Common Marital Mistakes

Let's look at an entry on the Dr. Laura Blog about "marriage mistakes all couples make", which I'd cynically say starts with getting married in the first place. [This entry bumped up from April 2017]

1. Screaming.There is absolutely no justification for yelling at your spouse. If you’re upset about something, count to 15, and then calmly express yourself.

Guilty, guilty, guilty. I am. It's one reason I'm in therapy. I don't want to scream. My my wife would scream at me if she could. She does the equivalent through texts. One time in particular I screamed at her was when the kids were away for the night and I'd jumped through all of the hoops and I was hoping for some long-overdue lovemaking, and she made it clear it wasn't going to happen, basically because she didn't feel motivated to do it.

Yes, I screamed at her. I screamed at her that I was tired of being crapped on and rejected. I screamed that there were women who'd actually wanted me and it was a rotten thing to do to marry me when she didn't. Yes, I'm guilty. [It has been a long time since I last screamed. I'm a beaten dog and realize that I just have to endure, at least for now. - August 2022]

2. Ignoring. If you’re actually too upset to talk, just say, “I’m not ignoring you. I just need to take a little time-out to pull myself together, and then I’ll be good to go.”

I've never, ever ignored my wife. She has ignored me many times, and you know what? The more she ignores me, the better! It means less stress for me, less work for me.

Well, let me qualify that. It's OK as long as she's not going to be home alone with the kids, because then her ignoring me could be an indication that she's having a psychotic break.

3. Trying to agree on everything. Coming to a complete consensus on every issue is not going to happen.

Are you paying attention, guys? There will be disagreements, including unresolved disagreements. Do you really want to legally and financially bind yourself to such a situation?

If you have a difference of opinion, ask yourselves who cares more or is impacted the most. Then let that person make the decision and take the responsibility. However, if you’re not willing to accept the responsibility for something, you can’t bitch about it later.

Yeah, here's what happens with us. My wife will announce or request something. If I disagree, well, that's too bad. She's going to go ahead anyway. I might ask her questions, especially about the possible problems that might result from her decision, and she'll usually accuse me of being pessimistic and raining on her parade. Then, later, when what I was concerned might happen does happen, I'm stuck dealing with it because my wife will say she can't and that she didn't know things would be that bad. The one exception is that she wanted to keep homeschooling, and has wanted to return to homeschooling, but we put the kids in private school and have kept them there, but it was because a couple of experts, including one we needed to sign off on the homeschooling, said my wife wouldn't be able to keep doing it.

4. Making assumptions. Don’t assume anything! If you want to know something, ASK.

Generally good advice, but it can also be helpful to think through what the likely possibilities are before or without asking. Sometimes you'll realize you don't really care all that much and so there is no point to asking.

5. Not communicating. A lot of problems can be avoided if you simply talk to each other.

In our case, the less communication, the better. If she's not communicating with me, then I'm not being given more tasks to do, hearing about how I'm wrong or insufficient in some area, or how much sex is a burden to her. Or I'll hear less about some inane TV show I don't care about. So it's good if she communicates less. And I'm better off if I communicate less, because talking with her rarely improves anything for me. Rather, anything I say can and will be used against me.

6. Lying. If you ever think, “Boy, I hope my spouse never finds out about this,” then don’t do it.

I'm generally for honesty, but really, not telling her things she doesn't need to know is fine, at least in our case.

Sometimes, a spouse has something wrong with them, so that if you tell them something innocuous they'll launch into a tirade and be in a bad mood for a couple of days. Sorry, honestly, especially volunteering something, isn't the best policy in that case.

7. Not making your spouse a priority. Your spouse needs to be adored and appreciated, and given affection, attention, and compliments. Get your pride and ego out of the way, and stop dwelling on what you should be getting.

Generally, yes. But at some point, when things are not right, mitigation is necessary. Let's take the example of a trauma center surgeon. She's there saving lives. And that's her priority. But if she never thinks about her own needs, as in "I really need to be relieved so that I can tinkle, then get something to eat," then she's eventually going to collapse. Making your spouse a priority without them doing the same thing can only last so long.

One More Reason to Limit Relationships

Here's another reason for men to avoid marriage and keep relationships (with women) limited if even bothering with them at all: The Permanent Record. [This is an entry from a few years ago, bumped up.]

Oh, you may think she subscribed to "forgiveness" or even "forgive and forget". But very few women actually do. All it takes is for them to get angry enough, or be hit with the wrong hormone, and things you thought you'd "worked through" together and put behind you as a couple will come back to haunt you. Since nobody is perfect, some of these things could be actual screw-ups on your part, but others will just be matters of taste or things you were right to do (or not do) that she didn't like. It could even be your tone or how you did something.

I was thinking about this because my wife responded to something I told her that should have been good news with a very cold dismissal of indifference, citing that we had to cancel certain plans she'd been excited about a year ago. Never mind that if we had gone through the plans, we'd have several thousand more dollars in credit card debt now.

It hit me that I'm going to be hearing about this literally for the rest of my life. She's going to bring it up over and over again and let it cloud all sorts of things.

Never mind that I make well above the national median household income. She's expensive, and she herself has said so. I refuse to liquidate our retirement savings to sustain a lifestyle that is beyond our means. I don't want to take more tax hits on income on which I've already been taxed and we need MORE retirement savings, not less. It's bad enough we're not putting more away now.

The fact of the matter is, my current income would be more than enough to provide me with a comfortable life, all the involvement in my hobbies I'd like, and a comfortable retirement. This would be the case even if I never increased my income other than along with inflation.

But it's not just me. It's my wife, our kids, and my wife's brother and his wife.

So think about that the next time someone tells you married men are better off financially.

And let The Permanent Record be another reason NOT to marry. If you insist on being in a relationship, when the record becomes too much to deal with, it is time to move on and clear that space in your life for someone fresh. It'll take time for that new record with a new woman to get bad. And the previous woman won't have to deal with you anymore, so you'll be saving her aggravation, right? The Permanent Record is just one of many reasons to keep relationships casual, rather than forming a legal corporation with a woman.

Perfect Timing

It is amazing how my wife "just happens" to pick fights or lays out a long list of complaints about me and/or makes demands about how I need to change (things I never do to her, by the way) a couple of hours before we're due to have sex. Yes, due to have sex. Oh, I wanted sex the days/nights before, but she kept putting it off. Yes, men, get married, and you too can schedule sex, but be prepared for that flight to be canceled. Scheduling makes it all the more easy for a wife to figure out ways to avoid sex with you.

It's funny, all of the women I fornicated with in my wayward youth seemed to want to have sex with me. They're the ones who initiated it into our relationship to begin with, and if we'd subsequently spent any amount of time together in private and did not have some form of sex, they would be concerned and want to know what was wrong.

It is times like this I can't regret having fornicated, because if I hadn't, I'd be damn near suicidal at this point thinking I must be completely repulsive and a terrible lover.

Yes, all of you guys who aren't married but haven't ruled it out of your future - you too can sign a legal document that will: 1) obligate you to give up more than half of everything you'll ever earn and make lifetime payments to a woman who will hate you; 2) automatically assign you paternity of any children she has, even if she conceived them with some genetic basket case while you were working your ass off at the office, and 3) give her default status as your beneficiary and the person who can make decisions for you should you become incapacitated. In return, the law guarantees you... uh... the responsibility of making decisions for her should she become incapacitated. What a deal! What are you waiting for??? You must be some immature boy or immoral cad to not want that!

Oh, by the way, the thing that apparently (who really knows with such irrational creatures) set her off this time? I kid you not, she is upset I did not perjure myself to get out of jury duty because it might... might... interfere with her social plans for a day - social plans I was key to facilitate in the first place by begging like a dog for a favor I can't possibly repay. I did it to make her happy. How ironic is that?

On the Couch

I'm getting counseling.

My wife has repeatedly demanded I get counseling for the times I have lost my temper and yelled. I resisted, figuring if I had time to get counseling, I should instead spend that time doing something I wanted to do. Previously, every time she demanded I get counseling, she dropped the demand or forgot about it completely, because each time she made the demand it was she, in retrospect, who had a problem.

My wife even took video of me during one of my rants. This was to show me how awful I was. I knew that even as it was going on. She demanded I watch it and sent it to me (we weren't in the same place when she made the demand). So I did. And you know what? While she was expecting me to see that things were worse that I realized, when I saw the video I didn't look nearly as bad I had in my own mind.

Anyway, I agree I can handle some situations better, and choosing my battles, I recently relented and agreed to get counseling. So now, for a hour each week, I sit on a couch and talk with a man without anyone else around. Heck, even if he wasn't a therapist that hour would be better than an hour being given marching orders at home, or with the kids fighting with each other and petitioning me for this or that. Sure, let me talk with another man for a hour!

Still, I'd rather be doing something else with the time. Even getting a nap, since I don't enough sleep. Gee, I can't imagine someone is who sleep-deprived ever losing their temper.

Thorns on the Roses

The time my wife and I had together without the kids was good, for the most part. But let me back up. This entry isn't pretty, but it is honest.

There's a reason I asked recently about verbal abuse. Part of what was rough recently was that my wife was saying the kinds of things to me I'd never say to her. It doesn't happen often, but she has given me the finger, threatened to withhold sex (more on that below), and many more things (mind you, I am the one with the anger problem, right?).

I've worked in jobs where I have had to take a lot of insults and yelling, and just shrug it off. But I don't live with those people and trust my finances and very life to those people, or share children with them.

But she apologizes for everything. Some of the stuff she apologizes for is stuff I have not felt I could bring up. And then I'm supposed to accept the apology, but in doing so for some of those things, I’d basically be accusing her of screwing everything up and marrying me under false pretenses, and I don’t want to kill the marriage or hurt her, because despite my gripes there are many things I like about the marriage and I love her.

She's been bitchy and has had little patience lately in dealing with the kids. She's also been having a pity party. I look at her attitude and how she's not keeping herself up and I wonder what happened to the woman I dated. She recognizes that there has been a problem, and is going back on her favorite antidepressant. You should see her collection of medicines. More on that later, too.

Turning Down the Volume

I gave a recap of our horrible vacation here.

At the end of that one evening that started out with me trading shouts with my wife and her sister, my wife kept me awake begging me to get therapy and get drugged for my "rage". I calmly and quietly asked her if I had ever... ever... come out of the blue and just started yelling at anyone. She had to answer no.

It is true, my temper has been a problem for me in my life.

It was a problem when I was a kid, and I learned to control it by the time I was a teen. Now that I think about it, I think I got a handle on my temper about the time I started masturbating to orgasm. Coincidence?

Anger has never been a problem for me professionally. If anything, there are times when I should have displayed anger and didn't.

It hasn't been a problem while I drive (no road rage from me).

As an adult, it has never led to a physical fight or violence.

I don't throw things, hit things or people, kick things or people, push people, or break things.

I don't berate or insult others.

I scream... loudly and angrily... often I'm screaming questions... "Why did you do that? What do you expect me to do?" Or refusal, such as "I'm not going to do that!"

It was never a problem in any of my past relationships – I don't recall that I ever yelled at a girlfriend except perhaps with one who would have already been yelling at me. But sometimes with my family, and that now includes the family I have made, I yell. My wife has correctly noted it is when I think I should have control over something, but don't.

With the kids, it was "STOP [fill the in blank]!" I say "was" because when my wife sat me down to point it out and why it was a problem, I stopped.

Even when the yelling is a response to an angry or yelling statement from another adult, I shouldn't be yelling as often as I am.

But I refuse to drug myself when I know behavior modification can work.

My mind is the last thing that is mine.

I'm not sure I have a need for outside help based on something that happened under very unusual circumstances, and things got better after that, as least as far as I'm concerned. I haven't yelled since. But my wife would argue that it has been a pattern.

Maybe it is.

Tactics in Breaking Bad News

When someone has been seeing someone who threatens suicide if there is a breakup, my advice, stolen from Tom Leykis, is to schedule a session with a licensed therapist with that other person, under the pretense of getting relationship counseling, or with the claim of needing therapy yourself and wanting them along for some of the sessions. Once they are in the session, the dumper needs to tell the therapist what the about-to-be dumped has said as far as harming themselves or others, tell the other person it is over, and walk out. Then the dumped person is legally and morally the responsibility of the therapist.

We (the wife and I) might have to break some bad news to her mother, which will almost certainly send her mother into a drunken rage. Who knows... I need to talk with my wife about it more - maybe there is no good reason to say anything.

But this got me thinking. Besides dumping a suicidal person in a therapy session, where and how are other good places to break bad news that is likely to bring a destructive response?

Well, thanks to the post-9/11 America, I'm thinking a long commercial flight might be a good place, at least for your own protection.

Let's say you're going to dump someone who has not threatened suicide, but threatened (or conducted) violence to you. Why not dump them during a flight? But only if you can remain totally calm. If they go into a rage on the flight, they'll likely commit federal crimes. They get arrested and taken away once the flight is over. You may end up held for questioning for a while, but you'll be protected.

What do you think?

I can imagine the TSA and flight attendants are thinking, No, please, don't let this become an increasing trend.

Making Up and Something New

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The Latest Shark Attack on Dr. Laura Schlessinger

I used to listen to Howard Stern. I've read his books. I've seen his movie. We even have at least one mutual friend. Listening to his show allowed me to listen to other shows, because of the 20-minute marathon commercial breaks. When he left terrestrial radio for satellite, I figured I would keep up on his show by reading recaps on the fan sites, as I wasn't motivated to pay for radio. Turns out the overwhelming majority of his listeners weren't motivated to pay for radio, either. Turns out I wasn't motivated enough to even read the recaps. In my life, just as in the larger pop culture, Stern's relevance has become a faint shadow of what it had been.

In my case, it can probably chalked up to maturing. Nationally, it is not just his move to pay radio, but also TV shows like Jersey Shore and other "reality" shows essentially doing his show on television. Stern's stuff is very funny to adolescent boys, at least the first few times they hear it. When he was a struggling father and long-married husband who made fun of others for getting drunk, and fought with his boss, people could identify with him. But that all changed. I most enjoyed Robin Quivers' news, and I'm a sucker for parody,so I enjoyed those aspects of the show even as I vehemently disagreed with some of the things Stern said or some of his tone.

There is radio for which I'm willing to pay. I started paying so I could get Dr. Laura’s podcasts, just before she announced she was changing the nature of and base for her show by moving to pay radio.

If you haven't heard yet, Howard Stern's prankster fans did a shark attack on Dr. Laura's show yesterday, apparently trashing the second and third hour so horribly that they weren't podcasted (at least not when I downloaded the first hour). They called with bogus calls, made cryptic and not-so cryptic references to Stern's show, and called Dr. Laura Anglo-Saxon words you can't hear on terrestrial radio because the FCC will fine the broadcaster into oblivion.

Stern has loyal, hardcore fans who, living with their parents and collecting checks from the government, have nothing better to do with their time than play toadie for the bully. If they can get their rude verbal assaults rebroadcast on Stern's show as Stern points out what his toadies did to another show, it is the highlight of their year. If Stern doesn't explicity organize and direct these assaults, he certainly encourages them.

There's no winning this sort of thing. Dr. Laura is on the air fewer hours of the day than Stern. Her show is about helping people, not tearing down others. Her listeners are busy working, loving their spouses, and raising their kids. Stern's toadies (a small subset of his listeners) have a lot of free time, stunted emotional development, and a fixation on insults and offensive disruption.

I'm not sure if there is a way to get Stern to stop attacking Dr. Laura on the air, and thus getting the toadies to stop. Has he made a specific demand? I haven't been playing close attention to Stern for many years now, but based on what he used to say and what scant scraps I've read more recently, my guess is that he attacks Dr. Laura because she teaches things like "It's wrong to kill an innocent human being for any reason other than self-defense", her propogating the ideal of saving sex for marriage, and for her past problems with the content of Stern's show and movie, especially now that she has done what he did – moved to satellite to avoid attacks on advertisers. Stern probably feels like she either should have stuck up for him during his battles in the past or shut up about her battles now.

But there is a difference. Stern's show, and related problems, had to do with pushing racy content for titillation. Dr. Laura's show, and related problems, had to do with instilling morals and ethics. If Stern truly can't see the difference, then he has a serious problem.

I'm interested in seeing how Dr. Laura handles this major shark attack. Is there a way to resolve it without a face-to-face broadcasted meeting between Dr. Laura and Howard Stern? Would Dr. Laura agree to such a thing? I wonder what their "bosses" at Sirius XM think about all of this?

You're On the Same Team

Be The Groom wrote about how to fight fair. I love tips like this.

1. Stick to the issue. If the problem is a certain behavior, attitude, hobby, etc, make that the issue of the discussion. Don't bring in every kind of ammo you can think of to whittle her down.

Sandbagging is not good. Although, it is easier for men to keep things distinct than women. That is one reason a man can have a crappy day at work and come home and make passionate love to his wife, while it is more likely that a woman who has had a rough day on the job is not going to feel like getting all lovey. Sometimes, her hubby can change her mind with a massage.

2. Try to work out a solution.

Yes. Whining and complaining and fighting that goes nowhere is destructive.

5. Determine to be on the same page and stand together. Don't let this stuff divide you.

My wife has brought into our marriage hand-holding during disagreements to foster that kind of thinking.

7. Take responsibility for your part and give the benefit of the doubt to your spouse.

Definitely. One of the red flags I saw in a past relationship was always assuming that other people had bad motives. I knew she would think the same thing about me if we married.

Read the rest and his explanations.