Husbands (yep all the tricky topics lately!)

Well what do you reckon to this? The Blog that started off with knitting has suddenly got deep and meaningful. I will return to knitting eventually, but a fluffy blog that makes everything look perfect was getting on my goat. Makes me feel hypocritical.
Anyhoo I will voice all my thoughts and concerns and sometimes I will include knitting and crochet and sewing and here we go. Please note I am not a trained psychologist, nor a relationship councilor, or any kind of trained councilor, nor have I any religious training - I am a normal person commenting on what I have lived and what I see. It is entirely my personal opinion. If it gets your panties in a bunch just stop reading! ;)

I am 32 and this coming January I will have been married for 12 years (he has too! :)) and I think that this is one of the hardest things I have ever done, other than raising children. I want to start by saying that this is not about put the husband down, its more about appreciating who they are right now. It could get ugly people!

From the time I was about 10 I believed that if I could be perfect it would make everyone happy. I was informed that I probably should not consider boyfriends or husbands when I got older, better to stay single. I was also told at one point maybe that when I got older i should consider living with some one rather that marrying them then I could leave if I wanted to. With those two considerations and the not so amicable atmosphere within the house I had decided that I was not perfect enough for anyone to love me and that I would remain single. I also decided I would not have any children because I would definitely screw them up, completely. I was set! Till I met my now husband and God said to me "Um I have a different plan".

Ash pursued me, he was my friend, and I told him blatantly that I did not want a boyfriend and I was never getting married, but I could be his friend. So he was my friend, then my closest friend who knew as much as I felt safe telling him, then one day I thought I can't be without him. BOOM! the master plan is down the drain.
Then we got married and stuff happens, it wasn't happily ever after, and even though he did not turn into a frog when we got married, I could definitely see room for improvement. Bingo! here comes Hypocritical Dini in full force, rating 20 on the Richter scale, Pride is here people and the fall comes soon after!

Now as well as being a perfectionist and a hypocrite I am also a doer. I do stuff, to look like a "good christian", "good person", so that people will like me and accept me because I don't feel like I am acceptable or likable just as I am. My husband just is. He does stuff when he wants to and is himself and although insecure in many ways he is very stable about what he knows, who he is and what he believes. I don't know if he knows it, but I see it clearly now. He will just be, and it used to drive me nuts, actually sometimes it still does, lets be completely honest.

He didn't want to DO the stuff I wanted to Do. The reason I wanted to DO it was to look acceptable, he just knew he wasn't ready for it, and it wasn't necessary. I can remember thinking that maybe I didn't pray hard enough before we got married, maybe I had made a mistake. I had married someone who might not want to be a missionary in far off Uganda.... So when I realised this I think the super critical, Mega beast button got turned into High gear. Fortunately when those particular buttons get activated in me, my husbands super patient, very loving and caring buttons go on full throttle too.
They have been on for a long time. God is turning my buttons down, and my husbands are still on full, and one day they will be used for his own benefit as well as mine.
I think sometimes as Christians, or religious people actually human beings in general we sometimes want to conform to a particular way we think we should be, how people want us to be, instead of just being. Maybe its just me.
In my life depression and anxiety has been present always, and I strive to hide it and to look like I have it together, even in front of the husband, maybe especially in front of him. When it all fell apart, several times, (God has a lot of work to do here!) the things about my husband that drive me crazy, and turn my Mega Beast buttons on, were the essential things I needed. GASP!

He is very very laid back, if he had been Mr Lets be Involved in EVERYTHING! and lets evangalise the entire world in 40 days and then do it again, there may not have been the space for me to psych out. I am not saying that if this is how your life is it is bad, just that I thought we should be Doing stuff and God showed me that His plan for me was perfect. I fell to bits and had days where I couldn't go anywhere until the washing was done, adrenaline running, heart pounding I would say to Ash "I just have to get the washing done, I don't know why, I can't go anywhere till its done" and his response "That's ok D, we can do that". Bless him! I had days where he sat with me and I sobbed because I was so messed up I didn't want to live anymore, and I couldn't see anyway out. We didn't have to go anywhere, he didn't have any agenda or anything that couldn't be put aside for a while. We just were at home, no urgency, no need, He put himself last for me, as naturally as breathing.

So my point for all this revelation to the entire world via my blog is this. I put my husband down verbally, to him and to others because there is a part of me that still wants to be perfect and i expect that others should be trying to achieve the same goal. The truth is God made Ash (and your husband too!) and if God is God then He can't have made any mistakes. How can I criticize the creator through his creation?

There is a culture among females ( it has many causes, that I am not qualified enough to explore in depth, nor do I want to. I know some of my motivations, I am dealing with them - its a whole of my life project!) where we put our husbands down. When we are together with our friends when we are out etc. Sometimes is just a little comment like "I know exactly what you mean" (translation:- mine does that crazy thing too, all the time!) to fully bashing the husband verbally with blow by blow descriptions. I have been present in both situations, equally as ugly. I am an excellent man basher in the verbal sense, sarcasm is my primary language, english my second. It is something that I am striving to fix. I have thought, "i will love you and I will honor you but you try and tell me what to do and you can shove it mate!" Um yeah good vows made at your wedding D!

Here is the cracker, when I let go and let my husband lead (oh my how anti womens lib!) it actually works! Now remember this is all opinion and I do not suggest that this is for violent and abusive relationships (plus I am not qualified to give any opinion on those situations at all). But I see lots of average marriages and relationships that fall apart because we all want to be in charge and you can't have two leaders. Yep its getting ugly people.
Respect your mate! always! It is so hard, i know, I have the tolerance of a single celled organism most of the time. But when I shut up and listen and let him be who he is meant to be it works out OK. Now he isn't spending our money at the casino, or drinking it all away, and for the most part I live a very protected safe middle class life that probably hasn't seen half or even a quarter of the problems the world really has in the nitty gritty of their lives. So I gab my opinion from a sheltered viewpoint, but for me, and my bible tells me, that my husband is the head of my household "For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior" Ephesians 5v23.
Now if you have turned off thats fine, if you are raving mad at me that is fine too, You might be thinking, you don't know the crackpot things my husband does! Nope I don't. You don't know how I feel when he talks to me that way! Well I may have a bit of insight into that but no, no one but you knows what is going on in your house, and I do not presume to know your circumstances or to even know what to tell you to do, and I wouldn't. What I know is this I cannot change the choices my husband makes or the way he behaves or reacts, but I can chose how I react to those circumstances and choices. If I chose to be with this man then I have a certain responsibility to this relationship and that includes considering him and his perspective and to not assume he will adhere to my master plan of " You will be perfect and we will both strive to attain perfection in record time". What I remember when I want to run him over or scream at the top of my voice at him is this, sure he has faults, but he is putting up with my buffet of imperfections too and he isn't freaking at me like a psychopathic masochistic nut (one of his strenghts, and even if he was doesn't mean I have to too) maybe I should just breathe and settle a bit. Unless you can get it perfect yourself (go on I dare you!) you don't really have any right to expect that the guy who decided he could put up with your PMS one week a month for the rest of his life, should either. When we say "I Do" at the altar it doesn't mean that we should suddenly expect that he will magically start picking his clothes up off the floor, and that he will agree with everything you say, and will automatically put your needs before his own, and will read your mind and know what you are thinking and will spend his whole life in complete service to you every day for the rest of his life. He is going to burp, fart, take you for granted, hurt your feelings, leave his stuff around, or be forever picking your stuff up for you. He might be a complete slob, or a complete neat freak, a crazy football yelling maniac once a week, he may hate some of the stuff you do (really, I thought everything I do is great???). If he does them before you get married, you can guarantee that he will do them after, they will make you crazy, and if you think you can change him you are fooling yourself! (by the way your pile of magazines next to the bed or the way you constantly clean the house - or don't- the way you hum that noise when you are absently doing other stuff, all your craft junk, the girly movies, your sudden fad for tofu and vegetarian food, your need to recreate your image again, etc all drive him equally bonkers too).
Husbands are human, He will make mistakes just like you do (different ones, that don't annoy him as much as they do you) but its all give and take. If he was perfect, we would all feel completely inadequate - truthfully a big proportion of women have this problem a bit somewhere already without their husband being the icon of perfection too- and how could you grow together and develop and mature if he was already at the finish line?

So your marriage isn't perfect, neither is mine. You can fully expect if you ever meet me that eventually both my feet will end up in my mouth, my husband will be emotionally cringing, and I will feel like a complete moron a couple of days later when I realise what I really said. Your husband isn't perfect, neither are you! Don't quit as soon as it gets a bit tough, the tough bits make good cement for later on when the earthquake hits.
Living with someone completely different is HARD! Even if you have similarities they are not your sibling or parent, and living with them can be very hard, you cannot expect that it will all be flowers and bells. Take a deep breath.

As a last note I just want to say that my husband puts up with so much from me, and the longer I am married to him, the more God is teaching me to deal with my own stuff and let Him deal with my husband, and let my husband be who he is because he is fine the way he is. When I say to God "um are you sure about this???, really???" God gently says to me " uh which one of us is the creator again??". Point taken.