The McGurk effect. Speaking as a guy who is named after a color I truly appreciate intersting last names and this is a keeper
You simply must click on this link: McGurk
Watch the video then come back here.
Okay, if you didn't click on the link none of the rest of this is going to make any sense so please, click on the link.
Done? Great. didn't that just blow your mind? Go back and listen to the entire video with your eyes closed.
The incredable thing about the McGurk effect is that it is beyond your control. It is proof positive that what you think you hear and what you hear can be two different things.
The McGurk effect works because you have eyes and you have spent your entire life watching people form words and you have come to the inescapable conclusion that when you see someone's teeth on their bottom lip the sound that they are making must be FA. It doesn't matter that the sound is somehting different, it matters only that you rely upon your experience and your belief to control what you experience.
So think how that plays into your relationships with your wife.
Okay, I'll help. You and your wife aren't getting along so great. She says mean things and you think they are intended to hurt you and you are, in fact hurt and that hurt leads to anger, mistrust,and resentment. We've all been down that so much it's been paved.
But McGurk underscores one of the basic tenents of the whole better man better marriage philosopy: sure, there's the chance that your wife is possessed and evil, but there is a greater chance that over the years you have taken misunderstanings and interpreted them to be slights, you've taken attempts at humor to be insensitive attacks, and you have come to expect that when you're wife says something that could be interpreted as either benign, neutral or mean spirited you have trained yourself over the year to hear it only as mean spirited.
You've kept track of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to and taught yourself not to trust your wife to be kind just as you have taught yourself to hear FA whenever teeth meet lips.
The good news is that while the McGurk effect is so ingrained it is irreversible the same is not true about your perceptions of your wife.
You can change them, and if you do just imagine how that will change your relationship?
What if, and I know this seems crazy, but what if she wasn't nagging, if she wasn't sarcastic, but you've just trained yourself to hear her that way?
Just sit with that for a little bit.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
AN OPEN VALENTINES CARD TO MY BELOVED
Beloved,
Happy Valentines Day. I know this should be written out in longhand, but….. you’ve seen my writing, and I've already done the hand made card thing.
Jack Nicholson had a line in “As Good As It Gets.” As Melvin he said to Carol “You make me want to be a better man.” It was a pretty good compliment, but from a relationship point of view, he was teetering on the edge of making her responsible for his growth, and of course after he said it he followed up with a stupid line that drove her from the room. Mistakes are the price we pay for growth.
The thing is, I’ve been working on being a better man since before we met (in fact our first correspondence followed an Imago training session) so I can’t look at you and say anything quite so romantic. I was doing the work before we met, and I do it still not for you but for me, yet in truth one reason I am truly glad I did all the work it took to turn my life around is because I know the guy I once was wouldn’t have won your heart and I love being loved by you.
So I thought this Valentines Day I would share with you (and given this blog’s demographics, only you) a little of what it is like for me to be loved by you.
It is hard for me to imagine, much less believe, how long we have been together. It all seems of an instant and yet somehow we can make time stop when we are simply together.
I never thought I’d have a kitchen as cool and beautiful as the one you are rattling around in as I write this. Every time I enter the kitchen I feel stylish, wealthy, happening, way too cool for school, all of which I am not, and most importantly, blessed, which I am.
I am blessed to have you in my life. I kind of knew that from the start when I saw your picture. I knew that you were different in all the important ways and I suspected (and you confirmed) that we could indeed “hang out” together.
There are a lot of things I could wish for, from winning the lottery to a larger practice to more sales and fame: the one thing I do not wish for is anyone else.
There are lots of things I would change in my life, from not being a good tooth-brusher as a child to my desktop clutter, an investment or two: the one thing I would not change is you.
I used to think that a lot of bad things had happened in my life. Death, betrayal, abandonment, lonliness… and now I think that if just one of those events had turned out differently I wouldn’t be the man I am today, and I wouldn’t have you in my life… and then I think, “gee… I’ve been pretty lucky all along.”
I am happy that you are a part of my life.
Happy Valentines Day. I know this should be written out in longhand, but….. you’ve seen my writing, and I've already done the hand made card thing.
Jack Nicholson had a line in “As Good As It Gets.” As Melvin he said to Carol “You make me want to be a better man.” It was a pretty good compliment, but from a relationship point of view, he was teetering on the edge of making her responsible for his growth, and of course after he said it he followed up with a stupid line that drove her from the room. Mistakes are the price we pay for growth.
The thing is, I’ve been working on being a better man since before we met (in fact our first correspondence followed an Imago training session) so I can’t look at you and say anything quite so romantic. I was doing the work before we met, and I do it still not for you but for me, yet in truth one reason I am truly glad I did all the work it took to turn my life around is because I know the guy I once was wouldn’t have won your heart and I love being loved by you.
So I thought this Valentines Day I would share with you (and given this blog’s demographics, only you) a little of what it is like for me to be loved by you.
It is hard for me to imagine, much less believe, how long we have been together. It all seems of an instant and yet somehow we can make time stop when we are simply together.
I never thought I’d have a kitchen as cool and beautiful as the one you are rattling around in as I write this. Every time I enter the kitchen I feel stylish, wealthy, happening, way too cool for school, all of which I am not, and most importantly, blessed, which I am.
I am blessed to have you in my life. I kind of knew that from the start when I saw your picture. I knew that you were different in all the important ways and I suspected (and you confirmed) that we could indeed “hang out” together.
There are a lot of things I could wish for, from winning the lottery to a larger practice to more sales and fame: the one thing I do not wish for is anyone else.
There are lots of things I would change in my life, from not being a good tooth-brusher as a child to my desktop clutter, an investment or two: the one thing I would not change is you.
I used to think that a lot of bad things had happened in my life. Death, betrayal, abandonment, lonliness… and now I think that if just one of those events had turned out differently I wouldn’t be the man I am today, and I wouldn’t have you in my life… and then I think, “gee… I’ve been pretty lucky all along.”
I am happy that you are a part of my life.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Over at popsci.com there is an article exploring a study that shows (at least in the test groups) that approximately 35% of the time a man…. Or perhaps it was 35% of the men.. they didn’t make that clear… but in either event that the test group of men were able to identify whether or not a woman was menstruating simply by the sound of her voice.
Click on the link and read the article if you doubt me but before you go all Charlie Sheen on me and say “Duh… bitchy” understand that what’s going on here is not conflict based or relationship based, but simply men listening to a woman’s voice recorded over the course of her cycle and being able to (about a statistically signifcant third of the time) identify the recording made during her period. Nota Bene this test was done with voice recordings, so there were no pheromones involved and no body language, this was strictly monkey hear, monkey do.
From a better man perspective this brings up one big point: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
In other words if one out of three times you can tell, simply by tone of voice, by timber, by tone, by inflection, by a countless number of unseen tells that something is going on in your wife’s life there is a fair chance that she can do the same, especially if she has other non-verbal clues such as your body language, you eye contact, your facial expression, your footsteps.
Lots of times in our relationship our beloveds come up with a statement like “is something bothering you?” or, in a less loving relationship “what’s wrong with you today” or in a even less satisfying scenario, “what is your fucking problem” and like most guys, given a choice between intimacy and plausable deniability, we go with the latter and say “no dear” “Nothing” or “Mind your own business.”
But what if rather than reverting to type you tried something different? What if rather than avoiding an awkward moment, you embraced it? What if rather than saying “I’m fine” you said “I am always amazed by your intuitiveness and I appreciate your invitation to dialogue,” and then tell her what’s on your mind.
WAIT A SECOND one of you is now thinking, what if something isn’t bothering me. What if I am as happy as a clam on a sandbar? And my response is, AS IF. What are you, a fucking saint? There hasn’t been something that’s been bugging you in your relationship? Do you seriously expect anyone to believe that you haven’t been nursing some viper to your breast, some unspoken anger, some unresolved angst, some slight or hurt which you wish she would recognize and own up to? Trust me, even if you are as happy as an alpiner in new lederhosen, there’s always something there, something that has gone unsaid and is lurking in the shadows waiting for an argument to burst forth and do its worst damage.
Just assume, for the sake of argument, that your wife is blind and deaf and there is no chance in hell that she has picked up on one of your tells, that she hasn’t intuited a sense of conflict or distress, why not take the opportunity? Why not accept the invitation? Why not honor her willingness to hear you by sharing? Why not get that lurking resentment out of the dark and into the open, resolve it and deepen your relationship?
Why not say “there is something that I’ve been struggling with and I appreciate your asking…..”
Now somebody is shaking their head and saying “Hunt, god bless you but you are an idiot, sometimes it is best to leave well enough alone and to simply not go there. If I answer her question honestly, all I will get is an argument.”
And that would be true if you weren’t trying to be the better man, if you still let your anticipation and projections control your actions, if you still made decisions based on fear and not on growth…. But assuming that some of you haven’t read the book, done the work and you haven’t gotten there quite yet let me point out the following.
Leaving well enough alone is just another way of saying stagnation, withdrawal and ultimately divorce. If you want to leave well enough alone then get out of the marriage. If you want to have a better marriage then the status quo will not do: the status quo is why you are miserable and you must act to make your relationship better and that means taking chances, that means honoring your wife’s invitation to dialogue.
Even if she says, “What the fuck is your problem?” you can answer: “I’d like to tell you if you’ll simply mirror me…” and then see what happens. My money says she’ll listen.
In fact, based upon the study cited above, my money says that when she asks you what is wrong there generally is something wrong and that you need to talk about it but you are afraid, even upon invitation, to go there and risk the bad scene you have convinced yourself will follow.
Be a better man: go there. Talk about it.
Click on the link and read the article if you doubt me but before you go all Charlie Sheen on me and say “Duh… bitchy” understand that what’s going on here is not conflict based or relationship based, but simply men listening to a woman’s voice recorded over the course of her cycle and being able to (about a statistically signifcant third of the time) identify the recording made during her period. Nota Bene this test was done with voice recordings, so there were no pheromones involved and no body language, this was strictly monkey hear, monkey do.
From a better man perspective this brings up one big point: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
In other words if one out of three times you can tell, simply by tone of voice, by timber, by tone, by inflection, by a countless number of unseen tells that something is going on in your wife’s life there is a fair chance that she can do the same, especially if she has other non-verbal clues such as your body language, you eye contact, your facial expression, your footsteps.
Lots of times in our relationship our beloveds come up with a statement like “is something bothering you?” or, in a less loving relationship “what’s wrong with you today” or in a even less satisfying scenario, “what is your fucking problem” and like most guys, given a choice between intimacy and plausable deniability, we go with the latter and say “no dear” “Nothing” or “Mind your own business.”
But what if rather than reverting to type you tried something different? What if rather than avoiding an awkward moment, you embraced it? What if rather than saying “I’m fine” you said “I am always amazed by your intuitiveness and I appreciate your invitation to dialogue,” and then tell her what’s on your mind.
WAIT A SECOND one of you is now thinking, what if something isn’t bothering me. What if I am as happy as a clam on a sandbar? And my response is, AS IF. What are you, a fucking saint? There hasn’t been something that’s been bugging you in your relationship? Do you seriously expect anyone to believe that you haven’t been nursing some viper to your breast, some unspoken anger, some unresolved angst, some slight or hurt which you wish she would recognize and own up to? Trust me, even if you are as happy as an alpiner in new lederhosen, there’s always something there, something that has gone unsaid and is lurking in the shadows waiting for an argument to burst forth and do its worst damage.
Just assume, for the sake of argument, that your wife is blind and deaf and there is no chance in hell that she has picked up on one of your tells, that she hasn’t intuited a sense of conflict or distress, why not take the opportunity? Why not accept the invitation? Why not honor her willingness to hear you by sharing? Why not get that lurking resentment out of the dark and into the open, resolve it and deepen your relationship?
Why not say “there is something that I’ve been struggling with and I appreciate your asking…..”
Now somebody is shaking their head and saying “Hunt, god bless you but you are an idiot, sometimes it is best to leave well enough alone and to simply not go there. If I answer her question honestly, all I will get is an argument.”
And that would be true if you weren’t trying to be the better man, if you still let your anticipation and projections control your actions, if you still made decisions based on fear and not on growth…. But assuming that some of you haven’t read the book, done the work and you haven’t gotten there quite yet let me point out the following.
Leaving well enough alone is just another way of saying stagnation, withdrawal and ultimately divorce. If you want to leave well enough alone then get out of the marriage. If you want to have a better marriage then the status quo will not do: the status quo is why you are miserable and you must act to make your relationship better and that means taking chances, that means honoring your wife’s invitation to dialogue.
Even if she says, “What the fuck is your problem?” you can answer: “I’d like to tell you if you’ll simply mirror me…” and then see what happens. My money says she’ll listen.
In fact, based upon the study cited above, my money says that when she asks you what is wrong there generally is something wrong and that you need to talk about it but you are afraid, even upon invitation, to go there and risk the bad scene you have convinced yourself will follow.
Be a better man: go there. Talk about it.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Curious Case of the Barking Dog
My dogs bark at the letter carrier. They also bark at the UPS box carrier. They bark at these intruders into their territory, because the letter carrier is an unknown, a threat, and his footsteps set off an alarm in their heads. They get their hackles up, their hearts pounding, their minds focused, and they present themselves as flesh-rending crazed canines, intent on death and destruction and guess what? The interlopers leave.
So from my dog’s perspective, the cause and effect is pretty obvious. They bark and these modern day Visigoths retreat. They go away. They turn tail and run. Thus, it seems to my dogs that they have an effective tool to keep the barbarians away from the gate and to keep their world safe: they bark,.
And when an intruder happens to simply walk down the sidewalk: they bark. The trespasser, according to the story my dogs tell themselves, is aware of the immense threat they pose and probably mindful of the dog’s successes with the postal service, and so moves on up the street. This is another example from my dog’s point of view of the extraordinary effectiveness of barking.
Mind you, the from the letter carrier’s point of view, (or as we say in HTSYMBBABM speak, the letter carrier’s “reality”) there is no hasty retreat, there is no turning tail and running, there is only the next mail box to fill, the route to complete, and the kids to pick up from school. In the letter carrier’s reality, as with the sidewalk trespasser and the Man from Brown, the dogs’ barking is mostly irrelevant.
A friend of mine, Stan, comes by the house on a regular basis. At first the dogs barked and being a prudent man he waited outside the gate until I responded to the dog-bell and let him in. The dogs barked some more, but eventually they shut up. Time and time again, Stan would drop by and the dogs would bark and Stan would wait patiently for me to come to the door.
Eventually they stopped barking. Now when Stan stops by they don’t even bother to raise their heads from their sun-besotted dozing. He gives them a pat and walks on in, often commenting that I need to get my dog-bell fixed.
The cleverer of my two or three constant readers will now nod their heads and say, “I know where this is going” but for the slower, the stubborn and the neophyte I will explain how the story of the barking dog fits into the paradigm of the better man and saving your marriage.
My dogs have one tool that allows them to keep a modicum of control over their environment when they feel threatened: they bark. In their reality it is an effective tool. It seemingly generates the response they want. When Stan did not respond the way they expected, the barked and barked and barked until at some time they realized that the whole bark thing wasn’t working on Stan and they quit barking. The tool didn’t work, there was no point in using it.
Your spouse might have one tool that allows her to maintain a modicum of control over her environment when she feels threatened: she becomes angry, and when she becomes angry she seemingly generates the response she wants: you leave, you retaliate, you shut down, you give in… whatever response to which you habitually resort is the response she associates with her anger, and thus by seemingly causing that response she gains something, maybe it’s a sense of moral outrage, ascendancy, or maybe it’s simply control and thus a sense of safety.
You’ve seen this happen time and time again. It shows up as when you start talking about one thing, it leads to another, and soon you are fighting about something that has nothing to do with where you were.
Imagine it happens like this: you and your beloved are chatting and you say something that you think is totally innocent but she hears it differently and for whatever reason it scares her. Maybe it scares her because it brings up a guilt issue, maybe she feels controlled, or blamed, or inadequate. It doesn’t matter what particular alarm you set off in her brain: the sensor has been tripped and the bell is ringing. She is scared, so she goes to the one tool she has, anger, and with the expression of that anger she gets the response that you all ways give her and suddenly she is on safe ground again. Admittedly, it is unpleasant ground, her hackles are up, adrenaline is coursing through her veins, and you’re not on your best behavior, but it’s safe ground. By reacting as she expects you return to a pattern that she’s experienced before and she can anticipate the course of the next few minutes, hours or days. Not pleasant, but predictable and thus safe.
Now mind you, she’s not trying to start a fight. I know it seems like that, but remember my dogs are not trying to kill the letter carrier. They’ve just learned to bark when they hear his footsteps and because they are scared and they’ve learned that when they bark the letter carrier leaves and safety is restored.
When Stan simply stood there the dogs eventually learned the tool didn’t work with him and they stopped using it. Likewise, and this is not to compare your wife to a dog, if you can become non-reactive, if you can learn not to give tit for tat, if you can learn not to take offense and make that point clear by way of engaging in an argument, guess what will happen. Guess what will happen if you simply stand there, as Stan did, and not react to the barking?
She will quit. She will quit because the tool isn’t working for her. As I said, she’d not trying to tell you she hates you, she’s not trying to drive you away, she’s not trying to hurt you, she’s simply trying to protect herself from some fear, perhaps a fear she doesn’t want to confront, perhaps a fear of which she is unaware. And if you stop reacting, if you stop responding in king, she will either start looking for another tool or she will open herself up to introspection and try to understand the fear that is driving her anger, but she will stop barking.
I shit you not.
So from my dog’s perspective, the cause and effect is pretty obvious. They bark and these modern day Visigoths retreat. They go away. They turn tail and run. Thus, it seems to my dogs that they have an effective tool to keep the barbarians away from the gate and to keep their world safe: they bark,.
And when an intruder happens to simply walk down the sidewalk: they bark. The trespasser, according to the story my dogs tell themselves, is aware of the immense threat they pose and probably mindful of the dog’s successes with the postal service, and so moves on up the street. This is another example from my dog’s point of view of the extraordinary effectiveness of barking.
Mind you, the from the letter carrier’s point of view, (or as we say in HTSYMBBABM speak, the letter carrier’s “reality”) there is no hasty retreat, there is no turning tail and running, there is only the next mail box to fill, the route to complete, and the kids to pick up from school. In the letter carrier’s reality, as with the sidewalk trespasser and the Man from Brown, the dogs’ barking is mostly irrelevant.
A friend of mine, Stan, comes by the house on a regular basis. At first the dogs barked and being a prudent man he waited outside the gate until I responded to the dog-bell and let him in. The dogs barked some more, but eventually they shut up. Time and time again, Stan would drop by and the dogs would bark and Stan would wait patiently for me to come to the door.
Eventually they stopped barking. Now when Stan stops by they don’t even bother to raise their heads from their sun-besotted dozing. He gives them a pat and walks on in, often commenting that I need to get my dog-bell fixed.
The cleverer of my two or three constant readers will now nod their heads and say, “I know where this is going” but for the slower, the stubborn and the neophyte I will explain how the story of the barking dog fits into the paradigm of the better man and saving your marriage.
My dogs have one tool that allows them to keep a modicum of control over their environment when they feel threatened: they bark. In their reality it is an effective tool. It seemingly generates the response they want. When Stan did not respond the way they expected, the barked and barked and barked until at some time they realized that the whole bark thing wasn’t working on Stan and they quit barking. The tool didn’t work, there was no point in using it.
Your spouse might have one tool that allows her to maintain a modicum of control over her environment when she feels threatened: she becomes angry, and when she becomes angry she seemingly generates the response she wants: you leave, you retaliate, you shut down, you give in… whatever response to which you habitually resort is the response she associates with her anger, and thus by seemingly causing that response she gains something, maybe it’s a sense of moral outrage, ascendancy, or maybe it’s simply control and thus a sense of safety.
You’ve seen this happen time and time again. It shows up as when you start talking about one thing, it leads to another, and soon you are fighting about something that has nothing to do with where you were.
Imagine it happens like this: you and your beloved are chatting and you say something that you think is totally innocent but she hears it differently and for whatever reason it scares her. Maybe it scares her because it brings up a guilt issue, maybe she feels controlled, or blamed, or inadequate. It doesn’t matter what particular alarm you set off in her brain: the sensor has been tripped and the bell is ringing. She is scared, so she goes to the one tool she has, anger, and with the expression of that anger she gets the response that you all ways give her and suddenly she is on safe ground again. Admittedly, it is unpleasant ground, her hackles are up, adrenaline is coursing through her veins, and you’re not on your best behavior, but it’s safe ground. By reacting as she expects you return to a pattern that she’s experienced before and she can anticipate the course of the next few minutes, hours or days. Not pleasant, but predictable and thus safe.
Now mind you, she’s not trying to start a fight. I know it seems like that, but remember my dogs are not trying to kill the letter carrier. They’ve just learned to bark when they hear his footsteps and because they are scared and they’ve learned that when they bark the letter carrier leaves and safety is restored.
When Stan simply stood there the dogs eventually learned the tool didn’t work with him and they stopped using it. Likewise, and this is not to compare your wife to a dog, if you can become non-reactive, if you can learn not to give tit for tat, if you can learn not to take offense and make that point clear by way of engaging in an argument, guess what will happen. Guess what will happen if you simply stand there, as Stan did, and not react to the barking?
She will quit. She will quit because the tool isn’t working for her. As I said, she’d not trying to tell you she hates you, she’s not trying to drive you away, she’s not trying to hurt you, she’s simply trying to protect herself from some fear, perhaps a fear she doesn’t want to confront, perhaps a fear of which she is unaware. And if you stop reacting, if you stop responding in king, she will either start looking for another tool or she will open herself up to introspection and try to understand the fear that is driving her anger, but she will stop barking.
I shit you not.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Arnie's Affair
Probably the best joke I heard was that Mr. Schwarzenegger justified his extramarital sexual activity by claiming he was just trying to fit in with his wife’s family.
Over at Dr. Helen the good doctor wonders why it is that women show such outrage at Arnie’s behavior when by some estimates one in ten children are not the biological offspring of the putative legal father, her point being the moral double standard but also that when men father children outside of marriage they get tasked with child support, but when women conceive outside of marriage… their husbands get tasked with child support.
There’s a little inconsistency in the proposition, because it follows that for every father who is paying child support for a kid that is not biologically his own there is at least one guy out there not paying child support for a child that is biologically his. So in that way it’s a wash… it’s not a conspiracy against men, it’s just a fallible system.
But the vast majority of the commentators on her page (a compulsion which has not struck the three followers of BetterManBetterMarriage ) feel that not only does this seeming unfairness represent a vast mysandrist conspiracy to enslave and emasculate men, but it is the leading edge of Armageddon, as willful, immoral, and unjust fornicators go unpunished and even rewarded for their iniquitous ways.
Really, this isn’t Sodom and Gomorrah, but if I were Lot’s wife and I had to put up with all that moral, bible thumping righteous indignation and blame, I would gladly look back and become a pillar of salt just to be done with it.
The bottom line is that nine times out of ten an affair is the result of a failed marriage, not the cause of it. I haven’t got a citation of authority of that, it’s just a rule of thumb. But honestly, no one has ever come to me for a divorce and said “we were doing just great until I had that damned affair.” No one sits at a bar and tells a potential sexual tryst how wonderful his or her spouse is, how happy they are, and how the feel understood, appreciated and loved.
Men and women have affairs. Is it a moral failing? There are a lot of people screaming that it is, that the adulterer is unfit to be a parent, a fraud and a hypocrite, and yet these moralist always seem to forget key tenets of their religions. Seek to forgive rather than to be forgiven, remove the beam from your own eye before the speck from your brother’s, let he without sin cast the first stone….
When we get to heaven we are not going to be asked how we were treated in our lives, but how we treated others.
And that works in relationships too.
Sure, an affair can be the straw that breaks the relationship camel’s back, but by the same token, not being man enough to get over it can too. My money says more relationships end because of one party’s inability to let go of blame and moral superiority than because someone impregnated a domestic.
When I was in college I cheated on my high school girlfriend, and the next morning I felt like such a failure, such a heel, such a bad person. I hated myself and what I’d done and I knew there was no way I could undo it, no way I could fix it, so I learned from it and became a better man.
I don’t know what happened with Arnie and Maria, but I wonder if Arnie felt regret and remorse and stupid and ashamed, and I wonder if Maria could appreciate the pain he felt if she could find pity in her heart, if she couldn’t know that after Arnie did the wrong thing, he did the right thing, and that because of his mistake he became a better man.
I’ll never know about Arnie, but I do know this: forgiving others for their misdeeds is a gift you give yourself. Letting go of blaming others for mistakes lets you be free to find your own happiness.
Over at Dr. Helen the good doctor wonders why it is that women show such outrage at Arnie’s behavior when by some estimates one in ten children are not the biological offspring of the putative legal father, her point being the moral double standard but also that when men father children outside of marriage they get tasked with child support, but when women conceive outside of marriage… their husbands get tasked with child support.
There’s a little inconsistency in the proposition, because it follows that for every father who is paying child support for a kid that is not biologically his own there is at least one guy out there not paying child support for a child that is biologically his. So in that way it’s a wash… it’s not a conspiracy against men, it’s just a fallible system.
But the vast majority of the commentators on her page (a compulsion which has not struck the three followers of BetterManBetterMarriage ) feel that not only does this seeming unfairness represent a vast mysandrist conspiracy to enslave and emasculate men, but it is the leading edge of Armageddon, as willful, immoral, and unjust fornicators go unpunished and even rewarded for their iniquitous ways.
Really, this isn’t Sodom and Gomorrah, but if I were Lot’s wife and I had to put up with all that moral, bible thumping righteous indignation and blame, I would gladly look back and become a pillar of salt just to be done with it.
The bottom line is that nine times out of ten an affair is the result of a failed marriage, not the cause of it. I haven’t got a citation of authority of that, it’s just a rule of thumb. But honestly, no one has ever come to me for a divorce and said “we were doing just great until I had that damned affair.” No one sits at a bar and tells a potential sexual tryst how wonderful his or her spouse is, how happy they are, and how the feel understood, appreciated and loved.
Men and women have affairs. Is it a moral failing? There are a lot of people screaming that it is, that the adulterer is unfit to be a parent, a fraud and a hypocrite, and yet these moralist always seem to forget key tenets of their religions. Seek to forgive rather than to be forgiven, remove the beam from your own eye before the speck from your brother’s, let he without sin cast the first stone….
When we get to heaven we are not going to be asked how we were treated in our lives, but how we treated others.
And that works in relationships too.
Sure, an affair can be the straw that breaks the relationship camel’s back, but by the same token, not being man enough to get over it can too. My money says more relationships end because of one party’s inability to let go of blame and moral superiority than because someone impregnated a domestic.
When I was in college I cheated on my high school girlfriend, and the next morning I felt like such a failure, such a heel, such a bad person. I hated myself and what I’d done and I knew there was no way I could undo it, no way I could fix it, so I learned from it and became a better man.
I don’t know what happened with Arnie and Maria, but I wonder if Arnie felt regret and remorse and stupid and ashamed, and I wonder if Maria could appreciate the pain he felt if she could find pity in her heart, if she couldn’t know that after Arnie did the wrong thing, he did the right thing, and that because of his mistake he became a better man.
I’ll never know about Arnie, but I do know this: forgiving others for their misdeeds is a gift you give yourself. Letting go of blaming others for mistakes lets you be free to find your own happiness.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Taking Your Victim as You Find Them
There is an old adage in law that you take your victims as you find them, which means that if you negligently knock an old lady down and she breaks a hip, you don’t get the excuse of she was an old lady and had fragile hips, i.e. anybody else would be fine ergo I shouldn’t be held liable for the broken hip, but only for the bruise a normal person would have suffered.
In relationships this comes out to you have to own the effect of your words, and not excuse yourself by saying “that’s not what I meant.” You said something that was possibly merely taken out of context, but it caused pain and you have to own that, you have to take your victims as you find them and excusing your behavior by saying “you know I didn’t mean that” or “nobody else would react this way,” or any other variation on that theme that places the blame for the bad feelings that have arisen on the person feeling them.
Intent is one thing, effect is another. If you make a joke, and it not only falls flat on it’s face but comes across as sarcastic and mean, whether you intended to be sarcastic and mean is really secondary to the person who is feeling the sting of your words.
It’s sort of like saying “fuck you” and following it with the old sardonic disclaimer of “I mean that in the best possible sense of the word.” It’s funny when we attempt to soft pedal a clearly unintended and gratuitous insult, but it is not productive when we attempt to back away and disclaim responsibility for unintentional hurt.
Imagine you are carrying a ladder on your shoulder and as you turn you inadvertently clock your beloved in the head with the end of the ladder hanging out behind you. If you want, you may stand there with the ladder and say, “It serves you right you stupid git. You should have seen I had the ladder and anticipated that I would turn. At the very least you should have ducked, now get up and stop bleeding on the carpet.”
The great thing about blaming the other person for being concussed is that it means that you don’t have to examine your behavior, whether it was reasonable to be carrying the ladder that way, whether you turned too quickly, whether you should have said something before you turned, whether if, in all actuality, you didn’t care if you hurt her or if maybe even, at some dark uncaring level, you wanted to.
Or you can put the ladder down and say, “My god, are you all right? Let me help you.”
In relationships this means the better man, when he realizes that he has stepped in it takes responsibility. He takes ownership. He might say “Clearly what I said hurt you, and I apologize for that pain.” And if he’s really good, he might start a dialogue, (“tell me more”) but if he’s getting better at the very least he revisits the circumstances of the conversation in his mind and does a bit of self-analysis, examining his remarks for any passive/aggressive basis. The better man will mark for future reference the effect of what he said, recognizing that it is a soft spot for his wife and treading carefully there. The better man will note that sarcasm is at best veiled anger, and maybe next time he’ll avoid an unintentional hurt.
Now there are those among you who are saying, “Hunt, c’mon, she’s hyper-sensitive,” and you may be right, you know your wife better than I do and you may be 100% tap dead center on this, but here we are back at the premise: you take your victims as you find them. Your wife might be oversensitive, but you are not going to make friends and endear her to you by telling her. You are going to come across is insensitive, uncaring, and possibly mean and then you are going to sit around and wonder why she doesn’t want to have sex with you. Admit it: you’ve tried it that way and it hasn’t worked. Try something new. Try a different approach.
Try coming back to her after she has cooled off and saying “If you have a moment, I’d like to share something with you. I’ve been thinking about what I said about Mother Teresa and I realized that what I said hurt you, and that’s not the man I want to be. I realize I can’t take it back, I can’t un-say, I can’t un-hurt, but I want you to know I’m sorry for the pain I caused you and I’m going to be more intentional, and more careful, about the way I communicate with you.”
By saying this you haven’t blamed her, but neither have you swallowed your man-hood and become a beta-male. All you’ve done is acknowledge that what you said caused her pain (true) and that you don’t want to do that in the future (true) and you are going to work on it (hopefully true.) You haven’t said she was right, you haven’t said that she can control how you talk. You’ve simply owned your part of what happened.
And in time, she will own her part, but you’ve got to lead if you want anyone to follow.
In relationships this comes out to you have to own the effect of your words, and not excuse yourself by saying “that’s not what I meant.” You said something that was possibly merely taken out of context, but it caused pain and you have to own that, you have to take your victims as you find them and excusing your behavior by saying “you know I didn’t mean that” or “nobody else would react this way,” or any other variation on that theme that places the blame for the bad feelings that have arisen on the person feeling them.
Intent is one thing, effect is another. If you make a joke, and it not only falls flat on it’s face but comes across as sarcastic and mean, whether you intended to be sarcastic and mean is really secondary to the person who is feeling the sting of your words.
It’s sort of like saying “fuck you” and following it with the old sardonic disclaimer of “I mean that in the best possible sense of the word.” It’s funny when we attempt to soft pedal a clearly unintended and gratuitous insult, but it is not productive when we attempt to back away and disclaim responsibility for unintentional hurt.
Imagine you are carrying a ladder on your shoulder and as you turn you inadvertently clock your beloved in the head with the end of the ladder hanging out behind you. If you want, you may stand there with the ladder and say, “It serves you right you stupid git. You should have seen I had the ladder and anticipated that I would turn. At the very least you should have ducked, now get up and stop bleeding on the carpet.”
The great thing about blaming the other person for being concussed is that it means that you don’t have to examine your behavior, whether it was reasonable to be carrying the ladder that way, whether you turned too quickly, whether you should have said something before you turned, whether if, in all actuality, you didn’t care if you hurt her or if maybe even, at some dark uncaring level, you wanted to.
Or you can put the ladder down and say, “My god, are you all right? Let me help you.”
In relationships this means the better man, when he realizes that he has stepped in it takes responsibility. He takes ownership. He might say “Clearly what I said hurt you, and I apologize for that pain.” And if he’s really good, he might start a dialogue, (“tell me more”) but if he’s getting better at the very least he revisits the circumstances of the conversation in his mind and does a bit of self-analysis, examining his remarks for any passive/aggressive basis. The better man will mark for future reference the effect of what he said, recognizing that it is a soft spot for his wife and treading carefully there. The better man will note that sarcasm is at best veiled anger, and maybe next time he’ll avoid an unintentional hurt.
Now there are those among you who are saying, “Hunt, c’mon, she’s hyper-sensitive,” and you may be right, you know your wife better than I do and you may be 100% tap dead center on this, but here we are back at the premise: you take your victims as you find them. Your wife might be oversensitive, but you are not going to make friends and endear her to you by telling her. You are going to come across is insensitive, uncaring, and possibly mean and then you are going to sit around and wonder why she doesn’t want to have sex with you. Admit it: you’ve tried it that way and it hasn’t worked. Try something new. Try a different approach.
Try coming back to her after she has cooled off and saying “If you have a moment, I’d like to share something with you. I’ve been thinking about what I said about Mother Teresa and I realized that what I said hurt you, and that’s not the man I want to be. I realize I can’t take it back, I can’t un-say, I can’t un-hurt, but I want you to know I’m sorry for the pain I caused you and I’m going to be more intentional, and more careful, about the way I communicate with you.”
By saying this you haven’t blamed her, but neither have you swallowed your man-hood and become a beta-male. All you’ve done is acknowledge that what you said caused her pain (true) and that you don’t want to do that in the future (true) and you are going to work on it (hopefully true.) You haven’t said she was right, you haven’t said that she can control how you talk. You’ve simply owned your part of what happened.
And in time, she will own her part, but you’ve got to lead if you want anyone to follow.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
BECAUSE I CAN'T BE MAD AT THE DOG
A while back my dog, an otherwise well-trained and good dog, had been housebound too long due to protracted rain (she simply will not go out in the rain) and errands (my beloved and I both had things to do and we will go out in the rain) and as a result when she got home before I did…
Well, let’s say my beloved knew with her frist breath after she opened the door that the dog, a Great Dane, had allowed biological need to overwhelm both her training and her sense of decorum and there in the dining room (on the oriental rug, of course) was ample evidence that the dog was well fed.
As they say, shit happens, and if you lock a dog in a house this is not an unforeseen result. Regrettable, but until I can figure a way to teach them to use the toilet for something other than a fountain this shit, literally, is going to happen. I’ve had Great Danes for over 20 years and as a rule I pick up pretty much everything that they eat, so cleaning up the mess isn’t a big deal for me, but I wasn’t the first home.
Now there were a couple of other things going on here. The rug was a new acquisition. My beloved, who enjoys a neat and clean house, had just finished redecorating the dining room, and while she’s not a squeamish type, cleaning up dog shit is not high on her list of fun things. These and other factors all combined to exacerbate the dire effects of this event.
I knew what was waiting for me when I got home because she had called to tell me what MY DOG had done and by the time I arrived the doors were open, the attic fan was on, two or three spent bottles of Lysol spray lay on the floor while their contents hung in the air, the poop was gone and she was angry.
No, she was livid.
And better-man me embraced her anger and in the course of our discussion I asked why she was mad with me and she said, “Because I can’t be angry with the dog.” Which was true. Irrelevant, it seemed, but true. I knew and she knew that the dog would have gone outside if she could, that we had locked the doors, and hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.
But still, it didn’t explain why she chose to be angry with me, inasmuch as I had just about as much control of the situation as the dog did. I would have opened the door had I been there, but I wasn’t there. Her anger felt like an unjustified personal attack, and I although I struggled with that, I set it aside. I didn’t take it personally because to do so would invite me to retaliate, to allow my righteous indignation to fuel an attack on her for her unjustified attack on me.
So I listened, and I mirrored, and eventually she felt heard and calmed down and somehow the sun rose the next morning and life went on, but her response has stuck with me…. she was angry with me because she couldn’t be angry with the dog. She’s not crazy so that has to make sense.
And finally, last night, it dawns on me: duh! The dog hasn’t studied Imago, the dog hasn’t read HTSYMbBABM, the dog’s only response to her anger is to run away. The dog cannot be a vessel for her anguish, the dog cannot embrace her anger…
But I can.
So it makes sense that she shares her anger with me (the only way she knows how), because I have shown her that I won’t run away from it, that I will embrace it, that I will be there for her.
Now some of you are going, “Hunt, come on down off the cross, it wasn’t right for her to be angry with you because of something the dog did. Grow a set and tell her to shut up.”
Yeah, you’re right about the first part, but telling her she’s wrong is not going to help things. It is enough that I know it, and as for the second part, grow a set, I got a new and improved set so I don’t have to prove I have them (to you or her) by telling her to shut up. There are better ways.
So here’s the insight: when your beloved is angry with the world, maybe it’s something that happened in her family, maybe it’s something that happened at school or work or maybe, god forbid, it has something to do with the dog, understand that you, her spouse, represent her safety zone. She may not do it gracefully, and it may not be a lot of fun, but she is turning to you in anger because you are the only person she can turn to, and for now, the only tool for expressing herself is anger.
She cannot blow up at her boss, her teacher, her mother, her neighbor or her dog because it will serve no purpose. They will run away, the will fight back, things will go from bad to worst. She is angry, and she can’t get mad at the dog, so guess what? You’re elected. Don’t get me wrong: getting angry at you is not good relationship maintenance and depending on your tolerance it will have to change at some time, but it is a very natural and common behavior for all of us.
You’ve done it. You’ve popped your cork at someone because damnit enough is enough and that person just picked the wrong person to fuck with…. And if you have done it then you cannot blame your beloved when she goes there.
And you’re elected because 1) you volunteered, (maybe the vows should be to love, honor, respect and embrace her anger) and 2) you (if you’ve read the book and done the work) got the skills: you can embrace your beloved’s anger. You can listen, you can understand, you can be supportive, and in her world the odds are you are the only person she can turn to (seemingly on) when the chaos of an unfair world make her fear and it shows up as anger.
You can take it in knowing that it’s genus, while superficially you, is elsewhere, and by not reacting to her anger, by not blaming her for being angry at you for something you didn’t do, by not allowing yourself to believe the lie that she is angry with you, you can help her survive the moment, transcend the anger, and perhaps grow.
My beloved became angry and the only recourse she had, the only tool in her box, was to blame me. Why? Because the dog couldn’t help her, and I can.
Well, let’s say my beloved knew with her frist breath after she opened the door that the dog, a Great Dane, had allowed biological need to overwhelm both her training and her sense of decorum and there in the dining room (on the oriental rug, of course) was ample evidence that the dog was well fed.
As they say, shit happens, and if you lock a dog in a house this is not an unforeseen result. Regrettable, but until I can figure a way to teach them to use the toilet for something other than a fountain this shit, literally, is going to happen. I’ve had Great Danes for over 20 years and as a rule I pick up pretty much everything that they eat, so cleaning up the mess isn’t a big deal for me, but I wasn’t the first home.
Now there were a couple of other things going on here. The rug was a new acquisition. My beloved, who enjoys a neat and clean house, had just finished redecorating the dining room, and while she’s not a squeamish type, cleaning up dog shit is not high on her list of fun things. These and other factors all combined to exacerbate the dire effects of this event.
I knew what was waiting for me when I got home because she had called to tell me what MY DOG had done and by the time I arrived the doors were open, the attic fan was on, two or three spent bottles of Lysol spray lay on the floor while their contents hung in the air, the poop was gone and she was angry.
No, she was livid.
And better-man me embraced her anger and in the course of our discussion I asked why she was mad with me and she said, “Because I can’t be angry with the dog.” Which was true. Irrelevant, it seemed, but true. I knew and she knew that the dog would have gone outside if she could, that we had locked the doors, and hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.
But still, it didn’t explain why she chose to be angry with me, inasmuch as I had just about as much control of the situation as the dog did. I would have opened the door had I been there, but I wasn’t there. Her anger felt like an unjustified personal attack, and I although I struggled with that, I set it aside. I didn’t take it personally because to do so would invite me to retaliate, to allow my righteous indignation to fuel an attack on her for her unjustified attack on me.
So I listened, and I mirrored, and eventually she felt heard and calmed down and somehow the sun rose the next morning and life went on, but her response has stuck with me…. she was angry with me because she couldn’t be angry with the dog. She’s not crazy so that has to make sense.
And finally, last night, it dawns on me: duh! The dog hasn’t studied Imago, the dog hasn’t read HTSYMbBABM, the dog’s only response to her anger is to run away. The dog cannot be a vessel for her anguish, the dog cannot embrace her anger…
But I can.
So it makes sense that she shares her anger with me (the only way she knows how), because I have shown her that I won’t run away from it, that I will embrace it, that I will be there for her.
Now some of you are going, “Hunt, come on down off the cross, it wasn’t right for her to be angry with you because of something the dog did. Grow a set and tell her to shut up.”
Yeah, you’re right about the first part, but telling her she’s wrong is not going to help things. It is enough that I know it, and as for the second part, grow a set, I got a new and improved set so I don’t have to prove I have them (to you or her) by telling her to shut up. There are better ways.
So here’s the insight: when your beloved is angry with the world, maybe it’s something that happened in her family, maybe it’s something that happened at school or work or maybe, god forbid, it has something to do with the dog, understand that you, her spouse, represent her safety zone. She may not do it gracefully, and it may not be a lot of fun, but she is turning to you in anger because you are the only person she can turn to, and for now, the only tool for expressing herself is anger.
She cannot blow up at her boss, her teacher, her mother, her neighbor or her dog because it will serve no purpose. They will run away, the will fight back, things will go from bad to worst. She is angry, and she can’t get mad at the dog, so guess what? You’re elected. Don’t get me wrong: getting angry at you is not good relationship maintenance and depending on your tolerance it will have to change at some time, but it is a very natural and common behavior for all of us.
You’ve done it. You’ve popped your cork at someone because damnit enough is enough and that person just picked the wrong person to fuck with…. And if you have done it then you cannot blame your beloved when she goes there.
And you’re elected because 1) you volunteered, (maybe the vows should be to love, honor, respect and embrace her anger) and 2) you (if you’ve read the book and done the work) got the skills: you can embrace your beloved’s anger. You can listen, you can understand, you can be supportive, and in her world the odds are you are the only person she can turn to (seemingly on) when the chaos of an unfair world make her fear and it shows up as anger.
You can take it in knowing that it’s genus, while superficially you, is elsewhere, and by not reacting to her anger, by not blaming her for being angry at you for something you didn’t do, by not allowing yourself to believe the lie that she is angry with you, you can help her survive the moment, transcend the anger, and perhaps grow.
My beloved became angry and the only recourse she had, the only tool in her box, was to blame me. Why? Because the dog couldn’t help her, and I can.
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