Glass Gloves

What I am about to tell you only applies if you are fortunate enough to have your wife sleeping in the same bed with you again and only if intimate relations have resumed at her invitation. If you aren’t there yet you need to go back to the start (150 hits) or at least here (120 hits).

Here we go. Some of this article may be a bit crass so you have been warned.
One of my friends told me a funny yet sad story about how he had gotten a bit out of control with his wife. No disrespect to my friend, but I thought we all could learn from his experience. Apparently, his wife climbed into their bed minus her underpants. To most guys - including myself - this would be an indicator of good things to come.

Unfortunately, for my friend it seems that his wife instead rejected his advances for physical intimacy and in response he threw a nice little temper tantrum. He proceeded to remove the sheets from their bed and even went so far as to toss his underwear somewhat violently. He then remade the bed with her in it. I can certainly relate to wanting to do things like this and have done much worse in the past.

I once commented to my wife on a similar situation albeit minus the underwear tossing - “I hope that one day you become reincarnated well endowed so that you’ll know what it’s like to be a guy.” - I said it much meaner than that of course - it might as well have been in demon-speak. I can say it much nicer now though. I just explained what is written in the following paragraphs.

Please filter appropriately as this is based on a study of my wife and many of my friends’ wives. For all I know, your lady could be loaded down with so much physical intimacy drive that you have to fight her off with a stick. Lucky you.

Also, for those couples who sleep in the nude - I have no answers on the subject of going to bed minus underpants.

At the risk of being crass, this stuff applies to the rest of us who have kids or who have a fear of the house catching fire while sleeping nude and then running out of the house naked much to the dismay of the local fire department that just arrived to put the fire out.

Yes I have kids.

A couple of suggestions for guys and ladies.

Ladies

You just don’t know how much power you have over us in this area and if you do and abuse it - well you are only robbing yourself. Please please play nicely. Denial in the area of physical intimacy wounds our poor little inner child which is waht results in the nice little temper tantrum at times. You must realize that in many ways this is no different from the need to eat and drink for us guys. Think of it this way. To us it is almost like saying “Sweetie I’m dying of thirst can you get me a drink of water?” Then we receive a proverbial “Sorry honey, I don’t feel like getting you a drink of water even if you are dying.”

Please don’t come to bed minus underpants unless your intending on a roll in the hay or unless some gnomes stole your underpants (98 hits). At the risk of sound crass, wrap your bottom up like a mummy if you aren’t interested. It is nothing less than torture to your poor poor husband to show up to bed minus under pants and not be in the mood. Period.

If you’re bloating, head-aching, or any of the other common ailments - let us know. It makes it a heck of a lot easier on our inflated male egoes. Until we reach a certain age (80 (92 hits)?), you must realize that these thoughts govern (97 hits) our brain half the time if not more. We’re just wired that way. You could almost say it is our mummy.

Guys

Sometimes your lady just wants to be held and every little physical caress doesn’t mean that the horizontal polka is a go that night. I have yet to figure out how to tell the difference, but just realize that it may not be. The whole process is some kind of game to them. They’re looking for the dance of romance (though not all the time). Confusing eh? Again, just acknowledge it for what it is and play your part.

No throwing the sheets like my ill-fortuned friend. It is tough I know. Here is a trick for her to calm that inner sheet tosser of yours. I found that if my wife explains why she is denying me that proverbial glass of water it instantly removes those feelings. Ask her next time to just help you understand and you may find yourself sympathetic to your loved one’s plight for once.

Another thing - you can’t just come in from work, sling all your stuff down, ask for a beer, prop yourself in front of the TV, and then expect her to want to be physically intimate once it is time for bed. If you do this - congratulations - you just made her feel like a piece of meat (106 hits) and you are probably building up some nice resentment against yourself from her.

Lastly, I’ve noticed that there are at least a couple of ground rules that allow her to take the game to your desired conclusion.

• It starts with you (assuming we’re working with the standard sex-crazed male situation and not the inverse (102 hits)). Make her feel loved. Think selfless.
• She has buttons - you need to figure out what they are. In the case of my wife, I discovered a rather simple equation. Fun (181 hits) for her (99 hits) = fun for me.
• 
• There are other buttons, but this is a big one for my wife. Do you know what your wife’s is? How sad if you don’t. I know I didn’t until I started piecing everything together.
• She needs the right environment - that means no kids running around, the nest needs to be secure, clean, etc. If your wife stays home like mine, then bring home dinner for once. Figure out what she is worried about and help remove as many items from her todo list as possible. Then she can focus on more fun activities.
• Whatever you do - if she says no - don’t complain. Suck it up and you can talk about where you both are going wrong (103 hits) later.

These rules apply if you actually want her to be into the experience. If she’s just indulging you (i.e., she’s not interested, but lets you have your fun anyway) then perhaps you should let her know how much you appreciate her kindness.

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As I was on the brink of repairing my marriage my wife and I quit seeing our mutual secular counselor at the same time. She wanted to go by herself. I then started going by myself to improve my anger management and to gather intelligence. Our counselor was in effect acting as an intelligence agent on “our” behalf by providing me with a status update on my wife’s progress towards recovery or lack thereof.

What I learned was interesting. My wife was fairly certain that there was no way I would be able to revise my errant ways on a permanent basis; however, she did indicate that I had been performing better recently. Her mind was still made up to go for the big D word because there was no way in her mind that I would be able to actually make some changes and maintain them for any meaningful length of time.

In her mind it was “He has said he was going to change so many times before - what makes it different this time?”. It had to be different this time. I utilized mental images of being without her or her being with someone else to make sure I didn’t regress. This drove me towards becoming consistently better. This was not changing who I am, but rather was making myself better. We can all stand to improve ourselves. In addition, I did tell her that though I was trying to improve, I am still human and would likely make mistakes. I set her expectations, but let her know I really was trying.

As you start to show signs of improvement you’ve got to make sure that you don’t regress. Figure out a way to monitor your progress and to keep you progressing. If the communications lines are open - one way to do this is to just ask her or find out from other sources how she thinks you are doing. In my case, the other source was our counselor. If you must, tell her why you are doing this i.e., so you can get better to improve the hopes of saving the marriage, but you better not break the law of not being creepy. It is a fine balance. If you must - write down how many “violations (102 hits)” you’ve had per day and per week. Keep track. Your log book (133 hits) is a good place for this.

Ironically, all of this is not too far from what I’ve learned in the corporate world - organizations tend to make “sawtooth” improvements in their processes. Stated another way - two steps forward one step back. This seems to be no different from people like you and me (gee whiz since people seem to form most corporate processes).

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It’s Thanksgiving day and I’m sitting here watching Divorce Court on television. It is amazing some of the things that people going through a divorce do to one another. The really sad thing is the impact that a divorce can have on the generations that follow. It is a statistically proven fact that persons from broken homes are more likely to have a divorce themselves. There are other behaviors that we may pick up from our family of “origin” as well that can be just as destructive to a marriage.

As I was watching divorce court I watched this husband who totally expected his wife to wait on him as though she were his maid. No doubt he learned this from somewhere, possibly his family of origin.

To illustrate this concept let’s start with the following joke:

A young woman is preparing her first thanksgiving dinner. As she gets everything ready for thanksgiving day, she very sternly reminds herself to let the turkey finish thawing in the sink overnight. She puts it in and places the dishrack over the top of the bird. Her husband walks into the kitchen and sees this. “Why are you doing that?” he asks.

“My mom always did that to help the turkey thaw” she told him.

The next day Mom calls to see how everything is going. “Fine, Ma. I have everything ready to go in the oven. I even remembered to put the rack over the turkey last night.”

This seemed to confuse her mother a bit. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Oh, I remember you always put the dish rack over the turkey when it was thawing in the sink,” she said.

There was a pause on the end of the line. “Yes, but honey, we had cats!”

Got the idea? I can relate this to my own personal experiences and how it affected my marriage.

I grew up in a small town where a great deal of the male population inherited a number of behaviors from their immigrant forefathers. To outsiders, many of these behaviors would seem a bit harsh by today’s standards; however, within that subculture it is the norm. They are good men - just a bit misguided by today’s standards.

As I approached my own marriage I realized that I did have some inappropriate expectations based on the culture I grew up in and furthermore within the immediate family that I was raised. Every family has its share of secrets and so does mine. The trouble is that if you believe that any poor behavior towards your wife is appropriate because that is the way you grew up. If this is the case with you, perhaps you need to investigate whether the way you grew up was actually correct. I know this hurts, but it is something that you need to at least think about. “Your way” may truly be the best way, but you need to realize that your spouse didn’t grow up in the same family and possibly culture as yourself.

It gets worse though. I know many people in the Christian “family” who tend to rationalize poor behavior and then source it to the Bible. I was one of them. For instance - us guys tend to love the passages about women being required to be submissive to their husbands “according to the Bible”. We always seem to miss the other part to that though. We are required to love our wives as Christ loved his Church. How did Christ love his Church? He died for it and that is exactly how you need to love your wife.

Side Note - I recently found out that this same logic was used to rationalize the owning of slaves in the 1800s by “good” Christians. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

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I like the movie “As Good as it Gets” with Jack Nicholson. There is one part of the movie that I found especially interesting. The hero of the show, albeit a misguided hero at times, is a writer who has a fairly unique ability to author in a way that reaches women. At some point during the movie a woman asks our hero - “How do you do it?” - “How do you know how to reach women?” Jack responds quite simply “I write my characters as men, but just remove logic and reasoning.”

We know that guys just don’t get it most of the time. All of the articles written on this site to date have been from a male’s perspective. It is time to change the beat. I have a friend who is currently on the brink of the nasty D word. She is fed up and is running out of steam with her husband. She is on her “last legs”.  I truly pray that her story turns out for the better, but the reality is I don’t know how it will turn out and neither does she.

We have an opportunity to see things from a woman’s point of view. This friend of mine has offered to write about her struggle on the site. Please keep your prayers with her and hopefully her story will turn out with a happy ending. If not, maybe someone can learn from her.

I bring you - “aunt-b”. Her first post will be coming shortly.

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There is a scene in the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” where the patriarch in the family believes that since he is the head of the family things should be his way. There is no way his daughter is going to marry a non-Greek agnostic. His wife slyly retorts - the head can not move without a neck! His wife managed to convince the patriarch otherwise about the approval of his daughter’s suitor. Before the movie was complete the non-Greek agnostic actually goes through the Church ceremonies.

How lucky for this woman getting married that they could begin to agree on such a significant religious issue well before the marriage had commenced. Others are not as fortunate. Some of us are confronted with situations where we think we know our spouse’s spiritual leanings, but over a period of time we learn the truth or our spouse’s faith begins to waiver as was the case with my wife.

I discussed this subject with a friend of mine having some marital problems of her own today. Apparently her husband doesn’t believe in praying and is a bit on the agnostic side. In effect - he either never believed or has become so lost that it as though he never did. I decided to refer my friend to some Biblical passages that I uncovered during my own search to save my marriage. 1 Corinthians (130 hits) 7:13-15 discusses the subject of divorce. For those who have never read the Bible - this is an excerpt from a passage from one of Jesus’ disciples, Paul, written to the Greeks of Corinth about many topics including marriage.

I believe the intent of these specific verses is that if you are Christian and your spouse is not, you should lead by example in your marriage and hopefully your spouse will eventually turn to God. It also indicates that if your spouse is not a believer and decides to leave, then as a Christian you should let them. It seems that this may be a bit of a Biblical loop-hole for Christians married to non-believers.

I doubt a loop-hole is what you need if you are reading this though. I imagine you really want to save your marriage, even if your spouse’s spiritual leanings or lack thereof, are different from your own. I imagine that somewhere deep down inside you really love your spouse and would prefer not to exercise some Biblical loop-hole, but instead save your marriage. There are plenty of people who have done it. Let me tell you about one.

A family member of mine told me about his mother in law who waited 30 years for her husband to stop being an abusive alcoholic. As the story was told to me, this guy was agnostic as well. At some point, this man had what alcoholics sometimes call “a moment of clarity”. He felt the presence of the Divine and never drank again. What dedication to the marriage that woman must have had to wait that long. If he had ever wanted to leave, and I imagine there were times that he did, then his wife would have been fully justified in releasing him if she stuck strictly to the letter of the law in what Paul wrote. Instead, she waited patiently for him to change. That kind of strength is rare in our 24X7 (157 hits) society. Most of us would just waltz on down to the court house and get a divorce.

The hope is that through the assistance of the Man above, your unwaivering faith, and unconditional love, that you may eventually help save your marriage and your spouse’s soul to boot! If you are a believer just remember, you are not alone in this. For those who don’t believe in Jesus- getting your spouse back may hurt as bad as crucifixion but it is still possible. It will take a different kind of love from you, one that you may not be used to.

Did you know that the Greeks actually had several words to describe the different kinds of love? Is the mysterious concept of creating a working marriage Greek to you? Fortunately for you - there is a book (12 hits) that talks all about the different kinds of love as they relate to marriage.

I’ve observed in my own search that many of the secular resources out there actually borrowed many of the concepts from the Bible. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but I think it is ironic that there are timeless truths written in the ancient Hebrew and Greek Biblical texts. They have been translated and repackaged into something even the modern divorce “trigger happy” sophisticate can understand.

Even if you don’t believe in all this Bible stuff you can still learn some valuable lessons.

Check out the first three chapters of Hosea, and especially 1 Corinthians (130 hits). For those of you who can’t seem to say the right thing to your wife - check out James 3.

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Okay - I’m a fan of Star Trek. Yeah I said it. That’s not to say that I go around wearing Vulcan ears and attending “trekie” conferences, but I do enjoy the movies. In a weird way, they seem to much more in tune with some of our own internal struggles than do many of the other outer space genres (e.g., Star Wars) and the premise just seems much more plausible to me. I believe George Lucas has actually stated that the target audience for his Star Wars movies are kids so go figure.

My favorite Star Trek character has always been Spock. This guy struggles with his own humanity. In retrospect, maybe the reason I like this character is that I could relate to his struggle. Some of you guys may be very much in touch with your inner woman or whatever, but I certainly wasn’t and it lead me to a very dangerous place with our marriage.

Logic vs. Emotion

Women seem to possess some sort of instinctive knowledge of relationships that us poor fellows have to learn over time or through very traumatic experience like having divorce papers filed. I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but I think as general rule most of us guys struggle with this. The bad news is that though women may have these built in skills with emotions / relationships they may not always have the analytical skills to go with it. I guess guys do have a purpose after all. Now there are some very analytical women out there and I have certainly met many of them in the corporate world; however, most that I have met are more intuitive than logical until they reach a certain age. This is based on just my personal experiences so please don’t accuse me of being some kind of chauvinist or woman hater because I’m not.

The point to all of this is how do you reason with someone whose analytical skills aren’t as strong as your own, and furthermore how do you reason with someone who wants a divorce? It doesn’t work that way my friend. You have to show her by your own example, not talk her to death.

Many guys think that once their woman has decided to leave that they can “talk her out of it”. It didn’t work that way for me and I’ve heard plenty of other folks agree with me. There are some interesting points about logic that I noticed during the war to save my marriage.

• I thought I always “won” any kind of reason / logic based debate with my wife, but in reality I was winning the battle at the expense of the war. You know this has happened to you if you get a sarcastic variation of “of course honey, you are always right” in response to winning a debate. I later learned that this was one of my wife’s biggest issues with our marriage. She could never win! Don’t be like I was. Throw her a bone, man!
• I learned to respect her wishes even though it made me personally vulnerable. I agreed to some of her wishes that were illogical. I had to really trust in God on this part, because my brain was telling me that many things I was agreeing to would hurt me. There was one point where she requested that I sign the papers. I had planned on stalling her out on the divorce, but finally said “Yes Ma’am - if this is what you want show me where to sign.” I respected her wishes even though her wishes would hurt me. I did tell her that I did not want this, but was reluctantly agreeing to her wishes if that is what she wanted. In essence - being selfless. You can’t do this just to “Call her bluff”. Now let me caution you on this part, my wife was a Christian who was fast heading towards agnostic so I was able to trust in God on this one. If she started out as a non-believer I’m not so sure I would have done this.
• I realized that once she was in the “divorce is the only option” state of mind that I could no longer reason with her. I needed to call in backup and that’s what I did. A friend referred me to an awesome Christian marriage coach (139 hits). This coach had been doing this for 30 years and really understood that divorce was not the right path for my family. He also had enough reasoning tools and prior experiences under his belt to reason with my wife on “our” behalf.
• My “backup” asked my wife to remove all the emotion to her decisions and confirm that a divorce would actually be harder than her life at the moment. She agreed that it would be. He then turns to me and says “Shohn - she knows that divorce will be harder on her, but she’d rather have that than you.” Wow. Deep revelation for me.
• My “backup” used the following argument. He said - “A divorce will affect you (my wife) for the rest of your life. Give me 30 days to work with Shohn and see if I can turn him around. 30 days is a small amount of time compared to the rest of your lives. I can’t turn him around in a day - I need at least 30.” He then promised her that he could show us the best marriage we had ever had and could ever have if she would just let him work with me for 30 days. Powerful stuff. He then turned to me and said Shohn most of this will rest on your shoulders since she is the one who wants to leave. This person had no reason to help either of us so it made it twice as powerful in her eyes.

• Note: I later asked my wife why she agreed to give me 30 more days and she said it was because our marriage coach was so persistent. Haha!

Good stuff from a very wise man. Now that we’ve covered this I hope you have learned some lessons from this. You’ll need help, but it needs to be the right kind of help. Perhaps there are some pre-screening questions you can ask your counselor or marriage coach.

“Do you believe in divorce?” for starters.

Now since we are on the subject of Star Trek and Spock and all I thought I would help relate the feelings I had as I was going through this rough time.

There is a scene from Star Trek V where our beloved Captain Kirk and Spock are being lead into the very scary “Great Barrier” by Spock’s zealous brother, Cybock. The Great Barrier was a wall of star dust and stellar stuff that separated the center of our galaxy from the rest of the galaxy. There comes a point where everyone is freaking out - “Oh nooo.. not the Great Barrier” to which Cybok replies “It is an illusion - full speed ahead”. Turns out it was just a bunch of dust. This is kind of like the way I felt once I placed my trust in God with regard to my marriage. It felt illogical to place that much trust in someone I couldn’t see, but man did it work! Get out of the driver’s seat buddy - let Him drive.

Go get the movie if you haven’t ever seen it or if it has been awhile so you’ll feel what I’m talking about.

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I once heard that members of Congress prefer personally written letters as opposed to the thousands of form letters written by the various lobbying groups and their supporters.

I decided to write a note to my congress man about the lack of marriage training in my state and nationally.

Do your part if you get through this. Send a note to your local representatives both at the state and federal government level. Make it personal!

We’ll see if I get a response or not, hopefully it isn’t a form letter!

Mr. xxxx,

I recently went through a gruelling time trying to stop my wife and I from divorcing. She did file under xxxx County so this was not just an argument, but rather was very serious. We have managed to rebuild our marriage and it is better than ever now.

Prior to saving the marriage, I noticed that there seems to be a logic flaw in the marriage/divorce rules in xxxx County or the State of xxxx.

We were required to go through a training course on handling our children through the divorce, but I do not recall being required to attend any kind of marriage training prior to receiving my marriage license. If we are required to go to a class for divorce, then I see no reason why the state can’t require classes prior to receiving a marriage license.

As you are undoubtedly aware, the family structure is at the very heart of many social issues that confront our country.

I’d like to see legislation that requires persons seeking marriage to go through training prior to receiving a marriage license. This should be no different than a driver’s license, barber’s license, plumber’s license, etc.

Remember, that with each divorce the odds increase with each generation that more divorces will occur. This affects the very fabric of our societal structure. I believe that such a proposal would receive a warm welcome by both Democrats and Republicans.

I realize that your audience often has more of a national focus, but I think this is an issue from “back home” that affects all of us. The statistics are there to prove that we need more preventative controls to avoid unnecessary divorces.

I know you are a busy man, but if you get a few minutes I’d love to chat with you about this. You can reach me at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Yes that is a Houston number - I live in xxxx though.

Feel free to forward this message to other members of Congress or the President as appropriate.
Thanks,
Shohn

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My grandfather shared with me a simple truth about marriage that I’d like to share with you. My grand parents have been married for well over 50 years so the man must know at least a thing or two about the subject.

If you don’t go to your job or place of employment what happens? You’d get fired right? The same applies to your marriage. It is a job and if you don’t work at it you will get fired i.e., divorced.

Simple.

I think this also has another lesson that my grandfather may not have seen. At my job we like to say work smarter not harder. I believe this also applies to a marriage. You can give her chocolates every single day of your life, but if chocolates are meaningless to her what good are your efforts doing? Food for thought!

In addition, I have learned not to compare her to my grandmother. This applies to other “model” marriages from those bygone times. This is not the 1950s so don’t expect your family to be like the Beavers. I have noticed that as a general trend women’s tolerance for the “bohemian” male has gone down tremendously with each generation. The bohemian male is that guy who props down in front of the TV in his underwear and asks his wife for a beer and then refuses to help her out some. If you don’t believe me - just ask your mom about some of the stuff she put up with, and then ask your grand mother. You may be surprised.

Unfortunately, depending on which generation you grew up in - you will have to live up to a different standard of behavior from what you may have grown up with and the reality is that the ideal standard of behavior has become lost.

The standard is simple though - love her more than you love yourself. If you follow this principle to the tee, she has no choice but to follow, but it may take time. Love is patient.

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Who was that famous American hero who had a flag with a snake. The flag said “ Don’t tread on me (117 hits)“. I forget, but I’ve always wanted one of those flags:

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As my marriage was falling apart a wise woman from an unlikely source came to me. This is a person I really didn’t like so much at the time because I viewed her as a threat to my marriage and to my family. She was one of my wife’s new found “friends”.

This was a person who I had helped out some through some financial troubles she had been having, but at some point her and my wife became friends. My wife was spending a great deal of time with this person and in my mind was probably receiving counsel from this “friend” to divorce me. It didn’t matter to me at the time whether she was or wasn’t encouraging my wife to leave - what did matter was that it was an unknown and therefore a threat in my mind. If there was a threat to my family I would do anything to stamp out that threat. Think of it this way - if your child is near a snake - do you take the time to ask whether it is poisonous or not? I didn’t either. Soon word began to spread around town about this person - she was being called a “home wrecker”, etc. In retrospect, this wasn’t what should have happened, but alas we make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time.

At some point she came to me and asked about what was being said. She and I discussed what was being said and had what lead into a very thought provoking conversation for me.

I left the conversation with one main theme. I can work as hard as I want to bring good things to my family, but what if I have no family to bring those good things to? This point really hit home for me. If you are a work-a-holic like me, just ask yourself why are you doing all this? If it is for the family, then you better not run them off with the long hours or else all your efforts are for nothing! Working for the family is meaningless if you lose your family. Some more irony at its best.

This friend of my wife and I did reconcile and I think it also helped my wife somewhat because I was no longer seen as the “evil” husband by her friend, but rather as a person with some faults who was actually trying to do the right thing. If you have contact with your wife’s friends - don’t creep them out, but let them see you as the good man that you are.

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If you’ve got kids, this one will apply to you. No kids - well maybe this would work as a cheap 10 minute date.

Needed

• 1 city pond or lake equipped with ducks
• 2 loaves of bread
• Kids or wife (generally not both at the same time if your wife needs space or until marriage recovery has started)

Take the kids to the city pond equipped with ducks. Distribute the loaves of bread to the kids equally and provide instruction on feeding the ducks. Perform once every two to three days if in a crisis (leave mom at home if she needs space). If marriage is finally in recovery, perform once every two to three weeks. Relive childhood with kids.

Total cost $2-$5 unless the nearest pond is an excessive distance.

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