The Toilet Seat Trick

The obvious, concrete example of the influence thing is the toilet seat thing. I grew up in a house of all men and one woman, mom, who never suggested that we put the toilet seat down after. So when The Wife suggested it I was like, Huh? I've never done that. It doesn't make any sense. It's more efficient for everyone all around if we set the toilet seat to the state we need it as we need it. Just-In-Time toilet seat positioning.

Of course, that was my inner asshole talking. The Gottman book mentioned the toilet seat thing as a very specific example of how a husband can fail to let his wife influence him. It takes no time and earns you kudos. Why wouldn't you do it?

So I tried.

And guess what? It's hard. I have real trouble remembering to do it. Learning a new habit after 40 years doesn't come easy.

My solution? Take one of the kids crayons or dry-erase markers, and write on the underside of the toilet lids, "DOWN." Now I've got a reminder in my face - so easy to remember, in fact, that The Wife didn't even know I had done it for a week. (And when she did find out, she thought it was cute, like, Awww, he's really trying.)

After a while, the cleaning lady erased it. And then, longer still, the habit came back. One day, after I'd noticed The Wife's snippiness factor increasing, I wondered - have I been remembering the toilet seat? And, after checking: no. No I had not.

Time to write on them again. In fact, think I'll double-check them right now.

The Marital Doomsday Clock

I'd say it's at about 4 minutes to midnight these days. Which is progress! Just six months ago or so I would have put it at 1 or 2 minutes. So we've been on an uptick, but last night I'd say we lost a minute or two - why, just a couple of nights ago, she even suggested we hold hands in a restaurant, the marital doomsday clock the farthest thing from my mind.

The blog is about tactics, but...

I do have a favorite book on marriage strategy.

*The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work*, by Dr. John Gottman.

The reason is it doesn't just throw a bunch of Christian platitudes at you...or anecdotes about the author's own marriage (which is all I intend to do on this blog, btw) - it has oceans of scientific data to back up its message.

It's depressing though - the outlook is bleak. Gottman can very accurately predict which marriages will end in divorce. That implies some fatalism. And my wife and I found ourselves counting the "horsemen of the apocalypse" in our own marriage. When she started reading it, she said, "I wish I divorced you years ago."

It's nice to have clarity on the problems, though. One of my biggest pitfalls is the influence thing. The book says that in successful marriages, the husband allows the wife to influence him. This was a big pill for me to swallow. I hate being told what to do. I have for as long as I remember, a problem with my parents / authority / bosses in any form. If my wife said something that even smacked of nagging, I might counter with a sarcastic, "Yes mom." After reading the book I decided to start trying to suck it up and let her be the boss, and that helped push the hands on the marital doomsday clock back some.

The "I'm Fat" Trap

Ok, so your wife says, "I'm fat." You:

a) Say "Oh no, honey, you're not fat."

b) Say "Well, you only had a baby a year ago, it's going to take longer than that to get back to your old figure."

c) Say nothing.

The correct answer? d) None of the above.

I know from experience - the hard way - none of these answers work.

If you answer a), you'll piss her off because you're contradicting her. You're not validating her opinion.

If you answer b), you'll piss her off because while it's ok for her to call herself fat, it's not ok for you. It's like the n-word that way.

If you don't answer, then you're ignoring her. "You don't listen!" may come up later in the day after some seething on her part.

Here are a couple tactics that do work:

1) The 'validation' tactic. "I hear you. You think you're fat."

2) Go meta. "You put me in an awkward position. If I say you're not fat, then I'm contradicting you and not validating your opinion. If I agree with you, then I'm a dick."

I advise mixing these two up. People like variety.

Obviously, this works for all sorts of physical-self-image problems. "I hate my teeth." "I have bad skin." Etcetera.

Here We Go

Got the idea for this blog this morning when I actually felt like I handled a marital situation with aplomb - a fairly rare thing. (Here's hoping "Husband X" doesn't become "X Husband"...)

The elevator pitch? Marriages are hard, some 60% of them fail and who knows how many of the remainder suck. There are some books that outline good strategy (the general advice - "Don't be an asshole" - thanks) but rarely go into enough detail on good tactics, day to day "moves" you could use to try and make your marriage suck less.

I'll probably go into more detail on my philosophy of marriage later. I'm not sure if I'll tell my wife I'm doing this or keep it a secret and thereby free myself to possibly be more honest here. (Or I can be more honest there and less honest here. A conundrum.)

My qualifications? Are piss poor. I've only been married almost ten years and would have gotten divorced by now if it wasn't for feeling obligation to the kids, who are awesome. (Of course, if it wasn't for the kids, there wouldn't be the stress that make us want to get divorced in the first place. One of the great ironies.) I haven't done any scientific studies or anything. I'm just a guy who's going to share some things that have worked for him and a lot of things that haven't. (Assuming I keep this up. I'm a pretty busy guy.)

So, without further ado, my first entry.