Eight random things about our Marriage (AKA Mormon Marriage Mistakes) or Carol's relationship advice

This is a blog tag. I am writing eight random things and then tagging eight people to challenge them to do the same thing. I need to update my links, have been needing to do it for a long time, but while I do that I will tag you anyway to give you time to work on it.

Alexys (Jacks)
Jape (Could be any of the Hickses)
Donna
Kate
Sandy
Amy
Bill (you could send me the list and I could post it?)
Malea

These would be on your own blogs but you post questions on here or let me know you're done. Or comments, insults (less of those) concerns...


Stacey, who started the tag, did eight random things about herself, but there are WAY too many just simply strange random things about me, I am so random, as the title of our blog suggests, randomness is a theme of our family. So while you only have to do random things about yourself (or you could use my idea and do random things about some other aspect, I am doing eight random coincidences about how Slade and I are alike in marriage, or compatable.) These are kind of silly, but I have been wanting since V-Day to do a tribute to our marriage and the miracle but seeming predestination of that, though I am not sure I believe in the second thing, really. I think that it can work out a number of ways, and often people don't find the 'ideal person' for them, even if that person exists, but that person can still make things work and be happy building a life with someone else, just mabye with a bit more work.

I feel like my marriage is not very much work at ALL. I feel bad sometimes that he takes care of me and runs the show a lot, but I DID choose him, and There are many more, I just chose some of the remarkable ones, the ones that sometimes would have led to problems if we hadn't found each other. There are many more things about us that are random coincidences or things we have remarkably in common, but it is a bit long, keep in mind you also don't need to do anything nearly this long, you could say "I have six toes on my left foot" or "I am quitting my job and going to clown school."

Here are eight unique things about how Slade and I chose each other and how we feel we are unusually perfect for each other, to the extent that we would be in bad shape if we hadn't found each other. Many seem way to unusual of features of compatibility to be coincidence, although I am open to it being.

The likelihood that something is ACTALLY just coincidence is usually underestimated, so I don't want to overblow my opinion that it seems amazing that the two of us who seem to match each other's strange random quirkiness were put in each other's way early on. Some people look at having met someone as a sign that it was meant to be, but that is rather tautological. People say "there was very little chance that we would have met each other of all the people in the world if it wasn't the right thing." Well, there is a one in six billion chance of standing behind a person at the supermarket line, but that means very little, because you will always stand behind someone. So do we turn around and say wow, I was clearly meant to stand behind you in line! Probably not.

So don't mean to overblow this, but unlike just things like meeting, we have various issues that the other person is the unlikely remedy, etc. And we have grown a lot of opinions together over the years about how we are able to do things in our marriage that are rather unusual, and we don't know if other spouses would be game for it. So anyway, we fell rather fortunate, and feel that our relationship is the place where we go to retreat from the world and be alone with someone that cherishes us for how very unlikely and lucky it was that we bumped into each other, however that came to be.



1. Slade and I each when we were very young wanted someone who was a powerthinker, was capable of taking a concept and exploring the various ins and outs of it for hours on end and was generally well educated enough to be able to understand each other when we went off on our various musing. That isn't unusual because Drake is really philosophical at his age, and we were three years older. We each wanted someone who was well educated, not just formally. We both have background on various philosophical/historical/science topics that enable us to be able to understand each other fairly efficiently.

2. I was the first girl that he was ever interested in, and the only one, because of the fact that he is a misogynist, and he admits that. It certainly isn't that he didn't have opportunities. He had women throw themselves at him before he met me, on his mission, and at BYU AND SINCE WE'VE BEEN MARRIED AT INTEL. He hasnt gone into the specifics on that one. But I know it is true because one time before a business trip I saw him putting on a costume wedding ring (He lost his on a scouting trip). I asked him why he was doing that, and he was pretty evasive for a while. But it turns out that he thinks it is a bit risky going on business trips without his ring, because he gets a bit of unwanted attention.

So he has had many other chances to get involved with other women, he just declined due to lack of interest and compatibility. So the reason I was his first date was not because he didn't have opportunity. I was once accosted in the bathroom at a stake dance by a hoard of his fans:

Girls: What did you do to get him to ask you out, because 'we all like Slade.'
One of the girls: I don't!
The rest in unison: Yes you do!
The girl: Ok, I do.

I don't know what I did, but it wasn't just 'a feeling' or anything warm and fuzzy on Slade's part. He said he had one at first, and I did eventually. It consisted basically of me passing a test administered in the form of a five-hour telephone interview until three in the morning where I answered all of the questions to his satisfaction. He asked me questions about all of life's basics and he determined compatibility. So it wasn't exactly love at first sight, although there must have been something that caused him to administer the interview in the first place, because this was the FIRST TIME HE HAD CALLED A GIRL. He said it was because (misogyny) he hadn't ever met a girl he wanted to talk to before.

Anyway, his misogyny is a problem because many men can find girlfriends pretty easy. They come home from their mission and bang, find one, break up bang, find another. But he doesn't like girls. And not THAT WAY. In fact far from being like the men who don't like girls THAT WAY he can hardly stand to talk to them. Not only would he have a problem finding someone to get engaged to in any particular BYU ward or whatever like happens fairly frequently, it was rather amazing that he found someone like me who isn't very much like most women in major ways so he can stand me.

3. I was also impressed with his accomplishments. I thought he was kind of cute, but he looked too young. Thankfully he has matured, and WOW what a gorgeous man he is now! But at the time, I was sort of interested until I heard he was going to be valedictorian, and then WHAMO. So that's why I am going to devote myself full time to my kids' getting As in the next few years. They will attract girls that are looking for the right things.

4. He was impressed with my accomplishments. I was only the eighth in my class, though we have argued about this over the years, but my high school was decidedly more college prep. There were many AP classes crammed full and many Merit Scholars, etc. He liked it that I could sing, and various things that he knew would be passed on to his kids, so in a way he was thinking of them. But one of the things that impressed him the most was that I was taking care of my elderly grandmother. The summer that we got close my dad and I were living alone and I cooked dinner and took it over to her house every night. That is how I learned how to cook, and probably we had a few questionable dinners. But he said that many of the girls that he knew probably weren't willing to spend their time that way every night. So I thought that was pretty nice, too, because probably most of the guys that I knew weren't going to be impressed by that, in fact I knew a few 'cool' guys that actually made fun of me because of it.

5. We made each other feel special. I told Slade that I felt that there were things about him that made him completely unique and superior of all people on the planet. I still do. I told him recently that if he ever became available you would be able to see the line from space, considering all the fans he still gets. I have had so many women tell me that he's attractive it is quite uncomfortable sometimes. He told me that he felt I would change the world one day, because he thought that I was capable of solving problems theoretically that he thought one day would be put to important use. So by finding each other we had someone that believed in us the way that perhaps no one else would have.

I think that Slade is getting to the point where people say the same things that I have said about him over the years. (I am too now that I write a lot online and people can separate my ideas from the individual, which enables them to evaluate them without as much bias). People in the ward go on and on and on about Slade. Whenever people find out I'm his wife I have an in with them and they tell me how they learned to have faith in humanity because of him or some such thing. A lot of parents tell me that their son or daughter went on a mission because of him.

He is the only person who can keep one of the kids in the ward behaving during Sacrament meeting, so the kid sits with us every week, and he gets moved up as that class' teacher every year. They have tried to have other people deal with him, even for short amounts of time. Someone was called as Slade's assistant, and the second week Slade taught that man and the kid ended up WRESTLING ON THE FLOOR because of a dispute about what he could write on the board. It is in some ways kind of a waste because people say that his lessons are the most interesting they have ever heard, even the ones he prepares for the 11-yr-olds, so the ward would do well to have him teaching more people, and some people have requested him to teach GD or EQ, but he has that assignment because it is the most challenging in the ward. Many have tried but eventually have problems. The kid's dad doesn't want to, even though he finally agreed to be Slade's assistant. Although Slade takes him out and stuff.

You know how kids and pets can sense good? That is why they both drip all over Slade like crazy. I noticed this while we were dating. Charity said that she got a comment about how good she was when she was playing with a kid bouncing him on her knee. Probably she would have eventually figured this out because she is probably like him, but she said that she was at the time doing something that Slade did with her when she was little. Kids that don't know him gravitate to him. It is one of the best things that I have done for my kids to choose him as their father, as he is not only fun and kind but a stern and solid leader and good example. We do a lot of things as a family that are unusual but that get the kids attention and win them over to our way of doing things in that I have a feeling they will do them when they grow up, at least the ones that they think work. I hope that my kids will do better than we do, and I hope they will be smarter than we are and have fewer problems, so in general I hope they exceed what we have accomplished, bigtime. I am not a Pygmalion parent.

6. We are fairly unique in that we have both arrived at the opinion that we don't believe in "Loving someone just the way they are" like Billy Joel. Actually, this is not exactly true, we DO love each other just so, but the song "Don't go changin to try to please me" also by Joel reveals an unwise limitation in marriage goals. We feel that we can help each other improve, and so this doesn't preclude making suggestions for improvement, and many couples are averse to that in a big way. Criticism makes them angry. Actually women are worse about that, bigtime, and so that's why it usually comes up in relation to men loving women without criticism and them asking things like do I look fat in this and their husband not being able to answer frankly, but wives always tell their husbands which tie they like or that they should loose weight or "You're not going to wear THAT are you" That is all women. And I have to say that I don't become popular in Relief Society for my views about how women should stop all of this Queen Bee nonsense that they tend to have picked up.

Also, we would rather discuss disagreements and feelings now and work through them with frank discussion rather than have something keep coming up and causing fights or pouting for the next forty years. Many people feel that it is best not to disagree, and that disagreements or criticism is the sign of a marriage that isn't picture perfect. But that is crazy. No marriage is without silly squabbles on up to serious differences of opinion. A way to deal with and permanently dispatch these is essential for a relationship that continues to improve with age.

And some people pat themselves on the back that they 'never fight.' We never have knock down dragouts, in fact we don't really have the kind of fights where we say hurtful things about each other or yell, but we do openly disagree. And the people that DON'T usually do something that is equivalent but much more destructive. People that pout at each other or say things under the surface ARE communicating their hurt feelings, they are just doing it in a way that can't lead to improvement. If I am doing something that causes someone to want to hurt me back or causes them to want to not talk to me or spend less time with me, I would much rather have an open and cool headed discussion about that thing. Because if is worth having hurt feelings about or worth limiting the relationship over, then it is worth discussing.

That is, if we have good motives. Sometimes people want the drama of a reason to resent someone, it is like a way to make their lives be like a soap opera and more interesting. And some people always want some reason to be hostile, or to have an 'us vs. them' attitude. They aren't happy unless they have some reason to be critical of someone and they need to have someone in their life that they are feuding with. Again this is usually just women. I guess Slade and I are both a bit misogynistic.

But I have to admit that Slade was a bit of a bit of a pouter when we first met. He had the prejudice that openly arguing was a bad thing, always, but pouting or withdrawing or occasionally being snippy or whatever was just fine. It took me a while to realize that pouting instead of arguing was MUCH worse, not just the same. Because arguing can be done with the hope of resolving the disagreement so that it doesn't need to happen again. There are things that we disagreed about early in our relationship that don't come up anymore, and that is a blessing because things are very tranquil now. Pouting is just empty communication of bad feelings done intentionally to get back at the other person and hurt them, without the hope of eventually having things heal and improve. This is one way that he has come to my side over the years. He doesn't pout anymore, especially after realizing how good it is that I don't pout and how much he hates it when people do.

But if we truly want to heal and nourish the relationships in our lives, especially marriages, we will feel that it is important to give and receive constructive criticism, in two directions. First, we will want to be open with peole about the things that are going to cause problems for us in the relationship. If it isn't important enough to discuss, then it shouldn't be important enough to have bad feelings about our talk to someone else about. Ideally, it would be the best thing to dispatch it totally and not have it be a problem for us at all. But if we can't do that, then communicating openly is better than any alternative. And we shouldn't have a prejudice about our own way of dealing with things passive aggressively (below the surface and communicated in other ways).

Also, wanting people in our lives to never say anything openly critical is unreasonable and destructive to the relationship, and it is doing our selves a disservice because it is assuming that the way to be perfect it to pretend that we are perfect NOW by defining ourselves that way and surrounding ourselves with only people that will tell us that we are perfect the way we are instead of suggesting ways we can improve. If we don't take feedback from those that love us, we will be sure to not be able to please those that don't. So we should be open to it and give them good reactions when they offer it so they are rewarded for it and continue dealing with their feelings by coming to us openly than talking about them behind our backs or simply not wanting to be around us.

I think that the reason that family is the vehicle for perfection is that it should (not that it always does) prevent a safe atmosphere for us to be able to see our own imperfections and do something about them. If we don't do that, if instead we just surround ourselves with people that tell us we are perfect NOW, and eliminate from our lives people that don't do that, it prevents us from moving forward toward ACTUAL perfection.

We know theoretically that none of us is perfect now, so we shouldn't expect the people in our lives to indicate that we ARE. Not wanting their feedback on the things we can do to improve is failing to utilize a valuable resource. So basically our marriage can serve as a vehicle by which we are both becoming better people.

Slade and I are doing that to at least some extent. Obviously we have a long way to go and I have unfortunately had some derailments in the last few years that prevent me from working on the things that I would like to. But if we keep our view of marriage as it is (and in fact a RARE VIEW of marriage because it goes against the cultural preference) we can become more like the person that we each saw in each other when we met. We love each other as we are, but see and expect progress toward the person that we COULD BECOME.

So you don't hear this that often, but it is why the 'Don't you love me the way I AM?" sentiment is so destructive in my opinion (a dangerous cultural notion about love). Many people are unable to withstand their spouse saying anything critical and it causes problems, like it does in other family or friends. But marrying someone that you trust to make good observations about you and how you can improve yourself takes advantage of applying the opinion of the person who knows you best and wants the best for you, and not doing this passes up a good opportunity.

7. Womens' LIP

I am not a controlling wife, as they go. I think this is a result of the fact that I got married mature enough to know that I didn't want a husband that I could boss around. Teenaged girls and others that aren't mature think it is really cool to have a boyfriend they can boss around. When they first start to date they think it is a novel thing to be treated like the queen. But that gets old pretty fast. Like Ed in Raising Arizona, she said "That ain't no man for a husband." If women can boss around their husband it will mean that other people can, too. Like people at his work, other relatives, etc. And that's not really fun.

When I started dating Slade I had had enough experience with relationships to know that i wanted a man in charge of me and of my family. A MAN not just a male. Someone that wouldn't mind taking control and wielding it and not letting me boss him around or cower in front of my sassiness and my nagging. I wanted him to get me in line. SERIOUSLY. It has paid off in the last few years when he has really needed to be in control. He could see that this whole treating of my problems as some sort of mental health thing was bogus and that I really needed was to get some sleep. But not many women want this. And this goes beyond not wanting their husbands to ever be critical, the "Don't you love me the way I AM? stuff? Men let their wives boss them around WAY too much, and I am one of the least likely to force Slade into allowing my lip than anyone I know. Not that many of the women I know are REALLY BAD about it, but basically most men are like "Ok, whatever you say honey" and will put up with things that they really don't think are acceptable situations in the name of keeping peace with a wife that would be seriously hard to deal with and make life miserable if they didn't yield.

That's why I think it is ironic that we think the man is actually in charge, because it is so seldom that he is actually the one that makes the final decisions, or the initial decisions, or any in between. "Ok honey" is usually the mantra of Mormon Men. They are seriously petrified with fear of their wives beig mad at them. When the mom of the house is mad it is a very solemn occasion and very rarely is there any sense that she is being abusive like there would if the dad was running around angry or insisting on his way"

If I had a good forum for expressing this church wide, I would do it, because I think it is a practical application of not only the last thing that we should allow our spouses to help I really haven't heard any other explanations of it that make sense, probably because even in Elders' Quorum and Gen Conference, men are encouraged to hold their tongues about their wives because they are supposed to act like their wives are queens etc. Ironically, you don't hear that much about women being not supposed to be critical. Men are encouraged to listen to their wives going off on them. Though I think that women tend to not be as conservative with the things they say and they don't really view it as the way they are helping their husbands become better people they just are usually ticked off and being selfish, of their husbands' time and attentions. Women don't usually encourage their husbands to take callings that take a lot of time, for one thing, because they are jealous of their husbands' every second. Men tend to want their wives to do good things, and so there is really not an equitable situation. The womens' lib mentality is so frightening to men in the church even though the party line is that men are in charge. But practically speaking, no one has any doubts about who ACTUALLY is in charge of the family or the relationship.

8. We wanted someone who is unconventional, who doesn't tend to go along with the crowd at all ever. We both tend not to like the tendency in the church to be subjective, impressionistic, impulsive, irrational, go by the gut. Because that is a hallmark of each of us, that we don't do or think things 'just because' and in fact we both tend to see the danger of that fairly clearly. Even very smart, well-educated people, if they don't evaluate the premises of various cultural beliefs (myths) it will cause problems, and even misery. Relationship problems and divorce rates in the church are impacted by cultural behavior when it comes to love and marriage.

(I AM INCLUDING THIS NOT BECAUSE IT IS PARTICULARLY RELATED BUT BECAUSE IT FITS UNDER MY ALTERNATE TITLE)

I have a lot of specific problems with this and will discuss it later I am sure. I recently thought about the fact that it is rejecting the divine in all of us.
A lot of the time it is not particularly harmful. If someone wants to go to a particular school or take a particular job because they 'know it is right,' fine whatever. Again, it is always nice to 'know in their mind AND their heart' like the scriptures encourage, rather than just 'I don't know why, but I am just supposed to.' If God just has us take marching orders like a pawn, it is really not an educational experience. We are not learning how to make good decisions or become more like him. In fact, reason is really like how God chooses things, it is just that He has more information. Most of the time if God were to tell us what job to take, it would be the job that made sense to take. So we like to be unconventional and think about how things are different than they seem. If one of us was like that and not the other, it would drive one of us crazy, actually both.

I will post more about that I am sure, particularly about how gut instinct rejects divine potential, and how Joseph Smith's model of inspiration is the one we should go for, ad that it is a different one than in the ancient and primitive dispensation of Adam, where he did things 'why I know not.' We do things because we should, obviously but with the increasing level of knowledge capability, we are also encouraged to decide in our 'mind and our heart.' Like Joseph Smith, who described it as a stupor of thought when things aren't right. We with modern revelation and access to education and reason can fall back on most of the time making a decision because it makes sense, like what school to go to because of the best aid package, because most of the time that will probably be how God would make the decision for us. If it isn't and we are living righteously, he will let us know.

So that makes it a fallback situation where at the very LEAST we would have used our divine power of reason to make decisions, that other animals can't do but we can because we are in his image. We wouldn't want to instead fall back on gut instinct or impressions or impulses, because those are the decision making powers of lower species. Particularly decisions that are high in emotion, such as who to marry tend to be made this way, when we should use both. I think that may have something to do with our high divorce rate, and I would like to see it change someday. Because we could have the feeling that it is right, plus getting to know the person and determining compatibility.

If one of those
isn't there, it wouldn't be mind
and heart, which offer security for emotional
young people who are rather likely to be wrong, at least
some of the time, not excluding potentially, this time, which is
particularly full of emotion and tumultuousness and new feelings and
situations. We know someone who was fallen for the obviously wrong person
and they all KNOW it is the right thing, so they take risks, come home back
home after a few months of marriage. A lot of people are fine after they
drive through red lights, but "I did it and I'm fine" isn't a reason to
suggest that someone take that as a habbit. Marrying young and when a
a couple hardly knows each other is risky, even though many people
turn out ok after they do. And also it sets a bad precedent for
those who would need to get to know their fiance before they
found out the dealbreaker that would have them coming home
after two months, regardless of how right they happened
to feel it was, and if they were wrong why wait. It is
hubris to think that all these other people should
avoid risk taking but we will be fine because
God's looking out for us. The typical "I
feel good about it" can be modelled by]
others in an extreme situation, like
like getting married before they
go on missions, and leaving
their spouse. After all, we
all have impulses that
aren't good like that.
Like saying something
hurtful to someone
Heart AND mind is
needed to avoid
a possibly bad
decision. It
isn't the
place to
risk
it
!


My marriage is one thing that I think I did right in my life. I found a guy that I liked for the right reasons, and who liked me for the right reasons, things they say that you should hold out for a guy to say about you, that you were sweet to children and old people, you had an amazing mind that he wanted to educate so that it could make a difference in the world. I chose him after a long courtship where we carefully brought up many of the important issues of compatibility like moeny, religion, family, communication styles, educating our kids, working, retirement, housing, how to spend our time, how we wanted to live, among many MANY others. We made sure that many disagreements would come up during the course of our dating. And they did. We had one or two particularly diffcult issues that created an awkward situation probably three fourths of the tie when we were dating, and not only did we survive it, we got stronger and more in love as we went on, not less. We didn't loose that goofy feeling that we had at first and then feel indifferent. Well, we lost a BIT of the giddy bit, but only the part that made us forget what date it was and stuff that didn't help much.
Other people that might be vulnerable to examples of others see other people justify risky behavior for that reason, and they have the high emotional draw, but without the mind being there there isn't anything to interpret the heart. Nobody says things like that but me and Slade, so it is a goodthing we have found each other.