Exploring Fault Lines

Finally!!

Last fall, I was ranting about couple-heal-thyself books—all of which seemed to be some variation on “your guy is great and your relationship would be too if you could just manage to stay silent and get into man-adoration mode.” Where's the book called Wow, Your Wife is Great, I wondered.

That one still hasn't been published, as far as I can tell, but Yin seems to have found the next best thing: It's (Mostly) His Fault: For Women Who Are Fed Up and The Men Who Love Them.

Author Robert Mark Alter definitely gets points for the title. (Forgive me for wanting to spread the relationship responsibility around a little.) I wonder how balanced his approach really is? A book like this could be a man basher or it could be a throw back to old "husbands should be in charge" thinking. And the reality always is that when you're fed up, you have some responsibility in that, too.

Have you read it? Let me know whether it’s worth checking out.

Falling and Failing in Love

We’ve fallen out of love. It happens to everyone, apparently. I’ve read at least one expert opinion that is doesn’t take but 18 months of constant contact to change the chemistry from blazing to blasé. They also say it’s not the end of the world—nor necessarily the end of the relationship. Couples can forge strong, lasting relationships based on a new kind of love—one that simmers comfortably, even if it never returns to a boil.

(According to Reva Seth, author of First Comes Marriage: Modern Relationship Advice from the Wisdom of Arranged Marriages, many people in arranged marriages seem to have the opposite experience. They enter a relationship with no expectation of feeling “in love” but grow closer and more loving over time. Lucky them.)

All that sounds reassuring. But when you watch your partner’s mouth move to form the words "I'm not in love with you," it’s like being dropped into an elevator shaft—without the benefit of an elevator. And it’s just as sickening a sensation when you have to admit that the feeling is largely mutual.

That said, my world actually did not end when I got this news. Said Husband is very adamant that “in love” and “love” are two different things and that he retains the latter feeling for me. (That, too, is mutual.) And we’re both optimistic—and have been assured by many folks who’ve been married longer than we have—that this is just the proverbial “bad patch."

In a way, I’m glad all this is out in the open. Call me odd, but for me hearing the worst is better than imagining the worst. For months, we’ve had a hard time talking, touching, even looking at each other. I just couldn’t figure out why—so my mind ran wild with unresolved speculation. But somehow for me, once I know what I’m actually dealing with—the cold, honest truth of it—I feel like there ought to be something I can DO about it. I feel like I have some power in the situation.

So I did what I tend to do when my life feels like it’s running away with me: I sat down and starting writing, trying to map out a resolution. I decided that perhaps we can push past this phase if we stop wallowing in the painful, disappointing feeling of it and start thinking about what is really going on. To that end, I’ve made myself a list of questions for each of us to ponder.

1. What are the things that I’m not in love with? (Buy a fresh ream of paper and make a list.)

2. Are these things annoyances or things I truly disrespect? (Get over the annoyances. Deal with the deep stuff.)

3. Can any of the “disrespect” stuff be discussed and resolved? Am I willing to understand these things differently (i.e. from the other person's perspective) and accept them, too?

4. What are the things that I do love and respect about my once-beloved? (Make another list and really do your best to fill up another ream of paper.)

5. If I weigh these things with an open heart, are they substantial enough to outweigh the other?

6. Can I be patient enough and stay open enough to make sure the answers I give to these questions are really, deeply true?

I figure that if I really stay deep and contemplate these questions, only one thing can happen: We’ll discover that there are things about one another that just cannot be overcome. And those things will be the ones that tell us, with certainty, that were not meant to make a life together. Or they will be the ones that remind us that nothing can tear us apart.

My objective side says that, either way, we’ll benefit from having a clearer idea of how to move forward. The optimistic side of me hopes that the process will reveal something beautiful and valuable—a new way of thinking that will open our hearts wide to love again.

I'm okay. I AM OKAY.

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” --Buddha

Isn’t that breathtaking? Yin sent me this quote after a rich conversation we had on the nature of self-acceptance.

It was prompted when I related an offhand comment from Said Husband. I have often accused him of “lawyering” me—asking questions that make me feel as if I should be on the witness stand. The other day, as he was about to launch a line of inquiry about some subject, he said, “This may seem like lawyering to you, but I’ve always asked questions like this. It’s just the way I am.” (Emphasis mine.) I don’t remember if he actually said, “You’ll get over it.” But that was the implication.

It raised my eyebrows—and my hackles. What a terribly unapologetic, self-justifying thing to say, I thought. How without regard for my opinion or interpretation. How dare he dismiss my accusation.

And then I realized that what I felt wasn’t just anger. It was also envy.

Why don’t I have that same solid sense of self-acceptance? I don’t ever imagine I’ll lose the tendency to push for personal growth and self-improvement; I don’t want to.

But why am I not more willing to be okay with who I am in the midst of that process? To be more compassionate about who I am in the moment would be deliciously spirit-freeing. To accept myself, if not because of my flaws, in spite of them? That is the definition of unconditional self-love. To stand firmly in all myself as a Child of God—recognizing even the God-ness that hides in my chinks and quirks. That would be wholly holy. And don’t I deserve that as much as the next person? Doesn’t everyone? The Buddha thought so.

We women, I'm convinced, have a more difficult time balancing the I’m Okay/You’re Okay model. We either accept other people, bending ourselves around their tendencies (even if it means denying our own). Or we expect other people to be as pliable as we are—and are hurt and disappointed when they don’t yield adequately to us. But aren’t we supposed to compromise—especially those we live intimately with? Aren’t they supposed to compromise, too?

Of course. But there is a line—thin, pliant, as easily broken as the strand of a spider web—between compromising and being compromised. Compromises, good ones, feel healthy and mutual. When we are compromised—subject to concessions that ultimately devalue or undermine who we truly are—an important line has been crossed. Like a spider web, you can’t always see it, but you feel it to sticking to you uncomfortably even after you’re sure you’ve wiped it away.

It made for a rich debate with Yin. She pressed the point that we have to be ready—especially in intimate relationships—to set aside some of the “just the way I am” stuff in the name the union. I agree. But I argued with her (maybe as a means of convincing myself) that boundaries must also be drawn, even in the deepest I love you relationships, so that I love ME is never forgotten.

She defended my hackled response to Said Husband’s comment. What kind of thing was that for him to say? I was right to be offended, she said. But whether his stance is wrong or not, he raised questions I need to explore: Do I deserve my own love, no matter what? And how can I learn the art of self-acceptance?

Your Woman is Wonderful

So I did my homework on books about how to find and keep a great woman. Went online and did a search. To get a basis for comparison, I started searching for books about “finding a good man.” I came up with a load of books for women of every age, race, religion and description.

For the married woman: Good Husband, Great Marriage: Finding the Good Husband...in the Man You Married
For the religious woman: In Search of the Proverbs 31 Man: The One God Approves and a Woman Wants
For the Type A woman: All the Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right
For the black woman: The Sistahs' Rules: Secrets For Meeting, Getting, And Keeping A Good Black Man (Not To Be Confused With The Rules)
For the angry woman: Seven Attitude Adjustments for Finding a Loving Man
For the mature woman: How Not to Stay Single After 40: The Secret to Finding Passion, Love, and Fulfillment--At Last!
For the maybe not so mature woman: How to Avoid a Stupid Man: A Woman's Guide to Attracting Her Soul Mate
And my personal favorite: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

Next, I typed “finding a good woman” into the search. The results? Drum roll, please….

More books about how a woman can find and keep a MAN!

Winnifred Cutler’s Searching for Courtship: The Smart Woman's Guide to Finding a Good Husband came up third on the list. There was also Dating Rocks! The 21 Smartest Moves Women Make for Love by Steve Nakamoto, a former Dale Carnegie instructor, personal development trainer, and international tour director. (I am not making that up.) The cover art is a picture of a guy’s hand reaching under the table for a woman’s thigh. Also on the list—and I’m not making this up, either: The Women’s Basketball Drill Book.

God Bless Ronn Elmore. He’s the author of How to Love a Black Woman: Give and Get the Very Best in Your Relationship which is apparently the only book in the whole world that offers instruction to men about how to treat women.

Is it me or is there something wrong with this picture? One thing I know from having worked in publishing: They don’t keep printing the stuff if no one’s buying it. So why are women so eager to pore over books on how to find a man, please a man, hold a man? And why aren't men just as eager to get their relationships right?

Maybe it's not the motivation. Maybe it's the approach. That was the hint I got from a counselor today.

“You’re working too hard,” she said. All my sincere, heroic efforts—the talking and reading and journaling and blogging and working and working and WORKING and WORKING on the relationship isn’t actually doing much of anything for the relationship--and it's doing less for me. “You’re doing all the work and he gets off the hook,” she says.

Her suggestion (though not her exact words): Get a life. Spend more time focusing on me. Do what I like. Do more of what makes me feel happy and creative and fulfilled. Stop and let him do some of the heavy lifting for a change.

My secret fear: That he won’t lift a thing. But then, if he’s not willing, why should I bother? And if I’m busy having a wonderful time in my own life, how much would I care?

Whether he's willing or not remains to be seen, but if he isn't, he should be. He was lucky to get me. I'm creative and smart and not too hard on the eyes. I have a sense of humor and a sense of spirit. I was a good catch. And he worked hard to reel me in. I need to see in me now, what he saw in me then.

Maybe there really is the need for the book called Your Woman is Wonderful. But maybe it’s us women who need to read it.

Wow, Isn't He Great!

Today my burly, surly, buzz-cut Asian UPS guy (who has the most beautiful legs you've ever seen in brown shorts) rang the bell and dropped a package on my porch. A review copy of a to-be-published book. I opened the package and read the title.

Your Man is Wonderful

I don’t know about you, but I’m big on Signs from the Universe and this seemed like a neon billboard. Okay, okay, I thought. I get it. I’ve got to appreciate my guy more. I’ve got to be more affectionate. I’ve got to overlook his little flaws and quirks and annoying habits. Okay. OKAY!

It actually seems like a good book—and probably an even easier read than the Susan Page one I've been trying to get through. I skimmed it and it does say some simple, pertinent things about how to remember he's a good guy. Here’s the gist:

Good = honest, reliable, trustworthy, responsive, responsible and appreciative.

That’s it.

And here’s the problem: We don’t see these “wonders” because

• We don’t recognize how vital and important these basics are
• “We pick (to death) a man’s superficial flaws”
• We don’t allow the emotional space for the good stuff to grow
• We want what they can’t give us

In other words, we expect too much. That’s basically it, isn’t it? We want more than they can give us.

I’m going to read the book more thoroughly and see what else it has to offer. (BTW, it's by Noelle Nelson Ph.D. and it's due out in January.) It seems worth ruminating on. I know that I’m guilty of all four of the “don’ts” above. I don’t often stop to think that, I married Said Husband because he had the six good qualities—and I recognized them as a great foundation for a good relationship. Those feel like lowest common denominators for me. But I’m also beginning to recognize that time takes its toll and if someone isn't actively cultivating those qualities or allowing them to “flourish,” the denominator can get lower. The guy who used to be responsive shuts down. The one who used to be there when you needed him can’t be found.

My problem is that when I'm asked to do more to "cultivate" him, I get caught up in this burning question: Where is the book called Your Woman is Wonderful? The self-help bookshelves are lined with books about how to find a great guy and make him happy. But I don’t remember having seen titles that offer the “wonderful” man advice on how to show appreciation for the wife who bore his 8-pound babies and picks up his stiff, sweaty socks after she comes home from work and before she starts cooking dinner.

That’s the thing that makes me feel just...tired. With all the work that women do—much that goes unnoticed, unappreciated or dismissed—we’re also supposed to find time to develop strategies for cultivating his wonderfulness and protecting his six precious qualities.

I want to see the book for guys called Wow, Your Wife is Great or Man, What a Catch! Maybe it’s out there and I just haven’t seen it. I’m going to do a search. I’ll let you know what I find.

Making Plans

I’ve begged and pleaded. I’ve asked over dinner. I’ve asked in e-mail. I’ve written letters.

What is our mission? What are our plans? What are we going to do together?

And I can’t, for the life of me, get an answer from my husband.

I don’t know if he can’t answer. If he won’t answer. Do the questions offend him? Do they just seem silly? Is he just the type of person that wants life to flow and take him along with it? Is he a “let go and let God” guy who believes that means you don’t have to plan at all? I don’t know what be believes. And it drives me crazy. It is a the crux of our relationship issues right now because his refusal to respond has left me wondering if he even has any aspirations for himself or his family. And, frankly, I don’t know how well I can deal with a person who doesn’t. But I can’t really make a decision about what I’ll deal with or won’t, because I don’t know what is going on in his ever-lovin’ head.

Finally, I just started thinking, “Ef it! If he won’t get a plan for his life, then I’ll just start making plans of my own.” Lately, I’ve thrown myself into creating long-range plans and short-term schedules. I’ve been fleshing out ideas that I’ve had, putting some meat on those dreams. Getting organized. Getting disciplined. Getting ready to roll.

It bothers me to set goals that don’t take him into consideration, but I feel like I have no choice. The call to get moving is very strong, and I’m the kind of person who can’t press the gas without some directions, a map, a destination in mind. I need a plan for my life. I'm going to have a plan for my life. Period.

And then the revelation came.

Maybe that was the point: For me to do it for myself. It's my life, after all. I know myself well enough to know that if he had responded to my queries about his dreams and goals, I would have thrown myself wholeheartedly into his vision for our future. Because the reality is, that I didn’t have a clear vision of my own aspirations. I had reached my previously set career goals (The cushy NY job). I had spent the past few years catching up on my personal goals (Marriage? Check. Child? Check. House? Check.). Now what? I had no idea what was next.

That’s why I was pushing so hard for us to talk about it. I was hoping that he would help get me motivated or that we would motivate one another. In the end, his inability (or stubborn refusal or whatever it was) to talk about it ignited a fine-then-I’ll-show-YOU attitude that fired me up to get off my ass and start to plan the life I want. As my girl Rox says, “I ain’t saying it’s right and I ain’t saying it’s healthy” but it certainly is helping to the job done.

To be honest, I’m still not absolutely clear on where I want my life to go. (Hmm, could that be why Said Husband has been so closed-lipped? He doesn’t quite know the answer to the questions I’ve been asking?) But I know some things I want in place. I know how I want my life to feel. I know I can find the ways and means. How, exactly, will it come together? I don’t quite know. But I’m working on it.

Talking In My Sleep

I had a chance to go and meet one of my favorite authors. Not at a reading or lecture. She was going to be at a friend’s house, having tea. I was invited. To sit and drink tea with Said Author and my friend. Just the three of us. I was dressed to go. I was in the car. I was on my way.

And I never got there. Because I ended up having a huge, all-consuming “discussion” with Said Husband—on the cell phone, as I was driving, trying to navigate my way to meet Said Author. In the end, I was too distracted to find the place and too much a mess to have enjoyed it anyway. (And lucky I hadn’t wrecked the car in all that drama.) That’s what I told myself anyway, to mask my disappointment at my own self-undermining.

I’ve always believed that, when two reasonable people have an issue, talking it out ought to work. Never mind that, in seven years of marriage, it has rarely yielded much. In fact, I’m beginning to find that talk—at least the way Said Husband and I are doing it—has become a form of self-sabotage. There have been nights when discussions about the State of Our Union have kept us up until 3 in the morning. And, while these hashings seem important at the time, often, in the next-day light I realize that we haven’t covered much new ground or come to any major revelations or resolutions. And, adding insult to injury, I end up exhausted. Not only have I wasted a good night’s sleep, I’ve tanked my ability to function the next day as well.

But I keep doing it. Keep think talking is going to help. According to Susan Page, that’s my first problem. She’s the author of, Why Talking Doesn’t Work: Eight Loving Actions That Will Transform Your Marriage.

The title doesn’t do the book justice. You’ll find it on the “self-help” shelf, but its focus is spiritual. It encourages you to think of marriage (and all relationships) as spiritual practice—a way for you to grow as a person. More connected, more authentic, more aware, more at peace, more in Love. (Big L Love.)

The book asks you to eschew discussion, debate and verbal self-defense in favor of acting with a sense of good will, allowing the other person to just be himself, accepting what is and accepting yourself with the same compassion. Give up problem solving, Page writes. Talking and negotiating isn’t going to solve them—and you’re not going to change your partner any more than he’s going to change you.

So far, the only “loving action” that has come fairly easily for me is Act On Your Own. Stop asking or expecting the partner to do the thing, say the thing, have a revelation you want him to have. Just do what you need to do. I’ve been calling this the “Work Around”—and find that it’s empowering to see that I can find a way to do or have what I need, without being hindered by another person’s actions or inactions.

I’ve had a very hard time with the other “loving actions,” because they require you to consider some practices and concepts that, if you have any ego at all, really stretch you beyond your comfort zone. But I’m inching my way into the book, going back and literally re-viewing the concepts again and again. Remembering that this is supposed to be a spiritual practice—trying again and again until I get it. And reminding myself that this is about me getting it. Because until I get it, I’m going to keep spinning in the same circle of self-sabotage. And I’m never going to get any sleep.

Right, Righteous Rightness.

I like being right. Who doesn’t? It’s our nature. It’s the way we protect the ego. And it feels so good. So of course I want to be right. I just don’t want to be known as The Person Who is Always Right. (A.k.a. “That Asshole.”)

I have to be careful. My temperament, my astrological sign and my life experience all make me tend to feel that if everyone would just please do what I think best, the whole world would operate so much more smoothly. It would be easy for me to lose the balance between “right” and “always right.”

In an attempt to steady that balance, I’ve been looking for another way to think about and articulate the right kind of “right.” I tried thinking in terms of being “righteous.” It has a nice 60s-hip, Rastafarian kind of vibe; but it feels too close to self-righteous. So lately, I have taken to using the word “rightness.” Being in rightness. Acting from a place of rightness.

What it means for me is that, whatever happens, I’m striving to respond in the best way. And not by the text-book rules. Not the way that could be upheld in a court of law. Not the way that’s technically right, defensively right, justifiably right. But the way that I know, in my heart of hearts, is right.

When I look at it in that way, I can’t help but think of a spiritual leader who famously and consistently defied religious “rules” in favor of doing what was right: Jesus. From my Sunday school days, I remember the story—and the image it created in my mind--of Jesus and the disciples, hungry wanderers, walking through the cornfields on a Sabbath. “They plucked the ears of corn and did eat, rubbing them in their hands,” says chapter 6 of the book of St. Luke.

Picking corn on a Sunday? The Pharisees were not having it. Technically Christ and his crew were harvesting and it was so totally against the rules to harvest on the Sabbath. It was against the law to heal a sick person on Sabbath, too. But He did it anyway. And did it right in the synagogue. Clearly, He wasn’t about the rules. He was all about the rightness.

The rightness is doing the best thing you can do under the circumstances. It is weighing the thing you might not really want to do, that it would be easier not to do—that no one would even blame you if you didn’t do—and doing it anyway because it’s for the highest good.

I've been struggling through a book on spiritual relationship called Why Talking is Not Enough: 8 Loving Actions That Will Transform Your Marriage. (More on that later. Or check it out for yourself at susanpage.com.) I say struggling not because the book is too dense or academic or complicated. It’s simple. It encourages you to treat your partner with rightness. To treat him with good will. To think of giving more than you focus on getting. To overlook the thing(s) about your partner that makes you angry, hurt or willing to pull each strand of hair out of your scalp piece by piece. Practice acceptance. Have some compassion.

How hard is that? Very. The easy thing is to do what seems to be in your own ego’s best interest: to get yours, to blame him, to forget that you make him want to pluck himself bald sometimes, too. It is easier to be see yourself as right than it is to set aside your resentment, anger, hurt or fear long enough to see that the other person could possibly be right, too.

But in any love relationship (and I mean any kind of love) the best thing is the thing you know, in your heart of hearts, is right. And that means being in rightness with and for everyone involved.

So when it you both know it’s his turn to wash the dishes—and he always seems to have an excuse not to do it, and then when he does he makes a mess of the job anyway, and will invariably break something or put dishes away wrong, and you have no idea what his Mama was doing when she was supposed to be teaching him how to do this one simple task—but you also know he’s stressed about his project at work and could afford to spend some time on that, rightness means you’ll bust those suds yourself. Just this once. And maybe the next time.

Plan B(itch)

Yve’s husband called her a bitch.

Well, he didn’t actually call her that. He programmed her phone number into his cell under the b-word. Instead. Of. Her. Name.

Look, I’ve watched the TV show “Girlfriends” enough to know that some people apparently use the b-word as a term of affection. I understand that it has come to fall in the same category of code-switching as the “n-word” among African-Americans. I know that there are academic dialogues taking place about the appropriateness of the use of “taboo” words and language in helping a social group retain a sense of group identity and belonging, and to mark “their rights and obligations relative to others in the conversational setting.”

Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

I also know that using “bitch” or “nigger”—depending on who you are and what your intention—is tantamount to abuse or a hate crime.

And that’s an important point. But it’s not my point here.

My question is: What is Yve going to do about it? What can she do? What is she willing to do? And how do her circumstances affect her response?

She, like a number of women I know (many who don’t work outside the home and a few who do), lives a lifestyle that relies on Husband's presence and his paycheck. Like many of us, she doesn’t have much of a safety net of her own. She is, at least to some degree, dependent.

Unless you have a strong sense of personal power, not having a sense that you have a safety net (even if it's as simple as "I can always go home to Mama.") can make your lines-that-must-not-be-crossed quite blurry. You can find yourself compromising values that you might otherwise hold firm.

I just read a compelling quote from Retrouvaille.org:

"If you are not free to reject, you cannot accept."

How do we get to the place—within ourselves and within our circumstances—that we are as free to reject as we are to accept?

It doesn’t matter to me how Yve finally addresses this with her man, as long as she's satisfied with her decision. I love her, I respect her choices and I know better than to try to tell even my best friends what to do within their own marriages. He’s her husband, for better or worse. They have children. And, it takes two, so she certainly carries some blame in her relationship's breakdown as well. That makes it complex. Even if she had a million-dollar trust fund and a private hideaway on St. Kitts, there would be no easy answers. But what I wish for Yve—and for all of us—is the ability to make hard choices from a position of strength.

Know. Do.

She started quietly, lifting one picture off its nail in the wall and placing it in the hallway. Then she carefully took down another. By the time she started moving the furniture, she didn't bother to tiptoe. The bedside table slid along the floor. The nails she was wrenching out of the walls came free with a squeak and tinked to the floor. When her husband finally roused from sleep, the only thing left in the room was the bed he was sleeping in. "What are you doing?" he asked, trying to make sense of what he'd awakened to.

"I am MOVING!" she said, leaning in, looking him square in the eye. "You can stay. You can go. But I am moving."

That's my girl Rox. She'd started quietly, she says, months earlier, talking about how quickly they were outgrowing their apartment. It was time to move themselves and their two young children out of the two bedrooms they rented, she'd said. Over the weeks, she kept bringing it up. And he kept saying, "We're gonna..." But nothing ever actually happened.

That morning, she'd had it. Totally. After she emptied the bedroom, she started on the kids' room, and she kept going until finally everything but the bare necessities was stacked in the living room or packed in boxes.

All this talk about Plan B? She didn't have one. Hadn't looked for a new place. Had no idea where they would find one. She just knew it was time to go and that she was going. She was not asking. She was not suggesting. She wasn't waiting. She was moving.

What she had was more powerful than a B-plan: She had clarity--a crystaline certainty about what was needed. And she trusted herself and her God enough to know she could make it happen--whether her husband came along for the ride or spent the rest of his days lying in the middle of their empty room.

Her story made me realize something: a plan B is just courage in a bottle. It's something we stir up, distill, and label Our Saving Grace. But what really saves us is our own willingness (willingness) to leap right past fear, self-doubt, second-guessing or whatever else has been holding us back, and put our feet down on what we really want, need, deserve and demand.

The best plan is simple, really: Know. Do.

As for Rox, it was barely two weeks after she emptied the bedroom around her sleeping husband that she was moving into a quaint house on a hill in a lovely old neighborhood. Husband and children in tow.

What makes you smile?

“I just want to come home and see you smiling.” So says sweet, sincere Said Husband.

To which I respond with a smirk and a snarl. Further proof that there is, indeed, a deep problem. Because when a guy says he wants his wife to be happy, it wouldn’t make her mad if she wasn’t so unhappy to begin with.

I hear a lot of women say they’re sent off the rails by the slightest thing Dude does. Why would you put on that ugly green shirt? Why do you stir the chili counterclockwise? Don’t you know that the toilet paper should roll outward, not back? What are you, some kind of idiot?

I’ve started to realize—through lots of counseling, lots of self-help books, lots of quizzing other women, and the hard, long slog of gaining tiny bits of wisdom through experience—that when we’re just constantly angry about the things he (or anyone) does, we’re really mad about something going on within us.

The idea is to get past his counterclockwise soup stirring long enough to figure out what our own issue is. Because here’s the thing: Even if he's doing something that’s actually stupid, the fact that we’re also mad at ourselves just compounds the problem and distracts us from doing a real, objective analysis and, ultimately, finding a solution. His stuff is just a distraction from what is really trying to get our attention.

So, woman, why aren’t you smiling? What would make you grin?

It's Plan A, actually

I’m afraid some of this sounds so cynical and untrusting, as if I’m writing this with my lip curled and my neck rolling, a squinty-eyed, man-hater whispering, “Go ahead. Make my day.” That’s not the intention. (Even if it is, sometimes, my mood.)

My eyes are wide open and I love men. I adore my father. I revere my grandfather. I love and respect my husband. Overall, I have known some really amazing guys in my life. And then there’s Obama. (Hey, any excuse to mention Obama.)

I hope that my Little Bitty will (if she chooses to and if that’s her path) meet a fabulous, respectful, visionary, hard-working, talented, brilliant guy and live in a blessed union of bliss, balance and harmony. But I also hope that she will never forget that she is fabulous, respect-worthy, visionary, hard-working, talented, brilliant and capable of creating a life of bliss, balance and harmony—in or out of a partnership. And—here’s the thing—it will be especially important to maintain that sense of herself if she is, indeed, trying to make a life with someone else.

Ultimately, I guess this “parachute” stuff is not even about my man or my marriage or escaping anything. This is about maintaining myself—and encouraging other women to do the same.

It’s about identity—literally re-membering myself—putting myself back together—and creating my own definition of self that doesn’t include anybody’s name but my own.

It’s about finding purpose and committing to the work that I’m here to do.

It’s about husbanding resources—being smart about my finances, my “papers,” my talent and all my assets—and tapping my creativity to use them wisely.

It’s about cultivating the power and courage that will hold me up so I can keep doing what I need to do for self and family.

It’s about my spirituality, because it takes a strong spirit to give yourself wholly and trustingly to your family and relationships, but still maintain the person created by the Divine.

It’s about the belief that, if I tap into that power, that courage and that spirit, anything is possible. Joy and peace are possible. And that is what I want.

I call this Plan B, but I might need to change the name of the blog. This is about Plan A—putting your own mask on first, keeping yourself grounded and clear about who you are and what you need to be your best and do your best—for yourself and the people you love.

The Child That's Got Her Own

“Have your own money, girl.”

That’s what my mother always preached to me and my sister: “Have your own.” (Interestingly enough, she was repeating a lesson she’d heard all her life. From her father. My grandfather was a minimally educated laborer who worked to send his (six!) girls to college because he said he never wanted them to have to depend on a man. An impressively enlightened idea for a guy born near the turn of last century.)

But Mama and Daddy only had joint accounts, which they always seemed to manage carefully and harmoniously together. I wondered if she just thought she’d gotten the last trust-worthy guy, and that her girls were going to have to be extra careful—though she never said a man-bashing word to that effect.

It wasn’t until I was out of college that I realized something: My sister and I each had a bank account where birthday money, Christmas money, random windfalls and after-school job paychecks were dutifully deposited. As minors, we had to have an adult’s name on the account. Our sole co-depositor? Mommy. And as the years passed—and my parents never, ever let us withdraw any money—all those Christmas club deposits started to add up to quite a little nest egg. And Daddy couldn’t have gotten his hands on it without some kind of court order. Mama would never have touched it. She never did. But it was there.

One day I’ll ask her if she did that on purpose. Knowing her, she’ll say something vague and imply that I’m making too much of it. But I also know she’ll still say: You just make sure you have your own.

Which ‘08 is this?

Time check: 10:19 a.m. July 22, 2008.

2008.

That's 88 years after women earned the right to vote. 40 years after the first bra burning. 48 years after Father Knows Best went off the air. A month after the first really, truly viable female Presidential candidate conceded.

Why, in 2008, would there be any need for a blog for women who don’t have a Plan B? I don’t mean the abortion pill. I mean an escape route, a parachute, an emergency exit, a safety net. We’re smart. We know better. Right? Right? But I keep hearing these stories.

• The husband who makes an expensive purchase—a sports car, a motorcycle, expensive electronic equipment—finances and family needs be damned.
• The guy who makes a major career decision—one that affects the whole family—without talking to his wife.
• The working mom whose husband tells her that, if they ever split up, the court will give him the kids because she’s never around anyway.
• The guy who withholds grocery money and hides the children’s passports so his wife can’t visit her family in Canada.

Okay, only one of these is potentially an actual crime. (The Canadian wife was found in a puddle of rainwater last week. Dead.) But all of these stories say something about the balance of power in these relationships. It points to the fact that a lot of us—I’m including myself here—are in situations where, if a partner decided to subtly or overtly pull rank, we wouldn’t really have much leverage or recourse.

I’m the last woman in the world who thought she’d be thinking about it this kind of thing. But here I am, an at-home mother of a toddler, whose nest egg disappeared into the down payment on the house, whose job disappeared when we moved away from Manhattan, who depends on a husband for health insurance. (All of this was done voluntarily on my part, I must emphasize.) Thankfully, Said Husband goes to work, comes home with his check and isn't hiding any grocery money.

But if he did? What’s my plan? What’s yours?

‘Chutes and ladders

My girl Yin and I were sitting in the bookshop café late on Thursday night, having a cup of tea. She’d announced to her husband that she needed to go out, left him with their three kids, and called me for a spur-of-the-moment rendezvous. Perfect timing. (It was the day I realized that, though I am a rabid Obama supporter, I could find common ground with John McCain on at least one front: Here was a poor soul who was captured and held captive by people who spoke a foreign language and tortured him continually for years. I could relate. Let's just say it had not been a stellar week with Said Husband and Little Bitty.)

As we sipped we talked, as we often do, about the state of our lives as wives and mothers. From all appearances, these klatches could certainly be categorized as bitch sessions. Dirty laundry is aired. Steam is blown. There is a lot of profanity (whispered so as not to offend other coffeehouse patrons). But there is also laughter and, always, the striving for higher ground.

This evening we talked a lot about our "hostage situations" (because that's what I've realized family life sometimes feels like) and our escape routes. How would we get away from the madness of family life if it, indeed, got too crazy to survive? What is our Plan B? we asked each other. What happened to our parachutes? Why don’t we have them packed?

The reality is, though, that we chose the lives we have. We wanted to be married and have children. We love the children and their Daddies. We don’t want to leave them. (Well, not permanently.) We just want a more balanced life with them.

Yin came up with a good analogy: skydiving. She wants her parachute back, not because she thinks she’ll have to eject herself from a burning plane, but so that she can experience the joy of leaping into the free, blue sky; seeing the long view; feeling the wind against her body lifting her on invisible currents. She wants to know what it’s like to look at life from her highest place, knowing that her parachute will bring her back safely to earth when the time comes.

It’s not about escaping our lives in search of the false freedom of the refugee. It’s about being free in the lives we have.