In His Head - On Marriage and Divorce

By Brian Doyle -

I am not so stupid as to make any public comment whatsoever about the character and nature and music of my marriage, which I understand less about year by year anyway.  My marriage, like every other marriage that is or was or will be, is different from every other marriage, and my marriage changes shape every 11 minutes or so, and my marriage, like every other marriage, is ultimately an utterly ephemeral thing, a shared idea, a mental and emotional constrict which both parties believe in to varying degrees at the same time or else there you are at the bus stop muttering about how you used to be married.  Also, the person to whom I am married, or to whom I was married 11 minutes ago, is a mysterious, changeable country whom I simply try to savour and appreciate rather than attempt to understand, or God help us all, predict in any way, shape or form whatsoever, such predilection to prediction being the surest road to muttering at the bus stop.

Yet there have been many riveting moments in my marriage and I recount them here cheerfully so that you can tell me what they mean, for I have no idea.  Like when our three children were hauled wet and startled from the salt sea of my wife’s womb and I saw her spleen and thin layer of subcutaneous fat, which I thought was pretty cool but she didn’t.  Or the time we lost a baby in utero.  Or all the times she has fallen asleep on my shoulder watching movies and the way she wakes with a start and asks anxiously did she drool or snore?  Or the way she becomes so absorbed in the paintings she paints that she loses track of the time and hoots with surprise when she realises how late it is.  Or the way she reads by the fire wrapped in a caftan.  Or the way she forgets the milk for her coffee is boiling and yelps with surprise every single morning when it boils over.  Or the way she loves to work in the yard, rain, or sleet or shine.  Or the way she laughs from the very fibre of her being sometimes with a dear friend on the phone.  Or the way she loses her temper sometimes suddenly and slashes and slices with a stunning tongue.  Or the way she retires upstairs sometimes in tears, overcome by exhaustion and rude children and unsubtle husband.  Or the way she our love affair has waxed and waned and ebbed and flowed and worn so many different coats of motley that sometimes I conclude it has died and sometimes I am agog that it has been born once again miraculously from ash.

Many times I have concluded that all marriages are nuts and my marriage is nuts, but I find myself delighted by her company which is endlessly stimulating sometimes in ways beyond hilarity or sensuality and sometimes in ways so frustrating and heartrending that I go pray and walk and hum and fold laundry and recall that I am no gleaming, glittering prize either, I am just a guy, muddled and humming.

I remember everything, I am memorious, that’s my gift and my curse, and I remember the way her voice once came shivering out of the dusk, telling me about her dad who had just died whom she loved madly, she was his last child, his late-surprise daughter, and I remember the quiver of joy in her high-beam eyes when we danced on our wedding day, swinging each other so fast and wild that if either let go we’d still be orbiting Neptune, and I remember the million hours she rocked and consoled and bandaged and fed and cleaned and snarled at and sang to our children, and the million hours we have wrestled with ideas and locked limbs, and I know the sound of her sob, and the lilt of her laugh. The lurch of her logic and the flare of her fury, yet after 20 years I know her hardly at all; which may be crucial for marriage is a verb, and why I am married, and why the most momentous moments of my marriage seem to me to be incontrovertibly and inarguably the next 11, of they come, which I hope they will, I pray they will, though no-one, including most of all me and my wife, knows if they will come, or what they will bring, which seems to me somehow the secret of the whole thing. 

But what do I know?

The Tiger's Whisker

An Old Korean Tale 

The story is of Yun Ok who came to the house of a wise sage for council.

 “’It is my husband, wise one.  He is very dear to me.  For the past three years he has been fighting in the wars.  Now that he has returned he hardly speaks to me, or not anyone else.  If I speak, he doesn’t seem to hear.  When he talks at all, it is roughly.  If I serve him food not to his liking, he pushes it aside, and angrily leaves the room.  Sometimes when he is working in the rice field, I see him sitting idly on the top of the hill, looking towards the sea!  I want a potion, so he will be loving and gentle as he used to be.’

 

“The wise sage instructed the young woman to get for him the whisker of a living tiger, from which he would make the magic potion.

“At night, when her husband was asleep, she crept from her house with a bowl of rice and meat sauce in her hand.  She went to the place on the mountainside where the tiger was known to live.  Standing afar from the tiger’s cave, she held out the bowl of food, calling the tiger to come and eat, but the Tiger did not come.

“Each night she returned, doing the same thing and each time a few steps closer.  Although the tiger did not come out and eat, he did become accustomed to seeing her there.

“One night she approached within a stone’s throw of the cave.  This time the tiger came a few steps toward her and stopped.  The two of them stood looking at one another in the moonlight.  It happened again the following night and this time they were so close that she could talk to him in a soft, soothing voice.

“The next night, after looking carefully into her eyes, the tiger ate the food that she held out for him.  After that when Yun Ok came in the night she found the tiger waiting for her on the trail.  Nearly six months had passed since the night of her first visit.  At first, one night after caressing the animal’s head, she said, ‘O generous animal, I must have one of your whiskers.  Do not be angry with me.’  And she snipped off one of the whiskers.

“The tiger did not become angry as she had feared that he might.  She went down the trail, running with the whisker tightly clutched in her hand.  When she brought it to the wise sage, he examined it to see if it was real, then tossed it into the fire, causing the poor girl to become stunned.  Then the sage said, ‘Yun Ok, is a man more vicious than a tiger?  Is he less responsive to kindness and understanding?  If you can win the love and confidence of a wild and bloodthirsty animal by gentleness and patience, surely you can do the same with your husband.’”

 

Forgiveness

"Start building that bridge of forgiveness even when the waters of disappointment and anger are still flowing underneath." -Steve Arterburn on Joyce Meyer Ministries

Amateurs!

"Amateurs!  they don't know when to keep their mouth shut!"
Law and Order Television programme

Be Happy

"If the only way you can be happy is to have a perfect day... you are in trouble!"
Joyce Meyer

Respectful

"When you talk to people in a way that is respectful, their ears open up."
Shannon Mumford - Anger Management Practitioner

Painful Relationships

Dear Anne*

I have had a chance to look through the book you left with me - you asked me for my opinion.

This is what I have to say - This book does not address the challenges of YOUR marriage in its present stage of development. It might be useful to you later.

Now - I suspect this lovely book will discourage you and cause you to doubt and fear, and be less effective in the hands of the Lord, and more effective in the hands of Satan, in your marriage of these days.

For you (and those in similar circumstances) the Lord has differently specific guidelines revealed to some of His children and put down into book form.

Some titles of what might be more useful to you might be "Women Who Love Too Much" or "Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them" or "I Hate You - Please Don't Leave Me" or "Stop Being Miserable - Say Goodbye to your PDI" or "Stop Walking on Eggshells"

These are some I have on my bookshelves. I am sure there are more current books on similar themes that will be of comfort, and more helpful book-guides to you. People who behave as though they hate you, and also say they love you (sometimes) is the subject matter you are looking for. Irrational to a rational mind. Perfectly rational to an irrational mind.

I attach "The Sponge People" summary I developed after reading a magazine article. This has a very brief description of a very large and complex pattern, and some guidelines about how to deal with it broadly. Note the SKILLS that need to be developed in the receiving individual. All you can do something about is you. And also - as you are increasingly changed, and have capacity to learn more about the patterns in these individuals and how they think, you can learn skills about how, when and why to dismantle a brick at a time of the walls they have built up surrounding them. Hurt people hurt others.

We have no Divine right to affect the lives of others, and perhaps offer them an opportunity to step a little step into a little more Light and Freedom unless our motives and methods are pure and Heavenly. Of course Satan would have us affect, infect, the lives of others to mire them down more into the depths of more misery and captivity.

And... at first, the former might feel like agonising pain inflicted by us on the wounded one before they experience increased Freedom and Light, and the latter might feel like blissful freedom initially with resulting increased Captivity and Darkness.

I typed in "Abuse in a marriage" on the http://www.lds.org/ website in the magazines section under Tools and came up with several articles I have noted from previous years that might be more useful to you in your particular circumstances. Let The Holy Spirit Guide you as you search, ponder and pray... Some dark spirits only come out with fasting and prayer.

The pattern of abuse is: One does it, the Other either allows it, or reacts abusively in return, and the cycle escalates - increasingly uncontrollably.

With some abusive people, to RE-act to their abuse, or to righteously challenge them at the right time and in the right way, or challenge their behaviour, makes them react to your purposeful and Divinely guided ACTION, or thoughtless defensive reaction, even more abusively. It's all they know - "Get them before they get me..." and sometimes "Get them BIG... slay them, slaughter them, aniahilate them..."

We who are in contact with them would do well to learn to pick our battles - as guided by the Spirit. "Not my will, but Thine be done." In fact ONLY in harness with Heaven will we have the Strength and Wisdom to take on one possessed with evil spirits - not that THEY are evil, but that they are possessed with/by evil spirits more or less of the time.

As time goes by, over the years!, eventually we will be able to address all the issues that need attention - maybe not even some in this life, but in eternity - some of them (depending on the depth of woundedness of the abuser). They need to feel less and less need to be defensive in our presence - because we have lost our desire to harm them, but our motive is to be an instrument in the Hand of the Lord to Bless them. They need to feel and increasingly know that we are their servant, serving them in the place of their Saviour - as He would, if He were here.

And yes, we are all wounded... some more severely than others. As we come unto Christ, He knows how to heal all of all of our wounds.

Some children of God are so wounded they will not / can not come unto Him directly yet. They are VERY protective of their precious inner selves. Hopefully, sometime in their life, they will come in contact with Someone Heavenly living on earth, clothed either obviously Heavenly, or not at all outwardly easily noticeably Heavenly, but... with close encounters there is no mistaking and discerning their Heavenly Spirit and Ministering to souls. The realisation of the God they/we serve increases gradually like the increasing of light after the dawn of a new day, or the light is instant like the switching on of a light switch. With some individuals along the path of Learning from the God of Heaven... we can feel the light there in them... like the light of the sun we know is there on a cloudly day, although we can't see it clearly until the clouds part. (drawn from Elder David A Bednar's descriptions...)

And the opposite is also true. Satan can creep into us, seep into us; or come into us in an instant, or... we just sense the malevolence in the presence of the individual we are in contact with.

In the meantime there is a peculiar and very specific closeness to the Heavenly Powers that we are blessed with as we work together with Them, in increasing harmony with Heaven and Heavenly Warfare, to bless both our own life and the life of our spouse (or another), and our children.

If the time comes that we need to leave - we will know it without any doubt if we are close to the promptings of the Holy Ghost and our Father and His Son. Or perhaps we reach the point of saying "Enough. I do not need to do this in the eyes of the laws of the land, and even God does not require it of me - he asks me, invites me to work along with Him for as long as I can, as well as I can, in blessing my life and the abuser's life - by learning more about the mechanics of abuse and being both constructively unyielding, and yielding, as led by Divine personal direction or the Holy Spirit sent to us by the Father's mercy."

"More used would I be..." we sing without sometimes realising the cost and the challenge to our committment and effort in becoming able to be more used in this of the many departments of the whole Holy ongoing fundamental War between Good and Evil.

Always there is a burden and a blessing, and a different burden and a different blessing - whichever way we choose. The Divine Law of Compensation. And we are free to choose.

God bless you dear Anne*.

Judy

*Name has been changed...


The Sponge People

Your'e talking to someone and suddenly you feel tense, angry, sad.
Why is that? you wonder.
Your'e spongy. Some people put out a lot of emotional energy, and the spongy people suck it up.
Not everyone is spongy.
Those who are, can learn to protect themselves from taking in other people's stress.
Construct a suit of psychological armour. ARMOUR UP.

A
ACKNOWLEDGE. When you feel uneasy in any company, acknowledge it to yourself.
Learn to know when you feel uneasy, especially with the same people time after time.

R
RECOGNISE. Learn to realise when what YOU are feeling fits THE PERSON you are talking to.
YOU'RE angry when SHE has been wronged. YOU are anxious when HE is stressed.

M
MONITOR yourself. Monitor how you feel when in the company of different kinds of people.
Monitor how you feel before contact, during contact and after contact with various people.

O
OBSERVE. As a highly contagious person gets closer to you, watch them and also yourself.
See what happens - to you and to them. Are THEY sending out their negativity towards YOU?

U
UNDERSTAND. Few contagious people are deliberately trying to contaminate you.
The way they are "put together" frees you to tap into your compassion for them.

R
RELAX. If simply noticing all the extra sensations rattling around you and inside you isn't enough…
Take a deep breath. Exhale. Relax all your muscles. Negative Energy (theirs and yours) will lessen.

SPACE
Create physical space and distance as soon as possible from emotionally contagious people.
Walk away - graciously. Take a loo break. When you are away: Breathe deeply. Relax.
THINK. VISUALISE the best DAY, the best PLACE, the HARMONY you want with them…
Go to your place of Inner Peace. Meditate. Pray. Be still. Regain your own composure.

U
UNHOOK from the toxicity between you. Stop trying to change/control anything of what they are feeling.
Allow the other person to be exactly as they are right now. Don't get pulled down into their problems.

P
PROTECT yourself. Return to your visualisations that connects you to your peaceful core self.
Spend a few minutes a day visualising the confidence, peace and harmony you want.

The only use you will be to them, and the only way to survive in relationship with them is… Armour Up.

If you are spongy and vulnerable to the unsettling energy of others, count yourself lucky.
You now know you need to ARMOUR UP. Create your own beautiful, protective, shining suit of Armour.

Consciously screen out the stresses that afflict you and all the rest of humanity. Be in, but not of, them...

Remember your ARMOUR UP list. Head out into your daily interactions with your fellow men effectively clad.

The power to keep yourself safe from any contaminations from others has to be developed by you for yourself.

From: Martha Beck - O Magazine SA Aug 2006 p31