coming out of my shell

coming out of my shell
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

A Case of You

My husband, T, and I have a lot in common. We are from similar working class socioeconomic backgrounds. We grew up in the same hometown in Northern Indiana and had many of the same friends as teenagers. We are both 3rd children. We share the same politics and have similar senses of humor. Neither of us are particularly romantic. 

Beyond that, there are differences. He was raised a casual Protestant, I was raised a devout Catholic. He likes mustard and I like ketchup. He likes IPA beer. If I must drink beer, I prefer German Hefeweizen, but I have a wheat allergy of sorts and if I eat or drink too many things made with wheat I will break out with eczema on my fingers and around my eyes. If I then stop eating wheat for a while the rash goes away. Very strange. I love wheat (think bagels) and so I periodically play with fire by eating it. I can't help myself. If T had a wheat allergy I am pretty darn sure he would never eat it again.

One of the biggest differences is the way we view the world.  He makes assumptions. I don't trust the world enough to assume anything. In our day-to-day life he rolls with the punches, I am consumed by blocking every move. He trusts everything will be okay. I anticipate every potential problem and try to find ways to avoid trouble before it starts. He is laid back. I am a nervous *&^%! wreck. He thinks I worry needlessly and I think he doesn't worry enough. 

And so it goes, and so it has gone for a long, long time. This year we are celebrating 45 years together. We were both wild and crazy kids when we married at 19. Nobody thought it would last. 

Relationships are difficult. It is hard to reconcile the fundamental differences between two cohabiting people for an extended length of time.  Obviously it takes compromise and mutual respect. Love is a given. Trust is important. You have to accept your partner for who they are, not for who you want them to be. But I think if there is a secret to a long and happy marriage it is "liking" your partner as much as you love him/her. 

You can love someone and still not like him or her very much. It happens. Love is personal and deep. Human beings are complicated. As the song goes, sometimes "love hurts." "Like" is conditional on compatibility and joy. I love that man like nobody's business, but we are not two hearts that beat as one. We have two separate hearts that beat for each other. And I really like him a lot.





I think she should have stayed with him...

I will have sporadic access to the internet this week, but will respond to comments as soon as I am able.  Cheers.



Thursday, September 10, 2015

Breaking the Sound Barrier

On Tuesday my husband had a dental appointment in Orlando.  I love that man like you would not believe; however, I am rarely in the house all by myself for an extended period of time and I was thrilled to have a few hours alone.  An unavoidable loss of privacy occurs when two people living in the same house do not work outside the home.  This has been an unexpected retirement challenge for me.

T and I have always had separate home offices in our 2 extra bedrooms. 
Throughout our long marriage, we spent most of each day apart.  Our jobs were private spaces where we spent a huge part of most days.  At home on the weekends we had no problem amusing ourselves with private hobbies and interests.  We have been together for over 44 years.  We give each other a lot of space.  It works for us. 

I assumed our private lives would continue in retirement.  Theoretically, the only thing that would change is that we would now spend most of our time in the house.  In fact, we still have our separate offices.  We still spend most of the day happily pursuing our own hobbies and interests, but it seems less private now.  Why?  Well, I think in moving to Central Florida we inadvertently broke the sound barrier.


Our old house in Upstate New York had 2 stories.  His office was upstairs and mine was downstairs.  The ceiling/floor between us provided a natural sound barrier.  I used to joke that he had the upstairs and I had the downstairs and that was the secret to a long and happy marriage. 


Now we live in a small house with high ceilings, all on one floor.  The master bedroom is on one side of the house.  The dining room, living room, kitchen are in the middle.  The two extra bedrooms serving as our private spaces are on the other end.  The doors of these two rooms mercilessly face each other, separated only by a short hallway leading into the bathroom that lies between us.  I was prepared for seeing him more often when we retired, but it had simply never occurred to me that we would hear each other so much.

I now find myself reluctant to make noise because I do not want to disturb my husband.  He is usually playing his guitar, so I worry that any music I play will interfere with his concentration.  This is not something he has complained about or even mentioned, it is me overthinking.  Anticipating problems is my forte.  Big smile!


Think about it.  We cannot even talk on the phone in our rooms without hearing each other.  It seems kind of rude, but I find myself going outside the house to talk on the phone.  I am not used to being overheard as I talk to friends or family.  It is a bit disconcerting, even though logically I know T is not the kind of person who is interested in other people's conversations.  I suspect he doesn't even listen to our conversations!

So what did I do in the hours T was at the dentist and I was home alone? Well, I have 4,127 songs on my computer.  I swear I have not listened to one of them since I moved into this house, well over a year ago. I guess I have been overwhelmed by change and frozen in place.  It happens!


I clicked on iTunes and played Al Green, Amy Winehouse, and the Pogues at full blast.  I listened to Joey Ramone sing about Sheena being a punk rocker until I started to feel a little foolish listening to the Ramones...  I discovered I actually have some Taylor Swift songs.  I do not think I have ever listened to them.  I did not listen to them then, either.  I was moved, as always, by the mystical Van Morrison.  I reveled in the intensity of my girl, Carlene Carter, as she sang Stronger.  I listened to the young Sandi Shaw singing Girl Don't Come.  Moby Grape thrilled me with their glorious vocals and male angst on Bitter Wind, but I had to switch to another song before they segued into the psychedelic reverse.  Been there, done that.  I am too old to sit through that abrasive noise and pretend I like it.

I remembered that I went on a music buying frenzy in the years before I retired, buying up as many of the new generation of female British soul singers as I could find.  I need to get back to those young women, they are waiting to be heard. 

I ate Doritos and a fudge brownie even though I was not hungry.  I drank coffee until I shook.  I did NOT do any laundry.  I ran wild in an old lady kind of a way.  It was really fun.

It took some doing, because I still do not know where all my stuff is, but I searched the remaining unpacked boxes in my room until I found my iPod and ear buds.  I hate listening to music like that, but I need music in my life.  More change, yuck!  But hey, problem solved!

Another obvious solution to the privacy dilemma is to do something I have always tried to avoid, both in my personal and in my professional life.  I think I need to shut the door to my office.  Why does that seem like such a hard thing to do?


Friday, November 7, 2014

Take My Wife, Please!


As I hinted in a previous post, I feel kind of sorry for men who marry young women.  They do not realize at the time, but they actually have no idea who they are going to end up with.  With some notable exceptions, most women do not come in to their own until middle age, when all hell breaks lose.  Sometimes the sweet, passive young thing you married becomes a mouthy, strongly opinionated woman in her 40's.  It happens!

I am uncomfortably aware this is a gross stereotype.  Still, I am going to follow this thought and see where it takes me.  I am not afraid to make a boneheaded argument and later discover I was all wrong.  It's kinda fun and it gives me something to do.

How many marriages end because the man no longer recognizes the woman he married, or the woman feels she has outgrown the man?  The contract has been broken, the promises have not been kept.  The husband may feel cheated and deceived when he finds out his wife has her own opinions and they do not jive with his own.  Imagine how heartbreaking it must be for a man to discover his wife cannot stand the things about him at 50 that she loved at 20?   That has got to be harsh!  You have my sympathy, gentlemen.


Most boys are allowed, encouraged even, to be “themselves.”  Boys are admired for having strong personalities.  Hey, they admire THEMSELVES for having strong personalities and they are not shy about revealing who they are.  I like that about young men.  Young woman let it all hang out with their girlfriends, but some do not reveal their "selves" when a young man is around.  Is it because a young woman does not want to "rock the boat" or alienate a boyfriend?  Don't you just love running into a young woman who does not care about things like that?  In fact, the world is not overly accepting of young women developing strong personalities.  I suspect most young men do not want a Bella Abzug for a wife, they want a Barbie Doll.  If you do not know who Bella Abzug was, then you were not politically active in the late 1960s and you really need to google her.  She was an amazingly accomplished and admirable political powerhouse who some tried to turn into a joke so as to diminish her power and influence.  Seems like some things never change.

We all change as we grow older.  I could be wrong, but I think women change over time more than men do. This is true for my generation, anyway.  I hope things have changed dramatically and the young whippersnappers of today are different.  It would make me very happy to be wrong, but I think Katniss Everdeen is still the exception to the rule. 

What do I mean by that?  Hopefully men will grow and change over time, but you often still recognize the essential 20 year old in a man even in old age.  The girl they married may have hung on their every word, blissfully allowing the husband to make all the major decisions when she was young.  The woman they grow old with may not be recognizable in that context.  Hopefully the husband has grown and changed along with her and has fallen in love with her all over again as she transformed into a woman.  Stranger things have happened.  But God help the old fart who marries a young woman.  By the time she becomes a grown up woman he no longer approves of, he might be too old and gnarly to find another malleable young girl.  Unless he has a lot of money, of course, then he might attract someone like Anna Nicole Smith.

Young women notoriously stop excelling at school around puberty and start researching beauty tips and clothing styles instead of math and science.  This is slowly changing, I am almost sure of it.  However, I fear a significant number of American Girls are still not being raised by parents encouraging them to be brilliant, quirky, or feisty characters.  It is sad to see a bright girl dumb herself down in hopes of attracting attention for how she looks instead of who she is, and even more sad when a grown woman does it.  I cannot help but wonder if Kim Kardashian has a personality or any deep thoughts.   If she does, she certainly hides them well.  Pink, on the other hand, is a celebrity I would be proud to know.  In fact, if you are not familiar with Pink's song "Stupid Girls" you really should listen to it.  Great stuff.

Once upon a time there was a psychologist named Carl Rogers.  According to the web site you will come to if you click on his name, he thought:


“…for a person to "grow", they need an environment that provides them with genuineness (openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regard), and empathy (being listened to and understood).

Without these, relationships and healthy personalities will not develop as they should, much like a tree will not grow without sunlight and water.”

Some girls in traditional families do not get those things from their parents.  Hell, many wives do not get these things from their husbands.  Even in this enlightened day and age (?), many girls are not liked, accepted or understood, even in their own families.  Too many young girls are still being tolerated rather than celebrated.


I know a lot of exceptional women with strong and unique personalities who live normal lives and even vote Republican!  (I would insert a smiley face emoticon here if I could figure out how to use this blog site software.)  After many years of struggle and hardscrabble existence, these woman are living feminism, whether they want to own up to it or not.  They might have been meek and mild when they married their husbands at 19; however, they are no longer meek nor mild at 40, 50, 60 and beyond.  They are gloriously fully formed personalities full of piss and vinegar.  Deal with it!

It is true that I married T young.  However, I have always been a mouthy dame and I was lucky enough as a young woman to find a young man who appreciated women like me.  Or at least that is what I have always thought.   Just to make sure I am not deluding myself, I just went and asked T if I was meek and mild when he married me.   He answered with a resounding "YOU?" Then some laughter and maybe snorting.  "No, you were never meek and mild."  I am one of the lucky ones.  Or maybe he is?