Marriage You Want

Lately I keep thinking about this movie from my childhood, Friendship's Field.

"Set in 1965, a boy learns about friendship, differences and dignity when Mexican families come to work on his father's farm."

More memorable than the movie, was the teaching moment my dad seized after watching it. He wanted us to know that the dynamics in the film weren't just a story, they were real and relevant to us.

He told us that he grew up in a farming community that often had Mexican families come and go with the work available. He told us how sad it always made him to see them treated poorly and how he always made a point to not be like that. He told us about fond memories of playing with kids who didn't speak english but they managed to have a good time anyway.

My dad often referenced his childhood on a farm and how sometimes he worried about being able to adequately teach the values of his childhood to his children who were growing up in a much different setting.

I imagine he was usually thinking about the value of hard work when he talked like that, but based on what he shared after watching Friendship's Field, I think he also worried about us learning to value people who were different when he was raising us in a part of the world that had very little diversity.

I largely credit my dad for giving me an interest in the world and a respect for other traditions. No one else I knew had a dad who would talk about making friends with migrants or what he was learning from the Quran translation he just bought.

It's the values from my childhood that are helping me navigate a really tumultuous time in the United States right now. I know how a person deserves to be treated regardless of any external factor, least of all where they are from.

All humans deserve to be treated with dignity and when they are not, witnesses are obligated to stand up for them and support accountability for mistreatment.

I'm trying to find the best ways to do that, and today I'm thinking that maybe it includes sharing the 1995 hit Friendship's Field with the next generation for Pizza Night Movie Night.

We need to figure out how to separate anger from poor behavior. There is nothing wrong with feeling angry, even very angry! There is something wrong with being hurtful. There is a difference.

I think we have a hard time seeing the difference because we grew up with adults excusing their poor behavior with their anger.

"Sorry I said that, but you made me so angry! "

Nope.

Just stop at sorry "I said that". You could have been angry without saying the mean thing. Being angry isn't an excuse.

*Full interview with Terry at https://katiecouric.com/health/mental-health/terry-real-trauma-marriage-advice/

A couple’s engagement is not just for wedding planning. It's a critical time for growing and dreaming together to start the marriage off right.

Couples can make the most of this time by consulting with a Marriage and Family Therapist to be sure that they are building their relationship on healthy, sturdy principles.

I work with couples looking forward to marriage using an online tool from Prepare and Enrich. The couple completes an online survey separately, and then Prepare and Enrich processes the data into results that  I can use to guide the couple towards the topics and issues that they would benefit from the most. 

I love this tool. It means that I can offer three powerful hours that cut right to the chase. It creates a high value, efficient way to support a couple when it can make the biggest impact. 

For $400, a couple gets three hours of consulting with me, and the results of their survey to use as a resource for future conversations and growth.

This package is not therapy, but consulting. As such I can offer these services to anyone via video call, regardless of what state they are in. Reach out through my website linked in my bio or send me a direct message on instagram. 

Spread the word!

Shame Fight. It might look like this.

You have a crappy parenting moment. 

Maybe you yelled at the kids or you shut down your teenager and you are pretty sure you are the worst. 

That feeling, right there, that, “They deserve a better parent than me. I’m a piece of garbage.” That’s shame. 

You probably don’t recognize it as such because you are so busy trying to keep shame away that you don’t acknowledge it. You power past it and pretty soon everything people are doing is irritating you. 

Your partner says something normal, but in your ‘busy avoiding shame’ ears you hear an accusation. 

So you defend yourself and insist that you are undervalued or insist that actually, it’s your partner that is the problem. 

And you’re off to the races. 

Fighting about who even knows what because there wasn’t an actual issue to address, just a dysregulated partner looking for a reason to feel crappy that doesn’t have anything to do with the thing they are ashamed of.

That’s a shame fight.

Here’s how to get out of it. Find a few seconds to yourself, lock yourself in the bathroom if you have to. And then…

Acknowledge the Feeling. “I’m feeling ashamed of the way I showed up with the kids earlier. Gosh I hate that I just hurt the people I love. I wish I didn’t do that”

Create Context “That thing that just happened… maybe it actually isn’t evidence that i’m a piece of garbage as much as evidence that I’m human.”

Own it. Apologize and reduce the strength of the pattern by shining light in the very places you don’t want anyone to look. Tell your partner what was going on for you inside. Tell them what you are ashamed of.

Stop trying to get out of your shame hole by digging. Set down the shovel and crawl out with acceptance and compassion.

Alternate title: The Little Red Hen's Recipe for Resentment.

What's harder for you, doing it yourself or asking for help?

Everywhere we turn in our culture we see ideal true love characterized by neediness. I bought into it 100%. I believed that, “You complete me” was the deepest of romantic expressions. This belief was foundational in my dating and early marriage.

And then one day I realized that this framing was not working. We were both kind of miserable and neither of us knew why. I had heard words like codependent and enmeshed but I didn’t really understand what they meant and I had no vision of an alternative. 

This book by Shel Silverstein, “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O” gently challenged my assumptions about a good marriage. Maybe stretching individually didn't need to feel like a threat to our relationship. Maybe growing in our love didn’t mean increasing our need for each other as much as our desire for each other. I hadn’t known that there was a difference.

Once I saw it, though, I longed to try for this different way. I liked that this model emphasized that doing our hard personal work was critical to the longevity of our marriage. The good of the individual wasn't just nice, but critical to the good of the couple.

Making the shift has not always felt good. It’s been downright painful and confusing sometimes. But it’s also been expansive and liberating and solid.

Now we both work hard at developing ourselves and choose to “roll” together as witness to each other’s beautiful and messy lives. We are each responsible for our own happiness and growth and deeply grateful for each other’s company, love, support and perspective as we build a life together.

I often get my inspiration for posts from topics I’m working on in school or in books I’m reading, but lately my mind has been preoccupied by significantly less academic pursuits.

Allow me to introduce you to our bundle of joy, Amos Tevya.

We knew we wanted to use Tevya as a middle name to honor our dearly missed brother in law who died 2 years ago. 

The idea for the name Amos came from two beloved children’s books,

A Sick Day for Amos McGee and Amos & Boris

Two beautiful stories of friendship. I can’t think of anything I want more for my children than that they build a life that knows deep friendship. 

Also, the prophet Amos in the Bible spoke against piety through ritual instead of being righteous by treating people better, especially those who are marginalized.

And then we found a grandfather in baby Amos’ paternal line named Amos who was a pioneer that learned the language of the local indigenous tribe and worked to bring understanding between his people and theirs. 

All beautiful associations for a beautiful baby boy we are honored to welcome to our family.

Normally my son drives himself to work but every once in a while he has to be dropped off.

On Monday he wasn’t thrilled about this. He was a little pouty. Understandable. It’s a drag.

I was cranky, too. I was getting the car for the day, I should have been feeling good.

His negative emotions were making me feel uncomfortable. I found myself wanting to talk him out of his feelings. 

I could tell him how entitled he is, how grateful he should be or how often I had to wait on rides. Tell him that he should be more of a team player, that he’s not the only one in this family. 

Why was I feeling this pull to cut down my own son? Why did I need him to stop pouting? He wasn’t being rude or disrespectful, he was having a feeling I didn’t want him to have because it was making me feel bad. Cutting him down would definitely have turned him off. Sadly, I know this because I’ve done it before. Also, it would puff me up into righteous indignation which is a much more comfortable emotional state than the way his pouting was affecting me.

We do this all the time as parents. Their big emotions make us feel uncomfortable so we justify any means to get rid of them. 

Maybe your child is upset about an upcoming move. Is it tempting to tell him he is selfish and not considering the needs of the family? 

A child consistently gets angry when asked to empty the dishwasher. Do we find ourselves asking less and less of her so we don’t have to be around her anger?

We can grow in our tolerance of our children’s negative emotions.  Then we won't be so prone to cut them down, talk them out of their feelings, or straight up avoid them. Growing up looks like

Dropping off my son and sincerely saying, “I know it sucks, thanks for accommodating to make rides work today."

Moving forward confidently with a move we know will be good for our family and letting our child not like it at all.

Being settled enough in knowing that asking our child to empty the dishwasher is a reasonable request that it doesn’t end in a yelling match when it is done fumingly.

It’s uncomfortable to give space for those uncomfortable feelings, but it’s a discomfort with potential for connection. I’ll take it.

In 8th grade honors English we had a persuasive essay/ debate unit. I represented the pro-gun position. I came from a family of responsible gun owners and had an uncle who was very eager to help me learn NRA talking points. 

I keep seeing many of the same lines I used in that 8th grade debate circulating the internet as memes posted by folks against gun legislation. Especially this one,

“Guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people.” 

The idea is that bad guys will always find a way to hurt people, even if we try to regulate guns it’s not going to slow down bad people from doing bad things. And the flip side is that good guys don’t use guns to hurt people. 

If you believe this then gun legislation is a waste of time and illogical before you even go anywhere near rights and the role of an armed citizenry.

Before accepting this, it seems important to ask some questions. One of them being, “Do people behave differently in the presence of a gun/ if they have access to a gun than those who do not?”

Here’s one study that asked that question by a friend and expert in the field at Ohio State.

The experiment involved placing 60 drivers behind the wheel in Ohio State's Driving Simulation Lab. Participants were randomly assigned a frustrating driving scenario. Half of the participants were then given an unloaded gun in their passenger seat, while the other half were given a tennis racquet. The results suggested that those in the presence of a gun tend to make driver’s act more aggressively.

“The mere presence of a gun in a motor vehicle increases aggressive driving," said Bushman in the article. "The chance that a situation of conflict, like being cut off in traffic, will end up deadly is increased if a gun is available." 

Go to Google Scholar and search “weapons effect”. It’s a whole thing. A part of human nature researched over and over across many cultures all over the world since the landmark study done in 1967. 

Because people are the ones doing the killing, it is all the MORE important for us to enact thoughtful legislation that limits exposure and access to guns so that people can have the best chance at cultivating a pro social brain.