Relationship | CoupleDumb

A Shadow Wedding

Oct 012009

Sexy Nun. Happy Paul.

         Ladies and gentlemen, you are here today on this lovely Thursday to witness the unholy daily union of the shadow of Paul to the shadow of Lee. Paul’s shadow, do you take Lee’s shadow, to fight and to bitch, to cower and resent, until the end of the marriage and beyond?

          Paul says: If you have been reading CoupleDumb then you know that I love Lee. Hell, you know that I love her, how we fell in love, our definition of love, and our opinions on making love. But this week we are talking about shadow and you know that our shadows came together at the same time that we did. If you understood the idea of an archetype, you get that my shadows cohabitate in unhealthy bliss with Lee’s shadows.

          Earlier this week, Lee and I shared about some of our discovered shadows. I have one that I call the Silencer who embodies all of my feelings of being weird, different, and generally the odd man out. Remember the mother in Carrie who yells out ‘they’re all going to laugh at you’ to her daughter? Well, that is the general message that I receive from my Silencer. The reason that I named him the Silencer was that I shut up so that nobody will laugh at me.

          So for fun, let’s marry my Silencer to Lee’s Sister Nazi, who she told you about on Monday. Let me quote from Monday to give you an idea of who she is. ‘This shadow is a rigid, unforgiving, cruel woman who knows how all things should be done and shows utter disgust when it isn’t.’ Can you see where the union of these two is a train wreck of frustration and sadness? If you can’t, run (do not walk) to your nearest therapist.

          When we are working from our shadows then Sister Nazi says that everything that I am doing is wrong and Lee can do it better and the Silencer tells me to listen to the penguin because she knows what she is talking about. I withdraw into my feelings of weirdness and Lee takes on yet another job because no one can do it better. It is a marriage made on a flower adorned balcony in hell.

          So, how do Lee and I stay married with our little shadowy friend hanging about? Long before we knew about shadows and gave them names and drew little drawings of them, we understood that there are multiple facets to our fears, hopes, loves, and hates. It was from communicating from a place of vulnerability and love that we could first tap into then bypass these shadow selves. Oddly enough, it still boils down to talking (and what you say…and why you are saying it).

          For me, my choices are clear and obvious. I can either communicate honestly or I can sleep with an old nun. OK, catholic school boys, did that shrivel any willies?

          Lee says: Paul Robert Fournier, get in your seat, put your hands on your desk, sit down and may God have mercy on your poor withered soul! You did that all wrong! O.K., I had to. Can you see why? Love and talking? Come on Paul. These readers want some real suggestions. They are holding on to a shred of a relationship and you tell them to talk?

          Hehehehe. O.K., I’m back. Yes talk about it but I will add that one of the reasons our shadows have not killed off this relationship is because we have never allowed them too. As I knew that I could at times be a rigid, know-it-all who does everything right, Paul knew he could be passive, silent man who would allow an inflexible, flightless bird to take over.

          Our priority has always been our relationship. Our egos and opinions have always taken a back seat to the couple. Our ‘I’ shuts up to the ‘we’. Do you get it? Do I need to draw you a picture? Of all the temerity and audacity of these readers to question me in the middle of my writing… Ooh. Sorry. I just channeled Sister Leticia (7^th Grade Teacher and the most wonderful rigid nun I ever had).

The Making of a Grandparent

Relationship Rejects

Sep 102009

Granny's off her meds again!

          It is Thursday in the CoupleDumb and we are talking about those odd, rumpled time travelers from an age gone by that we call grandparents. They may be lovable, senile, bitter or long gone but we all have some aspiration of being a grandparent, even if we do not want to deal with that whole messy childrearing thing.

          Paul says: Way back when, a psychologist named Piaget came up with the idea that children go through developmental stages. He had four of them that explained how children think. Anybody with half a brain who spends a bunch of time with a child can see these stages at work. From the little moron stage where they figure out that it hurts when they stick their finger in their eye (Piaget called this the sensorimotor period) right through to the last stage of child development which he called the formal operational stage and we call the ‘I can’t wait until my teenager moves out’ stage, it is easy to see these milestones and they actually offer a lot of insight into one’s self if you are into all of that introspection stuff.

          Other theorists have expanded the concept to include adulthood, saying that people go through stages their whole life. Personally, I think that that brainstorm should earn the theorists a big ‘no shit’ award but, hey, I’m no psychologist. I do see these stages play out all the way to old age and here is where the grandparent theme ties in. Nothing is more obvious and illuminating than watching your parents transition from Mom and Dad to Grandma and Grandpa.

          My parents were not the type that I would say liked children (I think that they liked me but I wouldn’t bet good money on it) and I know that they had little tolerance for noise and other small children emissions. Yet the grandchildren thrust them into a new stage. They went from stern disciplinarians to… how can I say it? Oh yes… jello. My children can do no wrong. Even things that I actually did and for which I got severely punished go defended by my folks. That part is understandable except that it seems to transfer into other non-child realms. There is an overall calmness and understanding that was not there in my childhood and is definitely a sign of a new stage in life.

          When I can pull my jaw up as my parents dismiss horrible behavior with a wave of their hands, I see that there is a more profound piece than just grandparenthood. It is the realization that people can and, more importantly, are destined to change. It is part of the human growth experience. And it brings up the question in me: what do I want to change in to?

          Lee says: I find it so cute when my husband, the physicist turned business man turned writer decides to bust out the psychology. I say, you don’t see me talking relativity so stay out of my playground. Paul mentioned Piaget and that was nice (said in that snarky look at the little special person bead that bracelet kind of way) but when we talk psychosocial development, the theorist is Erik Erikson. He came up with 8 stages that we go through throughout our lives.

          Sure Paul can turn his nose up and think this is no big deal but the reality is that most people think they have done all the growing up they need to do when they hit adulthood. Erikson points out that we have some serious decisions to make about our lives as we get older. In late adulthood, a person goes through ‘Integrity vs. Despair’ and this stage relies on the person developing or unlocking their own personal wisdom. This is time where a person looks back on their life and decides if there is meaning to everything. Have they acted and lived a life worth remembering or will they despair over their perceived failures.

          I would also add that insight and wisdom are needed at this point in life. An integritous life will flow into a wise old age, whereas a disingenuous life will leave you in despair, recollecting things that are best forgotten. So there are no spontaneously bad grandparents. You see it while they are parents; picking favorites, fuzzy boundaries. Maybe we should protect our kids from these non-baking, less than perfect Grandparents and just switch them out for some senior citizens who would kill for a little whipper snapper to call their own. It’s a win-win situation.

It's not sex. It's a merger.

Relationship Rejects

Sep 032009

open_for_business

If you are looking for romance, this is not the article to read. This is the practical ‘if you want a relationship then stop doing dumb shit’ type of commentary. This is also one of our little secrets that have kept us married for twenty years. Ready? Here it is. Marriage is like a corporation. I told you. No rose petals on this one. Corporations are structured for one purpose and one purpose only. That is to advance the corporation. The shareholders of the corporation – these are the stockholders, the employees and anyone else that gains benefit from the business – only succeed if the corporation succeeds. The perfect company has rich stockholders, happy and well paid employees, and everyone is working with the singular goal of expanding this little utopia ad infinitum. Kind of like the Borg.

When you hear people say that marriage is compromise, they are wrong. That comes from the view of partnership. Partnership is a different business structure. In a partnership, there are two people that each wants the best for himself or herself. Marriage is not a partnership. Marriage is a corporation and corporations do not compromise.

Lee and I have had a handful of fights in our marriage and most were in the settling-in portion of the first two years. The reason why is that the corporate entity of our relationship is the most important thing. Please understand, Lee and I are intensely competitive. Lee has been known to step on our prone and sprawled five year old in order to catch the Nerf ball. As for me, cheating is always a viable strategy. Usually, it is the preferred one. If we would have turned these bloodthirsty egos against each other, we would have self-destructed long ago.

But instead, we lined ourselves up behind the machine that is our marriage and…let’s just say ‘resistance is futile’.

Lee says: First I apologize for all the Star Trek references. You were warned in the About Us section that Paul had an issue. That being said, this is one of our special nuggets of brilliance. The idea that we don’t compromise baffles people. But honestly, what is compromising? It generally means neither partner gets what they want. Sure I have done some stuff that I initially wondered why would I subject myself to this (i.e. “Dungeons and Dragons”, not the game, the movie), but generally I have enjoyed being with my husband as he nourishes his geekiness.

Even when we first decided to date it was more like a board meeting than an intimate moment. We sat across from each other in my parent’s living room with almost 10 feet between us. We each discussed our boundaries (the most important thing any couple can do), what we liked and didn’t like, and came to the understanding of what we wanted from the relationship. Sure, there were some concessions such as stupid stuff like:

Paul saying: “I don’t like being touched a lot. I’m not very touchy feely.”

Lee saying: “Well tough cause I’m very touchy feely. Get use to it.”

Someone always has to be willing to take the upper hand to make the corporation grow. I think that was the last time I ever mentioned that and now his hands are permanently attached to my breast.