Tag Archives: marriage

Well, that happy hour stunk.

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25

Not long ago my husband and I met up with another couple for drinks. I will not go into any details, but suffice it to say that from the moment we arrived, it was clear something was amiss. And by amiss I mean there should have been a referee present, because it was not pretty. The thing is, there wasn’t any overt arguing between the two, no name calling or raised voices. But the barely concealed disdain for one another hung thick in the air. All in all, it made for an uncomfortable evening.

As soon as we parted ways, my husband and I were like, what the hell? After eight years together, the two of us have had our fair share of fights, and on more than one occasion we’ve had a spat just prior to going out with people. We have a tacit agreement that we can have words at home, and in the car, but the moment we open the doors and step outside to go wherever we’re going, the bickering stops and we each put on a smile. It’s impolite to air your dirty laundry in public. But there’s another side to our understanding, one which scores of marriage counselors would undoubtedly raise their hands in horror at, but that I find to be true:

If you slap a smile on your face and pretend to be happy and have fun, eventually you do have a good time. The laughter and chit chat overrides the bad mood, and it’s hard to stay mad at someone you’ve just spent an amicable evening with, even if it started out under false pretenses.

Yes, I’m sure some would say that’s ignoring the problem, but the truth of the matter is that, for my husband and I, most of our tiffs are inconsequential. Maybe one or both of us needs to eat and are therefore irritable, or perhaps we’re running late and stressed. In other words, the basically unimportant stuff that brings out the bitchy. So, nine times out of ten, whatever we fought over before arriving at our destination is forgotten by the time we leave.

The interactions of the other couple, however, were not the result of an argument that happened before we got there. It was the sort of behavior that can only come from extensive buildup, and it was rather ugly.

Obviously we discussed it the whole way home, and at breakfast the next day, and again a few days later. I’m not sure what it is about being confronted with another couple’s problems that make you question your own union, but it definitely happens. At any rate, my husband brought up an interesting point, which was to ask whether either of them were even aware of what they were doing, and how it came off to others. I think the answer is no, they didn’t, which to me is worse than if they did. Not realizing how they were behaving signifies that it’s their default mode. All I could think was, if that’s how they treat each other in public, what goes on at home?

Anyway, right after leaving my husband turned to me in the taxi and solemnly said we needed to pinky swear to never end up like that, which I complied with, because there’s nothing quite as comforting as knowing you’re bound by the pinky. But later, I wondered more about the incident to myself. How do you protect yourself from ‘ending up like that’? No one, or no one I know anyway, gets married with the thought that one day they’ll end up treating each other like shit in public. We all know communication is key in a relationship, and blah blah blah, but we also know it’s easy to fall out of synch with your partner. Life happens, and the chances of a couple experiencing a life altering and extremely stressful event only increase the longer they are together, and those sorts of things can be game changers. Or, perhaps it isn’t any one, or even a few major changes that cause problems, but an accumulation of small and inconsequential things. Like those insignificant arguments I referred to earlier in my own relationship.

I don’t know what happened between our acquaintances, maybe they’re just going through a rough patch, or maybe they’re on the road to splitting. I will say it made me grateful for what I have, gave me something to think about with regards to my own marriage, and provided me with extra determination to not go down that road myself.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find my husband and make him pinky swear again.

My train wreck loves your smart ass.

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16

This is not the blog where we talk about PMS. Some people post about it regularly, but it just isn’t something I feel the need to discuss. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever posted about it on the Cowardly Feminist. So for the dude readers that just did a collective eye roll over the prospect of a lady-day post, this is not a story about PMS, it’s about my husband.

All hail the smartass king

My husband is the California King of Smartass Ville. It’s in his blood, and he can’t help it. Fortunately for him, he is also one of those individuals funny and likeable enough to pull off the most brazen of sarcastic quips and still have people like him. I guess it’s a gift.

I’ve also posted previously about the complete lack of predictability in his job. It changes all the time, there is no set schedule, and we never really know what’s going on until the project actually begins. Long time readers might remember around this time last year when we found out at four in the afternoon he was leaving for the Philippines the following morning. Yeah, that was completely shitty awesome. Over the years I’ve learned to roll with it. Life is much easier for both of us that way.

Which brings me to yesterday.

PMS hit me like a freight train around midday. Within an hour I was irritable, feeling gross, and in general, bitchy. A couple of hours later my husband called. The details of what transpired are a little confusing, but suffice it to say that over the span of two hours and two phone conversations, his schedule did a complete 180, changed again, and then again. The last change was accompanied by the discovery that he was on his way home, several hours before I expected him to be. Ordinarily I would have been happy he was coming home early. My hormone-addled brain, however, processed things a little differently than usual. I was in the middle of writing, and instead of being glad he had an early day, I felt like my work was interrupted. I could have continued to write, and normally I would have, but instead I seethed at the disruption. And the more I thought about all the scheduling changes, the more annoyed I became, even though it was no different than any other week.

Needless to say, when my husband walked in the door twenty minutes later I was in full-on cranky pants mode. So, we’re standing in the kitchen, and all of my answers to his idle chit chat were short and ill-tempered. He leaned against the counter, folded his arms, and said, “What’s wrong?” I, of course, gave the standard answer of pissed off women everywhere, “Nothing!”

A look of confusion crossed his face, because clearly by nothing I meant screw you. So he replied with genuine concern, “No, something is going on, and you should really vocalize it.”

At that point, I totally lost my marbles and went something like this, “MARGMARGMARGBLAGITYBLAAAAACK!” There was a lot of yelling and gesticulating involved.

After that I fed the dogs, and we each took one for a walk. I stomped off in one direction, and he went in another. While watching Lil Stinko sniff every blade of grass in the lawn, it occurred to me I had just acted like a total lunatic. Now, guys won’t get this, but women will. Sometimes when PMS first hits you, you don’t actually recognize it for what it is, you only know you are angry. Anyway, the realization of why I was freaking out only made me more upset, because there is nothing worse than knowing you’re behaving badly and not being in control of it. So I marched upstairs, and when my husband walked in the door, I explained, while yelling, that I had PMS, that I was angry, and sorry, and it had nothing to do with him, and finished with, “And I’m not going to cook dinner!”

By that time I was nearly in tears. In other words, I was a total train wreck. My husband calmly gave me a hug, told me he loved me, and asked me what I wanted to eat. For the remainder of the evening he put up with me in all my grumpiness. Bless that man – he is one laid back dude.

Flash forward to this afternoon.

Most of this morning my husband left me in peace to work. This afternoon he waltzed into the office and informed me his schedule changed yet again, leaving him with the next four days off, and so he had decided to drive up north to take photos. Unfortunately, there are some logistical problems with that plan. As I pointed each issue out to my husband, he literally danced around the room with a camera in his hand and zinged out one smart ass remark after the other in reply. Each and every line was said with a wiggle and a shake – I can only assume the effort of not uttering a single wisecrack all morning and the night before was too much for him, and so the pent up sarcasm just oozed from his mouth, causing him to dance with joy.  He was in rare form, I’m talking SmartAss Extraordinaire. My mood, however, is not any better than it was yesterday. But he knows the deal – I’ve used up all my bitchy cards. I already had my little meltdown, and had a pouty pants fit for most of the evening, all of which he bore with good grace. Now all bets are off.  He’s like a kid with a stick, trying to poke a sleeping bear at the zoo.

All I can say is, you better run fast, boy.

Anyway, I’m not a particularly romantic person, but the point of my story is that I can be a nut, and my husband always, always knows exactly what to say, when to say it, and when to shake it. I love him for that.

What have I been smokin’?

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23

Nothing, but you wouldn’t know it from the dreams I’ve had the past few days.

I am always a vivid dreamer, but lately, I wonder what in the hell is going on inside my subconscious. I won’t even go into last night’s strange, fragmented dreams – they were too weird to pass on to the world.

The night before, however, is a different story. I’ll give you the cliff notes version (because, honestly, no one ever wants to hear another person’s dreams, unless you happen to be a psychic or something).

My husband and I were in a big building not far from where I used to live in Hollywood. People were everywhere, seeking shelter from an outbreak of some sort (I referred to it as zombies when I relayed this to my husband, but that really wasn’t what they were. They looked just like people, but whenever they opened their mouths, four incredibly long, dark purple tongues shot out. My husband said it sounded more like an invasion of the body snatchers than zombies). Anyway, the zombie/body snatcher people made it to this building where we hid, and everyone had to evacuate. My husband and I got separated, and outside, people kept telling me I had to leave anyway, but I refused. Just as the hysteria reached critical mass, a group of people ran from the building, and my man was among them.

Cool, now I could go.

So the plan was that we were all going to run to Lancaster, which seems like a crappy plan, because it’s like 60 miles away from Hollywood. That is a long way to run. Anyway, my husband told me he was going to go ahead of the group and scout things out. Suddenly he was in track shorts. You know how, at the Olympics, they shoot the gun or sound the buzzer or whatever, and all the track people take off like bats out of hell? Their legs move quicker than you’d think was humanly possible? Well that’s how my husband look as he ran off – all I could see was ass and elbows. When I tried to follow, I discovered I couldn’t run. Someone dressed like a referee walked up to me and said I needed to pick up the pace if I wanted to live, but no matter what I did, my feet would hardly move. For whatever reason, I decided to try and run backwards, which worked, and I ran with my head turned looking behind me down the 101 highway. While all this may sound nightmarish, in my dream I wasn’t particularly scared.

So last night while trying to fall asleep, I started thinking about that dream. What I found most odd about it was not the zombie/body snatcher people, or the fact that I could only run backwards, but my husband running. I realized that, in our seven and a half years together, I’ve never seen him run. Well, he’s done a sort of half run with Spazzy, but he’s 6’3”, and she weighs 10 pounds, so he isn’t exactly sprinting. He spends most of the time looking down at her to make sure his feet are nowhere near her tiny legs. So really, the dog run is more along the lines of a fake run. You know, that half run people do when they go through a crosswalk after the hand starts blinking – the, I’m-gonna-move-my-arms-like-I’m-running-but-my-legs-are-pretty-much-walking, run?

Well I think that’s weird. Not the fake run, but that I’ve never seen my husband run. How is that possible? How have I never once seen him run, not to or from anything, in all the years we’ve been together? And then I started thinking, has he ever seen me run? The answer is no, I don’t believe he has.

And this thought kept me up last night. What other acts have we not witnessed the other doing? Countless ones, obviously, but I’m talking about normal things, like running. This, of course, prompted me to try and formulate a list of what constitutes normal. Do somersaults count?

Geez, it’s seven in the morning, and I already need a nap.

Cheater cheater pumpkin eater.

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17

I was halfway through a post about my dislike for rabbits when I decided to make some lunch. While eating I flipped through the December issue of Harper’s Bazaar, and read an excerpt from Alain de Botton’s new book, How to Talk More About Sex.

Clearly this is a much more interesting topic than rabbits.

The excerpt centers around adultery. Botton makes some valid points about marriage (and presumably long-term cohabiting couples as well) and sex. Basically he believes that to not view sex as a complicated act, that often muddles our minds and is the source for poor decisions, particularly in marriage, is strange. We are sexual beings, and the thought of straying will occur to anyone in a committed relationship, however briefly, at some point. He goes on to write that fidelity should be viewed as a true achievement, and not something to blow off as the norm.

I always have mixed feelings when reading about infidelity, which is probably natural for anyone in a monogamous relationship. I consider myself a logical person, and do believe there is truth to the idea we aren’t biologically set up for monogamy. Well, women are, at least from an evolutionary perspective. We are wired to find mates that are strong, so as to pass off that genetic material to offspring, and who can be good providers to said offspring. Men are biologically wired to pass on their genetic material as much as possible.

Before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, I have all sorts of clarifications, not the least of which is that we aren’t animals, and survival of the fittest went out the window a long time ago, and was more or less rendered obsolete with the advent of modern medicine. And I am fully aware monogamy is 1) not practiced in the majority of cultures in the world, and 2) in a number of countries, take France, for example, where people do commit to lifelong relationships to a single person, infidelity is not a deal breaker and is often accepted (that is an extreme generalization, but you get my drift). Furthermore, we are living in a society where women no longer need a provider, and have freedoms the likes of which our predecessors couldn’t have imagined. For this reason, many women don’t feel the need to tie their ship to one dock. And, for that matter, women cheat with great frequency too.

All this is part of living in ‘civilized’ society, I guess.

Logically I can accept the notion that monogamy is a societal norm and not necessarily the ideal. Emotionally, I say fuck that. I just so happen to live in a culture where monogamy is the norm. What other people do is their business and fine by me, but in my world, you don’t cheat. My husband feels the same way, it’d be a deal breaker for either one of us.

Anyway, de Botton’s excerpt made me think of a conversation I had with my husband a few days ago.

Several years back, a couple we knew divorced. The wife discovered her husband had a mistress (yes, it sounds old fashioned, but at the time he referred to the chick as ‘my mistress’. What an asshole), and that they had been carrying on for quite some time. It was not a pretty situation. At all. They split, she remarried, and so did he. He married his mistress.

I instantly dubbed him the cheater, and told my husband the guy was a complete tool. The Cheater was given permanent placement on the Do Not Associate List, not just by me, but other wives and girlfriends too. The mere mention of his name in conversation brought on the I Smell Something Disgusting face by all of us. The funny thing is, the cheated upon wasn’t a friend of mine, nor was she close to the other women. It was the idea that Cheat-y McFuckwad threw his nine year marriage down the drain, and she found out via text message.

Though I think all the guys were shocked too, they weren’t as disbelieving as the women. And after the initial details came out, eliciting a ‘what a dick’ from all the dudes, they lost interest. He was still their homie, only now they got shit for talking to him. You could see their eyes glaze over when the womenfolk dissed him.

At any rate, all this happened a few years ago, and I haven’t thought about The Cheater in forever. Until last week, when my husband worked with someone for a few days he hadn’t seen in a while. I met him years ago at a party thrown by Cheaty and his first wife (I met the mistress that night, I just didn’t know she was boinking the host. Neither did the hostess at the time). So I asked if the guy still spoke to The Cheater, to which my husband responded, “No, I think his wife put the kibosh on that.”

I had to laugh, mostly because that same, glazed over expression immediately clouded his face. I never really thought about how hard it was on the guys, who had to listen to their ladies bitch over an act that they didn’t commit.

I don’t know if The Cheater was really ousted from the group, or perhaps his mistress/wife didn’t feel comfortable getting the stink eye from a bunch of broads she didn’t know, and thus decided that they would make new friends. I also have no idea what happened in his first marriage that prompted him to cheat. Perhaps they had long-standing issues and he was simply unable to cope, and used his affair as an escape. Maybe it was nothing other than lack of impulse control. Or maybe his ‘mistress’ was his one true love.

Whatever the case, it wasn’t any of my business. I believe the reason for the negative reaction on the part of the various wives and girlfriends wasn’t because anyone was chummy with the cheated on woman so much as, “wow, I didn’t see that coming, I wonder who else cheats?” I don’t, however, think this is solely a female response. A few months back, my husband relayed a story to me about a male acquaintance in the midst of a divorce resulting from infidelity. Interestingly my husband’s response was far more incredulous over the whole thing than when his own friend cheated. I think the obvious reason is because it wasn’t the guy who was unfaithful, it was his wife.

Whew, complicated stuff.

Anyway, I like Botton’s idea that fidelity is something to be cherished as an accomplishment in a relationship rather than an expectation. It’s sort of like getting a gold star next to your name for perfect attendance. Sure, you’re supposed to go to school and all, but it’s nice to get a reward for the effort.