Get Out of the Gift-Giving Rut: How to Surprise Your Spouse this Christmas

Photo by mysza83 from Flickr. Used w/permission.

First, let me clear something up: No, there are no kinky suggestions in this post. Sorry to disappoint. Second, be warned: this gets pretty nerdy.

Now, let's get started:

I'm lucky enough to be married to a man who gives terrific gifts. And he has it easy, as we have a mutual agreement not to give each other Christmas or Valentine's gifts, so he really only has to bring the magic to my birthday. (Which he manages to do, year after year.)

Even so, I know I sometimes struggle to figure out what to give Cliff for his birthday (which happens to be today). We're at a point in life where we have what we need, and a lot of what we want. And the stuff we want but don't have ... well, there's often a good reason for that (like it's too expensive or too impractical). Coming up with a "Wow!" gift is a challenge.

I hear other people saying the same things about buying for their spouses. Faced with the daunting task of finding the perfect gift, it's easy to revert to the routine: bottle of perfume, Craftsman tools. My mom put Old Spice in my dad's stocking for a decade, before learning he didn't actually like the smell.

One night last week when I couldn't sleep, I got to thinking about this problem: how do you come up with creative gifts, year after year? Then I realized that some of my favorite gifts from Cliff weren't especially creative: some were practical, even predictable. But I still liked them - and he kept me guessing by having a "Wow!" gift occasionally. Essentially, Cliff has created an unconscious rotational system of gifts. Take a look at this 2x2 and then let me explain what I mean:

If you're not familiar with 2x2's, they're basically an XY matrix (I warned you this would get nerdy), where each quadrant represents a different combination of characteristics. In this case there are two continuums: Fun to Practical and Creative to Predictable. The lower left quadrant shows gifts that are both Predictable and Fun. The upper right is Creative and Practical. You get the point.

The gifts you see on the 2x2 are some of the favorites we've given each other over the years. All good gifts, all perfectly appropriate. My favorite on here is the antique typewriter in the Fun and Creative quadrant: it's the best gift I've ever received. I love it most of all because Cliff knew me enough to give me a gift that fed the writer in me, and found a way to do so creatively. (It's also one of the least expensive items on the matrix: when you're in the Creative & Fun quadrant, the cash value of the gift doesn't matter.)

You can't hit it out of the ballpark like that every year. There's nothing wrong with grabbing something off your spouse's Amazon Wish List: it's sure to make him or her happy, right?

So here's my proposal: put yourself on a rotation through the quadrants. Try to have a "Wow!" gift - Creative and Fun - every few years. Pick up Practical and Predictable items in the years in between. This year's birthday gift for Cliff, which he'll get tonight, is in the Creative and Practical quadrant.

Of course, this doesn't answer the primary question of exactly what to get your spouse. I can't help you there. But I hope it does take some of the pressure off to deliver a "Wow!" gift every year. It's okay to be predictable and pratical: just not always.

Rare...but familiar

Photo by VirtualEm

My wife is a rarity.

She grew up in farm country, a place where "meat and potatoes" accurately describes families' nightly eating habits. And yet, my wife finds meat generally unappetizing (potatoes she can deal with). When we became vegetarians early in our marriage, I was motivated by the unethical treatment of animals on American factory farms, but she was probably equally motivated by her taste buds.

We later abandoned our vegetarianism during our years serving as Peace Corps volunteers in the South Pacific, and I started noticing a trend. My wife could tolerate eating meat...when it didn't seem particularly meat-like. Chunks of chicken breast in pasta? Fine. Fried chicken on a bone? Pass. Bacon in an omelette? Cool. Roasted pig on a spit? Nope. As best I can tell, she's been avoiding any semblance of blood, fat and bone for decades now. Morningstar products were basically invented for this woman.

And this would explain why she prefers basically all meat well done. We recently listened to a fantastic podcast from The Moth where Adam Gopnick described how he and his wife overcame years of arguments about "well done" vs. "rare" ("Rare Romance, Well-Done Marriage" is definitely worth a listen: funny, honest and insightful). We found ourselves nodding throughout, partly because we could remember those moments when our dietary preferences caused conflict.

One such moment occurred just a couple weeks back. We were celebrating a friend's birthday in Milwaukee and went seeking lunch a little bit later than anticipated. Traffic had been awful, brunch had been postponed and everyone found themselves completely famished at 2:30 p.m. We arrived at the pub and ordered just in time: the kitchen was closing in 5 minutes. I ordered biscuits and gravy because I was in a brunchy mood, and Amber ordered a cheeseburger medium well done. All was well with the world. Beer was being drunk, and food was being cooked. But. Then the food arrived.

My bride's burger was apparently not well done. I say "apparently" because I was judging solely based upon her disgusted facial expressions. After all, we were eating in a dimly lit bar, Amber was on the other side of the table, and I don't find pink hamburgers all that unusual. Regardless, my wife stated, "I cannot eat this." Since the kitchen was closed and sending food back was not possible, I only had a few options:

1) I could magnanimously offer to switch meals with my lovely wife.

2) I could cling to the biscuits and gravy (which looked really good, by the way), asking questions like, "Are you sure, hon? I hate for you to not eat. Maybe you could get past it?"

3) I could magnanimously offer to switch meals in between huge bites of my food, allowing me to seem kind without being completely self-sacrificial.

Once everyone else at the table looked my direction, option number two was pretty much out of the question. They would have thought I was a jerk...and they would have known I was a jerky husband that writes a marriage blog. Not a good combination. So I basically had to choose between genuine altruism or a hybrid approach of altruism and self-interest. Naturally, I started taking big bites of biscuits and gravy. In between gulps, I would say things like, "Just a couple bites, and then we can totally switch."

This is not necessarily a moment I'm proud of, mind you. I would love to portray myself as a nice guy who would happily sacrifice for his spouse. But I typically settle for "just sacrificial enough to seem nice to my wife and others." I find the minimum bar, and I exceed it by a hair.

The President of my alma mater had been married over 50 years and often joked that he was still waiting for that moment when he looked for his wife in photographs instead of looking for himself. Well, me too. People are naturally selfish, I suppose. But I still believe that lifelong relationship can gradually change you. Maybe you can find yourself a little more willing to trade meals or cancel your appointments or look out for your partner first. After all, I gave her the biscuits and gravy eventually, right?

Unfortunately, both the cheeseburger and biscuits and gravy were pretty underwhelming. Per usual, I was clinging to something I did not really want or need. My wife may be a rarity, but I'm pretty typical sometimes.

- Cliff (aka The Husband)

Moral High Ground and the Crunchy/Creamy Debate

Sometimes I think the real question of marriage isn't Who is the right person?, it's, Are you a crunchy person or a creamy person? Yes, I'm talking about peanut butter. Because it's virtually impossible for a creamy person to happily eat a crunchy sandwich. And crunch lovers know a creamy sandwich is lacking.

Maybe your issue is toilet paper. My grandmother's bathroom used to have a newspaper clipping hanging over the toilet paper roll. It said:

He says over / I say under / It's becoming quite an issue / Deciding what's the proper way / To hang the bathroom tissue.

And then there's socks: fold, or roll? Cliff prefers to do both: roll athletic socks, fold dress socks. And shirts: when I fold t-shirts, I put the crease right down the center. Cliff prefers two creases, one on each side, like he works for the Gap.

On a rough day, these silly topics can become marital battlegrounds, and we stake our own territory like it's the moral high ground. Apparently I'm not the only one facing these big issues in life. This clip from Up All Night made me laugh because it reminded me just how ridiculous these sorts of debates are:


Whether it's peanut butter, or socks, or toilet paper, I'm sure you and your spouse have some insignificant difference that you occasionally defend like it's a moral high ground. Laugh about it today - and share your own comic differences here in the comments section.

Choking: Ten Years of Marriage, and I Still Can't Parallel Park with Cliff in the Car

I remember taking driver's ed as a 15 year-old in Warrensburg, Illinois, population 1400. It seemed a little ridiculous that parallel parking was a requirement of the test. When would that ever be needed in Warrensburg?

Fast forward ten years to the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, where finding a parking spot was roughly equivalent to getting a top deal on Black Friday: not technically impossible, but incredibly unpleasant just the same.

Needless to say, I learned to be proficient at parallel parking. I won't claim to be a pro - I still have to rock back and forth almost every time - but I don't avoid doing it either. Except when Cliff is in the car.

I find it technically impossible to parallel park if Cliff is in the car. You can see an illustration of how it always ends up in the picture above: more than once I've gotten to this point, slammed the car into park, and said, "Why don't you just do it." Then I walk into the house in a huff, as if Cliff had said something derogatory about my abilities, which of course he didn't.

Parallel parking is the only thing I can think of that really causes me to freeze in front of Cliff. But thankfully I'm not the only one. University of Chicago assistant professor of psychology Sian Beilock has the same parallel parking issues in front of her husband. She calls it choking, and has written a book (Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To). When faced with "performance anxieties," she recommends:

1. Distract yourself
2. Don't slow down
3. Focus on the outcome, not the mechanics
4. Find a key word (a one-word mantra)
5. Focus on the positive
6. Change your grip 

(These tips come from an article in University of Chicago Magazine.)

Items 1, 2 and 6 seem to be spectacularly bad advice for parallel parking, but I plan to try the others the next time I have to park with Cliff in the car.

My theory on the parallel parking issue is that deep down, I don't want Cliff to think I'm unimpressive, about anything. (Funny, since no one knows my complete unimpressiveness more than he does.) We want (and need?) to be seen as competent and capable in front of our partners. The more we fixate on that, the more we choke.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds it impossible to do something they're normally completely capable of in front of their spouse. Anyone? Anyone? Share what you choke on, and your theory of why.

Six Ways the Holidays Can Hijack Your Marriage (And How to Avoid Catastrophe)

Photo by AussieGold. Used with permission
from Flickr Creative Commons. 

Christmas, Hanukkah, and the other festivities we celebrate can be beautiful expressions of our faith; terrific excuses to gather family around us; and gentle reminders to give more to others. Or the holidays can be a living hell. It just depends.

No where is this felt more than in your marriage. So to help avoid the worst, here's Six Ways the Holidays Can Hijack Your Marriage.

1. Money: You never have enough of it at the holidays, right? Honey-baked Ham takes some serious coin. As do gifts for the kids' teachers, booze for the office party, and that new Lexus we're apparently supposed to have waiting in the drive on Christmas morning.

Marriage researchers always put money at the top of the "what couples fight about" list. It goes without saying that fighting often intensifies during the holidays. Avoid the fighting by setting a budget today, and sticking to it. Divide the purchasing so that neither of you has to feel like Scrooge. Suggest you draw names for extended family gifts; go in with another parent on teachers' gifts. And skip the Lexus.

2. Time: Like money, there's never enough time during the Christmas season. And while the first few holiday parties can be fun, baking cookies at 2 a.m. for tomorrow's Christmas party usually isn't. Most importantly, the busyness of the season sometimes keeps us from actually enjoying it with the ones we love. So before you book the calendar, block out some time for you and your spouse to watch your favorite Christmas movie alone; or plan a date night to Zoo Lights, without the kids. Fill in the calendar with things that are fun and/or unavoidable, but don't add more than is necessary.

3. Food: We wait all year for the first handful of Puppy Chow, the first sip of Egg Nog. But of course we don't stop at the first bite. Freshmen Fifteen has nothing on the Holiday Love Handles that develop by the time the New Year rolls around.

One of the side benefits of marriage is that your spouse is legally obligated to love you in spite of the love handles. Just the same, there's no sense in giving your partner more to love this Christmas season.

4. In-laws: The one thing I remember my parents fighting about throughout my childhood was how to divide our time at Christmas between both sides of the family. And my two sets of grandparents lived 10 minutes a part. Multiply that by hundreds of miles, or multiple faith traditions, and it's no wonder that figuring out the in-law thing can be a major marital headache.

And it's not just who you spend your time with that can be a marriage hijacker. Does one side of the family give lavish gifts that you can't compete with? Are there family traditions that should have died a decade ago? Brother-in-laws that pick fights about politics? (Side note: The Onion recently ran a headline something along the lines of, Area Man Withholds 75% of Opinions During Thanksgiving Visit to Parents. Yep, I get that.)

When you're tempted to side with your side of the family, remember to have your spouse's back - especially in public. If you're both flexible, you'll figure out the extended family drama with less drama of your own.

5. Division of Labor: On average, 10% of men feel the division of labor at home is unfair; 60% of women feel it is. Ouch! Add in the extra holiday responsibilities of shopping and wrapping and baking and cleaning and decorating ... and it's easy for one spouse to feel over burdened. Men, make a point of taking responsibility for extra tasks (it has the side benefit of almost certainly guaranteeing you a little extra nooky, see link above). Women, let some of the tasks go, be willing to surrender control of the ones you hand over, and take a task or two off his plate too.

6. Dissatisfaction: Finally, the last big factor in marital holiday hijacking is that this season is designed to remind us of what we don't have: a house big enough to hold the extended family, a new car in the drive, jewelry boxes wrapped and waiting under the tree, an iPad hidden in the rafters for a Christmas morning surprise. It's easy, in a season of consumerism, to start counting what you don't have instead of what you do; dissatisfaction can quickly trickle down to your marriage, too.

The antidote to this, of course, is remembering what the season was originally designed to celebrate (and the answer is not Santa). Practicing gratitude together can be a place to start. As is mindfully lighting the Menorah or Advent candles. However you get through the holiday season, commit today to getting through it together, with your spouse.

What hijacks your marriage during the holiday season, and how do you avoid it?

Are you ready for some...parade floats?

Those of you who regularly read this blog know that I (the husband) have a penchant for sports and pop culture. Thus, I also have a penchant for reading Grantland, the sports and pop culture site recently created by ESPN writer Bill Simmons. Earlier this week, Simmons made the following comment during his weekly football picks:

I love carving the turkey because at around 9:30 at night, when my wife is still cleaning up and getting madder and madder that I watched football all day, I have a ready answer for this exchange:

Her (sarcastic): "Thanks for the help!"
Me: "Come on, I carved the turkey!"

...I'd like to thank the guy who invented turkey carving for making me feel useful on my single laziest day.

Simmons has made repeated comments like this one about Thanksgiving and marital stress over the last few weeks, culminating with a comment last week that Thanksgiving football precipitates more divorces than any other holiday or sporting event.

You see, there are now three professional football games on Thanksgiving: the Lions, the Cowboys and a Thursday evening night cap. Prior to this year, the Lions game could simply be ignored, but now even that team has improved (Strongly resisting the urge to taunt Detroit fans here. What can I say? I'm a Chicagoan.). But watching three straight football games on any holiday seems pretty risky, and Simmons comments got me thinking: Is my football-watching annoying my wife? Are other people under the impression that Thanksgiving is NOT about football?! So I took a drastic step. I actually asked my wife how she felt about Thanksgiving football.

For some men, this might seem like opening up Pandora's Box. But here's the thing: I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that I am pretty insulated from holiday-related criticism. I mean, I regularly bake desserts. I have been known to hand wash dishes after large family meals. I even voluntarily sleep on the floor when visiting my in-laws. How could a nice guy like me possibly offend anyone by watching football? Right? (Many male readers are currently nodding their heads, I assure you.)

So I asked Amber a simple question: "What is Thanksgiving all about?" This question is akin to asking someone, "What is the true meaning of Christmas?" Thankfully, she did not imitate Linus by dragging a blanket onstage and offering a heartfelt speech about pilgrims, first winters and our proud American heritage. She responded with, "There are four things that should happen on Thanksgiving: eating, spending time with family, watching the parade and watching football."

I was obviously incredulous. There's a parade on Thanksgiving? And someone wants to watch it? Very strange stuff, indeed. Also, football was number four on her list? I mean, my Thanksgiving list would have been food and football. Period. You might think I felt guilty when she mentioned that Thanksgiving should be about spending time with family. You would be wrong. It's presumed that family are sitting near me during the whole "food and football" thing, but they're obviously not the focal point. Let's not get carried away.

At any rate, I risked a second question also: "At what point would you say too much football has been watched on Thanksgiving?" Then I took a deep breath. My wife's answer to this question could significantly affect all future holidays, obviously. I would watch no less football on TV, but I could very well find myself feeling guilty for doing so. Yikes. Amber's response? "Towards the end of the second game, I would probably start getting restless. I'm fine with football being part of the day, but I hate the way it follows familiar gender roles: women in the kitchen cooking and cleaning up while men sit around watching football. Plus, 6 hours of football is a lot." Now, I would never deny that 6 hours of football is a lot. I would, however, argue that 6 hours of football is not enough. And you know how I solve restlessness? I stand up, I take a food break and then I sit down again.

Again, I avoided feeling too guilty about my wife's comments. Remember: I do some cooking, and I do some cleaning. I also play with my kids during football games. So those pesky gender roles that bother Amber are not being completely followed in our household. But that did not change the fundamental tension here. Thanksgiving football may not exactly be pushing our marriage to the brink, but it was capable of causing some tension at least. My perfect Thanksgiving is filled with football. My wife's perfect Thanksgiving involves decidedly less football. So I might not feel guilty about my priorities or behaviors, but my priorities and behaviors clearly affect my wife's holiday experience, nonetheless. That's marriage for you: your actions simply cannot exist in a vacuum any more.

With my wife's perspectives in mind, I made some pretty deliberate efforts today. I ate our Thanksgiving meal and cleaned the kitchen during the Packers-Lions game. I made my pies during the Dolphins-Cowboys game. I even watched a little of the Macy's parade. You know what? These were pretty small sacrifices in the grand scheme of things. My Thanksgiving was still enjoyable, and my wife's Thanksgiving was pretty okay too. Perhaps I should ask my wife for her honest opinion more often.

Perhaps I should also bring a book or magazine for use during the parade. Listening to Matt Lauer gush about floats and lip syncing pop stars is probably not quite as bad as having your fingernails slowly pulled out...but it's way less entertaining than football for sure.

- Cliff (aka The Husband)

Taking the Gratitude Thing One Step Further

After yesterday's post on the discipline of gratitude, a friend sent a link to an article from the New York Times called A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day.

It's a great article, and I suggest you read it. But knowing you have a turkey to bake and pies to make, let's assume you won't get around to reading the article. Here's a quote that pretty much sums up the research it covers:

"Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive Thanksgiving without serious injury."

In one study, researchers asked participants to write a weekly gratitude journal entry. When compared to the control group, the grateful participants were emotionally and physically healthier. They even worked out more.

The article also mentions an exercise developed by positive psychology expert Martin Seligman: "[write] a 300-word letter to someone who changed your life for the better. Be specific about what the person did and how it affected you. Deliver it in person, preferably without telling the person in advance what the visit is about. When you get there, read the whole thing slowly to your benefactor. 'You will be happier and less depressed one month from now,' Dr. Seligman guarantees in his book Flourish."


If you're like me and have a long car ride ahead of you today (and have you checked out the Chicago traffic reports yet?), then I challenge you to try a modified, road-trip version of Seligman's exercise. Take time to tell every person in your vehicle (kids, spouse, mother-in-law) five things about them for which you are grateful. Think about the character traits, the positive habits, or the skills and talents that make that person special, and that have a positive impact in your life. Research says you'll be headed for a healthier and happier Thanksgiving holiday. 

Giving Thanks: The Year-Round Practice of Gratitude

Photo by gisele13. Used with permission.

Earlier this year I was at a meeting. The leader called us to order and asked us each to share a spiritual practice you do daily. Not your average ice breaker question. 

The people around me gave all sorts of great practices: yoga, Scripture reading, prayer. I struggled to come up with my response, and was glad I was one of the last to go. I really wanted to be honest and only name a practice that I actually do daily. And while the things other people listed were great, I couldn't honestly say I did them every day.

When it was my turn, I answered honestly: I said I practice gratitude daily. And I do.

The spiritual practice of gratitude is one you can do regardless of your faith perspective, or even if you lack a faith perspective entirely. It simply requires that you take time each day to be intentionally thankful for the goodness in your life: for the abundance and warmth you're surrounded by, for the love and joy you share with others.

I try to be thankful for big things: that we've managed to stay employed through a tough recession, that our house is warm and safe, that our children are happy and healthy. But I also spend time concentrating on the smallest of things: the taste of coffee when it's perfectly mixed with cream and sugar; the way the moon streamed in through the window last night; how my daughter's face looked when she kicked a soccer ball into the net for the first time. I am grateful for Cliff snoring next to me, because his snores remind me that he's there and breathing, and give me permission to be a snorer myself (which, I'm told, I certainly was last night).

Spiritual disciplines are meant to bring you closer to God - and because I believe in God, gratitude succeeds in doing this. But I think it brings me closer to others as well because it makes me focus on the best there is about them. It makes me more joyful.

On Thursday we'll  all sit down at an over-stuffed table with our friends or family and name one thing for which we are grateful. This year, make a point of extending your gratitude to the other 364 days as well, and see if it brings you closer to others (including your spouse).

Have You Ever Lied about Telling Your Spouse Something?

 About twice a week, Cliff and I have a conversation that goes something like this:

Cliff: Don't forget I'll be home late tonight. My meeting goes until six.

Amber: Six?

Cliff: Yes. We talked about this. Remember? You said it was no problem.

Amber: [Clears throat. Tries to recall.] When did we have this conversation?

Cliff: Last night. After you were in bed.

And then we both realize we've done it again. I've managed, yet again, to have an entire conversation with Cliff while I was asleep - none of which I now remember. And Cliff has managed, yet again, to think I was actually awake and alert.

Usually these conversations are about stuff that doesn't impact the flow of our days: a Jon Stewart joke, the performance of Cliff's fantasy football team (okay ... it doesn't impact the flow of my day). But occasionally it's important stuff, and I'm oblivious.

Confession: Once or twice, when I've had absolutely no recall of the conversation, I've wondered if Cliff was making it up. But then I remember just how oblivious I am after 10 p.m., and know that he's telling the truth. (It also helps that I trust Cliff's character.)

All this to say, I laughed heartily at the intro scene from Modern Family two weeks ago. (See clip above.) Claire, apparently, shouldn't trust Phil as much as I trust Cliff. Watch the first few minutes and you'll see what I mean.

Have you ever lied about having told your spouse something? Leave a comment and confess here:

Top Chef, Marriage: Please pack your remotes and go

My wife and I have been married just over 10 years now. That's a lot of memories, a lot of evenings at home and a lot of fighting over the remote control. You see, we have slightly different television watching habits. I prefer live sports and dark critically-acclaimed dramas. My wife prefers HGTV and shows that make her laugh. To be fair, these disagreements are pretty minor. For every Sunday night debate between football and Iron Chef, there are moments of blissful consensus with Mad Men, Modern Family and - most of all - Top Chef.

Top Chef came along at a very critical moment in our marriage. If I had watched one more couple fret about their initial offer for a large suburban home, I might have started hitting random real estate agents on the street. Meanwhile, my wife suggested that I watch "The Sopranos" alone because she was no longer interested in mafia hits and assaults on women (picky, picky). Once Aaron Sorkin left "The West Wing" - you see, season 5 never actually happened - we were like one of those 1950s couples with separate beds...except instead of separate beds, we had separate remote controls. Then Amber flipped on Top Chef one night. It was like a cool refreshing breeze blew through our master bedroom. I was prepared to hate that show. After all, I don't typically care for reality TV or programming hosted by former models. But there I was loving every moment: the cooking, the competition and - yes - that former model I mentioned earlier. We found one more thing to share, even if our dinners seemed slightly more boring afterwards.

However, I would argue that we could have survived without Top Chef. Had we been suffering through a cheaper cable package or had Tom Colicchio been hit by a bus, we still would have been okay. And I don't just say that because Mad Men and Modern Family would come along a couple years later. I say that because we had discovered the importance of space both together and apart. Here's what I mean:

Accept your differences: Personal preferences regarding TV shows or decorations or food may seem trivial, but they can actually be pretty charged. Why? Well, arguing for your personal tastes means arguing against your partner's personal tastes. It feels like judgment. For a long long time Amber felt guilty whenever she felt like watching a light romantic comedy; she thought I was judging her. And she felt silly for not enjoying war movies because so many were critically acclaimed and popularly loved. But over time, she came to feel more comfortable in her own skin and her own preferences. And over time, I learned that my little sarcastic comments about her favorite TV shows were not helping. We eventually gave ourselves the space to be individuals and have our own likes/dislikes.

Treasure your similarities: It's pretty critical to give each other space, but - for all our joking - that does not actually mean separate beds or TVs or lives. Several years into our marriage, we definitely learned to give each other space, but we also learned to treasure those moments when we had something in common. Watching the last four seasons of The Sopranos by myself made watching Top Chef together pretty special. Those date nights my wife mentioned yesterday? Well every Top Chef episode became a date night. Had we sat next to each other on the couch every night, those evenings together would have been just a little less special. We love our space, and we love our togetherness...for us, that goes hand in hand.

When you started reading this post, you were probably pretty stressed. I mean, how could a marriage in 21st century America possibly survive different TV programming preferences? Oh, the humanity! Well, I should probably confess that we still struggle sometimes. We may both like Top Chef, but sometimes we like different contestants! It can get pretty rough when someone's favorite suddenly has to pack his/her knives and go. Somehow we survive. It's almost like we're used to agreeing to disagree. Now excuse me...I'm feeling kinda hungry.

- Cliff (aka The Husband)

Date Night is Dead. Long Live Date Night!

Our Date Night kit: cocoa with a generous smidge of Bailey's 

(or the generic equivalent). 

It's time you ditch date night.

"Have a weekly date night" is a standard bit of marriage mantra you probably had drilled into you by friends and family from the first time you hinted you might take a long walk down a short aisle.

It's a good concept, really: a weekly date night gives you time to be a couple, rather than the daily default of two business partners operating a small but intense organization. But here's the problem: weekly date nights are nearly impossible to achieve, and the pressure to have them doesn't exactly help your marriage.

First ... have you thought about the price of babysitters lately? In Chicago, the going rate for a reasonably responsible adult is $10 an hour. So unless Grandma and Grandpa are next door, or you're not especially concerned with the safety of your children, you can be priced out of a date night before you and your partner even get out the door.

Second ... most of us live over-scheduled lives. We work until six, rush home for dinner with the family, do baths and homework, get the kids in bed, pay the bills, finish up some email, and watch a half hour of TV before falling asleep on the couch. While none of that may be thrilling stuff, most of it is stuff that has to get done: and leaving home for the evening puts all that stuff off for later.

I think it's time we cut ourselves some slack on the goal of having a weekly date night, and look for some viable alternatives that gives us focused couple-time in the middle of our busy weeks. Because really, jobs change, kids leave home, but at the end of it you still have each other, and you better invest some effort now in making sure you still know how to hang out happily together.

So what does an alternative look like? I have family members who put their daughter in a 6 p.m. dance class, then dashed out together to grab a quick meal and chat while her class took place. Other people I know leave their children in their church's Sunday School and go for a cup of coffee.

In good weather, Cliff and I often end our evenings by taking a drink out to the back porch and chatting for a half hour. (This sounds idyllic, but remember that our back porch shares an alley with a car wash.) In winter, we both look forward to Wednesday nights when our favorite show is on, and we crash together on the couch with hot cocoa.

You don't have to have the same solution for every week. Cliff and I once played hooky from an afternoon of work to catch a movie, leaving our son at daycare until the last possible minute. We can't do that every week, but as an occasional treat it fills the Date Night gap.

So here's the moral of the story: you need time to be a couple. It's hard to find, so don't pressure yourself into a routine that doesn't fit your budget or your schedule. Traditional date night is dead. Long live modified date night!

Sleep is the New Sex: How to Get More of Both

Disco Nap Copenhagen by KathyC81. 

I am not a night person. Anyone that has seen me try to make a coherent argument after 10 p.m. can testify. Likewise, I'm not really a morning person. Anything before 7 is just too early.

What am I? I'm a sleep person.

I love sleep: my perfect REM cycle would start at 10 p.m. and end about 7:30 a.m.

Recently, I heard the phrase "Sleep is the new sex." And I thought, I get that. (And, for the record, I also believe that 40 is the new 30 ... which makes me 26.)

The thing is, sleep and sex can provide the same things: they relax you, they restore intimacy in your relationship, you feel more refreshed after. The good news is you don't have to trade one for the other: researchers say sex helps you sleep better by releasing tension and stress. The problem, of course, is that it's not always easy to get enough of either.

I read a lot of stuff on marriage and relationships, and this is a topic that comes up fairly often. So here is a quick review (garnered from a variety of articles, blogs, conversations, and life experience) of how to get more of the stuff you want in your bedroom: 

Sex

- Stay Married: Researchers say married people have more sex than singles. Tell that to Carrie Bradshaw.

- Find the right time: Easier said than done, I know. But if the choice is often Colbert or sex, you either need to say goodbye to Stephen, set the DVR, or pick another time. If you're a night owl and your spouse is a morning person, 10:30 at night isn't the sweet spot. Maybe it's right after the kids go to bed, or Saturday morning while the kids watch cartoons. Sunday afternoon "naps"?

- Do it whether you want to or not: When I was in school I worked at my college's admissions office. Our boss put mirrors near the phones, so we could make sure we were smiling as we talked to prospective students. The thing was, even on a grumpy day, I sounded and felt cheerful when I smiled. You might find the same principal to be true of your sex life: act like you're into it and you'll discover you're into it. Also, try mirrors.

- Men, do the dishes: In a study of 300 couples, there was a direct correlation between a higher frequency of sex and both the husband and the wife feeling satisfied with the division of household labor.

Sleep

- Set yourself up for success: The average person moves 65 times a night. If you're still sleeping on the crappy mattress you inherited from Aunt Mildred, it might be time to invest in a new one so your tossing and turning doesn't awaken your partner.

- Rearrange your day: Move morning tasks (like ironing your clothes or packing your lunch) to the night before; reevaluate late night tasks and make sure they are preparing you for sleep. There's been a lot of research lately about how totally dark rooms (no night lights, no green glowing alarm clocks) lead to better sleep.

- Keep your bedroom focused on the bed: One college summer I lived with a family while I worked at their church. Sue, the wife, told me they try to keep kids homework and laundry and sports equipment out of their bedroom, so the room reminded them of rest. This is advice I don't take: as I type, I'm sitting in the over-stuffed chair in our bedroom, which also houses our exercise equipment and our office space. Just the same, it makes sense as a concept.

Finally, remember that getting a good night's sleep may mean you fight less - science says so (see our earlier post Sleep More, Fight Less.) Just for the symmetry of this rambling blog post, I thought I'd try to find a bit of research showing that couples who have sex more often fight less ... about 5 seconds of Googling turned up a Dr. Phil episode that posited this theory. I'm not going to take time to watch the show, so I guess we'll just have to believe it's true. Perhaps with daily sex + 8 hours of sleep, we could virtually eliminate all marital fighting. Let me know how that works for you (but spare me the details).

How Being Generous to Your Spouse May Change the World

In the fall after our first child was born, we planned a romantic dinner out for our anniversary. Our friends Chrischona and Koudjo came over to watch Sam, and Cliff and I escaped to a lovely restaurant (not the one pictured above ... but wouldn't you like to have a romantic dinner there?) for an evening out that didn't involve diaper bags and rice cereal.

The restaurant was crowded: our table was just a few inches from the one next to us where a man in his 40s sat dining by himself. But the room was candlelit, and so we quickly forgot our next door neighbor and became in absorbed in our own conversation.

A few minutes into the meal, Cliff had a surprise for me: he had hotel reservations for us downtown, and an overnight bag in the trunk of our car. Chrischona and Koudjo were staying the night with Sam. It was a lovely surprise, and a second surprise followed closely after.

When it was time to pay the waiter asked us, "Don't you want another glass of wine? Coffee? Dessert?" We insisted that we were ready to go, and would like the check.

"It's been covered already," the waiter said. "The man sitting next to you says to tell you Happy Anniversary."

We have no idea who that man was, or why he decided to be so generous that evening. But I do know that his gift made us more generous: we bought an anniversary meal for some friends of ours a few months later.

Yesterday I read some research on generosity on Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog. The author cites the findings of some new research from The Journal of Happiness Studies:

"Gratitude may cause individuals to transfer the goodwill they previously received to people other than their benefactors, because they no longer differentiate the group of benefactors from others."

What does that mean for marriage? In the case of our anniversary dinner, our benefactor's gesture gave us a sense of goodwill we passed on to others. In the case of your every day relationship, being generous to one another (buying the type of ice cream he likes, even though it contains walnuts; putting gas in her car; volunteering to do the dishes even though you cooked) may not just be good for your marriage - it could be good for the world. Or at least your outlook on the world.

Do you have your own story of generosity-gone-wild? Give it some thought today, or start your own generosity epidemic by doing something good for a loved one or stranger. It might just change the world.

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Side note: the photo above is from El Convento, a lovely restaurant and hotel in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.

My Final Tribute to An Old Argument

I grew up in a small town community of very loving, generous people. As a whole, they were also fairly conservative people who held, among other things, that woman's highest calling was to be a good wife and mother.

I remember talking with an older woman one Sunday after church, discussing the colleges to which I was applying. One of them was a conservative Christian college our church supported. I decided against going there when the well meaning woman told me, "Going there is a great idea. You'll make an excellent pastor's wife."

Not surprisingly, I've always had a chip on my shoulder about the idea that women should stay home with their children. It didn't make sense to me that this was the only moral and ethical choice for a wife and mother to make.

(Let me be clear, I have no problem with women - or men - who do decide to be a stay at home parent. I actually think that's great, if that's a financial option for your family and if it's what you want. I just don't want my community telling me what the right choice is.)

So I developed an arsenal of arguments as to why it was okay for me to want to keep working after becoming a mom. And one of them was an argument drawn from history: that in reality, both parents used to work at home. Men working outside the home, and women as stay at home moms, is really a modern convention.

I've continued this argument in my head long after society stopped asking me to defend my position: some habits die hard. Last year I read sociologist Stefanie Coontz's amazing book, Marriage: A History - How Love Conquered Marriage, and was delighted to see her lengthy development of this argument from history. I tried to summarize it in this blog post, but failed miserably.

Then last week I read The Atlantic's cover article, What, Me Marry? by Kate Bolick and discovered a terrific summary of Coontz's lengthy historical overview:

IN THE 1990S, Stephanie Coontz, a social historian at Evergreen State College in Washington, noticed an uptick in questions from reporters and audiences asking if the institution of marriage was falling apart. She didn’t think it was, and was struck by how everyone believed in some mythical Golden Age of Marriage and saw mounting divorce rates as evidence of the dissolution of this halcyon past. She decided to write a book discrediting the notion and proving that the ways in which we think about and construct the legal union between a man and a woman have always been in flux.

What Coontz found was even more interesting than she’d originally expected. In her fascinating Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, she surveys 5,000 years of human habits, from our days as hunters and gatherers up until the present, showing our social arrangements to be more complex and varied than could ever seem possible. She’d long known that the Leave It to Beaver–style family model popular in the 1950s and ’60s had been a flash in the pan, and like a lot of historians, she couldn’t understand how people had become so attached to an idea that had developed so late and been so short-lived.

For thousands of years, marriage had been a primarily economic and political contract between two people, negotiated and policed by their families, church, and community. It took more than one person to make a farm or business thrive, and so a potential mate’s skills, resources, thrift, and industriousness were valued as highly as personality and attractiveness. This held true for all classes. In the American colonies, wealthy merchants entrusted business matters to their landlocked wives while off at sea, just as sailors, vulnerable to the unpredictability of seasonal employment, relied on their wives’ steady income as domestics in elite households. Two-income families were the norm.

Not until the 18th century did labor begin to be divided along a sharp line: wage-earning for the men and unpaid maintenance of household and children for the women. Coontz notes that as recently as the late 17th century, women’s contributions to the family economy were openly recognized, and advice books urged husbands and wives to share domestic tasks. But as labor became separated, so did our spheres of experience—the marketplace versus the home—one founded on reason and action, the other on compassion and comfort. Not until the post-war gains of the 1950s, however, were a majority of American families able to actually afford living off a single breadwinner.

Do I still have to defend my choices as a working mom? No - not really. Society has left that discussion behind, and I think most women feel an autonomy to make the choice that best fits their family and personal desires (assuming they can afford to not work, that is). But we still feel that emotional pressure, and perhaps remembering our place in history will ease the tension some. 

Speaking of tensions, Bolick's article (which is long and interesting, if a bit disjointed) is full of them. As a never-married woman in her late 30s, Bolick expresses an ambivalence toward her marital future. It's an ambivalence she feels is common among women of her generation:

... as women have climbed ever higher, men have been falling behind. We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up—and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.

As a result of the circumstances, Bolick is moving beyond "our cultural fixation on the couple" and into a mental landscape where friendships and freedom replace the objective to marry for happiness. Fair enough.

I think I felt a bit defensive reading the article - as if, now that I've finally come to terms with my freedom to choose to work, I have to defend my choice to marry in order to still feel I'm a modern woman. But when I'm honest I don't really think Bolick intended that outcome: I think she's arguing, as Coontz does in her book, that our concepts of marriage, and singleness, and couplehood, are in constant states of societal change. She wants the freedom to make her own choices. So do I.

Books I Planned to Hate, Part 1: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

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This is the first in a two part series, "Books I Planned to Hate." Check back for Part 2, featuring Gary Thomas's book Sacred Marriage. 
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A few weeks ago I had an unexpected delay at LaGuardia and as a result I ran out of reading material. Hudson News was particularly under-stocked, which left me with two choices, Moneyball or The Happiness Project. I was just about to reach for Moneyball until I remembered that I hate baseball, and the cover photo of Brad Pitt wasn't enough of an incentive to make up for that.

So it was with some hesitation that I picked up Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, a stunt genre kind of memoir. (Stunt genre is a term I picked up from Rubin: it's a descriptor for the type of book or blog where the author spends a year writing and doing something extreme. The Year of Living Biblicaly by AJ Jacobs is a great example, and a great read. Also Julie and Julia.) Rubin tackles things that will make her happier, one area at a time, month by month.

I was prepared to hate this book. Happiness is a bad measure of a marriage - or a life's - worth, meaning, success, character or substance. (I've covered my thoughts on that in a previous post, If You're Not Happy and You Know It, Read This Blog.) I suspected that reading the story of one uber-educated, wealthy New Yorker's year-long pursuit at being more happy would have the opposite effect on me, instead convincing me that the world was a shallow, gimmick-filled place. This is especially true as I'm mindful that Rubin (like me) is almost certainly in the top 85% of the world's wealthiest people. (Don't be shocked, you probably are too: test the theory here.)

But about three hours into the ridiculously long airport delay (which was not caused by weather on the ground in Chicago, no matter what United had to say about it), I had to admit that Rubin's book was charming, self-effacing, and (in some modest way) important.

Relationship Takeaways 

Rubin comments that the atmosphere of your marriage sets the weather for your whole life. With that in mind, almost every observation and resolution in the book could be seen as a reflection of your marriage. I'll share a few observations that I found to have particular resonance:

Develop Gratitude: Rubin's husband, Jamie, struggles at first to understand the nature of the happiness project: if you're not unhappy, why are you doing this? he asks. She replies, "I am happy - but I'm not as happy as I should be. I have such a good life, I want to appreciate it more - and live up to it better. ... I complain too much, I get annoyed more than I should. I should be more grateful. I think if I felt happier, I'd behave better."

I can relate to that. The inner monologue in my head is often one of griping rather than gratitude. And unnecessarily so: I'm surrounded by people who love me and have all the things I need, and more. Why do I let my mind dwell on the frustrations so much? And wouldn't I be happier, and behave better, if I didn't? 

Act More Energetic: One of Rubin's Twelve Commandments is to act the way she wants to feel, because usually acting one way leads you to actually feel that way. One reasonable piece of marital advice I've heard is to act like you want to have sex when your spouse makes an advance, and you'll probably find out you actually do. I suppose it also applies elsewhere: act like you want to hear about his Fantasy Football team, and it might actually become more interesting as he talks. Act like you want to hear about her mom's unimportant doctor's appointment, and you might actually remember you care about your mother-in-law. 

What You Do Every Day Matters: Rubin observes that she'd eagerly give her husband a kidney without a moment's hesitation, but she is intensely annoyed if he asks her to pick something up at the drugstore. Once again, I can relate to that. But it's not the grand gestures of love that define a relationship, it's the day-in-day-out support for one another. This relates to the next takeaway:

Give Proofs of Love: No matter what you feel in your heart, it's your actions that are observed by others. Finding small, daily ways to give evidence of your love can strengthen your relationship. After noticing that she only emailed or texted her husband when she needed something, she made a point to begin sending messages that were quirky, encouraging or playful.

Cliff is especially good at these "proofs of love." He rarely returns from a work event without a goodie from the dessert table wrapped in a napkin. (He knows my love language is sugar.) 

Do Something Challenging or Novel: Unrelated to her marriage, Rubin decides to take on a personal challenge just for the fun of something new. It energizes her. We're all that way, right? We feel more alive when we're learning something, accomplishing something we didn't know we could do, or exploring the unusual. Shouldn't we do that as couples, too? 

One of my favorite bits of research is on this topic - called self-expansion. I wrote about it here. 

So does Rubin end the year of the happiness project feeling happier, she says she does (and hey, she got a book contract out of it, so I suppose she's right). Whether you will or not is up for grabs. It's not a fabulous book (at times I found her annoying and petty), but it is a good exploration of the happiness we already have in our lives, if we could just uncover it.

In conclusion, I have a litmus test to determine if you'll like this book: Think about any 1990s movie starring Meg Ryan. If you feel a hint of nostalgia, you'll like this book. If you feel a soul-crushing sense of anxiety, you should have bought Moneyball.

What it Feels Like When Someone Has Your Back

My dentist has been hounding me for weeks to make an appointment for my son. (Seriously - is it necessary to text, email and call? I'll get to it sooner or later, I promise. Besides, every tooth he has is eventually going to fall out anyway.)

At any rate, it's reminded me of a sweet story I once heard a friend of mine tell. Let's call the couple Jack and Diane (no, not that Jack and Diane):

Diane was a well educated woman who wasn't satisfied with her current job prospects. Jack was a supportive husband who believed in his wife's capacity to tackle anything she wanted. One day Diane came home from a particularly frustrating day at work and over dinner announced, "I think I'm going to check out University of Chicago's college of dentistry."

This took Jack by surprise: he'd married a social worker, and now she wanted to be a dentist? But, eager to show his support, he responded, "Of course. Look into it and let me know what you think. I bet you'd be a great dentist."

Now it was Diane's turn to be surprised. "Dentist?," she asked. "Oh, no! I just meant to make an appointment to get this cavity filled."

That's what it looks like to have a supportive spouse: Jack knew Diane wasn't one to follow whims, so if she was mentioning interest in something new, he planned to encourage her. It turned out he misread the situation, but I bet Diane didn't mind: it reminded her of what a supportive husband she has.

That's what it feels like when someone has your back. Cliff recently posted an entry on a similar topic - -prominently featuring the Bears offense. Find that link here.

Finding Mr. Right in a World of 7 Billion People

In case you've missed the headlines, the global population hit 7 billion sometime today - yes, today. Somehow, we can estimate the number of living people in the world with this degree of accuracy. I find this amazing since the repair guy coming Thursday morning can only say he'll be by sometime between 9:30 and 2.

Obviously a population of this size raises some questions: how do we maintain a sustainable planet? Feed and educate everyone? How can we provide access to clean water? What's the maximum number of Facebook friends you can have? How can you find Mr. Right when you've got roughly 3.5 billion options?

I have some single friends that are asking some variation of that question. Fair enough. I can't take issue with asking that question, though I can take issue with one aspect of it: the implication that there is one right person for you, and everyone else is Mr. Wrong.

If you're already married, here's what I believe to be the truth: with some rare exceptions, whoever you're with is Mr. Right (or Ms. Right, depending on your preferences). Fairy tales that involve destiny and Prince Charming and a convoluted, poisoned-apple paved path to find each other, are romantic but misleading. When you're single, it leaves you on the look out for a miracle. And once you're married, it leaves you wondering if you might be stuck with a frog when you were really expecting a prince.

In an earlier post, I asked the question, Are you happily married because you picked the right person, or because you got lucky? Today I'm reminding myself that out of 7 billion people, I am married to the right person. He's right for me because I decided he's the right one: not because of a miracle of fate, serendipity (which was a terrible movie, by the way), or destiny. It's the dozens of daily decisions that keep us right for each other, not the dozens of twists of fate that led us together.

(Some people might argue that God brought us together - and isn't that like destiny or fate? Sure. But I believe God is more honored by the daily ways we decide to stay together than by the way we met 12 years ago.)

Making the daily decision to see your imperfect spouse as your Mr. Right isn't easy. I'm imperfect too. Sometimes we act like frogs. But it's Halloween: kiss a frog - you never know what might happen.

Protecting Your Marriage's Blind Side

We are a Bears family. For proof of this fact, simply ask our almost-five-year-old son who our family's favorite team is. He will declare, "The Bears!" Note, that there is no need to mention which sport or distinguish between college and professional. There are billboards throughout Chicago declaring, "One city. One team." The advertising wizards behind this campaign have clearly connected with our household. Although, I probably get more credit (and/or blame) for this family's collective devotion. My kids wore their first Bears clothing within hours of returning home from the hospital, and we've been known to watch "Pure Payton" as Saturday morning entertainment. The aforementioned ad executives have nothing on this guy.

So, for the better part of three years now, our family has watched every single Jay Cutler snap. This has sometimes proven painful, both because of the manner in which the man gets pummeled by opposing defenses and because of his tendency to throw into double coverage. Let's ignore that second trend for now (and let's also ignore his habit of making pouty faces on the sideline). This particular post is about what it means to get someone's back. In Culter's case, the meaning is fairly obvious. When a Bears "offensive lineman" - note that I place that in quotes - inexplicably imitates a revolving door, Cutler typically finds himself laying on the ground under a pile of humanity. This happens at a pretty regular clip. In the game pictured above, Cutler was sacked 9 times...in the first half. Oh, and he suffered a concussion. It's not that bad every week, of course (although he's been sacked 106 times in the last three seasons, which is - you know - pretty ridiculous). Still, it's fair to say that Cutler's often uncertain whether his offensive line has his back. Every single play, there is a giant man barreling towards him from behind, and his teammates' track record in these situations is not exactly stellar.

A few weeks back, Amber and I gathered with some other married friends and the discussion turned to whether our marriages were intentionally supported by people in our lives. Essentially, the question was whether there were people in our lives that had our backs. Afterwards, I commented to my wife that I don't actually know what "intentionally support" means sometimes. Sometimes it's easy enough to recognize:

• A friend asks his buddy, "How's your marriage?"
  
• Two couples chat about life and relationships rather than just watching a movie.
• A neighbor offers to babysit so a couple gets date night on their anniversary.

Those actions and moments are critical, for sure; the network of support that exists around a marriage can make a huge difference on a day to day basis. But that's probably not the equivalent of a 300 pound defensive lineman sprinting towards you, right? Because that's easy enough to recognize too:

• A husband berates his wife in front of dinner guests.
• Several office colleagues are discussing relationships when suddenly one person starts crying.
• A wife confesses to her friend that she's been cheating on her husband.

What does "intentional support" look like then? Those were the moments flashing before me when I started struggling for a real definition. Getting someone's back is not always easy to define, after all. If supporting your friends' marriages just meant date nights and good conversation, that would be easy enough. Then again, if Jay Cutler always had 10 seconds to find the open receiver, that would be easy enough too. That's just not life.

I think intentionally supporting a friend's marriage might actually mean asking some hard questions. But it also could mean shutting up. I think intentionally supporting a friend's marriage might mean calling him out for infantile behavior. But it also could mean taking his side. There's no manual for getting someone's back, just like there's no manual for a perfect marriage. Every decision is split second. Every situation is different. Every single play could go wrong somehow. Still, you need someone that gives everything they have for you, for your relationships.

The Bears' offensive line played pretty well the other night, and all was right with the world. But this city's collective memory is pretty short and there's another game on Sunday. Cutler needs someone to get his back every single week. You know what? So do I.

- Cliff (aka The Husband)

Why Ziploc Won't be Sponsoring this Blog

Ziploc: Guaranteeing freshness for your
left overs and arguments in my kitchen. 

Product placements are hard to avoid in film and television these days, but some of the most awkward I've seen are on The Biggest Loser, where the contestants and trainers repeatedly break from food prep to smile at the camera and say:

"I just love the way Ziploc keeps my food fresh. It's so easy to save these healthy leftovers with my [insert even wider smile] fabulous Ziploc bags."

This is not how conversations about Ziploc go in my kitchen. If you read yesterday's blog post, Are You Grounded or Stuck?, then you'll understand this confession: Cliff and I are stuck when it comes to Ziplocs. Or at least we were until last month when we declared a truce in The Great Plastic Baggie War of 2011. 

Here's the situation:

I insist on washing and reusing plastic bags. I do this for three reasons:

1. It's better for the environment.
2. It's better for my budget.
3. It's wasteful to throw away something that's still useful

Cliff loves the environment and is equally frugal. And for the first eight years of our marriage, he washed plastic baggies mostly without complaint (there might have been some muttering involved). But a year or two ago, he drew a line in the metaphorical sand: no more washing bags. He hates it, and was just too nice to tell me for the first several years of my insistence.

Out of respect for my feelings, he doesn't throw them away either. He places them in the sink for me to wash, or puts unwashed bags in a kitchen drawer so he can reuse them for the snacks he takes to work. 

There's just one problem: this annoys me. I don't really like washing them out either. And that stack of crumby Ziplocs was really getting out of control. 

The Great Plastic Bag War of 2011 came to a rather undramatic end last month when I, barely able to close the kitchen drawer where the dirty bags are housed, complained to a friend. "These are so gross. What am I supposed to do with them?" 

Cliff, who was standing near by, gave the obvious answer: "Wash them out. I told you I wasn't going to do it."

We then launched into a good-natured but vigorous defense of our own positions that probably sounded something like the old "Whose on first?" routine. It ended with our friend saying, "Promise me you'll write about this on the blog." (Promise kept, DF.)

It was all comically ridiculous, in a cheerful sort of way. But it left me with a realization: I guess I can't be angry about a situation I've created, right? Because the truth is, if I want to improve our family's environmental footprint, or save more money, or even waste less, there are better places to start than Ziplocs. 

It's easy to get caught up in these worthless cycles of debate over relatively meaningless topics. You're stuck. So was I. Until I realized I was stuck in a crumby Ziploc jail of my own making. 

So what happened? Nothing. There's still a stack of used, crumb-filled Ziplocs in my husband's desk drawer at work...he just knows better than to bring them home now. There's probably a freshly washed bag in the sink, too. It's okay for me to hang on to my miserly Ziploc ways, as long as I don't blame Cliff for drawing a different line than I do. 

"I just love the way these fabulous Ziploc keeps my marriage fresh." [Insert wide smile].  

Are You Grounded or Stuck?

Yep. This doesn't look good.
(Borrowed photo from here.)

Last weekend Cliff and I were at our church's annual retreat, which is (frankly) usually most memorable for the apple orchard trip on Saturday afternoon, and the "after party" on Saturday night. But this year I walked away with a little gem of wisdom that I've been ruminating on for the last 72 hours or so:

Being grounded is different than being stuck.

This is one of those obvious pieces of brilliance that we never forget but never quite remember either. So since Saturday I've been looking at different aspects of my life, and asking, "Am I grounded, or am I stuck?"

It's a fun little mental game. Being grounded is when you feel settled and at peace. Things might be a little routine, but the routine is comforting for both partners. Being stuck is when you can't or won't break out of the routine on occasion. It's having the same fight over and over. It's never doing anything but Netflix on Friday night. It's not having taken your socks off in bed since the honeymoon.

In her book "Divorce Busting" (which I highly recommend, by the way), psychologist Michelle Weiner-Davis tells a great story from anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who is probably best known for being Margaret Mead's third (and most lasting) husband.

Bateson was asked to observe some otters at a zoo. The otters, normally playful, and grown quite listless over the course of several weeks, to the point that their health was endangered because of their lazy behavior. Bateson observed them for awhile, noting their inactivity. On a lark, he dangled a piece of paper tied to a string into their pool, and suddenly the otters were wild with activity.

The otters were bored. They were stuck. All it took to shake things up was a little variation in their scenery: a simple piece of paper on a string.

What's your paper to get you unstuck? Weiner-Davis says when you come to an impasse, a place of being stuck, big or small, Change Something. Anything. Have that same fight in the shower. Move furniture around. Try a new restaurant. Get unstuck.