ICB: You SHOULD lie to your spouse to save your marriage?
My good friend Christina and I have been participating in NaNoWriMo together for two years now. Next year, we were contemplating choosing a storyline and characters and each writing our novel using the agreed upon plot and setting. I’m not sure how this is going to work out, but it sounds rather interesting. I was also recently inspired by my Twitter-bud, @melissaoyler and her friend (Amy) who are choosing a random topic and then each blogging about it. Christina and I thought this would be an awesome way to test out our ability to write individually on a collective topic.
This week’s topic: Lying to your spouse is acceptable?
Visit Christina’s blog to read about her thoughts about lying to your spouse: here.
*/Begin shameless plug for new blog/*
I also want to take a short moment to say that there are only 71 days until the beginning of NaNoWriMo. And thus, I have officially opened my NaNoWriMo ‘09 blog where I will be posting musings, excerpts, etc leading up to and throughout the NaNo season. Christina and I will be doing a Collective NaNovel.
Oh, and I’m lazy… All future posts of Individually Collective Blogging will have the prefix ICB instead of the full topic name.
Why are we writing about this?
I recently came across an article on NewsWeek’s website called: Married, With Lies by Raina Kelley. When I saw the title, I was a little floored. In fact, I was a little outraged! And instead of doing what a sane person would do (ignore the article and write a terrible post about how Mrs. Kelley must know nothing about marriage and thus is a complete idiot) I did what I would normally do… settle down and read the whole damn thing.
I would recommend you take my approach. Read the whole thing… start to finish… and try not to groan when you start.
“Marriages cannot exist without dishonesty. They can’t.”
Mrs. Kelley mentions at the very beginning of the article the quote that you just read above. Taking that completely out of context you might think that she’s implying that everyone cheats, or that we all lie to each other, or whatever other negative thing… but then she goes on to say:
Husbands and wives have an unprecedented ability to get on each other’s nerves—not only do they know each other really well but they also spend a lot of time together doing things like changing dirty diapers, trying to find a plumber on an early Sunday morning, and filling out income-tax forms. To end lying in marriage under these kinds of circumstances is tantamount to ending sex in marriage.
And she does admit that not all lying is good lying. What Mrs. Kelley is really talking about is fibbing to your spouse.
Marriages cannot exist without fibbing
You all might know from some of my previous posts that I am approaching my fifth year of marriage. Now, I don’t pretend that I’m an expert at this in any way shape or form… however, we’re getting to the stage when the newness… the prettiness… has worn off a bit. We’re not all shiny around the edges. I don’t want to hold my hubby’s hand while we’re taking a walk because we’re no longer out to stroll along and enjoy each other’s compnay; nope, we’re out to try to work off the “Newlywed-20″ (something that I don’t think anyone will tell you about and something that is so far worse than the Freshman-15 that I can’t even begin to tell you the horrors). We’ve definitely had moments with plungers that were not something that I want to ever repeat again in my life. We still love each other, but goodness… being married is HARD!
Anyway, so, as I got into Mrs. Kelley’s article I actually started laughing out loud at some of the stuff that she mentions! Because I can literally put my husband and I into these situations and see us!!
Here are her 3 principles about lying and my thoughts about them:
“1. Spouses are always trying to trick you into admitting something they think you secretly believe. The only defense is a lie, especially when you really do believe it.”
YES!!!
I admittedly do this. Is it nice? No, probably not… but I do. Women are conniving, so can you blame our husbands for making up a little white lie to get past this little sneaky thing that we try to do to them?
Steve & I took this pre-marriage communication course at some point during our engagement. The folks there said that you’ve got only a few “negative” tokens in your possession. And you can use them all at once if you want to, but that it takes nearly 3 times as many “positive” tokens to counteract the negative ones. So, the moral of the story is to be careful how many negative tokes you dole out… because you might just get in over your head.
It’s like Mrs. Kelley says in her article, if you hate your spouse’s chili, and they try to trick you into telling them so… you might not want to waste one of your negative tokens on something trivial.
And you tell a lie.
“2. Spouses should remain constantly vigilant of subtext.”
This has to be one of my favorite of her three principles. Mrs. Kelley really gets to the crux of marriage in this one. No matter if you’re a husband or a wife, or you’re in a less traditional relationship, you have to be vigilant to what your spouse is really telling you! Being married is really more like sticking a mime and a Somali Pirate into the same invisible box and make them try to ask each other to pass the salt!
It’s a translation game. A much harder translation game than you’ve ever experienced before in your life. And the point of Mrs. Kelley’s #2 is that while you might be answering a question truthfully on the outside, the internal meaning might just be the honest to God truth.
Her example is the classic, “Do these pants make me look fat?”
So, what does “Do these pants make me look fat?” really mean?? Does it mean, do I need a new size of pants? Does it mean, “Do you think I look fat?” Does it mean, “Hey look honey, I’m pregnant!” Or does it mean something else entirely. Mrs. Kelley suggests that perhaps many women who have been married for years are really asking their husbands “Do you still find me attractive after 5 kids and all these years?” In which case, the appropriate answer (even if she looks like Shamu in those pants) is “No… you look beautiful.”
“3. Spouses need lying for venting purposes.”
OMG. OMG is all I can say about this particular one!!! Steve & I have so gotten to the point in our relationship that I do this to him all-the-time.
Mrs. Kelley explains in point #3 that we are constantly annoyed by our spouses, and that it’s cathartic (in a way) to highly exaggerate what we would like to do to them if they continue doing the annoying little things that they do.
Mine? The thing that annoys Steve more than anything on the face of this planet that I do?? It’s chewing ice. I love it. He hates it. And by hate, I really mean he loathes it with the passion of a thousand burning suns. I just can’t stop. I don’t want to drive him to lunacy…. but I just love my ice!
So, why not make it a game? Why not try to find the most creative way of stopping your spouse from doing that one (or ten) annoying little thing? If you can’t laugh about it, eventually it will just kill you. And in the process it will kill your marriage. I honestly think that this particular example is a perfect thing… something that all couples should do! I guarantee you’ll end up laughing by the end of it, and you’ll probably forget all together what it was that annoyed you about that thing your spouse did.
She’s a smart cookie
I take back any horrible things that I might have thought about Raina Kelley when I first read the title of her article… or, to be fair, the first paragraph.
I think that if she ever wanted to quit journalism she could make an excellent suburban marriage therapist. What I think? I think that maybe you should get off your high honesty horse and realize that there are times when a white lie is OK, and there times when it’s not. And there are times when the things that matter are making each other happy.
Now, for big stuff? You gotta tell the truth.
“Honey, whose panties are these?” is not an appropriate time to make up a story about how you rescued some stranded granny, and then a golden eagle flew down from the mountains and ripped her panties right off her butt and stuffed them in your coat pocket. That’s probably not going to fly.
“Honey, did you remember to buy the dog food?” is also probably not another one that requires an elaborate story about the obstacles you had to overcome and why you couldn’t make it to PetSmart.
“Honey, do why do you hate my mom’s Pumpkin Pie?” that might be one of those instances when you just grin, bear it, and say as sweetly as possible, “I don’t hate your mom’s Pumpkin Pie! I love it.”
I’m so happy you said “hate with the burning passion of a thousand suns.”
I’ve been using that phrase a lot lately. It is oh-so much more descriptive than “hate with every fiber of my very being.” Though I must admit I often use the two within the same sentence for added punctuation.
Sorry, Whitney, but I’m going to have to disagree with this one.
“Honey, do these pants make me look fat?” The response options include “No” (perhaps she doesn’t look fat in them, or perhaps she does, but it’s not the pants’ fault); and “Yes” (the implication with this response is that it IS the pants’ fault). Note that use of the “Yes” response also means that there will be a shopping excursion in the near future…perhaps even immediately. You have to be okay with that.
“Honey, why do you hate Mom’s pumpkin pie?” “Because it doesn’t taste good.” Direct, brutally honest, but will earn you more points in the respect department than points lost in the making-you-feel-good department. Net gain. Bonus points for “I don’t think she puts enough nutmeg in. Hey, maybe I should ask her to swap pie recipes with me.” Overtly helpful, covertly attempting to rectify the situation.
“Honey, whose panties are these?” “Do you remember the time Whitney and Steve came over, and we all (well, not Steve) had a bit too much to drink?….”
Hmm…. Well, I kind of see your point when the fatness is all the pants’ fault and the must be punished with a shopping spree; that does sound rather good.
And I’ll admit that Mom’s pumpkin pie was kind of a bad example. But to be perfectly honest, my lunch hour was running short and I needed to get back to work so that was the best thing I could come up with.
No comment on the panties!
I guess, from a personal POV, the small things like that have just never … mattered.
Interestingly enough, with Jeff that’s never been something I’ve needed to address. He’s so easy going that not much bothers him, so I could tell him he looks fat in those pants (hmm, does it work in reverse?) or that I hate his mom’s turkey (and he’d respond with – “but you hate all turkey! That’s why she gets a ham for you.”) and it just doesn’t matter.
However, I do feel you should pick your battles when those small battles DO matter. I do have friends that I majorly have to hold my tongue with. “Do I tell him what he said just offended pretty much everyone in the room or do I let this one go because before the night’s over he’ll surely say something worse?” And in those situations, I say lies can keep the peace, keep me from looking nitpicky, and no one knows any better but me. And that’s a good enough reason to keep my mouth shut.
And I soooo love that your comment on my anniversary blog links us to your blog on lying in a marriage. How appropriate!
Yeah… when I looked down at CommentLuv and then realized that it was pointing to my lying in your marriage blog post I was a little horrified. And I was hoping that people might read it out of horror and then realize it’s not as bad as it seems!
There’s actually a pretty heated discussion going on over at Christina’s blog post on the same topic. Sadly, her fiancé likes to play devil’s advocate, or oppose anything I say, and he likes to do it loudly! (Or so it feels to me… ) I held back a little on my post… I had just gotten finished with yoga and was feeling like karma might bite me in the ass if I told him what I really felt like.
And I’ll admit, the Mom’s pumpkin pie example was a poor one. Within days of Steve & I dating, he told me that he hated the way my mom makes salad. Now it’s a family joke. No one’s truly offended. He just often gets a bowl full of Iceberg when everyone else gets Spring mix and all kinds of wonderful salad goodies. Iceberg and Ranch Dressing…. oh well, to each their own!
What? Iceberg and ranch dressing? Ick! I’ll take the spring mix, please
I know! How can Iceberg + Ranch be even remotely called a salad?