When arguing with your spouse drives you crazy!

Today, I had an argument with my husband on his way out of the door to work. Which is the worst kind of argument, for me because I can’t follow him around finishing the argument off, and for him, because I reckon women can handle a myriad of emotions in a single blink, whereas men can’t. It’s not a put-down, I think it’s just fact. My hubby may well agree.

So, we argued, he left, I mulled over it, he mulled over it, and a perfectly productive day was wasted. Later in the afternoon we finally got to chat to each other on skype, just touching base, and continued to argue. Which led me to this post.

Here are some handy tips to make arguing not so ugly..

1. Stick to Skype arguments
We often argue on Skype, and I realised perhaps others out there don’t know the beauty of arguing on skype! Really, it is beautiful. I can rant and pull my hair out, sigh and roll my eyes, smirk and be sarcastic even, if it gets that ugly, and all he sees is my text. Beautiful! Being a woman who can process a thousand emotions and trains of thought per minute, I can type thirty lines of opinion and emotion in a flash, and he can reply without being interrupted. That should sell arguing on skype to all men, instantly. NO INTERRUPTION, that is unheard of in arguing, right? Skype truly is a marriage saver for us sometimes.

2. Argue in public
It is really awkward and socially inappropriate to rip each other’s heads off in Seattle. So we don’t. We are forced to speak under our breaths, usually (I can grin at how funny this is on hindsight) our ‘conflict management sessions’ peak in intensity, where we whisper really emotionally, and then both stop and breathe. We do this on repeat until we a) fix the problem and kiss and make up, or b) run out of coffee money. At least you get to go home with closure and happiness 🙂

3. Argue in the garden, not in bed
Worst case, the neighbours get a low down on your current argument about the budget or how mad hubby gets about the maid, or how totally illogically I argue. Nontheless, we argue, get it over with, and go to bed happy. Nothing worse than arguing in bed and sulking to sleep, which isn’t really recommended anyhow – Ephesians 4.26 reckons “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” which is something my husband’s grandparents told him once, and is totally true. Which leads me to another point..

4. Don’t argue while angry
Probably the most important of all points. If  you learn to wait it out a bit until you have your emotions under control, chances are you’ll be able to argue it out civilly, without feeling your blood pressure’s about to explode.

5. Keep it decent
Name calling, even swearing if it gets to that, may seem easier when arguing and feeling attacked, but those words last long after the argument’s over. Keep that in mind, and literally make a set line together that you both will not cross, no matter how bad the argument gets. This helps a lot, trust me! And remember, the ‘D’ word should be a no-go zone, divorce is never, ever an option, or spoken of in our household. 😉

6. Timing is everything
Pick your timing. I know arguments usually feel URGENT, but if I’m about to go to the dentist and am nipping straws, I don’t want to argue about why I said that rude comment the other day, and hubby doesn’t want to argue just before he leaves for work, or just before we are about to sleep. Refer back to point 1 about arguing on Skype.. sometime in the day is probably best 🙂

7. Bear in mind the treasure your marriage is, ultimately
We all say things we regret in arguments. Try, in the heat of the moment, to either walk away and revisit later, or to just zip it, swallow your emotions and pride, and for the sake of your marriage, just make peace NOW. Sometimes it’s hard to just give up all the little points you feel you HAVE to make heard, and just say, “honey, this is silly, and not worth our energy, I’m sorry I ..XYZ.. , I love you, please can we let it go?” but it is well worth learning how to do. Your marriage is a long term awesome precious thing, and working on keeping it scar free is really great to learn and practice.

So the next time you feel mad as hell, and open your mouth to retaliate or argue with your spouse, ask yourself if it’s worth it, if it’s put off-able til later, if it can be done over skype, or if it can be avoided altogether.
Speaking of all this, it’s time for me to go and find my hubby and apologize for a crazy day, and then kiss and make up. 😀

Happy marriage building! x

No, you can’t have THAT now.. the art of delayed gratification!

What is it about waiting, that we just don’t like?
In a world where everything is instant and easy, how hard do we find it to just..wait. We get impatient in traffic, give the waiter a hard time if our order is slightly late & heaven forbid if the train is a minute off schedule.

At the end of last year, hubby (who works for himself mostly) and I sat down to chat about our list of debt to pay, medical appointments to make, etc. All feels great when you have a list, and know where you’re going..
This year, business has it that for  the first time in our blissful married lives, we are getting a set salary, not the ‘make as and when we need’ which we (meaning I!!) have become so comfortably accustomed to. My ideal list has since gone from exciting to gobsmackingly horrid – I will have to wait painfully as we tick off only one item per month, as opposed to most  urgent few first. Oh the horror.
This, after a good subconscious scrutiny, has been the reason for my red flag mood this week. Which has led me to mull over that thing that is so foreign to so many of us.. delayed gratification!

Do you recall the Deferred Gratification Test that was done in the ’70’s?
If you weren’t around then, like me, and have no idea what that was about, no worries, here’s the short of it:

In 1972, an experiment was conducted by a psychologist – Walter Mischel –  on a group of four year olds. Each child was offered a marshmallow. They were then given the option of having it now, or waiting a few minutes, and having two. Some children grabbed the marshmallow right away, while others were able to hold off and wait. Interestingly,  Mischel followed up on the children as adults and discovered that those who displayed deferred gratification and didn’t eat their marshmallows that day, were considered emotionally intelligent, were  generally more self-motivated and successful in school. On the other hand, those who simply couldn’t wait generally had low self-esteem and had suffered in school, labelled by both their teachers and parents as being easily frustrated, stubborn and envious.
This got me smiling, and thinking about my grumpiness over not getting what I want..now.

4 Tips to Feeling Great about Delayed Gratification

1. Have a long term goal
Having a set, written goal as well as specific smaller goals inbetween, helps you stick to the plan and not be swayed by emotional moments and temptation. Reward yourself for sticking to each small goal. We all like rewards, even if given to ourselves, by ourselves 🙂

2. Prioritise!
Think about what your priorities are, and then write them down if need be. In a moment of weakness, recall that food on the table is  more important than your shoe cupboard, or that nonurgent camping gadget, say, and walk away!

3. Projection
Envision how great  you will feel the moment you reach your goal. The pain of saying no to fifty cheeseburgers will be sweet when you set foot on the beach with your toddlers for the first time. Hold out!

4. Remember the marshmallow test
If some four year olds out there can say NO!, heck, so can you! Seriously though, it is something that you can learn over time. It can help you overcome irritating habits, like overeating and overspending and help with getting out of debt.

Go for it, sit down and write. Regardless of your bad habits, where would you like to be in a year, or five. What would you like to have, or do or be? Make some financial goals, or study goals, whatever it is you need to, set some smaller goals to help you stay on track, and go for it!

How to kick some New Year Resolution butt!

What is it about human nature and new year’s resolutions? They seem incompatible from the start.

We make a nice list of things we’ll begin, let’s say, getting up early every morning to do bicycle crunches. January first, you begin. Easy does it, but a start is a start, feeling good.  By day three, you’re feeling the effects of that extra hour less sleep, and you’re snoring on your back mid-crunch. Evening of day three you’re googling other ways of getting great abs that doesn’t require as much .. change in routine. By February it’s all crashed & burned and forgotten as a ludicrous idea anyway, and you’re back where you left off last year, still working off those christmas mince pies. Why do so many new  year’s resolutions end up that way?
I think it has to do with Wiki’s quote of  Isaac Newton’s 1st law in ‘ Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ‘

“The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.”

In normal English, that means an object, (that would be you), will continue moving at its current velocity (zero, and no, walking around the office does not count as exercise) until some force (reason or motivation) causes its speed or direction to change.

So, how do you kick some new year’s resolution butt?

Planning, people. We all know deep down how really difficult it is to change, to keep the ‘oomph’, to keep the habit alive. Here are some tips to getting things going, and keeping them going..hopefully permanently:

1. You need a solid reason WHY
Why do you want to get a six pack? ‘Because it looks hot’ isn’t solid enough. ‘Because it would make me feel stronger, better about myself, and happier in my marriage because I know my wife loves it when my body’s looking it’s best’ Now we’re getting warmer.. analyse your deep seated reasons, write them down, stick them somewhere where you can see them every day. On the fridge, in the car, on the bathroom mirror. Your WHY.

2. Have a specific goal in mind
Cycling like a speed demon for months on end because you enjoy it may work for some, but you’ll likely land up back on the couch if you don’t have a goal in mind. Do you have a set number of pounds or kilo’s you want to lose? Put a number to it (be realistic too). Do you have a race in mind that you’d like to train for? Print out a training schedule and grab a friend or join a club. Set a goal, and then plan your baby steps inbetween today and your goal. We did this one year, just 5 months prior to a half marathon, and felt like absolute champions when we got over the finish line. We’d never run before, let alone finished a race in another city, but planning prevailed. Set a goal, plan a path to it, go for it.

3. Accountability is a winner
If your goal isn’t something you can do with someone, like training for the yoyo championships or for long jumping, say, then write up your goal and your WHY and stick them somewhere where others can see them. This gets you out there, lets the world know of your intentions and goals, and keeps you from slipping into December’s-old-self. People are watching, and expecting great stuff from you, come on!

4. Believe in yourself, self talk!

Get out of your old bad self talk habits that may try and creep in and sabotage everything at 5am in mid winter when you’re battling to crawl out of bed. I find a handful of small cards with affirmations work wonders. They don’t have to be lengthy or lame, just find a few lines that really motivate you deep down, that talk to you and inspire you, and carry them in your wallet, or stick them on your fridge (or inside of your cupboard if you prefer them to be private). ‘I value myself deeply and love eating healthy food’ etc.
You know what I mean.. what works for you?

5. Pray

Personally, I believe wrapping it all up in prayer does wonders. Asking for help to keep disciplined, to grow in character & faithfulness, from God who sees everything and every heart, is the best accountability of all. When I’m trying to get up at 5 for a workout, or to write, even if noone else on the planet is aware of my trying to open an eye, I know He knows. He knows my WHY’s and my dreams and frustrations, and that I’ve asked for His help is.. reassuring and powerful in a way.

Start today. It’s only the 9th Jan! Never too late to begin 🙂
Sit down somewhere quiet where you can think, dig deep and plan to make resolutions that excite and inspire you, and then plan to succeed.

You can do it!

How does she do that.. & I’d give my left thumb for those shoes..

Don’t you sometimes find yourself dissatisfied with some area of your life?
I definitely do!

The lead couple kissing in the driveway before leaving for work, in the movie you watched last night plays clearly in your memory while you’re carrying out the garbage in your PJ’s, seething over an argument you’ve just had with your spouse about dog food. SERIOUSLY?! Get a room, you mutter.
I’m a lousy wife, says the voice in my mind. Sigh.

The picture perfect family on that billboard over the highway smile down at you from a sunlit beach, while you drive home in traffic with two hungry, irritable children and no glimpse of a holiday in the foreseeable future. Your heart takes a dip – every good family goes on holiday. My kids are being deprived, I’m a bad mommy. Sigh.

From then on, for a week, every advert showing holidays has you gritting your teeth in frustration and misery. The joyful attitude of the last two years’ mutual decision to save instead of going away seems like some distant craziness. I.WANT.A.HOLIDAY!  (and I feel darn lousy for not being able to be that perfect family) is what’s really chewing at me.
Intro snappy wife and mum.

What is it that makes us get into thinking like that? What is it that makes us feel utterly miserable and dissatisfied about certain parts of our lives or ourselves? Where do we get our picture of what it means to be a beautiful woman, have an awesome marriage, and a beautiful home?
Have you ever stopped to dig deep and ask yourself?

I have to laugh at myself as this is an example of my train of thought sometimes:

I’ll wake up in the morning on a, say, Tuesday, subconsciously mulling over that fashion mag I read yesterday in the dentist waiting room, and open my shoe cupboard. (well, more like..my shoe microcollection of 5 pairs). Slops, slops, boots, brown heels, black heels. I’m a 30 year old attractive wife, no slops for me anymore. I can look as great as that model.. Heels it is! I whip out the sexiest pair, dust them off, and put them on, feeling instantly sexier for having them on. A flash of fashion mag model streaks through my head. Hot shoes..check. Great wife… double check.. and off I head to a normal morning of two toddlers, housework and general chaos. Sitting on the loo five hours later, I look down at my aching feet and wonder who the heck I’m kidding. Heels and my stay at home mom lifestyle don’t seem to gel as easily as expected.
Back they go in the shoe cupboard, and are replaced by the old trusty slops. Joy . They may not be hot, but they are comfy, I tell myself, feeling unsexy again. Some days I just want to feel more exciting and more important than just a ‘comfy’ wife. I want my norm to be that hot magazine model. I mean, isn’t that the norm? Can I not just step out of bed and into hotness? Every magazine I seem to read lately says so in picture form, or so I believe.

My realisation is that if we’re yoyoing with our emotions and pictures of ourselves, we are getting our skewed pictures from media, a lousy liar of a place.

4 Ways to Get Over that media Malarkey

1. Scrutinize what you see and watch

When Jennifer Aniston wakes up in that movie with perfect bed hair, and that stab of ”oh my word, she is beautiful and I wish I woke up like that, I must be wierd’ runs through your mind subconsciously, STOP right there, look at her and go ‘Really? Do people REALLY wake up like that? Nope, they take half and hour to GET like that. I’m normal, she’s misrepresenting, darn woman!.. move on.’

2. Dip into the Scriptures and take a look at what it says about YOU.

The looking glass for our ‘perfect wife, mom, family and home’ should really be the Bible, not media and everything it portrays. Learn what it says about who you are, who you are meant to be and what your levels are. And then LOVE THE HECK OUT OF YOURSELF while striving for your best.

3. Write/Consciously work out your pattern for your life

Immerse yourself in God’s Word, find what it says about you, your family,  your role as wife and mother, and then set in your heart ‘This will be my ideal, my standard;  this is what I, by God’s grace, will allow to be the pattern for my life and family.” Settle it in your heart & find your peace.

4. From today, be aware of your internal dialogue & master it

Be aware of what dips your mood, your esteem or your outlook on certain things, and nip them in the bud. Become a more self analysing person, questioning what you believe and why. Dig deep and change!