So I’m reading through Gretchen Rubin’s bestseller “The Happiness Project” month by month and incorporating some of her ideas into my life to hopefully increase personal happiness. This month, Gretchen talks about love and boosting happiness through the most significant relationships in your life. I want to take the next week to write about things I’ve learned about love over the last year and a half in my marriage to my best friend, Katie.
During the first few months of our relationship six years ago, Katie and I were amazed at some of the random things that we had alike. For example, both of our best friends in high school were of the opposite gender, we both have a deep passion of singing and worship leading, and we were both Spelling Bee champs in grade school. I think we had a list of like 70 unusual things we have in common.
Our personalities are somewhat similar. We’re both pretty even-tempered but have surprisingly strong competitive streaks at times. We’re both first children and thus responsible, people-pleasing, and somewhat organized. We’re both affectionate (fortunate for us), but we’re also somewhat introverted and shy. We both have incredibly strong work ethics. We’re both Christians. I think that’s a biggie–not that we’re both evangelical Bible thumpers and find it our life long mission to team and press a conservative Biblical doctrine in everything that we do. John Gottman suggests that healthy couples have shared meaning, values, and dreams; Christianity gives us a language and a narrative by which to hope and share and dream together.
But I love that Katie is different from me. I had no idea how different she was from me until we got married, and it scared me at first. (I’m hearing laughter from people reading this blog who have been married for years.) But I love that about her.
I love that Katie is sentimental. I feel like being a therapist and exploring so many deep and traumatic issues vicariously through the stories of my clients have taken some of my sentimentality away, although I think before I became a therapist, there was still a difference between our levels of sentimentality. I love that Katie feels so deeply and passionately for the injustices of life that she weeps, and I hope she doesn’t feel uncomfortable sharing those tears with me.
Katie and I listen for different things in music. I listen for musical themes and creativity. Katie listens for stories and meaning through language. I love that Katie can connect with music on such an intimate level.
Katie is a giver, while I have such a hard time letting go of control of things. For example, she’s taken up knitting over the last few years. Just about everything she knits (well, until selfish-knitting January) is for other people. It was her idea to support a child through Sanctuary Home, the Indian orphanage I blogged about last week. Her giving spirit makes me want to give to others, and I feel like I’ve become a better giver (to people I don’t know) through our marriage.
Katie lives life in the present and moves slower, whereas I feel more comfortable when I’m driving fast, have a lot of things on my plate, and am looking ahead to the future. I love that Katie gets frustrated when friends (and myself) complain about where they presently are and where they wish they were. I love that she slows down long enough to absorb her surroundings and relationships and takes time to rest. As I’ve written before, I’m not always the best at that.
They say opposites attract. People look for partners and deep friendships amongst those that have qualities they wish they had. As I look over this list (I could go on, but I promised myself I’d work to make my blog posts shorter), I realize that we’re quite similar in many ways, but these qualities that I’m thinking about give me something to strive for. At its best (when spouses are comfortable with themselves and yet open to growth), marriage provides a chance for people to experience love through celebrating the excitement of differences.
What are some ways that you celebrate the differences in your loved ones? Do we do that well as a culture?
At first these differences
Katie has started following Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project–both her blog, in which she evaluates a combination of philosophical mantras, psychological research, and personal experiences concerning happiness, and her NY Times best-selling novel. Gretchen has split her book into twelve themes of happiness, corresponding with the twelve months. I’m taking 2010 to read this book one chapter at a time, one month at a time.
This month, appropriately, discusses love, specifically within a marital relationship. Quite a bit of the conversation revolves around John Gottman’s Love Lab project in Seattle. Gottman is a behavioral therapist that suggests, among other things, that healthy couples have five positive interactions per one negative interaction. Gottman was one of the first theoreticians we studied in MFT; we used his “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” to define levels of conflictual relationships between couples. For example, he noticed that quite a few spouses criticized their partners, through nagging (which Gretchen calls herself out on) or blaming statements (among others). Whereas some couples are able to leave conflict at criticism through repair efforts, others create a positive feedback relationship through defensive and contemptuous behaviors. Gottman behavioral therapy guides couples through the “Sound Marital House”, with focus on creating cognitive room (learning more about each other), designing a fondness and admiration system, turning towards your partner instead of away, positive sentiment override, dialogue with perpetual problems(Gottman suggests that a good percentage of arguments happen over the same subject/theme), physiological soothing, making dreams come true, and creating a shared vision.
(As a practitioner, I use Gottman ideas with every couple; specifically, I would strictly use Gottman with couples that I felt needed a “marital tune-up” and combine Gottman with other marital therapies with couples with deeper emotional pain and betrayal. Just in case you were curious.)
Gretchen closes the chapter by thinking of proofs of love that she receives from her husband Jamie and has given to other people. I wanted to take this next week to do the same. Katie and I have been married over a year and a half now, and our marital relationship has redefined perspectives of love and the ways that we prove our love to each other. So from everyday, Tuesday through Valentine’s Day, I want to give little snippets of new things that I’ve learned about love through my relationship with Katie.
Anyone else sharing this project with Gretchen? What are your experiences with discovering your own happiness project, especially relationally (with spouses or otherwise)?
My sports obsession is largely the fault of my dad. He took me to my first Rangers game when I was four, my first college football game (Texas-OU no less) when I was five or six, and many high school football games. There was at least one year that I stayed home from school and watched the opening rounds of March Madness with him, possibly more.
My mom’s got a bit of a flare for sports as well.
She’s from south Louisiana and grew up cheering for the Saints. The Saturday that Katie and I went home for Christmas this year was the Saints-Cowboys game, and Mom would rub it in to Dad when the Saints scored–I think Katie was a bit shocked. When I was growing up, whenever the Saints were playing or were mentioned during the Cowboys game Dad and I were watching, she’d yell “Who dat, who dat, who day say dey gonna beat dem Saints?”
Dad would yell, “Everybody, everybody…”
Well, not anymore, I guess.
Great to see two likable teams in the Super Bowl this year, but my heart goes out to the Saints, the city of New Orleans, and my mom (and other Saints fans who have waited what seems like an eternity for this moment).
To review, I’m in the middle of a four-part series thinking about the tragedy that Haitians are undergoing this month and the unfortunate event of 10 Americans being arrested for gathering Haitian orphans and transferring them to another orphanage outside of Haiti. The latest update is that all 10 Americans will be detained by Haitian authorities until further notice.
Honestly, this last post has little to do with Haiti’s children–forgive the misnomer. I asked in Tuesday’s post, “Do we have the right to go to a land of poverty and “rescue” children through international adoption efforts? Is that a Christian mission or an American mission? How different are those terms?”
I especially want to key in on this idea of “rescue”. Specifically, to start, who are our socially sanctioned rescuers?
If my life is in immediate danger (if I was in a burning building, having a seizure, or something equally morbid), I would want someone to barge through the doors and haul me out or perform efficient life-saving surgery. Policemen, firemen, and surgeons do this on a daily basis, but “rescue” for these professions suggests that there’s no plausible alternative for saving your life. Sometimes, you need to be physically rescued, and I want to leave room for the possibility that these 33 children (as well as the other thousands of parent-less children in Haiti) need to be rescued and removed from the nation.
On the other end of the rescuing spectrum are people who take it upon themselves to right the wrongs of loved ones. For example, as a therapist, I work with couples who create an overfunctioning/underfunctioning relationship. Let’s presume that the husband has an alcoholic addiction. The wife may try to rescue her husband by nagging her husband to quit or attend an AA meeting, working herself to death to keep the house spotless, or denying to children or other family members that there’s a problem. Interestingly, regardless of whether the wife in this example pursues or distances, as long as she’s rescuing, the husband responds by distancing, either by drinking more or creating emotional separation by yelling and abusing.
I want to focus this conversation in the middle of our spectrum, but I find it pretty difficult to do given our national and contemporary Christian narratives.
Ironically, in a nation that preaches individualism and efficiency, we’re obsessed with superheroes. I think part of this comes from our desire to see the supernatural, be that God, Superman, or an altruistic celebrity. But I wonder if there’s a part of our national psyche that wants to be saved. (Another topic for another day.) Anyway, women in the prefeminist days were taught the damsel in the distress narrative, hoping that the perfect guy will rescue them out of a forbidden tower or a dreamless coma. (Women, is this narrative still prevalent? How has this affected you?) Our foreign policy, in the opinion of other nations at least, models rescuing other countries–we’ll come in, kill off who needs to get killed off, and speak on behalf of the country we’re supporting through international relations, government restructuring, etc.
Evangelical Christians seem to have their own version of rescuing, using moral standards and eschatological language (generally) as its premise for attempting to save the world from itself.
I don’t want to say that these are all bad things–we all need values to stand on, be that democracy, the Christian ethic. But rescue always has hierarchical implications. In order to be rescued, someone has to be powerless, and someone has to have power (altruistic or otherwise). Someone has to be weak, someone has to be strong. Someone has to be right, someone has to be wrong. Someone has to be poor, someone has to be rich. And so forth.
God rescues–he rescued the Israelites out of Egypt, he sent Jesus as a form of rescue from the eternal grips of Satan (among other things). Does that mean that we get the same power, the same responsibility, or is the role of rescuer explicitly for God to use?
In closing this series, what does social justice look like without the hierarchical confines of rescuing?
Max Beauvoir, the leader of Haiti’s national federation of voodoo priests, explains, “There are many who come here with religious ideas that belong more in the time of the Inquisition. These types of people believe they need to save our souls and our bodies from ourselves. We need compassion, not proselytizing now, and we need aid — not just aid going to people of the Christian faith.”
For more thoughts about this topic, please check out this website, or leave thoughts of your own in the comment box.
To review, I’m in the middle of a four-part series thinking about the tragedy that Haitians are undergoing this month and the unfortunate event of 10 Americans being arrested for gathering Haitian orphans and transferring them to another orphanage outside of Haiti.
Part three concerns the idea of rescuing children. Angelina Jolie made a social justice splash several years ago by flying to Southeast Asia and adopting several children with Brad Pitt, bringing a lot of positive attention to adoptions. Thousands of Americans adopt internationally each year—as I stated in part 1, most of these families adopt to attain joy, energy, and the ability to share love with a child. And I want to commend these families for often overcoming an incredible amount of difficulties (the inability to have children biologically and, as a result, grieving the loss of an idealized child, legal and financial difficulties, etc.) on their path to adoption. I find it amazing that these families continue following their dreams of parenthood and joy in the midst of these difficulties—in many ways, their visions of the expansiveness of God’s kingdom are far greater than mine.
But I’m curious if “rescuing” children—taking these children from their nations of origin and rearing them in the U.S., especially while neglecting the culture from the child’s nation of origin—is always the best option for that child. Can he/she obtain an equal, if not higher level of education, moral standards, and financial capabilities in his/her own nation of origin as in the U.S?
Honestly, sometimes that answer is definitively no, especially when a child’s world has turned upside down, such as in times of natural disaster, political turmoil, or cultural/familial oppression. But I’m curious about when the answer is “perhaps” or “yes”.
I’m thinking of our friends Ray and Amanda who founded an orphanage, Sanctuary Home, in Tenali, India. Katie and I give financial donations to one of the children there, which provides clothing, food, and textbooks, among other things. Katie’s summary of Sanctuary Home, written for Halogen’s magazine, can be found here. Ray and Amanda run the financial aspects (donations, grant-writing, etc.) from Abilene, and they’ve teamed with a humanitarian worker/preacher named Isaac, who manages the Sanctuary Home campus in India. Isaac, his family, and team of workers provide these children with a Christian education comparable to many of the public schools in Tenali (several children have gone to Indian trade schools, with the potential for many more to enter trade schools and universities). Isaac and Mary (his wife) provide safety for these children not just by meeting basic needs, but also through compassion, awareness, and peace. Funding comes largely from Western bank accounts, but the children are educated within the context of Indian customs, language, and rituals.
I’m also thinking about failed nations and disaster centrals (such as Haiti). I’m curious how removing children from difficult circumstances affects the future of these nations. Would it matter? I mean, if a child witnesses abuse or trauma, chances are that those events will perpetuate themselves in the future, right? Or is it possible that removing children means eliminating the hope of stability, security, and culture for that nation?
Are there change agents in these nations, like Sanctuary Home, who can provide on-site nurturance and wisdom from loving, culturally sensitive, and culturally-aware people? What happens if our response to the Haitian disaster is supporting non-profits such as these—literally going to all of the nations instead of bringing all nations to America?
To review, I’m in the middle of a four-part series thinking about the tragedy that Haitians are undergoing this month and the unfortunate event of 10 Americans being arrested for gathering Haitian orphans and transferring them to another orphanage outside of Haiti.
Part two concerns the question “Do we have the right to go to a land of poverty and “rescue” children through international adoption efforts?”
I’m adopted–not internationally, but bi-racially. And I know that the primary intention of all families who adopt is to bring joy, radiance, and love to their lives through a small child that they can claim as their own. But there’s something that bothers me about this idea of going into another territory (an actual poorer country or an agency that works strictly with birthmothers in poverty), claiming a child (legally or otherwise), and raising that child solely as an American, neglecting that child’s culture of origin. What are some of the unspoken implications of this response?
I feel like my parents did were pretty culturally sensitive with my sister and me–it helps that I’m part Hispanic and my birthday is Cinco de Mayo. Seriously though, they were open to questions that I had about where I came from and did well in giving appropriate answers and comforting me when they had none. But race is everything to a child that doesn’t look a thing like their parents–I know that my sister and I both attempted to develop cultural narratives to describe ourselves; though they were often fictional or only partially developed, they helped create security and a personal sense of identity. I get the chance to speak occasionally with adoptive parents through a local adoption agency, and I encourage those that are seeking to adopt internationally or inter-racially to research their child’s culture of origin and find creative ways to adapt celebrations and rituals from that culture into their family’s rhythm.
I got the chance to visit the region in northern Spain of my ancestry this summer with Katie; as part of our European adventure, we visited Pamplona and San Sebastian—two cities with significant Basque influence. We explored Basque cuisine (pintxos with various seafoods and cheeses), I watched about 30 minutes of jai alai, one of the regions most popular sports, learned about the Basque naval tradition, and explored several regional art museums. We were only in Spain for five days, and there were some parts of the trip that were wearisome (especially the language barrier), but this trip provided unique answers to lifelong questions about my identity.
I’m curious, along with thinking about the unspoken implications of neglecting the child’s culture of origin, about stories from people who were adopted inter-racially or internationally or adopted inter-racial/international children and found creative ways to incorporate their/their child’s culture of origin into their family’s narrative. Thanks for dropping in–looking forward to hearing from you!
Any other news junkies out there feeling a bit numb about the Haiti situation?
Please don’t confuse numb with disinterested or tired of. My heart goes out to all Haitians as they cope with varying levels of powerlessness–especially those men, women and children who lost loved ones in the tragic earthquake. But that’s just it–how do you respond to a natural disaster like this? How do you serve the poor, the homeless of the world? I know a lot of people praying, and I don’t want to discredit the power of prayer, but can we do more? I’ve given about $50 in contribution to Haiti-related causes. Katie has bought several items from artisans at etsy.com, with proceeds going to Haitian charities. I cleaned out my closet a few weeks ago and contributed the five bags of unusable (to me, anyway) clothes to a non-profit collecting items for Haiti. Somehow this doesn’t seem enough.
I read a very fascinating story on NY Times today–you can read the full text here–about ten Americans who were arrested by Haitian officials as they attempted to rescue 33 Haitian orphans, with intentions of building an orphanage in Hispaniola and potentially adopting them for themselves or to American families. These 10 were from an American church group on a mission trip entitled “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission”, and reportedly, their itinerary included “Gather 100 orphans from Port-au-Prince’s streets and collapses orphanages and return to Santo Domingo (the site of the American orphanage).
Technically, the illegalities occurred through the fact that all adoptions in Haiti must have the consent of Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive due to an alarming increase of traffickers taking poor Haitian children, orphans or otherwise, and placing them essentially in foster/holding homes with hopes of illegal adoptions (best case scenario) or prostitution and slavery (worst case scenario). They did not get appropriate signatures, and they broke the Haitian law.
One government spokeswoman was quoted as saying, “If people want to help the children of Haiti, this is not the way to do it.” I’m wondering about the profoundness in that statement. Do we have the right to go to a land of poverty and “rescue” children through international adoption efforts, especially through the described methods, which I perceive as people essentially picking homeless-looking children off the street? Is that a Christian mission or an American mission? How different are those terms?
I want to make this a blog series through three thoughts I have in exploring these questions–these aren’t answers to these difficult questions, but are wonderings I had that would have made this post way too long. I first wanted to leave these questions open-ended and hear from people in blog world, so feel free to leave comments. Tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday afternoon, I’ll have new posts up that consider these three ideas.
If you want to use/advertise this phrase in the next week (whether you’re a Saints fan or Colts fan), please attribute the NFL as its rightful owner.
I’m no marketing expert, but at what point does language become trademarkable? Do we have an ethical/constitutional right to take a portion of the English language and force others to recognize our personhood/corporation when they use it? I say “Oh dear goodness” more than any person that I know–does this mean I can trademark that phrase? What purpose would trademarking that phrase serve me or a corporation I wanted to incorporate that phrase with (other than monetary and self-promotion)?
This article has some interesting commentary about the issue–I’m wondering what other personal and more professional insight is out in blog world.
Robert, the best man in our wedding, explained that Katie and I operate under the steadfast refusal to do what anyone expects of us.
Not entirely true, but close.
There are some trendy things I avoid just because they’re trendy. Popular contemporary television sitcoms and reality shows. CGI. Top-40 music from artists other than U2. Most Christian fiction that makes the New York Times best seller list. Rooting for a top-four team in the English Premier League. (Americans have a reputation for devoting fanship to Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, or Liverpool. Coincidentally, they’re the top four teams in English football.) Pop psychology. (Although quite a bit pop psychology is also based on faulty philosophy and incomplete representations of research.) Don’t get me wrong–there are great qualities about each of these things I’ve listed. But the artists, social forums, and well, people that I get the most joy and energy from carry a certain level of independence and edginess that gets lost with popularity.
I come around on some of these things…eventually. I’ve read all of the Harry Potter books, but didn’t start reading them until after the sixth book came out. I got a cell phone my sophomore year in college, when most of my friends already had one. Katie and I are going through all of the seasons of Friends four or five years after it finished. (Although I was a Friends fan in high school.) I joined facebook two or three years after it became the most popular social networking device in the world.
(I’m sure there’s a psychological piece to this, such as “I want to remain different for as long as possible, but there’s a part of me that wants to be like everybody else and conform to society’s expectations, so eventually I give in.”)
So let it be known, that tonight, January 29 2010, I caved in and joined twitter.
I admit, part of me wanted to see what the craze was all about. Katie’s twittering now (although we talked about how few shared followers we’ll probably have because of our different interests). I also love writing funny comments on the profile update portion of facebook.
I’ve actually been thinking about this for some time. When Mir-Hossein Moussavi directed his peaceful protest against the election process that named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran this summer, Twitter became one of Moussavi’s main networking tools to provide updates and allow followers to pictorially describe the injustices in the streets of Tehran; I considered joining for that. The AAMFT (the regulation board for marriage and family therapists) uses Twitter to provide updates on the ramifications of Obama’s potential health care reform on MFTs; other professional organizations use twitter to provide links to contemporary research projects. Friends and acquaintances from various stages of my life use twitter to joke, explore, share, and dream about life.
So now that I’m hooked, who/what are some valuable, light-hearted, talented, and/or influential people (known and unknown) that you follow on Twitter? I want some new trends to engage with.
I admit that I can be a very stubborn person. When someone tells me to do something or that I should be something, I often question that person or system and do the exact opposite. More often, I’ll do just enough to skate by and add my own twist. Reading is one of those things.
During the last eleven years of my life, I read what I was told to read. For homework. For a research project. For a lesson plan. I never got to read for me. Truthfully, I never prioritized pleasure reading in my schedule because I was so burned out from reading what I had to, especially during my two years of undergraduate. Two of the most important people in my life–Katie, who is a writer, and my mom, who is a librarian–are voracious readers, as are more of the people I’m beginning to admire.
As I mentioned in a recent blog post, on our European vacation, I read. A lot. Four books that I chose and that I read at my own pace. And since our vacation, I’ve continued to read–I’ve finished two books and am working on another one. So to accompany this rediscovered pleasure, I want to install Fictional (or Non-Fictional) Friday on my blog, where I talk about the book that I’m currently working on. I must admit, I’m a meticulously slow reader, so I may talk about books for two or three weeks at a time.
Last year, for my 24th birthday, Katie bought me a coffee table book called U2 by U2. It’s an extended interview (over 300 pages in my edition, nearly 500 pages in a paperback version that’s being released in December) with the four members of U2 and their manager, Paul McGuiness. I briefly thumbed through it when I first got it, but now, after the excitement of seeing U2 live, I’m getting to know the band, their thoughts on music, and their story. Here’s the opening clip from Bono:
Sometimes it comes across as if I got into U2 to save the world. I got into U2 to save myself. I meet people out on the street who approach me like I’m Mahatma Gandhi. And when someone says, “Hail, man of peace,” I can hear Larry (the drummer) mutter under his breath: “You’re so lucky he didn’t nut you.” The band are very bemused by my attraction to non-violence, because they know you couldn’t get further from the songs than the singer. They understand the reason I have been so attracted to these characters, the subjects of the songs — because in my life and temperament I am so far from them.
To sing those songs, to hit those high notes, takes an incredible concentration and commitment. You have to step inside and live the song. So you’re right in the middle of Derry performing “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, or you are in Memphis at a civil-rights rally with Dr. King, singing “Pride in the Name of Love”. I’m right up there. Your mate is ruining his life with a bag of smack. It’s “Bad”. You’re in those emotions. And I think the band have been very good about realizing that I get to that spot. At times it must have been very idfficult for them, because the singer would be right out there.
Your nature is a hard thing to change; it takes time. One of the extraordinary transferences that happen in your spiritual life is no that your character flaws go away but they start to work for you. A negative becomes a positive: you’ve a big mouth, you end up a singer. You’re insecure, you end up a performer who needs applause. I have heard of people having life changing, miraculous turn-arounds, people set free from addiction after a single prayer, relationships saved where both parties “let go and let God”. But it was not like that for me. For all that “I was lost, I am found,” it is probably more accurate to say, “I was really lost, I’m a little less so at the moment.” And then a little less and a little less again. That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting of a computer at regular intervals, reading the small print of the service manual. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet.
As I mentioned in the last post, U2 is celebrating its 30th year of recording. U2 by U2 is chaptered into different eras of their career, starting with meeting at Mount Temple School outside of Dublin and concluding after the release of “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. I’ve gotten to about 1981. U2 had just released “Boy”, their first album, and concluded their first American tour.
I love the last idea in Bono’s quote–I was really lost, I’m a little less so at the moment. That idea transcends into the narrative of the band, as well as the narratives of the band members; readers learn about four high schoolers who started a musical group without knowing that much about the technical aspects of music, but understanding that music brought fulfillment and community. Their community was messy–at several points they mentioned that their rehearsals mainly consisted of fighting, and there are several rather hilarious depictions of teenage angst in the introductory chapters. Adam was an unorthodox bass player at first, Larry had difficulty keeping beat, and Bono often produced unpredictable shenanigans while performing in the early years, but they refused to disband because of their friendship; in fact, they became better musicians learning to adapt to these early ineptitudes. Their community was also incredibly poignant, as these young men used their camaraderie to combat trauma and loss; three of the four had lost parents (physically or emotionally) by the age of 21.
I’m listening to the U2 CD’s as they talk about them in the book. I just finished reading about “Boy” and listening to some of the musical nuances they enjoyed producing and examining some of the lyrics of songs, such as “I Will Follow”. I’m really excited about learning how these four become musically, personally, and spiritually molded and shaped into the most influential rock group of our generation.
