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10 Things I learned in 26 Years of Marriage

1. I had more June Cleaver Claire Huxtable genes than I thought. Nothing like love to make you feel oddly domestic in ways you swore you’d never do.
2. I don’t know where they got this from but I did not find that 2 can live a cheaply as one.
3. People have financial personalities. Savers gotta save. Spenders … have to get with the program.
4. A marriage will glide … for a while but sooner rather than later you have to put your thrusters back on before you lose too much altitude.
5. A sense of humor is invaluable.
6. You never get to stop talking about it.
7. Marriage counselors should be a go-to-whenever event not a near-the-end- of –the- marriage event.
8. At some point you and your partner will find yourselves hanging on for dear life trying to survive the kids.
9. Number 8 can last a long time … just sayin’.
10. You know you’ve got the right guy when the both of you forget your wedding anniversary and both of you think it’s funny.

On Anger

I used to get angry a lot.  I used to tangle with that monster at least once a day. As I grew older and saw the negative ramifications of my anger I decided to do something about it.

In order to do that I had to understand what anger was and why it owned me.  The answer was easy, I was afraid almost all of the time. Partly born to it, I have always been predisposed to panic. “Even as a baby” mom says.  My unexamined vision of the world is one that is arbitrary and incendiary. I thought it picked people out at random and burned them up alive.  There was no mere problem that I couldn’t turn into a catastrophe.

 Knowing that I am who I am in the nervousness department I decided to work on my anger as a project unto itself. I wanted to be able to feel fear and not become angry.

Here’s the thing about anger. It is an able imposter. It feels like the answer when in fact it isn’t at all.  That’s not to say you don’t ever have the right to get angry.  The thing is you have to be in charge of when it appear,s to whom it is directed and whether or not it will serve you well in the moment. Most people just feel it and act upon it because if feels like the right thing to do at the time because

 ANGER is easy. That’s why any two year-old can do it.

2.      ANGER IS deceptive. It feels like power when it’s really just fear or frustration looking for a place to land.

        ANGER  is cathartic. It feels go at the moment you express which leaves you to believe it is a good thing.

The most important thing to my assessment was, however, anger leaves you more vulnerable to the world at large.  You are not more logical when you are angry. You don’t think as well, if you manage to think at all. Anger, though frightening, is not persuasive.  And once you start getting angry all of the time you get tagged as a lunatic so even when you ARE making sense people are less likely to believe you.

Anger makes you hit people, throw things, shoot folks. Let’s say a guy insults you in a very public manner. You beat the living daylights out of him. Now you go to jail. That means with a few simple words, someone you don’t like took away a year of your life.

Anger is like a city broken into and left without walls.  That’s from the Bible. I think that about sums it up.

 So let’s say you are in a place where anger rules what you do.  I continue to work on everything, my propensity toward anger included. I hardly ever get angry anymore but that’s because I’m always on the look out for random emotional foolishness that might get in my way.

 Emotional Awareness has not only taken care of the inappropriate anger but it has laid into my fear as well.  I work on it daily. I’ll share that with you here. Maybe it will help you too with whatever emotional stuff you have …

This is my ongoing effort to make sure that I am running my own emotional house and it is not running me.

 You guys have a great day!

JLT

TODAY

What are you going to do with THIS GIfT?

As of last week I decided that I was going to ask myself that question everyday.

Today is a singularity. It is something you can’t get back once it’s gone. Another day will come but not this one. Today expires in less than 24 hours from now.

I have a wonderful life. I have been blessed with so many gifts it still stuns me when I think about it.

But like any human being I do the wrong thing on the regular!

Lost among those many gifts, today sometimes fails to get enough attention. When I fail to give today is due, I tend to fill it with worry about small things, annoyance over dumb stuff and sloth (bad boy laziness).

Like anyone else I have had struggles. I grew up in a house of chaos that, for years, drove my emotional bus. Everyone has unpublished problems. I am not immune. But I also know I am extraordinarily blessed.

I know what goes on in this world. I see the specific pains you share with me here. There are so many of you who have a mighty fight everyday just to stay afloat. Some of you have been born into circumstances so difficult your daily survival is a small miracle.

When you fight that hard sometimes it’s almost impossible to see today as a gift.

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It’s another struggle,

Just that much more trouble,

Unrelenting stress.

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But you got up to fight another day. You have another opportunity to find a way. Just take five minutes of it to find some joy or peace so you don’t miss the opportunity. Pat yourself on the back for getting up and getting on with it. If something good happens take a second and acknowledge that.

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Taste it.

Embrace it.

Something you caress.

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Here’s hoping that your struggles unfinished,

Diminish.

Your joys, though few,

Sustain you.

I wish you a WONDERFUL TODAY … or at least one that is better than yesterday…

JLT

Question:

I watch your show everyday as I am on SSID and lost my job due to budget cuts in 2013. First, I have to say that couples don’t know what marriage means when they want to divorce after three weeks. I will be married 34 years later this year, but due to my situation, it is putting a strain on my marriage to the point where I can see no other way out but to get a divorce. I have read your book, “Making Marriage Work.” but my wife is the type of person you have on your program who insists that I do all the work at home since she is the one with a job. The kicker is we have five cats and she pays more attention to them than she has given to me in a long time. Or, to put it another way, she makes me feel like an employee who should wait on her hand and foot, and I am getting very tired of it. Judge Lynn, I admire the work you do on your program, is there any hope for me? I would have sent a comment by Twitter or Facebook, but as difficult as it is to believe, I can’t afford them, even though it seems to be the only source of communication these days. What ever happened to email? I will patiently await your reply.

A loyal fan

Answer:

 First of all I have to admit to some things about myself that could color my opinion. I was raised in a house where my father worked and my mother did everything else. He did nothing around the house. He didn’t even pick up his clothes off the floor. But that’s the deal they cut. Dad made it clear when he married her that was what he needed. In return, he provided very well for her and us.

 Once I married, I worked full time and did 90% of the housework. I think my husband and I fell into that because that is the role both he and I knew from our families. We never talked about OUR new reality and how disproportionate that made our workloads. I must say though, that he tended to work longer hours so it was almost impossible to alter that.

 I am not sure how your household duties are split or if you simply do them all.  Nor do I know how many hours your wife works outside the home. Either way I think one of the most telling parts of your comment is that “You feel like an employee.” And she pays more attention to the cats than she does you.

 I don’t know if you and your wife argue about chore distribution but even if you do that’s probably missing the point. Looking at your situation from way over here I would say that the crux of the matter is you don’t feel valued. That your wife feels and acts in a way that demonstrates she doesn’t respect you.

 You are doing work that the world at large tends to devalue. Add that to the fact that you have spent so much of your life feeling the respect that people give to those who “make money” as opposed to beds. That loss you feel for what you used to do is real.

 All of that messes with your head.  You are dealing with a lot of negative feelings about something that is very central to your person and it doesn’t appear from what you said that your wife understands that.

 The first thing I would recommend is make sure you value you. Make sure you have things in your life that make you feel good about yourself. Do you have something you always wanted to pursue? Be it education, hobby, whatever it may be just so you don’t feel solely defined by what you do in the house.

 The second thing is make sure your wife understands just how devaluing her behavior is. This must be done calmly and cooly. Make sure she knows that in order to stay in this relationship you have to feel like a man in it. I don’t think that necessarily has to do with who does what chores but more with how she treats you, how she talks to you and how she deals with you.

 The cat thing is just wrong. Explain to her if things don’t change you believe it could end the marriage. Give her a chance to get it right. But make it clear that you deserve respect for what you bring to the table. I don’t know if she understands how you feel or not but the two of you need to talk about what the circumstances are doing to you more than you do about who’s doing the dishes.

 For what it’s worth I respect the fact that you’re holding down your end. Just Saying…

Best of Luck,

JLT

Often when people find themselves caught in a relationship where they do not feel valued they get stuck on getting this one significant source to change his/her attitude toward them.

It is natural. Your marriage or your relationship with your significant other is the most intimate and constant one you have. It is hard to feel okay when the one person whose opinion means most to you doesn’t have a very high opinion of you (Or at least he doesn’t appear to)

You can’t change other people. People will however change when their circumstances do. You have to put yourself in a position of feeling better about yourself. 

The easier way to get started on that is to focus on other sources of feedback. The bigger your life is the more ways you’ll have to feel good about yourself. If it’s volunteering in your church, taking a course, reading a book, exercising … anything that focuses on you in a positive light  – do it.

They internet is a great place to start.. Not social media (Which is again looking for someone else to define your value) but they have so many fascinating things going on. Get good at something you’ve always wanted to do. Or just enjoy doing something even if you don’t do it well. The process of getting better at anything makes you feel better about everything. I can’t draw. Always wanted to. So one day I googled how to draw a sphere on youtube.  It sounds stupid but it focuses on something you can control. Adds to you …

Support in groups are also good. When you get together with friends don’t spend all that time talking about all that unhappy you have going on at the house. Of course, you have a right to talk about it and you should share, but also uplift and branch out. What could the two of you do today that will make that feel small?

Just saying, work on those things that can work up your self worth without it having to work on him. When you change how you feel you change how you respond. It will help change how much what he does or does not do stings …

It is not a solution but a start. That alone, getting off dead stop center will help you feel better ….