Tagged: marriage
One Teeny, Tiny Flaw
I remember catching my mom in a bookstore aisle, kind of tucked away once. The book she was reading was self-help for “control freaks”. Understand, then, that she was the control freak in our family, and my sense of the encounter was that she was embarrassed that her son had seen that maybe she didn’t want to be.
I barely need to repeat the following, but for the unfaithful readers, please accept without question that my wife isn’t in love with yours truly anymore.
Books actually play a pivotal role in the drama, albeit in an unpredictable way. One of her main complaints to me, about my way of life, is that all my book reading does not lead to more money.
For my part, one of my main “asks” of her is that she stop reading the latest Christian bestselling “health and wealth” sermon transcripts masquerading as books. And truthfully, I don’t care that she reads them, but I would like her to read, at least some of the time, real books—not “The Secret” part 73. I mean even pulp fiction or Louis L’Amour or whatever is flying off the grocery store shelves these days.
This last time home, I saw an unfamiliar book stacked upon her bible called something like, “How to Live With A Manipulative Husband”.
Do you see the problem, folks? It’s easy to miss, so I understand if you don’t.
As for me, I am seriously considering putting out a best seller for us husbands. What do you say?
The title will be, “How to Smarten Up Your Wife AND Get Her to Stop Buying Crap.” Or maybe, “How to Make Your Wife Understand That She Doesn’t Need Makeup and Wigs Just Because All Other Women Wear Them.”
This might need to be a series, actually.
Another could be, “How to Live with a Woman Who, as It Turns Out, Is an Immature Child Who Lacks the Ability to Reason.”
Then there could be one on, “When Your Wife Married You, But Listens to Every Other Human Being Who Has Ever Uttered Speech Sounds Instead.”
The capstone, and I mean Fifty Shades of Grey success, will, of course, be, “How to Actually Get Your Wife to Stop Complaining and Be Happy.”
Men of the blogosphere, I’ve got you pegged as less than 10% of my readership. But what say you? Would you pay to unlock these secrets?
Poverty Can Be Immoral
As I see it, there are two, maybe three, ways to live in poverty.
Firstly, you can be grateful for what you have. This would be the Biblical and wise posture.
Secondly, you could (though I can’t think of anyone like this) remain neutral or ambivalent towards your condition. Asking for nothing more, expecting nothing more, and receiving nothing more. Again, this doesn’t seem to be a real posture, but I am not willing to rule it out.
Thirdly, you can believe that your impoverished condition is somehow not your fault. The flip side of this posture being that you believe you deserve and are worth more material good than you currently possess. This posture, then, is immoral poverty. It is immoral, not merely because it is unbiblical, but because it is rooted in untruth. Put plainly, you will not find an immorally poor individual who isn’t living a life of wild lies. Lies permeate their life like wetness permeates water. They are soaked in lies.
(Take a breath.)
Faithful Reader: Do not mistake the above for useful information. It is trivial observation based on this morning’s fight with my lying wife. Also indicative that the observation is useless is the following: There is nothing that can be done with these people. Their immorality is complete and airtight. They live within a perfectly logical netherworld. There is no prayer available to us that isn’t already floating to the heavens. There is no god capable of changing their behavior, capable of rescue. There is no help to be found on the mountains for this problem.
How does one live alongside such people? It can only be accomplished through exceedingly particular, nuanced, and ultimately discrete analysis of cause and effect.
That, then, is your wisdom for this Choosday, as Twain’s Jim utters it—which calls to mind another big assist: books.
Modern Prayer, From One Modern Dad, In One Modern Marriage
Of late, especially due to participation in a CBS (Community Bible Study) study of the Psalms, I have been hearing Metallica’s lyrics (as sung by James) more and more as prayers. If the reader can understand this concept, then they can understand that the following cryptic glimpse into my marriage is likewise more than a blogpost.
“In six years you haven’t learned that giving the kids snacks right before dinner ruins their appetite for dinner and sets in motion a painfully long pleading to finish, but you’re going to learn how to get rich at a three day everyone-knows-its-a-(un)Christian-scam conference on day trading?”
It’s My Birthday
I grew up on the movie City Slickers.
In short, it is difficult for me to not agree with his aging bit.
There’s also the natural element of “taking stock” in any anniversary. This seems to lead to either 1. forcedly happy and mostly untrue feelings or 2. depressing realities.
Something on my mind today is the recent observation (more to follow in my next reading log post) that life is unfolding precisely as we/I want. That is a scary thought, no? In my case, I put up with a lot of depressing shyat because I want to be around my kids as much as possible. But is there a way to be around them with less drama? I don’t know. It doesn’t appear so. But I am working on it.
I leave you with a sad, but I can report 100% accurate, commentary centering on the concept of “natural virtues” (you might say “inherent virtues” in 2025), with a close look at “veracity” and “savages”. JS Mill is the writer.
Parental Bliss
Your 4 year old is eating a watermelon wedge.
She loves it.
And you love watching her bite diligently closer and closer to the rind.
You turn away to talk to your spouse.
You turn back and there is no more watermelon. No red part. No rind.
Behind the empty plate on the table is nothing but your little girl wearing the satisfied expression that only comes from a job well done.
That is bliss.
A Downright Mean (But Not Mean-Spirited) Observation
It occurs to me near constantly, when it comes to relationship problems, “I am so right!” Nearly every marital issue could be solved by implementing some kind of “rule” or process. Get it? The disagreements all stem from each of us wanting our own way. (This is a given.) But the very idea (only ever presented by yours truly) that we compromise and/or put a “rule” or “plan” into place is so foreign to my non-Western wife that all I can do is assert the following observation:
If my non-Western (code for African) wife ever were to triply 1. See the value of “rules” or “plans” 2. Implement them and 3. Execute them, then all war (civil and otherwise) currently spanning the globe would end in the same instant—the two events are inextricably linked.
But it ain’t never happening.
It is still to be determined whether the hangup—be it blindness, stubbornness, or laziness—is genetic (some level of biology) or vindictive (“What does (s)he want?” “Revenge.” “For what?” “For being born.”) or proverbial (“can’t teach an old dog new tricks”). For what it’s worth, my money is on “all of the above”.
We will see.
My Sister Said We Should Sacrifice Everything to Marriage—and That This Is Biblical
My sister said we should “sacrifice everything to marriage—and that this is Biblical.”
Do you agree?
Sounds like a woman’s perspective to me.
She also said, relating to perspective during troubling times, “I think about when I yell at the kids and then imagine, god forbid, if someone dies soon after, and how would I feel? Was it necessary or just nitpicking?”
As an EMS pilot and former combat pilot, I promise that I have thought more about death and regrets than any non-pilot.
Here’s what I think.
I want to live a life that demonstrates to any who knew me—family, friends, co-workers—that they knew a (Pinocchio voice) real boy. I am not a sheep, I am not a drone, I am not a robot.
Did you get offended by me?
-That’s not my problem.
Did you disagree with me?
-You would, because you’ve never even considered the issue.
Did my personality rub you wrong?
-Well, what did you expect from a person? And where did you ever get the idea that people “get along”?
On the topic of marriage, no. No to both. The Bible never says sacrifice all (here read the practical parts of life: financial stability, children’s care, friendships, truth, fact-based systematic reasoning) for marriage. But more, and I know the full scope of what I am suggesting here, the Bible never even gives a portrait of a desirable marriage.
Exhibit A: No woman on Earth in 2025 wants to be ruled by her husband, as scripture suggests is the design of the hierarchy.
Exhibit B: Adam and Eve
Exhibit C: Moses’ marriages. Abraham’s marriage. In fact, all OT marriages.
Exhibit D: Jesus was single. Paul was single. And there is really no part of any NT letter or Gospel which highlights some marriage.
(I am suggesting my sister’s understanding is untenable, not that the Bible is invalid or uninspired etc.)
What to do?
For starters, finish the post. Then file the advice away in the archives under “probably not worth contemplating further” and get on with life.
Eureka! Marriage Realities Exposed
I concluded my recent review of Joker: Folie à Deux with the pathetic (full of emotion…) question, “Why do we hurt each other?” Well, just this second the answer came me.
“We hurt each other because we don’t think we do.”
No, I did not just plop into a very full bathtub like ol’ Archimedes. But I am reading a book on the subject of the universe and one of the thematic points is the whole “mostly empty space” thing I mentioned in discussion of Nolan’s script’s mistaken definition of quantum mechanics.
So, if you need an analogy, use this. We hurt each other because we think of each other as mostly empty space. The truth, however, is we are all full. (Wow. That’s fun. No, not “awful”, but we all are full. We are full.) We are filled space. We are space filled full. (Not empty.)
But that’s just a fun physics analogy that may or may not tickle your fancy. Don’t miss the point!
We possess the power to hurt each other unintentionally.
****
PS – For kicks, the actual origin of this Eureka! moment for me is I believe one of my wife’s announced desires is surely destructive to our marriage and family and consequently insist she give it up. Whereas she believes god authored it or approved it or some shit. And as I was reading just now, after I stopped her from randomly starting the dishwasher without my dish in it and saw her eyes say, “Even this action is wrong?”, my mind wandered to the ongoing hellscape of my marriage.
Do you see? Her desire—to her—isn’t harmful to me. And my decree—to me—isn’t harmful to her. But I can assure you, as the nursery rhyme says, “Needles and pins, needles and pins, when a man marries, his trouble begins.”
The best part is Christianity is one of the last forms of order which unequivocally, unconditionally, and without exception places the husband at the very tippy top of the food chain, so much so that even in 21st century conservative, Biblical doctrine, the doctrine is simply avoided. “Why lose even more people by giving unpopular teachings airtime?” seems to be the approved stance.
Incidentally, I even unintentionally started a skirmish in a friend’s marriage (both former international missionaries) by asking them to confirm for me that they were, both 1. Not studying the bible together within their marriage and 2. He is not leading her in any semblance of a formal bible study. I asked them to merely confirm it because a newly converted friend was lamenting to me that his wife (also newly converted) wouldn’t listen to him read scripture to her. And this couple lost their composure in a big way, getting as defensive as I have ever seen—of course the wife being the dominant justifier of the state of things.
I do not know what it is like to be a woman, but I do know what it is like to live under authority. And as it isn’t terrible or tragic or unbearable, I just don’t see the issue.
Husbands: Throw Away the Romance Novels, A Review of The Island (2004) by Michael Bay
Husbands, I’m looking squarely at you! Throw away those romance novels and pick up the remote control. On Paramount+ right now you will find the most sensational, the most sultry, the most seductive film ever created to help save your marriage. Grab your wife, plop down on the love seat, and get ready for sparks to fly.
Husbands: you know the situation. Right now there is “culture” and there is “husband”. It is war. And us husbands lose every time.
How do we right the ship?
The answer is easy: wives must be shown a model.
Wives, as is well-documented and only too well-known, have little to no imagination. So they need to have a ready-made “felt experience” from which to draw memories. Enter, Mr. Bay’s 2004 classic The Island.
After the film lays out the story (post-apocalyptic indoor world, boring as shyte to men, exciting to women, with the only hope of change being a timely, random lottery every so often promising relocation to the last uncontaminated spec of land on the earth—an island) we meet the needed ingredient to help us win back our families. That ingredient being, the “culture” in the movie—the company cloning the rich people—puts out a “contamination” alert for Ewan McGregor’s character. But McGregor has already got the hand of Scarlet Johansen, and so here’s the kicker: Mrs. Johansen trusts and follows Mr. McGregor despite what the screens and other women advise!
Even more fantastic than this scene, the couple live! As they live on together, often even touching, they both learn just how much the “culture” lied.
Sometimes McGregor leads the running, other times he gets bogged down by some heavy lifting and Johansen continues the chase at the front.
Their object is the same—escape the prison of “culture”—so it really doesn’t matter who appears to lead according to the variables of time and space. What matters is that she chose her man, consequently she and he are now one and, again, at the risk of repeating myself, the wife (future) ignores the “culture” in favor of her husband.
Now, as every Bay fanboy knows, there are rules to the universe and rule 17 requires Michael Bay films to include a perfectly outrageous highway chase scene where the husband must unload railcar wheels onto the highway from atop a random semi which they only leapt onto by sheer chance. But if your beloved has somehow dozed off during the film as this begins, gently nudge her when you recognize the set-piece. Why? Because there is an incredible moment when the wife states husband’s name in a very neutral—yet leaning naggy—voice. After the exact amount of time to be perfectly suspenseful and fully engage the initiative elapses, she says, “Nice work!”
A compliment!! Just amazing.
Like St. John says of Jesus,
And there are also many other things which if they were written one after the other, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
So we should end this simple film review here. But time is short! Grab your wife. Grab the remote. And take back your marriage!
Point/Counterpoint: Will the Influx of Africans to the West Work? (3)
No.
The influx will not work, at least not for the first few generations (and deeper, the longer they segregate).
There has been too much “foreign aid” to their homelands, and not the requisite amount of humble (which is inherently also wise), “Say, how do you get to a place where your ‘cup runneth over’?” for the Africans to ever get out of the mindset of thinking manna falls from heaven and transition to contributing.
Captain’s Log 