whim with abandon. An emoting person is so much easier to manipulate and so we make much "better" consumers when our emotions take the reigns and make our decisions for us. Our current psychology has told us for decades to let our feelings out; our feelings are our Truth; our emotional life is our only authentic life. As a result we have adults with the emotional maturity of toddlers. If you feel it, do it. Don't be afraid to pitch an authentic tantrum now and then, either.

Fair warning, though, the pendulum is beginning to swing at least in psychology. Self Esteem is slowly giving way to something called Resilience. Self control is coming back into fashion, though they'll wind up calling it something more palatable and marketable (like Resilience). You might want to pick up a few skills and get some practice under your belt and lead the charge rather than run to catch up later.

40 Days and 3 Ways to Improve Your Marriage

--1--

Bite Your Tongue and Then Some

This is an oldie but a goodie. Count to 10. Take a deep breath. Get some air into the moment. If you feel like snapping at someone, try that moment of silence first. As a Christian, this is the moment to pray. In fact, if you are determined to make a real change here, you need to step up your prayer life.

Prayer: Change It Up

If you pray habitually in the more Charismatic fashion of ejaculatory or improvisational prayer--making a prayer up from the heart and heat of the moment--now is the time to add the discipline of the prepared prayer. You can write out your own, or better yet, find a beautiful prayer that speaks to the Lord in a way you need to grow spiritually, memorize it and then really and truly discipline yourself to it. For those of you who find this a new concept, Christ Himself introduced the idea of praying a prepared prayer, so you may want to start with His prayer, the Lord's Prayer, first. Really pray it. Delve into each word and plumb the depths as you spend the next 40 days making a habit of turning to prayer rather than turning to your emotions to deal with those hard moments in your day.

If you pray the prepared or prewritten prayer regularly, now is the time to begin the practice of ejaculatory prayer. Eventually you will have the habit and will be able to compose a beautiful prayer on the spot, until then God will adore your first clumsy steps like the perfect Father that He is. As you are learning, remember that a complete prayer contains praise, thanksgiving, petitions for others, repentance, and requests for ourselves. Again, it takes about 40 days to begin developing a new habit, so don't expect to be an expert at the ejaculatory prayer style right away. You can simply begin with a quick, "Jesus, I trust in You!" or even a heartfelt,  "Help me!" in the heat of any given moment. To help you practice the practice, add a few sentences of improvised conversation at the end of your regular prayers at your regularly scheduled prayer times throughout the day, too.

God will reward these steps toward Him in His way. Be on the lookout for those subtle signs of change and remember to thank Him for His good work when you see them in you.

--2--

Pay Attention

If your spouse is cranky, it's a signal. It's very likely that they need something. More sleep? More affection? Appreciation? Chocolate? Being a human being, you may suspect that you've fallen short of your husband's expectations and can call to mind a few dozen handy excuses for yourself and your behavior. But before you go down that well trodden road, try a new route. Instead of reacting defensively to a moody person, react on the offensive. Pray a quick prayer and then do something nice.

Marriage is a work of the heart
and heart surgery always hurts.

Conflict is an opportunity to make your marriage better. It's a signal that it's time to work. The work of marriage is a work of the heart and you and I both know that heart surgery hurts. HURTS. Ask God for the bravery and the strength to endure the truth about your shortcomings and the necessity of your spouse's needs, and then set about setting those above yours.

Whoa! Hold It!

Yeah, I know! In an ideal world that idea of putting your spouse's needs above your own would not be a scary one. Ideally, every he would be serving every her and every she would be serving every him, and everyone's needs would be more than adequately met. In the real world, this will take trust, practice, and a whole lot of Grace to even approach equity. Let's face it, getting two Modern Western minded spouses to acknowledge that each other's needs are even on par is a minor miracle.

Psst...that's one reason you're doing all this praying.

Simply changing your focus from yourself
to others can relieve some of that inner pressure.

This is a practice, a process. Don't get overwhelmed at the thought. Try focusing on one need at this time. Pick one important need of his and put that one need on top of your priority list. You can mentally see yourself giving one of his needs top billing, can't you? Make meeting that one need a daily habit and see what happens. Ask God to make you see the fruits of your hard work. Ask Him to reward you with an awareness of His rewards.

One of the first fruits will be a lessening of your own inner turmoil each time you take a moment to step
outside yourself to identify the needs of others. It takes a bit of the pressure off when you take the focus off of your own pressure cooker.

--3--

Give It the Full 40 Days

You tell yourself you want to be a better person. You may even say to yourself you're a good person. Where the real work happens, though, is in the practice of the preaching.

You have to do the work. You have to fail miserably. You have to start again and again. That's just how we do it. Those of you who play a musical instrument know how much bad music it takes to produce good music. Learning a new song takes a willingness to sound like a fool. It is only a seasoned musician with years of ugly music behind him who can pick up a new song and sound pretty decent on a first go. They've put in the work already.

Practice makes perfect!

Just like with my husband and I. In keeping his cool, he logged in all his practice hours before we even married. I'm putting them in now. Comparatively, he has the mastery of a maestro. Between him and the Lord, I'm screeching out the first recognizable notes of this song. In this particular aspect, I'm patiently being tutored by my betters. By following my husband's lead, I can hear how well it is supposed to go as I struggle along.

All those years of practice make it look so easy.






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This has been a Wifey Wednesday post. For an even more Wifier Wednesday click on over to To Love Honor and Vacuum!

The Divorce Cure?

My son asked about adultery today and I was all ready to yank the last vestiges of media from his life to save him from the Big Bad World when come to find out he'd heard about it in Church.

"Stupid Commandments," I grumbled to myself as I tried to figure out a way to discuss sexual sin with an innocent. I punted, "It's when people act like they are married to each other when they are married to  other people."

His brows came down into a frown. "That would be bad," he said.

"It's very bad," I agreed.

It led to a discussion of divorce, naturally enough, and a promise exacted from my son to never pretend I was married to anyone but his daddy. He also promised solemnly to do the same for his wife.

I'm glad he's already thinking and praying for my future daughter-in-law. I pray for her, too. Living in a crazy world where half of all marriages end in divorce, everyone could use some prayer.

Which brings me to this startling statistic. Though the divorce rate for the general population is 50%, it is 5% for couples who practice Natural Family Planning (more on that in next week's podcast) and it is 0.3% for couples who pray together (source: Our Catholic Marriage). In other words, one couple out of 300 will wind up divorced if they take the time to pray. The couple who prays together really does stay together.

I find that heartening. I also find it terrifying.

I have been naked and frisky in front of my husband, I have been sick with all manner of illnesses, and I have both given birth and miscarried before his very eyes, but I have never felt so exposed and vulnerable than when we have opened up to God together. Let's just say that there is intimacy and then there is Intimacy.

According to Scripture it is the heart that prays and what is the heart?

The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as images of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant. (CCC 2563) 

Praying with your husband means bringing him there.

Kinda scary. As modern wives we're used to bringing him into our bodies, into our day to day life, even into our thoughts and hopes and dreams, but are we called to bring our husband into our very Truth, to that place in our soul where each breath God asks of us is sighed out, "Yes!"?

Yes, yes, yes.

The two shall become one, yes. We two shall become a reflection of God, a unity of Three Persons, so yes.

Couples do this, they really do. My sister and her husband do this. My neighbor does this. In fact, not praying together is kind of a modern thing with couples.

About as Modern as the 50 percent divorce rate.

There is help out there. To break the ice, you can get started with a sincere and nightly recitation of the prayer Christ taught us, the "Our Father." When you are ready to move on, there is this resource: Coupleprayer.org. It's ecumenical in nature and designed to get you praying daily. It's also just a little bit fun.

Just like we worked our way past the awkwardness of learning how to be intimate with each other as Newlyweds, we worked our way past the awkwardness of learning how to be Intimate on this level as Oldlyweds. We worked to make daily prayer together a habit. We knew it was worth it.

Seriously, bumping a 50/50 chance of success to 300 to 1 odds?  Discovering couple prayer is like finding a cure for divorce! Who wouldn't want that?

For more on Couple Prayer and some good old Christian common sense, tune in to tonight's Garden of Holiness Podcast at Deeper Truth.


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This has been a Wifey Wednesday Post. To have an even more Wifey Wednesday visit Sheila Wray Gregoire at To Love Honor and Vacuum.

Husbandly Wednesday

Correction: Wifey Wednesday is up and running this week...goest thou hence and read all about it!

The Wifey Wednesday meme will return next week when Sheila at To Love Honor and Vacuum returns from vacation. Meanwhile, I am taking the opportunity to explain why I write to wives and not husbands...

I answered the "Why do you only talk to women? Men are half the problem!" question officially over at To Love Honor and Vacuum in the comments section of her Am I Too Hard on Women? post...

Like you, I write to women. Like you, I expect each person in a marriage to work equally hard at making the marriage work, but I write to women. Sure Ephesians 5:22 is hard. It’s hard to submit. In an ideal world we could do it and not worry about it. We have to work with our limitations and our husband’s limitations and work out how that is going to look in the very real world we live in.

But you know what I know? I’m glad I’m a woman! Ephesians 5:22 may be hard to work toward but Ephesians 5:25 is even harder. Biblically our husbands are called to lay down their very lives for us in love and service. I don’t know how to even approach that one, so I don’t write to men.

I don't see a whole lot of that manly type of sacrificial love going on in the Christian world, honestly. I see it here and there and it stands out like a jewel. My brother-in-law Brent, my own husband Andrew, and my neighbor's husband Timothy lay themselves down for their families like Christs, but I don't personally know many other real men: the kind of man who takes the hits from the world for his bride and children, instead of passively or selfishly making them sacrifice to ease his burdens. From what I can see around me, it is hard work to make a marriage into the reflection of God's love that marriage is meant to be. Sure, women have to work very hard to fulfill their role as the heart of the home, but in all honesty, men have the tougher job to attain the level of Christian Husband. Women and children suffer more when he fails in his duties, but the hardest job is his. Dying is harder than submitting. Period.

I think the temptations are greater for men, the pitfalls are deeper, the ways to fail are subtler. A man can look and feel the part of the loving, Christian husband and yet live as if his wife were his personal drudge. In other words, he puts her in the sacrificial role he is called to fulfill. That always looks ugly. When a husband sacrifices like a man for his family, it is exquisite and manly. When a wife does so at a husband's demand, it is a scandal. This is the little bit of truth behind the stereotype of the Christian Wife as Doormat that the secular world criticizes us with. It is this that they are pointing to when they say, "I want no part of that!"

But like I said in the comments section, I don't know how to fix men. It's not as if you can nag them good. What I do, what I have done, and what has worked for 2,000+ years, is to call women to become the jewel of love, the precious gift from God, that inspires better things from her man. What works to transform yourself is what works to transform a spouse: prayer, love, generosity, service. That's what I know.

For you men, you'll have to look somewhere else for the specifics. Here's a good place to start...

The tyranny of the moment 

(from The Generous Husband blog)

December 12, 2011

in Acts of Service, Be a grownup, Her Needs, IMG

Five words jumped out of the sermon today – “The tyranny of the moment.” Does “the moment” ever cause you to do stupid things in your marriage?

• You are so caught up in whatever you are doing that you are rude to your bride either in word or deed.
• You are so focused on your immediate goal you don’t listen to her.
• You are so ready for sleep you fail to give her the ten minutes of talking and cuddling that would make such a big difference to her.
• You are so desirous of sex that you don’t take the time to warm up first her mind, and then her body.
• You are so upset at being interrupted you don’t even hear what she said.
• You are so desperate to get ahead of the bozo that cut you off in traffic, that you terrify your wife with your driving.

In one way or another, each of those is putting some short-term thing with no long-term significance ahead of the woman you promised to love, honour, and cherish. This sends a message to her that she is less important than whatever you are doing or wanting in the moment, and that’s not a message that blesses her or helps your marriage!
The term “tyranny of the moment” is very appropriate as we do give in to the moment. We want what we want when we want it, and we want to deal with what we are focused on to the exclusion of everything else. It’s easy to get such a narrow focus on now that we do things that make a mess of later; or, we fail to do things that could make later much better.

Wifey Wednesday--Why Sex Is Complicated

Wifey Wednesdays are hosted each week by Sheila Wray Gregoire
at To Love Honor and Vacuum.

A very wise young man once blew my mind by pointing out a fundamental reality in our fallen world: God made all things good and Satan tries to turn good things evil. Satan can create nothing. All he can do is use his superior intellect to twist our perception of reality to make good appear evil, truth look like lies, the attractive repulsive. He loves to use our emotions, good things, to further befuddle us.

God made marriage. Marriage is good. God made sex. Sex is good. Marriage reflects the unity of the Triune God and the bond between Christ and the Church, so it is a profound good for the world, even without the economic and social stability marriage generates. It is good for the persons involved, too. It takes immature, self-centered creatures and matures them, making their lives outwardly focused on another. With sex in the equation, it also makes them parents, which furthers the process of maturation. 

God the Father loves the Son perfectly and completely: so much so it is personified in the Holy Spirit. Your love and your husband's love is meant to be that beautiful. Your love will grow larger than the two of you, something you will both stand in awe of. In fact, the world will wonder at it, writing news articles about love after 75 years. In fact, marital love personifies, too--in your children.

Speaking of sex: the more selfless it is, the better. The more you lose yourself in your spouse and let go, the more amazing it is. On a fundamental level, sex is about surrendering to each other and becoming one, if even imperfectly. The hormones involved, oxytocin especially, are designed to cement a bond between husband and wife so that each sexual encounter--be it a romp under the covers or merely the promise of one in a look and a wink shot across a table crowded with cranky children and schoolwork--produces oxytocin and other hormones to reinforce the chemical, emotional, and spiritual bonds between husband and wife. That is very, very good.

That's why Satan hates it. You and your spouse are created in the image and likeness of God. Marriage speaks to the world about the Nature of God. Since Satan cannot hurt God, he will hurt you, His image, or your marriage, His reflection. Satan will interfere with your marriage in any way inhumanly possible. If he can't end the marriage, he will mar it to make it as imperfect a reflection of God as he can entice the two of you to make it.

God knew you and His purpose for you from The Beginning (Jerimiah 1:5, Romans 8:29). You and your spouse have been called to the Sacrament of Marriage from the moment God created the world. Satan, being a spirit, exists outside of physical time. He is not bound by our bonds. He can see you married when you are still a speck in your mother's womb. He knows your spouse before you have even met. He will work on you and your husband from birth until death to interfere with your marriage. He will encourage you, a woman, to damage your ability to bond with your spouse by enticing you to sexual encounters without commitment so that you will come to marriage untrusting, numbed and scarred. He will entice your future husband to view women's bodies as tools for his sexual fulfillment, separating the act of sex from the bonds of marriage and keeping him emotionally and sexually immature and unable to approach true manliness. (The Damage of Sexual Promiscuity--a must read)

Satan insinuates himself into your marriage to make less room for God

But God teaches us forgiveness, repentance, and self-sacrifice. God heals. As damaged as you come to the marriage bed, there is hope. As harmed as your marriage may be by sins against it, infidelity, lust, selfishness, God infuses the Sacrament of Marriage with abundant Graces to heal you both. All you need is God. All God wants is you.

Make yourself precious, like jewels.
Proverbs 31

Open your heart to God and to your husband. By this openness, you will allow Grace to flow into your marriage. Be prayerfully aware of God and set your selfish impulses to ignore, belittle, or bemoan the needs of your husband at the foot of the Cross. If he wants you to bring him a cup of coffee, serve Him by serving him. If he wants you to cuddle up on the couch after the kids are asleep, serve Him by accommodating him. If your marriage is damaged, use your love of God to rebuild it. If your husband is so damaged as to be numb to your needs, let God heal that. Help Him heal your marriage by taking up arms with Him to fight for your husband's heart. Send a barrage of roses against the fortress your husband has built against you; flood his life with so many small acts of love that he drowns in it. Surrender to God to win the war for your husband's heart. Make him gasp at the beauty of Love.

Who knows? Maybe your husband has been trying to do the same for you for years.

Your emotions, your desires, and your impulses must be under your guidance. Your guidance must be under God. If you do not guide your impulses, if God does not guide them, you will be manipulated and enslaved by them. Do not surrender your will to your emotions. Unite your will to God's will, even when your emotions have a will of their own.

Your marriage can work. It can fulfill you, but only if you let God in. 

Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26

On the Battle Ground of Marriage

Gird your loins, ladies. Sheila Wray Gregoire is calling us to battle! I can't say enough about this woman's take on marriage, both her words and the guest bloggers she invites to write on the topic. Although not a Catholic source, she is excellent in understanding and expressing the ways that Christian marriage is the battleground on which you will fight for your eternal life--yours and your husband's.

Click here to go to the blog To Love Honor and Vacuum
Don't forget to tune in each week for Wifey Wednesdays

Here's one quote from her latest Wifey Wednesday post: "God’s Word doesn’t say that marriage is designed to bring us happiness. In fact it says that it will be an area of struggle and hardship. Genesis 3:16 He told the Woman: 'You’ll want to please your husband, but he’ll lord it over you.'"

And another: "If Satan attacks married people first and foremost through their spouses, in order to render their hearts useless to God, doesn’t it make sense that two strong believing Christians may have more problems within their marriage than non-believers? "

She gets it. She really gets it. I would like to encourage you to read her insights, discuss them, and then get busy battling your temptation to fight fire with Hellfire (letting your husband's sins be an excuse for your own). Even if your husband is not behaving in a way worthy of a Christian man, you are to behave like a Christian woman. Remember, always, that you are serving God by your service in marriage. It isn't about what he deserves from you, it's what He deserves from you.

Get to it, ladies. The war is on!

Be a Prayer Warrior

To Get Started Today:

3 Steps to Make an Immediate Improvement 

in Your Marriage

1. Apologize
Even if you are only responsible for 1% of today's problem, apologize for it, then say no more. Even if he's a jerk about the apology, you have done your best to heal the matter.

2. Do More
Do three things every day that you don't want to do, just to please your husband.
Again, pleasing him is your surest bet to pleasing Him. Face it, we treat strangers we will never meet again way better than we treat our spouses. It's time to break that bad habit.

3. Smile
Make your face a friendly place. Sometimes our face is a bad representation of our innermost selves. You may be worried about tomorrow's schedule, but your face reads as grouchy. Check your expressions a few times a day. Let a smile and an open countenance open doors in your husband's heart.

These improvements are meant to improve YOU first. You are a major component in your marriage and are responsible for YOUR behavior. God is responsible for changing your husband. Be an avenue of change and grace for the marriage so that God can do His work. You can't change anyone else but you, even in your own marriage. Truly, the secret to a better marriage is prayer. The best thing you can do is to pray for your husband, for his good, for his blessings to increase, for God to pour grace and love into his soul. Let God in. Pray and make room.

Pray and Make Room

Tell Him, "I still do!": A Challenge for Wives

Here's a challenge I'd like to share with you. It is counter cultural in the extreme--it's all about treating your husband with respect.

Your husband, personally, may or may not deserve respect, but then again, you may not either. If you waited to respect each other until either of you behaved up to a certain standard, respect could become rare indeed! Respect in a marriage is more about honoring the office of spouse than a particular spouse. Your particular spouse may be driving you crazy, but because of who you are, and what God set up marriage to be, you need to behave as if your spouse deserves the best from you. Your husband is a child of God, after all, so although he may or may not deserve your best, He deserves it. Think of it this way, God is your Father-in-law and he can see exactly how you are treating His child. You need to behave accordingly.

And since you are God's child as well, you need Him to worry about making sure your husband takes care of you in the same way. Treating your spouse well, without worrying about being treated well in return, is an act of Faith--not in your spouse, but in God. He will pour out Grace upon the woman who acts in such faith. Even if it is the Grace to endure while He works on your husband a bit more.

From speaker, author, and mom, Sheila Wray Gregoire To Love Honor and Vacuum

A Challenge

For the last few weeks we've been talking about how to radically transform your marriage by focusing on meeting his needs--rather than waiting for him to meet yours. I issued a challenge to all of you to do these five things for six weeks, and see what happens:

1. Thank your husband once a day for something (try to make it something different each time)
2. Compliment your husband to your mother, your children, your friends, whatever, within earshot of your husband, every chance you get.
3. Do not nag.
4. Do not give the silent treatment.
5. Make love with relative frequency (say at least 2-3 times a week).

 

Try it and let me know how it goes...if he notices?...if he responds? I'd love to know. I've been slipping on my personal version of this challenge, so I'm taking it as a wake-up call. This is going to be my focus for Lent this year. 

The Culture of Divorce

REWIND WEEKEND: As I am off on retreat this weekend, I thought I would rerun some of the marriage posts. We can all use a refresher course on being sweet, after all. (Me included and me especially!)

The Culture of Divorce

"The unchallenged acceptance of divorce has infected our world with hopelessness" from the Retrouvaille vision statement

A friend lamented recently, "Why wasn't I taught how to be a wife when I was growing up?"

I thought on that for a split second and then I opened my mouth and said something along the lines of: well, my mom had tried her best. She wanted to teach me to be independent. She made sure I knew how to balance a checkbook and stay within a budget. She stressed the importance of maintaining good credit, limiting your debts, and paying your bills on time. She also trained me up to maintain a house for myself. I could cook, clean, maintain a decent schedule for myself so I didn't burn out. I resisted all along the way, of course. She insisted on choosing a solid, dependable career as part of my training, and it was in college that I learned to resist anything that resembled "women's work." If it smacked of the domestic chains, I wanted nothing of it. She had her work cut out for her.

When I took a breath and she had half a chance, my friend, obviously a tiny bit irritated with me a bit, said, "Not that stuff. That other stuff."

Come to find out what she really meant was the skills like keeping your mouth shut when you want to let loose, apologizing without rationalizing, allowing space for emotions without letting them run the show. That's a whole different kind of training.

All my married life I've struggled to learn That Other Stuff.

The more I thought about this the more I realized I've been trained to be divorced better than I'd been trained to be married.

Here's some Divorce Preparation Tips I picked up along the way:

• Get a career and keep your own money in case he dumps you.
• Keep track of what belongs to whom.
• Let him know exactly how you feel.
• Men want to rule women.
• Men are silly.
• Men don't feel.
• There's no difference between men and women--it's all cultural.
• Because you feel it, it must be true.
• You're not just arguing with your husband, you are arguing with thousands of years of male domination and female repression.

Most of this "helpfulness" came from those women's magazines that are chock full of articles my husband and I joking refer to as "How to be divorced in 6 years or less!" The real stuff took some real maturity and some real pains to learn.

The Real Stuff like:

• There's no winning an argument.
• Actions speak louder than words.
• Emotions are just emotions.
• Love and trust are not emotions all the time: sometimes they are conscious decisions you make.

There's No Winning an Argument

You can win debates. You can even even win the lottery, but an argument with your spouse is unwinnable. Winning means there's a loser and when there's a loser, you both lose. It's like scoring a touchdown against your own side. You and he are in this together. You're a team. You may have won the war of words, but you've lost something more important. Keeping score and using conflict to do it is a no-win.

You need to approach conflict as the inevitable result of two people living in close proximity. You're going to have to come to a compromise of some sort. This other person has needs and desires that are at the very least just as important as yours. Try to find a way to accommodate each other. The first step is to listen to him. Try restating his argument for him. "Are you saying...help me understand." Let him know you are really listening and really considering his side. That generally takes the heat out of the friction between you, and once that happens you can get down to the business of working things out.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Are you still acting single? Do you have your own space, your own money, your own stuff? Do you make decisions that will affect the two of you without his input just because you can or even because you merely feel like it? Do you resent the demands he makes upon you?

If so, consider how loudly you are communicating two thing: my spouse doesn't make a difference in my life and he is not worth any extra effort on my part. You may not ever say such rude comments out loud, but consider how much wear and tear is done to the relationship when you daily act as if they were your truth.

But He Isn't Perfect!

If you are expecting him to be perfect before you are willing to make any changes yourself, you'll have a very long wait. Neither he, nor you, will ever attain that glorious state. Waiting for him to change first is a perfect excuse. It's your handy dandy get of responsibility free card. When you find yourself thinking he doesn't deserve the best from you, I can pretty much guarantee you probably don't deserve the best from him either.

Part II All You Have to Do Is...

REWIND WEEKEND: As I am off on retreat this weekend, I thought I would rerun some of the marriage posts. We can all use a refresher course on being sweet, after all. (Me included and me especially!)





The 3 Things You Need to Do

1. Pray

2. Give more

3. Stay in your right mind

A Recap and an Introduction to Part II

Marriage is almost impossible. It takes society, willpower, the threat of financial ruin, and Divine Intervention to keep us from exploding into separate and unhappy divorced pieces. Studies have shown that after a few years, unhappy couples who have rated themselves as miserable and yet stuck it out now rate themselves as happy. The unhappy couples who divorced still rate themselves as miserable(http://www.americanvalues.org/html/r-unhappy_ii.html). That makes sense if you think about it. Are you happier knowing that when times get rough, you have someone willing to tough it out with you? Or are you happier knowing that when times get rough enough, you'll be all alone?

Real unhappiness in a marriage stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. We think that we can live happily ever after. Oh sure, you'll be happy intermittently and sad intermittently, and angry, too. But that happily ever after part comes later, ladies, when you reach your reward. Having impossible expectations leaves you frustrated and unhappy. Who are you going to blame for your disappointed expectations? Him? How about our fallen human nature?

From our Self-Esteem Pushers we've heard that human nature is giving, loving, generous, kind. Blah, blah, blah. What is pointedly ignored is that human nature is also selfish, demanding, cruel, and lazy. Each one of us is a combination of good and bad traits. You are. Your husband is. We are all pretty much idiots emotionally. You are going to hurt him and he will hurt you back.

So? So stop feeling guilty. So stop holding grudges. It's the nature of the beast.

Stop thinking of your husband as the enemy. Even when you are fighting, he is not the enemy. He is the man you chose, and he is the man God will use to make you better than you are. We do not grow emotionally or spiritually by doing what is easy, but by enduring what is hard. Marriage to an imperfect person is hard work, but you will grow in love and holiness by persevering in the task. G.K. Chesterton, often referred to as the Apostle of Common Sense, said, "Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no virtue at all." Love what is good in your husband and he will return the favor. Love what is not good in him, and pray he does the same.

Your husband may not be your enemy, but you are involved in a great war. On a purely secular plane, the battle is about wresting a living and keeping afloat financially in the world. It involves everything from scheduling to sleeping to packing a lunch. There are too many demands out in the world. You act as one another's filter to keep those financial and time demands to a sane minimum. There is also the war of good versus evil that has its sights trained on you. Since marriage and raising children is a "good," it will come under direct attack. Evil is not a very fashionable idea in our day and age, but that only works toward its advantage. It exists. If you don't believe in it, watch the news.

When at war, there are casualties. Although you are united in the fight against a common enemy, it is the nature of war that sometimes, accidentally, you catch fire from your own side. It's called Friendly Fire. It's due to errors in communication, judgement, or confusion in the heat of battle. The injury is the same as if the enemy inflicted it, only...it's worse somehow.

The problem with battles within a marriage is that they are all Friendly Fire. Thank God, there is a cure for those wounds.

1. PrayWhen you hurt, pray. When you wonder, pray. When you despair, pray. In all things, pray. Prayer reminds us that we are not the largest, greatest, and best thing in the Universe. We are bowing to Somebody. We are humbled. I have a very wise friend who once advised me when my heart was breaking to cry in the lap of God. He would comfort me. She was right. I received comfort and was healed over time.

God will take the hurts of your marriage and heal them. Through prayer, He will make the pain in your life a wellspring of compassion in you. When you are humble enough to ask for help and to admit your own faults, it's amazing how your perspective on your spouse changes. He stops being an adversary and becomes, once again. a person that you love and that you want to love you. Be soft. Be humble. Be prayerful.

My husband and I began a habit not too long ago when we were stuck in a rut of daily bickering. I wanted to stop the constant, mutual harassment and so did he, but it seemed impossible. After a particularly trying day and at the start of yet another epic misunderstanding I prayed aloud, "All of Heaven would you please listen to what I am trying to say to this man?" My very wise husband, grabbed my hand and said, "Okay, then, let's argue in prayer!" So we did. All the heat went right out of us and we were able to say exactly what we needed to say and to hear exactly what we needed to hear. It's now a joke that God wanted in our argument. But the joke was on us, because by praying, the argument was over. We were able to finally have a discussion.

What's really funny is that neither of us even remembers what that particular argument was about!

So, if you want to really go out on a limb, be as brave as my husband was, grab that furious person's hand and ask him to pray. Ask God to join your argument. It will transform your marriage.

2. Give more

Selfishness breeds more selfishness. Focusing only on yourself and your needs is childish with the complication that it will further your unhappiness. When you are thinking, "All I ever do is give!" the focus is on yourself and what you are doing. It's a sure sign that you are actually not giving enough in the marriage.

Human beings have a real need to be needed. This doesn't mean that you have to go out of your way to make yourself indispensable to your husband. That is another form of selfishness--it's still all about you. What you need to do is to go out of your way to make your husband's life easier to live. There's a big difference. The first way, becoming indispensable, means that you are rewarded by being needed. The second way, being helpful and easing his burdens, is a gift you are giving your husband. Remember that first post on the difference between male and female? I'm trying to teach you a little about the male way of loving.

We women make the mistake of feeling that love is only an emotion. We think it's supposed to be a perpetual state of bliss, a soft goeyness, or an overwhelming desire for another person. What is love really? Love is a series of decisions you make. Men understand that way better than we do. They decide to brush the snow off your car, check the fluid levels, fill up the gas tank, not because it's something you can't do, but to show you they care. What little gestures of love does your husband do for you? Does he put a glob of toothpaste on your brush before he brushes his teeth? Does he spoon sugar into your coffee when he's sugaring up his?

Use the male model of love for a month. Do little things for him that he would normally do for himself--not the things you'd like done for yourself, that's a veiled hint. While you do these little things in your head say, "I'm doing this to show myself how much I really love him." Don't worry if he never notices. Don't hang around waiting to see if he's discovered all the wonderful things you are now doing for him. This is a lesson you have to teach yourself.

3. Stay in Your Right Mind

This one is the hardest. We women are emotional creatures and we relate to the world and to others on a touchy-feely level. When we hurt, we hurt! When we love, we love! When we argue, look out!

We have an advantage over men in the emotional arena. Our female brains are wired with many more connections between the right and left hemispheres than male brains. That means your emotional left brain and your rational right brain are a little more intertwined than your husband's. A woman can generally out think and out speak a man on the emotional level. In other words, we can better express our feelings from the right side of our heads with the logic and language skills stored on our left side. While this gives us a decided advantage in rearing children, it can be a handicap: when our emotions run away with us, our mouths give a running commentary.

How many times have you had to apologize after the heat of the battle for the cruel words that spewed from your anger? How many times have you wished that you could take back the words that have hurt so deeply?

When you are in the heat of the moment, always remember that this moment will end and it will have an aftermath. Would you rather the aftermath be full of peace and resolutions or full of regrets and apologies?

Keep your head straight when you are in the thick of a disagreement. You don't have to agree on everything. You don't even have to come to any particular conclusions right at this moment. Some discussions are better tabled until after some thought has been applied.

The old adage of "Count to 10" before speaking is a good one. A better idea is to give Heaven a quick appeal before you open your mouth to speak. Ask for help expressing your needs in a way that he can hear. Ask that his ears and heart be open to you and ask that yours be open to him.

Maybe a change in perspective is needed, too. Before you start to voice your opinion in any given disagreement, ask him if you can sum up what he is trying to say to you. Try to restate what it is he is trying to say. Let him fine tune your perspective until you actually do understand and can make his case for him. Take the time to hear him and his side before you ask him to do the same for you.

You may find that if you are calmer, more logical, and more open to his perspective, he'll begin to return the favor. There's no guarantees, of course, human nature being what it is. But if you change your way of dealing with him, you will at least have more peace with your side of things.

Now what?

Well, that's a very good question. Now that you are better prepared to stay prayerful and giving in your dealings with your husband, shouldn't everything be blissful?

Not on your life, but take heart.

We are not meant to be happy every given moment. We are not capable of sustained bliss. Marital happiness is more about having a person on the planet who is willing to bear you and bear with you the struggles of daily life. He is your one sure ticket to heaven--either by encouraging you in your daily growth to God or by causing you to call upon Heaven for the strength to put up with him.

Your marriage isn't about Happily Ever After anyway. It's about something more: how two selfish people can overcome themselves in order to make something beautiful. It's about reflecting the love God has for us by giving and loving another person. Neither you nor your spouse is the center of your marriage, and neither you nor your spouse is the Center and the Universe. God is. Just remembering that alone will take care of most of your problems.

One final point. I don't know about you, but I sure am grateful that I don't have to be married to me. I think my husband is much easier to get along with.

Part I here:

http://gardenofholiness.blogspot.com/2009/04/attitude-tips-for-wives-and-moms.html

Related Posts:

http://gardenofholiness.blogspot.com/2009/03/believe-it-or-not-its-controversial.html

Attitude Tips for Wives and Moms--Part 1

REWIND WEEKEND: As I am off on retreat this weekend, I thought I would rerun some of the marriage posts. We can all use a refresher course on being sweet, after all. (Me included and me especially!)





Here's the caveat. This stuff is going to sound incredibly old fashioned. I know that. There's a perfectly good reason for it, too. Old fashioned marriages had a tendency to last. Modern ones don't. So, follow all the modern advice you want right to the doors of the courtroom. I'm going for the wisdom of the ages, myself.




The 3 and 3
There are just three things you have to keep in mind and three more things you have to do to have a successful marriage, or the 3 and 3. Sounds way too simple, and believe me it isn't. Marriage is anything but simple. I really should add a fourth, a fifth, a sixth thing, ad infinitum, but the mind is a funny thing. It just won't process too much at once. Especially under stress. I'm keeping it simple because, once stressed, the brain has a tendency to simplify in order to facilitate the fight or flight response. Your job is to remember that fighting and flighting is not the way to stay married. After we get the 3 and 3 on the ether here, we'll have a chance to look at each one in a little more depth.

3 Things to Keep in Mind
1. You picked him.
2. You can't change him.
3. You didn't marry a girl.

3 Things You Need to Do
1. Pray
2. Give more
3. Stay in your right mind

The Things to Keep in Mind
I will be bluntly honest and admit that at one time I was an idiot. I did marry the alcoholic drug abuser that everyone warned me not to. Yes, he slept around. Yes, it was nasty. And yes, I came to my senses and left. I put 3,000 miles between us and started over. Yes, completely over with the debt, the utter lack of belongings, and the emptiness that that entailed. So, let me just say, if you married my ex, or any man like my ex, this advice is not for you. This advice is for the average woman married to the average man. If you really, truly feel you are married to a demon not of your making, what are you reading this for? See a rabbi, see a priest, see a shrink.

(FYI to my fellow Catholics, that first marriage was annulled and my current marriage was regularized in 2003 during my conversion to the faith.)


Still reading? Okay, so that must mean you've had some humility and admitted, at least to yourself (if not to your mother) that he really isn't that bad. He's human, therefore imperfect. And let me tell you this, sisters, if he was perfect then he'd REALLY be annoying.
1. You picked him.
All right. You picked him. If he really is as bad as you say he is, then who's fault is that really? Were you really such a bad judge of character all those years ago? The thing we ladies don't think about when we indulge in our sport of male bashing is this, while you are ranting people are wondering what was it in you that made such a (insert your favorite anti-hubby adjective here) man attractive to you.
What did make him attractive to you? Was he good with his hands? Good with kids? Did his voice in your ear send you over the moon? Come on! There's got to be something. Remember back to the days when your wedding band was so new it had a mirror sheen instead of the little nicks and scratches of long use. He was much kinder then. So were you. Try kindness again. Try it for a month. See if kindness and good manners on your part don't bring about a softening on his part. See if they don't bring back into the marriage that hopeful young woman and that sweet young man.

2. You Can't Change Him
Quit complaining about him and to him, trying to get him to change. Trust me, there's plenty in you he'd like to change, too. He just might be too scared of you to say so. A fundamental rule of people is this: you can't change them. That may lead you to despair if there wasn't this ray of hope. There's still someone in the relationship you can change and control. YOU. If you can't admit that you are part of the problem, then you are the problem. Or, if you are really good at the womanly manipulation kind of thing, you can find a way to admit your problem while somehow turning it back to him. We do that kind of stuff all the time. It's why more men go bald than women. We make them pull their hair out.

Act like the kind of wife you'd like to have. Be sweet. Be of service. Do stuff for him just because. There's a rule of thumb I heard from a psychologist in the marriage realm, the one who complains, "I give and give and give!" doesn't. Someone who is keeping score is a self-centered individual. It's all about what she is getting. A self-centered person is not a happy person, ultimately. When there is only one person in the Universe, the echoes of your own voice is your only company. Your marriage isn't about you. It's about us. Make sure he's happy and he'll turn around and do the same. And you know what I just love about men? They turn around a lot faster and forgive than we women ever do.

Just change yourself and see. Again, try it for 30 days.

3. He's not a girl.
If you are not grateful for this, pray you will be. (I mean that seriously, pray to be grateful for him.) We are demanding and emotional creatures who are slow to forgive. We notice everything and we comment on it.

Your man is the exact opposite (unless you've been so awful to him it's going to take him a while before he'll trust you with his feelings again). His needs are pretty simple. His emotions are cut and dried. He forgets, forgives, and moves on before you've even finished mentally reviewing the first 456 reasons why you are so hurt and angry.

Let's take an example. You've asked your husband if he wants to go out to dinner and he says, "Sure, okay." He means, "Sure, okay," in the sense that he wasn't thinking about dinner at the moment because he wasn't hungry, but the idea sounds good to him. Meanwhile, you are reading something! He hesitated. What does that mean? Is he implying that you should have already had dinner planned and ready? Is he criticising you for being a little lazy about cooking? He doesn't appreciate all you do around this house. And the fight is on.

When I was a schoolteacher I noticed the differences between the male and female species to be profound. Girls had girl wars and got every friend they could involved. It took weeks, months, counselling, kid gloves, gentle remonstrance, and sometimes the threat of detentions to negotiate a peace. Even still some of the grudges were epic and lasted until adulthood even though the battles were sometimes brought to a level of peace that allowed a wary coexistence. The boys? You know how to fix a problem between two boys? Make them work side by side and demand they don't talk to one another. Pretty soon, they are rolling their eyes, making faces and they are just fine. Forever.

Who would you rather have mad at you? You? Or your husband?

Be glad he is the forgiving man that he is and return the favor. He isn't perfect and neither are you. When he annoys you with his imperfections, just remember to thank God he isn't perfect. If he was, he never would have married you.

end Part 1
Part II Here: http://gardenofholiness.blogspot.com/2009/04/part-ii-all-you-have-to-do-is.html


Related Post:
http://gardenofholiness.blogspot.com/2009/03/believe-it-or-not-its-controversial.html

Wifey Wednesday: Watch That Mouth! ...and links to helpful marriage links

My best advice for a solid marriage? Watch your mouth. By that I mean you should:

1. Be as polite to your spouse as you would to a customer at work
(be even more polite if you find yourself broke and/or fired frequently)

Good manners are the grease that keeps the heat out of social friction. You are subject to the most friction at home since home is where people are the closest--that's the best place to use your manners. Besides, shouldn't you treat the ones you love better than you treat strangers? It isn't a coincidence that the divorce rate was lower when courtesy was more common.

2. Never talk badly about your spouse to your family or friends

They don't love this person, you do. They don't get to temper their judgement by seeing how sweet he looks when he sleeps, so they're much slower to forgive. Don't blame them if they decide to despise him if you are constantly telling them to.

3. Pray when you're pissed.

That may sound crass, but maybe it'll help you to remember to do this. Pray for the best for your spouse when you are thinking your worst about him. Things will clear up much faster that way.

Some links on marriage from this blog

Find other links here

The Hitch in Your Get-Along

Wow, you think, you are a marital diva. You've weathered the storm. For months now, you and your dear hubby have been chugging along, getting along. All is well.

Then it hits--the hitch in your get-along.

Sure, months ago some well meaning mentor may have warned you this was inevitable, but you were unprepared. Surely you and he have solved every last marital problem?

Sure.

So, before despairing and thinking, "Oh woe! Oh weep! Oh moan!" Think again. Did you forget something? You are married to a human, and worse! You are both of the same species. Neither one of you has any hope of getting it right every single time.

Here's a few things to do while you are weathering the glitch:

1. Don't dredge the past
2. Don't despair
3. Don't lose your head, use your head

1. Don't dredge the past
    Old habits are hard to overcome. If he's slipped up or you've slipped up, can you give yourself the common decency of remembering that learning and changing is a process? A slip up can be just that. If it isn't something serious, like an affair or a return to an addiction, a relapse into bad behavior is probably just a momentary weakness and not an indication of a refusal to love, honor and cherish.

2. Don't despair
    If you can manage #1 and if you can remember to pray, this one might not be as hard as it sounds. Despair is an emotion: a profoundly negative and unhelpful one. Although it is incredibly hard not to let emotions get control of you and your mental life, it may help to consider that if you are feeling despair, you are most likely not seeing things very clearly. Also, you must remember that an emotion is not the most important element of your reaction, as much as that emotion wants you to think it is the boss. Sometimes you just have to ignore yourself and get going. Despair is not an emotion with a divine source, it is a sinister, undermining, weakening emotion that you are better off not entertaining. If you find yourself having despairing thoughts, say, "I know better than this. I really do" and then allow yourself or even force yourself to think of something else. You've got reason for a reason. Use it when your emotions are not helping.

3. Don't lose your head, use your head
    Well, fine and dandy. Maybe he has treated you this way before and maybe you really are thinking he is hopeless and this is a horrible way to live and the usual interior rumblings of an unhappy woman (let us do keep these types of thoughts to ourselves now shall we?) Does that really mean you now have free reign to behave badly in return? Can you let go and be a banshee because he's been a jerk? Are you still 9 years old and think you can walk away from responsibility for your own actions with a "Well, he started it!" attitude? Do you recognize a rhetorical question when you see one? Or five? Or seven?

The sweetest revenge is sweetness. If he's hunkering down to jerkiness, respond with kindness, smile sweetly and think, "Oh yeah? I'm being a much better person than you!" Pretend you don't notice and carry on as if you were the nicest gal ever. Pretty soon, he'll come around. I've never had this one fail me. The trick is to not have one scintilla of sarcasm in your manner, not a dollop of ill will, or even a whiff of irritation. Consider it an exercise of wills. Yours versus yours. Just trust me on this one, he'll be dazzled.

Meanwhile, back at the split-level ranch house, can you remember that history repeating itself has a good side? Yes, you've been here before and you are sick and tired of the same old stuff coming up again. You hate feeling this way and you never ever thought you would have to again. Yeah, that sucks. But, guess what? You guys felt like this and got over it once before. Or two times. Or maybe even half a dozen times before. You guys can get over this glitch because you've gotten over glitches before. It's a habit now.

Now that's worth something.