I Have Words. Post-Wedding, Relationship-Type Words
I have been gone from Livejournal for so long that the format looks weird and even the font is alien to me. Well, ok then, let it be weird.
I'm married! A wife! Yay! What does this mean?
. . .
. . .
. . .
I'm still figuring that part out. To this end, I have read two books about marriage that are intended to help people. Both books were given to me by married people. One is Emotionally Engaged: A Bride's Guide to Surviving the "Happiest" Time of Her Life, and the other is The Five Love Languages.
Emotionally Engaged reassured me that all the madness I went through with planning the wedding is not entirely strange or unreasonable, but part of the massive shift in my life I've just gone through. It gave me a useful reminder of how my family and friend relationships are changing and that I have a LOT of emotional luggage still packed tight that needs sorting, cleaning, discarding and laying away.
Most of my worldly possessions are still in my old room at my parents house. You do the metaphorical math here; I'm too tired.
That book also took for granted that I'm going to have kids someday. Hard.
Anyway, the other book, Five Love Languages, sucked me right in with descriptions of couples on the verge of divorce. I don't want that to be me, and while I fully intend to stay with my husband, I do have a brain and I know that shit happens and people change can easily become disconnected in relationships.
This book has a very simple premise. Each human being has a primary "love language" that is a mode of behavior or set of actions that best communicates love. It has to do with how we are raised, with the behaviors we are rewarded or punished for as children, that which we recognize as love, or that which we suppress instead, or take for granted, may be the very thing or the opposite thing our spouse does.
I'm down with that! It sounds solid. Sometimes the best truths are the most simple ones.
Only Five languages, though? Here they are:
1) Words of Affirmation
2) Quality Time
3) Receiving Gifts
4) Acts of Service
5) Physical Touch
The book's author also mentions that you can have a secondary love language, too, and that there are many dialects and such. This metaphor of language carries the book's message: you speak the wrong one, partner does not hear, partner feels devoid of love and now has what the author calls an "empty love tank." Because love is not only a language, it is also a fuel. Everybody needs to be loved to survive, by their spouse more than most, etc.
But really, only five? It seems too simple, and as I was reading, my brain wanted the author to explain further, go deeper, reveal more options and ways, or at least acknowledge that people are more complex and real than a Top Five List. He uses anecdotes to illustrate how falling apart marriages are fixed by husbands and wives learning to speak each others love language, even if it does not come naturally.
I get it! Compromise is important. Paying attention to your partner is important. It's essential to notice reactions and feelings, and go out of your way to show love in the way that means the most. Makes sense, even if it's a bit glib for me. Makes sense, even if the story of the couple that just wanted each other to do some more damn chores to show love depressed me a bit. And the bit that went kind of like this: "Why don't you pick a flower from the side of the street and give it to your wife if she likes gifts, it's the thought that counts," made me roll my eyes like I do whenever anyone opens a musical greeting card in the drugstore. For some that may very well work. I'm no expert like the author, after all, I'm a marriage newbie in all this.
There were parts of this book that resonated with me, don't get me wrong. Some of the messages were enough to kick-start my own self-awareness in startling ways, and I like to think about the different ways I can show love to my husband because its fun and I want to.
I'll get all introspective in a moment. For now we must discuss Chapter 12 of this book "Loving the Unlovely." I thought it would contain some kind of "beauty isn't only skin deep" type of message, perhaps, or learn to love your spouse even if they are grouchy now or having a rough time or mad. Because I'm down with that. I think love can withstand all kinds of other mean emotions.
Ch. 12 had the story of a woman whose husband she hated. "Her feelings of love for him had been killed through the years by his constant criticism and condemnation" (148-149). He refused to get counseling, and the wife went for help for both of them, alone. Is there something not right with this? We are only scratching the surface of wrongness, actually. As you read, keep in mind, the author of this book has hosted seminars, published many books, been in peoples homes, advised couples through troubled times. He is one of those names people feel like they can go to with marriage problems. He has traveled to many countries and studied anthropology.
In the books own words, this woman's husband "cursed" and "mistreated" his wife and when author asked her if her husband had said he hated her? She replied "Yes." This dialogue is even set without tags at the end of the paragraph to stand out and look dramatic. It's written like a scene from a little play. And I thought, 'here's the part where he admits he cannot fix every marriage, recognizes this woman is suffering from verbal and emotional abuse and neglect, and calmly advises her to begin envisioning a life without her husband.
Actually, he suggests to her a six-month long experiment in which she will try to speak her husband's "love language" to him. For six months, she will carry the entire emotional burden of trying to please and accomodate him by loving him, while he may choose to still say horrible, demeaning things to her. I guess her own "love language" just isn't as important as his, and she must do those extra miles on an "empty love tank." Why? Doesn't it fly in the face of all the advice that came before? Isn't this really emotionally toxic for everyone involved? WHY?
"I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you . . . Do to others as you would have them do unto you."
Oh. That's why. This is really where the book gets creatively wrong about Jesus and the Bible.
Love your enemies! Even if your "enemy" is the man you're married to! Would you say this to a child being yelled at and hated? "Just love daddy more and in the correct manner; he'll come 'round for you kid! Dry those tears and act like Jesus."
It gets better. And by "better" I mean it advocates for martial relations steeped in dubious consent issues.
Guess what Abusive Husband's love language is? Does he want his wife to compliment him? Wipe his nose for him or do the dishes for him? Give him a new pair of shoes or something? Spend an afternoon together? Actually, his "love language" is physical touch. Because of course it is. This book has a notable lack of wives with "Physical Touch" as their primary love language, I noticed. Earlier, in Ch. 8, the author described physical touch as not really sexual touch, no, but actually yes, it does include sexual intercourse. Also, men have balls and these balls need tending to. (Really, he goes on a tiny tangent about how men like sex because of Sperm and women like it because Love.)
But if this wife is to fix her troubled marriage, all by herself, with only the angelic influence of her Love Language and the Word of God, she has to have sex with him. Often.
Author tells the troubled wife, "Begin taking more initiative in physical touch and sexual involvement. Surprise him by being aggressive, not simply responding to his advances. Set a goal to have sexual intercourse at least once a week for the first two weeks and twice a week for the following two weeks."
She replies this will be difficult, because "I found it hard to be sexually responsive to him when he ignores me all the time. I have felt used rather than loved in our sexual encounters. He acts as though I am totally unimportant all the rest of the time and then wants to jump in bed and use my body. I have resented that . . ." (155).
Holy shit.
Author responds, "Your response is normal and natural. For most wives, the desire to be sexually intimate with their husbands grows out of sense of being loved . . . If they do not feel loved, the likely feel used in sexual context. That is why loving someone who is not loving you is extremely difficult" (155)
YES IT IS NORMAL AND NATURAL TO NOT WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOUR ABUSIVE HUSBAND. YOU CAN STOP THERE.
And then? This:
"You will probably have to rely heavily in your faith in God in order to do this. Perhaps it will help if you read again Jesus' sermon on loving your enemies, loving those who hate you, loving those who use you. And then ask God to help you practice the teachings of Jesus" (156, emphasis mine).
"loving those who use you?"
"Loving
those
who
use
you"
People? My jaw hit the floor. I was lying in bed at the time, and somehow it unhinged itself, leapt over the side of the mattress and hit the damn carpet with a thump.
Sure, you feel used and humiliated when your husband feels neglects you and then expects you to automatically provide sex as though nothing is wrong. You know what will fix this and make everyone happy? Lay back, grit your teeth, spread your legs for your husband and think of Jesus! Love your enemy with forced sexual attention you don't feel! Conjure up sexual aggression from nowhere, and with depleted emotions! And when you don't feel like you can do it, like you can't bear another night of obligatory, love-language-style sex? Just be like Jesus and "love those who use you."
This is the worst thing I have ever read. It is insidiously bad. If you are a Christian, do you think Jesus wants you to suffer needlessly? He already died on the cross. Why would you advise someone to become a martyr so needlessly, if you believe that humanity's suffering has been soothed and forgiven by God's Son?
And the author goes on to say that he makes sacrifices too. You see, his wife's love language is Acts of Service, and when she asks him to do something, he thinks of Jesus and then goes out and manfully mows the lawn. It's every bit as bad as martial sex that kind of feels as objectifyingly awful as rape. As far as I'm concerned, tolerating and providing sex in order to save your marriage is a very, very awful bargain. Because she did not want him. She did not love or want her husband anymore, she wanted to save the marriage, and she did so pretty much all on her own, with the Bible and Love Language. But it's ok, because while abusive husband never came in for counseling, he took her on a trip to a garden like she wanted. It's almost just as difficult as pretending to be attracted to, kiss and be intimate with, someone who has told you to your face that he hates you.
And that is why Ch. 12 of The Five Love Languages is a steaming, misogynistic crock of false Christian, forced-love shit.
And now I will tell you what I learned from the rest of the book!
What? I can hate bits of a thing and still learn from it. I'm complicated! And in my own glass case of emotions as a newlywed.
Figuring out your own Love Language is like, no actually it IS, taking a quiz in a magazine to find out what personality type you are. I'm pretty sure I know Brent's primary one. But which one is mine? My eyes went right to "Words of Affirmation" because that is how I get my ego juice at work; when someone tells me I've done a good job. But then I think of what happens when someone I love and truly value compliments me. It . . . doesn't take. It slides right off, most of the time, and I brush it aside.
Because I cannot take a compliment, and must verbally undermine any positive thing a loved one says to me. This is a truly bad thing that hurts me and the person saying something good. If it's my husband saying the good things, it hurts him even more, then I feel bad for hurting him, and have more fuel to hate myself, etc.
So my "love tank" has a leak. Or sand in it. Or the wrong kind of fuel that burns and makes a smell and ruins the engine in the long run. They call them emotional "break-downs" for a reason. (lol, I can do trite and easy mechanical metaphors too, author guy! SO MEANINGFUL.) To bring in the other metaphor, my love language deliberately misinterprets what's being said, turns kindness into nastiness, and something important and sweet into something that should just be ignored. Because if it's about me, I know I am no good, and that opinion HATES being challenged. I need to learn to say "Thank you" and leave it at that. But . . . I've sort of known this about myself for a while. It drives everyone who knows me nuts with annoyance sometimes. I don't know how to really fix it, not on a deep fundamental level where it will stay fixed, any more than I could fix an actual car with anything other than duct tape and shit.
Issues like this are too messy to fit into a book about Five Love Languages. Maybe if it were 1000 Ways People Engage in Sneaky Self-Hate? I'm sure that would sell too. People love nothing more than reading about other fucked up people. The distance makes us feel wise.
I'm married! A wife! Yay! What does this mean?
. . .
. . .
. . .
I'm still figuring that part out. To this end, I have read two books about marriage that are intended to help people. Both books were given to me by married people. One is Emotionally Engaged: A Bride's Guide to Surviving the "Happiest" Time of Her Life, and the other is The Five Love Languages.
Emotionally Engaged reassured me that all the madness I went through with planning the wedding is not entirely strange or unreasonable, but part of the massive shift in my life I've just gone through. It gave me a useful reminder of how my family and friend relationships are changing and that I have a LOT of emotional luggage still packed tight that needs sorting, cleaning, discarding and laying away.
Most of my worldly possessions are still in my old room at my parents house. You do the metaphorical math here; I'm too tired.
That book also took for granted that I'm going to have kids someday. Hard.
Anyway, the other book, Five Love Languages, sucked me right in with descriptions of couples on the verge of divorce. I don't want that to be me, and while I fully intend to stay with my husband, I do have a brain and I know that shit happens and people change can easily become disconnected in relationships.
This book has a very simple premise. Each human being has a primary "love language" that is a mode of behavior or set of actions that best communicates love. It has to do with how we are raised, with the behaviors we are rewarded or punished for as children, that which we recognize as love, or that which we suppress instead, or take for granted, may be the very thing or the opposite thing our spouse does.
I'm down with that! It sounds solid. Sometimes the best truths are the most simple ones.
Only Five languages, though? Here they are:
1) Words of Affirmation
2) Quality Time
3) Receiving Gifts
4) Acts of Service
5) Physical Touch
The book's author also mentions that you can have a secondary love language, too, and that there are many dialects and such. This metaphor of language carries the book's message: you speak the wrong one, partner does not hear, partner feels devoid of love and now has what the author calls an "empty love tank." Because love is not only a language, it is also a fuel. Everybody needs to be loved to survive, by their spouse more than most, etc.
But really, only five? It seems too simple, and as I was reading, my brain wanted the author to explain further, go deeper, reveal more options and ways, or at least acknowledge that people are more complex and real than a Top Five List. He uses anecdotes to illustrate how falling apart marriages are fixed by husbands and wives learning to speak each others love language, even if it does not come naturally.
I get it! Compromise is important. Paying attention to your partner is important. It's essential to notice reactions and feelings, and go out of your way to show love in the way that means the most. Makes sense, even if it's a bit glib for me. Makes sense, even if the story of the couple that just wanted each other to do some more damn chores to show love depressed me a bit. And the bit that went kind of like this: "Why don't you pick a flower from the side of the street and give it to your wife if she likes gifts, it's the thought that counts," made me roll my eyes like I do whenever anyone opens a musical greeting card in the drugstore. For some that may very well work. I'm no expert like the author, after all, I'm a marriage newbie in all this.
There were parts of this book that resonated with me, don't get me wrong. Some of the messages were enough to kick-start my own self-awareness in startling ways, and I like to think about the different ways I can show love to my husband because its fun and I want to.
I'll get all introspective in a moment. For now we must discuss Chapter 12 of this book "Loving the Unlovely." I thought it would contain some kind of "beauty isn't only skin deep" type of message, perhaps, or learn to love your spouse even if they are grouchy now or having a rough time or mad. Because I'm down with that. I think love can withstand all kinds of other mean emotions.
Ch. 12 had the story of a woman whose husband she hated. "Her feelings of love for him had been killed through the years by his constant criticism and condemnation" (148-149). He refused to get counseling, and the wife went for help for both of them, alone. Is there something not right with this? We are only scratching the surface of wrongness, actually. As you read, keep in mind, the author of this book has hosted seminars, published many books, been in peoples homes, advised couples through troubled times. He is one of those names people feel like they can go to with marriage problems. He has traveled to many countries and studied anthropology.
In the books own words, this woman's husband "cursed" and "mistreated" his wife and when author asked her if her husband had said he hated her? She replied "Yes." This dialogue is even set without tags at the end of the paragraph to stand out and look dramatic. It's written like a scene from a little play. And I thought, 'here's the part where he admits he cannot fix every marriage, recognizes this woman is suffering from verbal and emotional abuse and neglect, and calmly advises her to begin envisioning a life without her husband.
Actually, he suggests to her a six-month long experiment in which she will try to speak her husband's "love language" to him. For six months, she will carry the entire emotional burden of trying to please and accomodate him by loving him, while he may choose to still say horrible, demeaning things to her. I guess her own "love language" just isn't as important as his, and she must do those extra miles on an "empty love tank." Why? Doesn't it fly in the face of all the advice that came before? Isn't this really emotionally toxic for everyone involved? WHY?
"I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you . . . Do to others as you would have them do unto you."
Oh. That's why. This is really where the book gets creatively wrong about Jesus and the Bible.
Love your enemies! Even if your "enemy" is the man you're married to! Would you say this to a child being yelled at and hated? "Just love daddy more and in the correct manner; he'll come 'round for you kid! Dry those tears and act like Jesus."
It gets better. And by "better" I mean it advocates for martial relations steeped in dubious consent issues.
Guess what Abusive Husband's love language is? Does he want his wife to compliment him? Wipe his nose for him or do the dishes for him? Give him a new pair of shoes or something? Spend an afternoon together? Actually, his "love language" is physical touch. Because of course it is. This book has a notable lack of wives with "Physical Touch" as their primary love language, I noticed. Earlier, in Ch. 8, the author described physical touch as not really sexual touch, no, but actually yes, it does include sexual intercourse. Also, men have balls and these balls need tending to. (Really, he goes on a tiny tangent about how men like sex because of Sperm and women like it because Love.)
But if this wife is to fix her troubled marriage, all by herself, with only the angelic influence of her Love Language and the Word of God, she has to have sex with him. Often.
Author tells the troubled wife, "Begin taking more initiative in physical touch and sexual involvement. Surprise him by being aggressive, not simply responding to his advances. Set a goal to have sexual intercourse at least once a week for the first two weeks and twice a week for the following two weeks."
She replies this will be difficult, because "I found it hard to be sexually responsive to him when he ignores me all the time. I have felt used rather than loved in our sexual encounters. He acts as though I am totally unimportant all the rest of the time and then wants to jump in bed and use my body. I have resented that . . ." (155).
Holy shit.
Author responds, "Your response is normal and natural. For most wives, the desire to be sexually intimate with their husbands grows out of sense of being loved . . . If they do not feel loved, the likely feel used in sexual context. That is why loving someone who is not loving you is extremely difficult" (155)
YES IT IS NORMAL AND NATURAL TO NOT WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOUR ABUSIVE HUSBAND. YOU CAN STOP THERE.
And then? This:
"You will probably have to rely heavily in your faith in God in order to do this. Perhaps it will help if you read again Jesus' sermon on loving your enemies, loving those who hate you, loving those who use you. And then ask God to help you practice the teachings of Jesus" (156, emphasis mine).
"loving those who use you?"
"Loving
those
who
use
you"
People? My jaw hit the floor. I was lying in bed at the time, and somehow it unhinged itself, leapt over the side of the mattress and hit the damn carpet with a thump.
Sure, you feel used and humiliated when your husband feels neglects you and then expects you to automatically provide sex as though nothing is wrong. You know what will fix this and make everyone happy? Lay back, grit your teeth, spread your legs for your husband and think of Jesus! Love your enemy with forced sexual attention you don't feel! Conjure up sexual aggression from nowhere, and with depleted emotions! And when you don't feel like you can do it, like you can't bear another night of obligatory, love-language-style sex? Just be like Jesus and "love those who use you."
This is the worst thing I have ever read. It is insidiously bad. If you are a Christian, do you think Jesus wants you to suffer needlessly? He already died on the cross. Why would you advise someone to become a martyr so needlessly, if you believe that humanity's suffering has been soothed and forgiven by God's Son?
And the author goes on to say that he makes sacrifices too. You see, his wife's love language is Acts of Service, and when she asks him to do something, he thinks of Jesus and then goes out and manfully mows the lawn. It's every bit as bad as martial sex that kind of feels as objectifyingly awful as rape. As far as I'm concerned, tolerating and providing sex in order to save your marriage is a very, very awful bargain. Because she did not want him. She did not love or want her husband anymore, she wanted to save the marriage, and she did so pretty much all on her own, with the Bible and Love Language. But it's ok, because while abusive husband never came in for counseling, he took her on a trip to a garden like she wanted. It's almost just as difficult as pretending to be attracted to, kiss and be intimate with, someone who has told you to your face that he hates you.
And that is why Ch. 12 of The Five Love Languages is a steaming, misogynistic crock of false Christian, forced-love shit.
And now I will tell you what I learned from the rest of the book!
What? I can hate bits of a thing and still learn from it. I'm complicated! And in my own glass case of emotions as a newlywed.
Figuring out your own Love Language is like, no actually it IS, taking a quiz in a magazine to find out what personality type you are. I'm pretty sure I know Brent's primary one. But which one is mine? My eyes went right to "Words of Affirmation" because that is how I get my ego juice at work; when someone tells me I've done a good job. But then I think of what happens when someone I love and truly value compliments me. It . . . doesn't take. It slides right off, most of the time, and I brush it aside.
Because I cannot take a compliment, and must verbally undermine any positive thing a loved one says to me. This is a truly bad thing that hurts me and the person saying something good. If it's my husband saying the good things, it hurts him even more, then I feel bad for hurting him, and have more fuel to hate myself, etc.
So my "love tank" has a leak. Or sand in it. Or the wrong kind of fuel that burns and makes a smell and ruins the engine in the long run. They call them emotional "break-downs" for a reason. (lol, I can do trite and easy mechanical metaphors too, author guy! SO MEANINGFUL.) To bring in the other metaphor, my love language deliberately misinterprets what's being said, turns kindness into nastiness, and something important and sweet into something that should just be ignored. Because if it's about me, I know I am no good, and that opinion HATES being challenged. I need to learn to say "Thank you" and leave it at that. But . . . I've sort of known this about myself for a while. It drives everyone who knows me nuts with annoyance sometimes. I don't know how to really fix it, not on a deep fundamental level where it will stay fixed, any more than I could fix an actual car with anything other than duct tape and shit.
Issues like this are too messy to fit into a book about Five Love Languages. Maybe if it were 1000 Ways People Engage in Sneaky Self-Hate? I'm sure that would sell too. People love nothing more than reading about other fucked up people. The distance makes us feel wise.