Growing Up

I wish I could remember the exact conversation that precipitated the thought, but I can tell you exactly where I was when I had it. James and I were driving from his place to our new house (I couldn't help it! I love saying it!) - and we were making arrangements for getting the mail forwarded or calling LIPA (our power company) or some other home-owner related task.

And I said something along the lines of, "I guess we finally have to grow up." He mumbled something like, "No, I think you can grow up..." to which I replied back that we needed two grown-up people in this marriage... And the conversation just got me thinking...

All this home-owner business - all this marriage business - it is the stuff of grown-ups. It's not like I feel like James and I aren't grown up. I'm 36, he is 41, we both have stable careers, pay our bills, having working cars, are not homeless...we aren't immature - we are responsible individuals. But I wonder if not being immature is the same thing as being grown up.

And, I guess that, at any point prior to this, we could still choose not to act like grown ups - and it wouldn't really affect anyone but ourselves.

Not anymore - it's different now. If I choose not to act grown up, it's not just me in my un-grown-up world. You can't live in an un-grown-up world and get to enjoy all the things that only come in a grown up world.

And even though I would say we act grown-up a majority of the time, I guess it is the idea that now we have to grow up. And as much as we maybe have resisted seeing ourselves in that demographic, we have, really and truly, entered the grown-up world.

I've been reflecting on how things will be different. I think the move and the house is what really spurred on this chain of thought...

I rent an apartment from my parents...I have for the past 5 years. Beside my years in college and despite my numerous, unsuccessful attempts to move out, I have lived at this address my whole life. As much as I have wanted my independence and freedom, I can't deny the convenience of just 'running upstairs' if I ran out of milk or just wanted to borrow an egg. Or, if I didn't feel like cooking. Or, if my car started making a weird noise. Or if I needed help hanging my black and white pictures.

That's gonna change. I won't be running to dad when I need something fixed and I won't be asking mom to cook for me when I'm too tired lazy to cook for myself. As much as it might not have always been the most 'mature' action, I could get away with it. No longer.

The house, the move, the marriage...I can't escape it. It is time to grow up.

So, all these things we could 'get away with', if we wanted to....not anymore.

It's exciting to me to think of having our own home and running a household and being in charge of my own little corner of real estate. But it is a little scary, too. I wonder if I am ready to be a 'real' grown-up. With a house. And a mortgage. With no escape clause if I don't like how it is working out (owning a home, I mean - although I don't believe in an escape clause from marriage either. But the home is what I was referring to).

Maybe it is the idea of commitment - commitment is very mature and adult. It is the essence of 'grown-up.' And I think that is good for us. It's not like we don't know about commitment or that we haven't thought about it or haven't commitment to anything before this...but I guess it is more tangible now. More permanent.

Buying a house is a very grown-up step. And so is getting married. I think we are ready for it. [I think.] I think it's time. And honestly, I think we need to do it. Being a 40-year-old 20-year-old is a little unbecoming.

So grown-up world, ready or not, here we come.

THE LANGUAGES OF LOVE

First, a big THANK YOU for all who commented on my last post with their wisdom for resolving conflict! I am so appreciative of that!

What is on my mind today is love languages. Some of you might be familiar with this, based on the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman (If you visit his site, you can take a quiz to see what your languages are!).

The basic concept is that there are certain ways we as individuals like to give and receive love. If someone is showing us love in our 'language,' then we get a sense of feeling loved by that person. A person may still love us, but if he is showing love in his language and not our language, we might feel unloved by that person, when in fact, he does love us.

So, the point is to find out which way you and your partner give and receive love, and try to show him love in the way he receives it, not in the way I like to give it. And vice versa - your partner should try to show you love in the way you receive it, not in the way he likes to give it.

Well, the J-man and I had another pre-marital counseling session, and the focus was on love languages. We had taken a love languages test months ago, when we were in our pre-covenant classes (a great 8 week course required for anyone getting married by one of our pastors). We both scored high on 'physical touch' and 'words of affirmation' - so that was good.

But the one difference we had was in 'quality time.' I scored very high on my need for quality time, and he scored much lower. And this makes sense. The J-man values his alone time and often is OK spending time with himself. I, on the other hand, while I need time by myself to regroup, I generally like to be around people and find it stimulating (most of the time!).

Now obviously, the point of a relationship is to relate to another person which can only be done by being with him/her. But I think this was enlightening for both of us. For me, it showed me to not take it personally if the J-man needs to be alone at times. It is just who he is.

On the other hand, the J-man was encouraged to be aware and sensitive to the fact that my needs are different, and that if I am feeling disconnected, then quality time is needed on the double.

And over time, the hope is that it will balance out - he will get used to spending more time together, and I will grow to be more comfortable with time he needs alone.

The give and take of a relationship. The dying to self - that was a point our pastor made. Sometimes, to love someone else, in his or her language, it's not always what is comfortable for us or what we would prefer. But if we love that person, we will get beyond ourselves. And, by doing that, we learn to grow as people. Which, really, is one of the points of marriage.

[p.s. - I just added Gary Chapman's blog to my blog list. They have some great relationship resources and articles! A great find! It's definitely worth a visit!]

Love... and War

Yeah, the other side of relationships. The Battlefield.

I float around on a lot of these blogs, and sometimes I think, 'Everybody's life just seems so happy. So perfect.'

Can anyone else out there relate to me??? Am I the only one who feels like sometimes love and relationships are (cough, cough) less than perfect??? That they can be hard sometimes?

I'm sure nobody wants to hang their dirty laundry out there for all of cyber-world to see - I am not saying they even should. Some things are private and should be kept between you and your man. Absolutely true.

Maybe we women are trying to respect our men and paint them in a positive light - and that is great. I am all for showing our men respect and think that is totally appropriate.

But being newly-engaged and soon-to-be-married, I guess I am curious to hear how other couples deal with conflicts in their relationships - I can use all the insight I can get! And I haven't really seen a lot written about that.

I don't know if there is a 'right' way - each couple is so individual. And we are all works in progress. But I guess sometimes I want re-assurance that we are "OK." "Normal." Not that we are being graded, but I guess sometimes I want to know where we fall on the Bell Curve. But that's just me...the recovering perfectionist.

[I have to add this disclaimer - of course - you knew that was coming: things are actually very good with the J-man and myself. For real! They are!]

But I admit that it takes a lot of mental energy always trying to decipher the best way to deal with conflict.

To not react emotionally.
To seek to understand before being understood.
To think logically about what way of communicating is effective and what is just a waste of time.
To know which battles are worth fighting and which ones will only put us on separate sides instead of on the same team.

They told us in our pre-covenant classes that women see the world through pink glasses, hear with pink hearing aids and speak through a pink megaphone.

Men, on the other hand - yep, you guessed it: blue glasses, blue hearing aid and blue megaphones (That came from Love and Respect by the Eggerichs). And I am sure that those differences alone cause most of the skirmishes.

It's a lot of energy to just try and understand them as men.

So I guess I am curious to hear from you ladies - married, engaged, dating, newly-wed and even singles... Can you relate to this??? What kinds of things have come in between you and your man? How do you resolve it? What have been your experiences with this? (It's OK to be honest but no male bashing here! I hope we all love our men and want to respect them!)

Relationships. It's all about love - but it can feel like war sometimes...
It's a lot of energy.
But to have a relationship with a good man, to love him and experience his love in return, I've found, that is worth fighting for.

(PS...God is teaching me a few lessons about this, too. I'll share some in future blogs.)

Eve's Curse

Oh, what a cursed gender are we!!! Why, Eve, why?!?

We all know how Eve ate the apple and spoke for all of us when she said goodbye to the perfect existence (Thanks, Eve). But the longer I'm in a relationship, the more I see how her curse affects us.

The part I always remembered about her curse was the 'pain in childbirth' part. While I'm not minimizing the significance of that (shout out to all you mothers...especially those of you who opted not to use drugs for the delivery - whoa! Amazing!), that pain is temporary. While excruciating (so I'm told), it's over and done.

I'm thinking of the part of her curse that we keep on having to deal with: "Your desire will be toward your husband, but he will rule over you" (Genesis 3:16 - The Complete Jewish Bible).

One commentary I read put it this way: "She was doomed as a wife and mother to suffer pain of body and distress of mind. From being the help meet of man and the partner of his affections [Genesis 2:18,23], her condition would henceforth be that of humble subjection."

And I can tell you that so keenly do I feel the effects of this. The desire for the man - for his love and affection...the power struggles...the desire to control...sometimes it feels like desire out of control.

We were made to be his helper, his partner. But now, it doesn't work that way so cleanly. And possibly, maybe our desire for him (and I think that includes our desire to control him) - has a dark root. It almost like it's just the nature of the beast of relationships in the same way pain is part of childbirth. This part of our nature is part of relationships now.

The Hebrew root of that word 'desire' likens it to a beast devouring, an overflowing, an abundance, a stretching out. It's the same word that is used in Genesis 4:7, when God tells Cain that "sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." That's a little scary. So, it sort of begs the question...is this intense longing we feel for the men in our lives the way it was meant to be - or the result of a curse? Yeah, sometimes it does feel like a curse. I think because we fear- and I think we know - they will never - no, can never - be enough. And we want them to be. So we try to control them to make them be.

I'm not saying that I think desire is evil or abnormal. But I can't get away from the fact that, according to Scripture, this desire is part of the curse. I think something that was supposed to be balanced and beautiful has somewhere gone wrong.

And I think about alot of the struggles in relationships...is it coming out of this internal wrestling of not wanting him to rule - over me? Over himself? Maybe I want to be in control...of me...of him...of everything... I don't like having someone ruling over me. I am just learning to be OK with God ruling over me, but it is difficult when it is another human being...who isn't doing everything the way I want him to. Especially when in my eyes, I think I've done just fine ruling over myself (humanly speaking, that is).

So this is the part of relationships I've been mulling over. There are no intense power struggles going on between me and James (at the moment, lol)...but the temptation is always there. And I'm realizing - when I boil it down to its simplest terms - that my frustration comes because James is just simply not doing what I want him to do. There it is again - CONTROL. But life would just be so much easier if he did things my way (translation: if he let me control him)! Why can't he see that?!?

It has mostly come up in the wedding planning (or lack thereof). I've had to walk very softly when it has come to this area. And it is a fine line between being sensitive and tactful and being manipulative and controlling. I can hear the crunch of the apple in my ear even as I attempt to justify my actions by calling it 'finesse.'

But what I think both of us are learning (by trial and error, more or less)...that things work best when God is in control. And I have to realize that, curse or not, it is not God's will for me to be in control of the relationship. For as much as I am learning to be subject to James, I can find peace because I know he is subject to God.

I can see the beauty of God's plans and purposes even in this. And God can even redeem a curse.