Brilliant Therapist Idiot Husband

My Father worked hard in everything he did.  He worked hard, played hard, loved hard.  He made more great mistakes than anyone I ever knew.  He would smile at that sentence, knowing that the only way to make a good mistake is to stay in the game and to keep your head up.  I think Dad would smile at that because he knew that a mistake well made ONCE can be a lesson well learned if you are paying attention.  Yeah, Dad was like that.

To respect our privacy, I am just going to say that we had a complicated family.  Use your imagination.  Yeah, that’s about right.  But my Father was the guy who lowered his shoulder against it all and kept trying.  When I was a kid, I didn’t see him much because he was working all the time, and I really didn’t like him much for that.  When my parents were divorced, I saw him less, even though he lived really close to us.  My Dad juggled a tremendous amount of things, emotional, financial things for many people.  I never heard him complain.  He didn’t shirk his responsibilities, he embraced them.

He wasn’t Superman.  He was an Idiot, stumbling around in the face of the mysteries that are relationships just like the rest of us.  It’s just that he was an idiot with enormous style.  Throughout my adolescence and college years, my Dad was single.  He dated some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.  I greeted that with a mixture of great pride and not a little intimidation.  He was a man of extraordinary grace with women.

When I was in college, my father came up to visit me as a surprise.  When he came in to my dorm room, there was a big bag of pot sitting on the bed.  He took one look at it, and had such an expression of pain and hurt on his face that he had to walk away for a minute to regain his composure.  I think it might have been easier to handle had he been really angry at me, had he lectured me.  He never said a word.  I was shattered.

Years later, Dad said, “Randy, I think if someone doesn’t like you it’s because they don’t really know you.”  That’s the way he viewed his sons.  He assumed we were wonderful. Part of the reason we are wonderful is because our Father assumed that we are.  Again, this isn’t Disneyland.  I’m just saying that you can see the wonderful if you look for it.   So look for it.

I like to tell my clients that I am always pulling for their marriage.  They come to me when their ability to pull for their marriage is severely hampered, or sometimes gone.  If the marriage is too sick to be saved, we decide it together, and we pull together for the safety and health of the people involved.  Something like that happened with my parents.  How painful to have to say goodbye to something you wanted so much to be wonderful.

I could say a lot about his business successes.  There were many, and they were really impressive.  It just doesn’t matter.  What matters are the things that people don’t know about, won’t find out about.  I won’t recount them here because Dad wouldn’t want me to, except to say that they exist and they are carried on quietly and without fanfare.

The last time I saw my Dad alive; the ravages of Parkinson’s disease had taken his body and given him involuntary motions, so he looked like he was punching a speed bag.  The last time I saw my Dad alive, Parkinson’s had reduced his beautiful voice to a whisper, and his mind was almost gone.  The last time I saw my Dad alive, he fought his way up to the surface of consciousness, and he didn’t talk about the pain, or his fear of dying.  He didn’t ask for water, or say he wanted something.  The last thing my Dad ever said to me was “Tell me about Randy.”

And so I did.  Sitting with my Dad, as he punched the air, punching the Parkinson’s that took him away from us, I told him about me one last time.    I told him that I am a pretty good therapist, but I think I am probably an idiot husband.  He punched at the air, and I told him that I keep on punching too;  I keep making mistakes, and I keep trying, hoping they are good mistakes.

Paul Markey died on January 5, 2010.  He died at home in the company of his wife as he wished.  He left a beloved family.  He played hard all four quarters.

Go Spurs

Did you ever get well meaning relationship advice?  One of my favorites is we never go to sleep angry.  Are you kidding me?  What does that mean?  Does that mean stay up all night until you both say you are happy?  Does that mean stay up all night until you both actually ARE happy?  Does that mean stay awake until your situation is resolved?  Or does that simply mean that any time there is a conflict, you resolve to stay up until one or both of you is too exhausted to be angry.  Kinda makes me think that these are people who never authentically talk to each other.  

IF I NEVER WENT TO BED ANGRY, I WOULD STILL BE AWAKE.  I am going to have another blog about expecting the honeymoon, but let’s talk about going to bed angry.  First of all, couples come into my office all the time really upset about the fact that they aren’t going to bed with their problems all resolved. 

I don’t know who these people are who have all their problems resolved before they go to bed, but I assure you they aren’t communicating well. 

Now, the IDIOT HUSBAND is like many husbands, perhaps even most husbands, I don’t know if that is true, but I would be willing to bet on it.  When you get right down to it, many husbands believe that they are responsible for their wife’s happiness.  What that means in a practical sense is this.  When your wife is unhappy, a lot of guys think they are doing something wrong, OR they better do something right.  Now, there is SO MUCH WRONG with that idea, and with the feelings that accompany it, that I could write a book.  (hey, that’s not a bad idea!),  The main problem is that most guys never check in (there’s that check in again) with their wives to see if her unhappiness has anything to do with them.  A lot of women are unhappy about other stuff.  Maybe their work didn’t go as planned, or a friend didn’t call, or their car broke down.  But again, the important thing is this:         (idiot husband alert!!!!!)

The Way Men Think About Their Wives Is News To Women.  And

Even Men Who Have Sisters Don’t Understand How Women Think About Men

       Fantastic Relationship Fact:  If you want to know what your partner is thinking:

• Call each other from work and make sure that it’s for no reason
• Go out for dinner and pretend it’s your first date
• Have a very romantic, sensual encounter without making love
• Watch your favorite movie together; a comedy, a romance
• Go to church or synagogue together
• Go for a long walk in nature
• Share one sweet memory from before you knew each other
• Dance  (no, none of that matters just dance)…slow, fast…club, alone, just dance
• Hold hands when you argue
• Feed each other…and do NOT worry about being messy

Welcome to the Brilliant Therapist Idiot Husband’s blog.

The other day, the Wonderful Marcia and I were downstairs watching NCIS and having a perfectly great evening.  I went to the kitchen to get an ice cream sandwich, and when I came back, she said “Promise you won’t get mad, but I want to tell you something.”  Now, ladies, just for future reference, if you are EVER going to begin a sentence to your husband or boyfriend with “Promise you won’t get mad but, “I think you can just about forget the rest of the sentence.  Maybe you can forget the rest of the day.   

So anyway, the Wonderful Marcia says “I am really worried about your weight.”  Now…had she said that a year ago, I would have gotten up angrily, thrown my beloved ice cream sandwich into the trash, gone upstairs and sulked for the rest of the night.  BUT….last year I was an Idiot Husband most of the time.  Now I am just an Idiot Husband some of the time. 

Last year, I would have looked at her, and even though in my heart of hearts, I would have known that being worried about my weight is a very rational and loving thing; I would have been really angry that the Wonderful Marcia was depriving me of my ice cream sandwich. 

Women, don’t roll your eyes.  Here is what happens to Idiot Husbands.  I really feel in that moment like my Evil Wife is intentionally trying to take away my ice cream sandwich.  I swear, I feel like saying “You’re NOT the boss of me.”  But I CAN’T say that.  I am an educated, wonderful, man.  I am The Brilliant Therapist.  But I am at HOME, where I am (say it with me) an IDIOT HUSBAND. 

So now I am REALLY stuck.  If I eat the ice cream, I am going to look like the fat slob idiot I am; and I am going to feel like a three year old IDIOT.  If I don’t eat the ice cream sandwich, and I put it back in the refrigerator, she’s going to say something like “good boy” which is going to make me feel like a three year old IDIOT. 

So either way I am going to be a three year old IDIOT.  Unless……..

We check in with each other about this….

 Most guys shiver in fear about the prospect of “checking in.”  There is a big difference between a “check in” and a TALK.  What I like to call a CAPITAL T talk, is when somebody wrecked the car, or someone is in the hospital (God forbid).  The kind of “check in we have here is MUCH SIMPLER and MUCH MORE BRIEF.  It goes something like this.

First, you start with an honest expression of what an ice cream sandwich is for you….(guys LOVE this….it’s practical)…

If it’s the man, you could say…”I love my ice cream sandwich, and it feels like a reward.  I NEVER think of it as food, or as making me fat….it just feels good.  And then YOU…(STOP THERE)

Then the woman responds  “You don’t think of it as food?  Really?  Wow…I am constantly thinking of food as food, as what it will do to my body…And I want my man around…to grow old with and to nag until we are old and gray…well, until I am gray and you are a billiard ball” 

(Brilliant Therapist interrupts)  See, the purpose of the check in is for the two of them to really “get it” that their perception of food is totally different.  It completely changes their relationship, and reconnects them in a very profound way. 

It is RARELY this easy.  But the take home messages here are two fold.  First, it is always possible for there to be two right answers, or even more than two fold.  You can want your ice cream sandwich AND want to grow old together.  If your shared mutual primary purpose is to be connected, than sharing information, and hopefully affection about your shared goals, and about your dreams and desires (whether it is to write a book, lose five pounds, get along better with your in laws, or eat an ice cream sandwich), then your connection will deepen and grow.