LKL wrote:
AR, have you really heard, in real life and not on some movie (probably written by men), a woman tell another woman that she should divorce her husband because he forgot to put the toilet seat down one time? Have you heard it for real once, much less often?
I'm exaggerating slightly, and I'd think that would be apparent. Obviously this isn't about a toilet seat. I just meant issues between couples that really are petty, more annoying than hurtful. Chronic snoring, passing gas between the sheets, the times and places he clips his toenails, not putting the seat down on the toilet after peeing, or making unintentional remarks he honestly didn't expect to offend his wife. Little things couples deal with all the time. And yes, I seriously do mean there's at least that ONE friend whose answer for EVERYTHING is divorce. My wife has vented about me and things in our relationship that annoyed her, but it was more just letting off steam than "I hate my husband." "Well, you just need to get a divorce." Um…WHAT??? We're a lot like siblings and annoy each other like brothers/sisters do. We'll pick fights just to say we did it. OK, so you think stepping on my underwear is disgusting…fine, I'll have one of the kids come in every day and put it in the hamper, just give me a freakin' break!
There are two women I have in mind that consistently do this kind of thing. One we no longer hang out with. The other is someone who has been through an ugly divorce and since remarried. This other woman has never hesitated to badmouth me in front of my wife, and I noticed my wife stopped hanging out with her, or she was depressed or annoyed after hanging with her. She eventually told me what was going on. I didn't say anything one way or the other, but my wife eventually did tell her that she loves me and that if they're going to be friends there are certain things that aren't up for discussion.
No, I'm not perfect. And I'm not going to change any time soon. Not because I think so highly of myself or that I'm always right, but because I don't have it in me to be someone I'm not. If my wife wanted something else, she wouldn't have married me, warts and all. My thing is, people do get married for a reason. And I'd think that true friends respect and encourage the union, not disrupt it. I think it's horrible when girl friends immediately jump to the nuclear option. What's interesting to me is that the first to drop the d-word is either a single woman or a married woman who was previously divorced. Why does someone take that much pleasure in other couples breaking up? If it were up to me, I'd ask each in turn what's going on, diagnose the problem, and figure out a way they can move forward without too much compromise (compromise meaning giving up ground each believes is important. You can resolve conflict often through mutually beneficial strategies without "giving up" anything). I'd do what I could to get them to stay together and work things out. Heck, some people actually get paid for this kind of thing. But setting out to break up a perfectly good marriage? I don't get it...
We've been married almost 9 years now. We've only had two really awful fights. The first one was within our first year of marriage, and that was the basketball incident. We never came to an agreement on that one, but she DID accept that from time to time work-related things like that do happen and MOST of the time there's a perfectly good explanation (long story, kinda embarrassing, don't care to get into that here). The other big fight was the cheese incident--which, as it turns out, was only a really BAD dream I had one night.
25 Mar 2014, 6:31 pm
