Monday, July 16, 2012

marriage counseling

I heard some awful marriage advice the other day.  I'm no expert - I've only been married 7 years and I've been alive for oodles more (and spent exactly none of those preceding years getting ready for marriage) so I'd hardly go out giving advice.  Especially because I'm pretty sure our marriage is far from normal, what with the two of us because so far from normal.

The advice was to always argue naked.  Has anyone else ever heard this??  I am all for a healthy discussion about how wrong the other person is, but if they were nude then I'd be all mad at their nudity, and then just hate their naked body for being all naked.  My anger knows very little logic.  And no matter how rockin' my bod is, I can seriously infuriate the hubs.  I do NOT want to mix my annoyingness with my hottness.  That just screams poor foresight.

As my girlfriend and I were discussing this in my kitchen yesterday over peaches and a bad day, husband pointed out another problem - it would be waaayyyy too easy to point out the other's flaws.  Consider the following hypothetical confab:

"How could you not rinse out your bowl before leaving it in the sink??"
"I didn't have time because I had to rush to turn off the bidet that YOU left on that was flooding the bathroom."
"Why are you throwing that in my face??  I told you I forgot to turn it off because I was distracted texting my mom pictures of cats and dogs snuggling  WHY DO YOU HATE MY MOTHER?!?!"
"Who said...  what the... ARG!  You drive me insane!  I didn't say that or do anything wrong - why are you and your belly button giving me the stink-eye??"
"It's not my fault I have an outtie!"
"IS IT???  IS IT???"

My girlfriend had had a rough day and was hanging out before going back to home and reality.  Before she left, I gave her my own, rare bit of advice.  When things are rough, just hug them and tell them how much you love them.  And if you REALLY made them mad, do it topless.   APOLOGIZE naked, I say.

Who can argue with that?

5 comments:

Cath said...

Blah.That really is terrible advice. I think it kind of "cutesifies" what could be a serious issue/conversation. And how exactly does that work? "Oh, we're arguing over these serious concerns, I guess we take our clothes off now."

Jane said...

I *have* heard that before and I think the point is supposed to be that if you are naked when arguing, soon you won't be arguing anymore and head straight to the make-up sex.
HOWEVER, the practicality of that scheme is flawed on so many levels. One of those levels is children, another is location and yet another is the unavailability of shoes to take off and throw at the peak of screaming.
(I have more...)

The Pagets in Florida said...

What about arguing while rubbing each other's feet? I see 3 benefits to that. 1-you get your feet rubbed. 2-You are releasing endorphins that make you feel all good possibly modifying the argument to a discussion. 3-Arguing with my feet naked makes me feel much more comfortable. So, arguing with naked feet makes sense, at least where it is not freezing outside.

Lyndel said...

Mike and I had a good little laugh as we read this out loud. He especially enjoyed the hypothetical conversation :)
Although, I do agree with the apologizing naked part. It's distracting at best :)

Russell Dill said...

Haha! That is a pretty eccentric piece of advice, to say the least. Well, if you’re both comfortable with talking naked, then I’d say it won’t hurt to try it out. That important part is that you can talk freely and you can show all the emotion you want to show. The important part is communicating honestly and truthfully to the other.

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