The Secret to a Long and Happy Marriage? Really?

How does that old joke go?  Oh yeah: What's the number one cause of divorce?  Marriage.

I had a friend of mine tell me the other day about a trip his wife was planning for the two of them to take and how he was trying his best to get out of it. This happens all the time; She plans a trip, he tries to get out of going.  Inevitably, he winds up going.  I asked him why he didn't just tell her he doesn't want to go, and he told me that's his secret to a successful marriage – he always gives in.

His answer got me wondering about what it takes to have a long and happy marriage. He's been married 32 years and obviously knows a thing or two.  I've got my own ideas about it after nearly 21 years of matrimony, but I was interested in what others had to say.  A Google search produced a plethora of websites offering plenty of advise, most of which seems to be common sense – things like: respect, commitment, compromise, being nice, focus on the positive.  And while that's all well and good,  I didn't really want to know what marriage experts had to say, I wanted to know what the married folks I know personally had to say – my friends that had said, "I do" and have slogged through the muddled marital trenches and climbed the blissful wedded peaks all those years since.  So I conducted an anecdotal survey on my own, asking some of my friends and co-workers what they thought was the secret to a long and happy marriage.  Oh, but the responses were eye opening, and far from anything I'd read on any marriage expert's website.  From the responses I got I've ascertained a few more secrets that help keep a marriage mirthful and gay, long into the twilight of those married years.  See if you agree:

Avoidance

I asked a married couple of twenty plus years what they thought were their secrets to wedded bliss.  He said, "I stay away from her."  She said, "I keep my mouth shut."  Ouch!

I asked another friend, and he said, "Find a good bar." 

Could it be that they are merely allowing their spouses a little "me" time?  I mean, it's not good to crowd your spouse, or to deny them the opportunity to pursue their personal interests, but I'm thinking that's not exactly what they were referencing.  I think they're merely avoiding their betrothed.  And it seems to work for them.

Capitulation

I got this answer three times – it's all about compromise.  I asked one guy what that meant.  He said, "It means I give in to everything she says."  I asked another lady friend what she meant by it.  She said, "It means I give in to everything he says."

The experts agree that compromise is one of the secrets to bliss with your beloved, but to give in every time?  I'm guessing for compromise to be successful it has to be a two way street, but hey, capitulation seems to work for some as well, so I ain't knocking it.

Secrets

A friend answered with honesty.  He's 25 years old and has never been married.  I'm not sure why I asked him.  Another friend who's been married 25 years agreed with my young friend.  Since my young friend prompted him I have to discount his answer.  Is that unfair?

Another answer I got was more illuminating.  She said, "What he don't know don't hurt him."  She punctuated that remark with, "You take your secrets to your grave."  Yikes!  Another lady friend told me, "Keep your secrets secret."

I've always heard  that honesty is the best policy, but these ladies keep their men happy by keeping them in the dark.  That's a twist I hadn't thought of.  But really, do we really want to know our spouse's every thought?  Everything they do?

Okay yeah, I kinda do. 

Sex!

One young lady answered, "Sex."  I said, "Really, sex?"  She said, "Yeah, for him."

It's long been thought that the best way to keep a man happy is with hot food and hot sex.  Being a man, I have to acquiesce to this logic.  We are but simpletons, motivated by the simplest of things.  The ladies are generally more complex than that, wanting salads and cuddling, which leads to much marital strife. 

Okay, I say that partly in jest – partly – but clearly for some keeping a spouse's carnal appetites sated is part of having a happy home.

So, since my anecdotal survey I can't say I have a better understanding of what leads to a long and happy marriage, but I think I understand why the divorce rate is so high!  Okay, I'm kidding again, but I believe my survey corroborated something that I have believed for a long time – you can't expect your spouse to make you happy.  Let's face it, your spouse will make you unhappy at times.  They're human with their own faults and foibles and failures like anybody else.  One response to my question was, "Ask me next week when I'm not mad at him!"  Wow!  Listen, your man or woman is going to make you stark, raving mad at times, and accepting your spouse as someone other than that idealize picture of perfection you thought they were when you fell in love with them will help you stay happy long into your marriage, not to mention sane.

Okay, so here was my favorite answer to the survey.  My friend says, "Why even get married?  I mean, it was great at first, but now she has me with four kids, and I can't get out!"  We laughed a long time after that.  I'm pretty sure he meant it tongue in cheek.  I think.

The Blogosphere Beckons

My good friend and Blogger icon, Acorn, a.k.a. Dave Sutton of Seven Oaks Art made this awesome .gif of a shark circling my own rather iconic Blogger avatar picture.  I'm sure it was made with the best of intentions and not intended to be threatening.  Dave, thanks!

Of course, I needed a place to display Dave's creation.  The most natural place seems to be right here on The Isle Of Mulling, but since I haven't been mulling of late I faced a slight dilemma – to mull or not to mull.  I decided to mull.

I figured that I was done with mulling, as I found I'd grown tired of reading my own opinion about everything, and further figured that if I've grown tired of my own opinion, then how much more so the poor, dear reader who occasions these disparate posts must be! Egad!  It's been months since a fresh mulling, and I believe you and I could consider that a public service!

Well, that just won't do today.  The blogosphere beckons, in the form of a prowling shark, and I had to answer.  The darn thing is too cool not to!  So, I post this .gif to say thanks to Dave, and maybe to clean out some the accumulated neglect of these past mull-less months.

Of course, I have to wonder with that shark circling, will I ever get off that Isle? 

A Quick Word From The Muller

Howdy folks. 

It's been a while since The Muller's been on the isle and thought I'd share why.  Although I've been writing all along, it's all been fictional pieces, and I figured they didn't belong on The Isle of Mulling.  Well, that's my humble opinion anyway (you can argue, but The Muller gets the final say – it's my blog after all).  And I have to admit that I am more than content to let my latest work sit on the hard drive and get lost amongst the clutter of my children's old school projects, the random text files that were emailed to me and for some reason wound up being saved to my hard drive, and Mrs. Muller's various lists – of which some date back to five years ago (yeah, my PC is pretty old by most standards).  In fact, my writing would fit right in with that disparate collection of documents, hiding in obscurity until the day I decide to pitch this dinosaur of a computer and trade up to a new, sleek laptop (I only get to use the current laptop when Mrs. Muller doesn't have it otherwise employed).

But alas, a dear friend of mine found out about my so-called writing and demanded I post them.  Actually, I sent a few things to her, so I'm not really blaming her – much.  So, I did.  Now she feels I need to inform you all of the new blog as well.  And now I have.  So, if you are inclined to read yet another amateur blog, here it is: Caymantime.  If you do read it, be gentle with me – I can be quite sensitive. 

And I hope my dear friend is satisfied.

Cardboard Jesus

The ladies with Cardboard Jesus

This was originally  posted on Opine Apparatus.

I don't know if you've read Leon's, My Holy Land Experience Redux, or not, but I'd recommend it. For a Christian pastor, he has a certain sardonic flare that makes the heathenish contrarian in me stand up and shout, “Hell yeah, brother, preach on!”

And please forgive the ironic flippancy in my use of the phrase, “Hell yeah!” It's a Southern thang.

His pictorial exposé of the Orlando, Florida amusement park, I dare say, is potentially more enjoyable than an actual visit to the park itself. I haven't personally been, but my wife and daughter visited recently, on a school field trip, and they led me to believe it's not necessarily amusing. I came to that conclusion when my daughter told me, “It was alright, but I was glad when we left.” Not a glowing endorsement.

Leon and his son with a real life Jesus impersonator.

Like Leon, they took pictures, and like Leon, got a picture with Jesus, the only difference being Leon's Jesus was three-dimensional, while the ladies was only two-dimensional.  Egads!  Leon does a great job of pointing out the over commercialization that's rampant in Christianity today, and the obvious hypocrisy of making Jesus a marketable commodity on his blog, but at least he got a full bodied Jesus impersonator while the ladies only got a cardboard cut out!  What gives!

I did see a certain irony in their pictures of Jesus, one I could relate to personally. The contrast of Leon's Jesus to my wife and daughter's cardboard Jesus made me think about my own perception of him, and how it's changed over the years.

Like many Southern children, I attended Sunday School. We were taught Bible stories, like; Jonah and the whale, Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus' resurrection. We sang songs, recited Bible verses, ate cookies and candy. We also got the hell scared out of us, leading us to repent of our plethora of sins and hoping to get our Get out of Hell cards, because Hell seemed really bad to us. I have to admit, I never really got much more out of church beyond that back then. It seemed Christianity was only about avoiding hell in those days.

It wasn't until I was an apostate adult that Jesus started to make more sense to me. When I actually read the Bible – and not just listened to someone else's rendering of it - and read the words ascribed to be Jesus', I became interested. The Jesus of the Gospels was a freakin' revolutionary radical that turned the religious establishment on its ear! He challenged the predominantly Pharisaical Judaism of the day, even going so far as to suggest he was the fulfillment of their religious laws! The idea that one was to love sacrificially appealed to me, as did the concept that that all people were equally loved by God. The more I read, the more I studied, the more I liked this Jesus. He was so different from the Jesus I'd heard about in Sunday School. Back then, I was taught to fear Jesus, but I realized I didn't need to fear him after all. I actually came to love him.

My family and I started to attend church in order to worship and follow Jesus. It seemed the natural thing to do. My wife and I both had conservative Christian backgrounds, so we gravitated towards that type of church. In hindsight, I know that was a mistake. It's amazing what happened to the Jesus I'd come to love once he was put through the grinder of conservative, fundamentalist Christianity. Once again, he became a Jesus to fear, as doctrine and dogma sucked the life right out of him. Unfortunately, I'd fallen into a world where evolution is considered pseudo-science, despite the fact that seven day creationism can't be supported scientifically, that the Bible is inerrant, even though that notion can be dispelled with a cursory reading, and that today's evangelical brand of Christianity is the only way to heaven, regardless of the fact that it's a relatively new religion that ignored history and it's own two thousand year evolution. I'd fallen into a world of myopic ritual and self-inflicted ignorance.

I have to tell you, fear is a great motivator, and it took me several years to completely reject that belief system, but I'm glad I was finally able to. Sadly, my religious life relegated Jesus to resemble the cardboard cutout in my wife and daughter's picture; flat and without depth, and utterly lifeless. Gone was the Jesus I read about in my Bible; he'd become the Pharisee to me. He was condemnation and conviction, not love; he was the establishment, not the revolutionary. I have to tell you, that realization sucked for me. Still does.

I'd like to get back to the Jesus I admired some twenty years ago, the one I read about, the one before religion took him away. He wasn't some supernatural entity that was beyond my ability to comprehend, like the one I'd come to learned about as a child, the one my church espoused. I like the revolutionary Jesus, the Jesus that loved everybody. I don't like Cardboard Jesus.

Well, that seems a lot to get from a couple of pictures, but there you go.  Christopher Hitchens says religion poisons everything, and while I might not necessarily accept that fully, I anecdotally understand it.  Religion certainly poisoned my perception of Jesus.  Still, I have hope I'll see him as I did once, unencumbered by religion.  And maybe I'll even admire him again.

Out of Myself, and Back Again

I feel like I've been out of myself lately, like I'm detached and watching myself going through the motions of a life.

When I was a child, I had dreams that a part of me (my soul, spirit?) could leave my body.  I would look at myself laying in bed, then fly off on these disembodied, nocturnal adventures.  Once I flew to the moon.  In this dream, I remember that I grew apprehensive as I drew closer to the moon, worried that I might not be able to get back to my body.  I looked back and saw this cord that attached  me to a fixed point somewhere on the diminishing Earth.  I figured that point was my body.  Still, my fear of seeing the cord and my terrestrial home flying away caused me to awaken from the dream.  I never dreamed of traveling to the moon again.

On a different occasion, I dreamed I wound up in what appeared to be the Far East.  I remember seeing this fishing village, the water on fire from reflecting the lights of many fishing boats. I approached one of the boats and I saw a lady.  I just floated there and watch her.  Then it seemed she could sense my presence, and that scared me, so I awoke.

Astral projection, the metaphysically minded might think?  I don't think so.  I could dismiss those experiences as either an overactive imagination or too much sugar before bed time.  And nothing like what I mean now when I say I've been out of myself lately (though I wish it was).  No, lately I seem to be on autopilot, taking care of the mundane and perfunctory matters that seem to constitute my existence, while my mind wanders away to the moon, or the Orient, or just about anywhere else.

Sadly, it seems the days are consumed with the chores that keep me ostensibly functioning as a member of the human race; job, school, bills, social and family obligations, house upkeep...the list seems infinite!  I feel like part of me is an automaton performing a set of programmed tasks while the other part of me watches.

The ladies, Mrs. Muller and Lili.

Today was a little different. The ladies (Mrs. Muller and Lili) and I had a rare moment of downtime we could share, and we decided on a hike and picnic.  Seems a simple enough thing, but something we rarely think to do.  I believe that is because, despite the fact we have time that doesn't have to be consumed by obligation, we allow those obligations to take that time from us anyway.  Today we took that time for ourselves, and I have to tell you it was nice.

It was an easy enough hike, maybe five miles through flat, Florida sand pine scrub brush.  Our only concerns were protruding oak tree roots throughout the trail and a fallen tree we had to duck under.  Unfortunately, Mrs. Muller didn't duck when coming back and ran into it with enough force to rattle her teeth.  She's OK, but her ego is a little bruised.  Though black bear and bobcats are seen in the park where we hiked, our only encounter with any wildlife was a rafter of five wild turkeys.  We got pictures.  Mrs Muller actually thought about cooking a turkey breast for dinner.  We had good times.

The Muller and Lili crossing a treacherous part of the trail.

On our way back to the trail head - with my daughter leading the way as she sped towards the bottle of ice tea that waited her in the picnic area, my wife bringing up the tail end with a goose egg on her crown - I couldn't help but to think this was one of the best days I'd had in quite a while.  And I felt whole, both fully engaged mentally and physically in something for the first time in what seemed like forever.  My thoughts were on the next step in front of me, then the new discovery my daughter ran across, and making sure Mrs. Muller was still back behind us somewhere (by mile 3.5 I think she was tuckered out).  I wasn't thinking about work, tuition, the bills, or that pile of laundry that needed to be put away; my thoughts were of the ladies, and the smell and sounds of the forest around us, hopefully sighting some wildlife, and finally that picnic lunch waiting for us at the trail head.  I was fully engaged and in the moment.  And it was nice.

I should admit that I also thought about those biting gnats that terrorized me during our picnic (and only me!), but it was a brief moment in an otherwise perfect day.  They sure were irritating, though.

Tomorrow I'll be back to the mundane and the perfunctory, but today it was good to be back into myself again.  I need to remember the lesson of today and try to stay engaged, because each moment is precious and worth the effort to enjoy.  Other than the knock she took to her noggin, I'm sure Mrs. Muller would agree.

As for Lili, well, she already gets it.  She's good that way.  You know, I should tell her about my wild dreams.  She'll think I'm crazy.  Then we should plan a trip to the beach.  With a picnic.

Winner of The In-Thread Writing Competition

What the heck, I won, so here's my award.  I won The In-Thread Writing Competition, a friendly little event where several Blogger coffee shoppers compose a story of exactly 150 words, to include five randomly picked words.  You might be amazed at how hard it is to compose something with exactly 150 words, and then find a way to make five completely unrelated words work in a short story.  But it sure is fun to try.

Here's my winning entry, the five random words are bolded:

Stories' business had improved since helping Drachma with his "little problem".  She began to grind more meat, noticing an eye she'd missed.  She picked it out and threw it in the fire.  She'd found mixing it with pork best.  Best seller, as well.

Business had been declining since the supermarket moved in a year ago.  Butcher shops just couldn't compete with their pricing, unless butchers could offer something they couldn't.  Stories' "special" blend of ground pork was just the something they couldn't offer. 

When Drachma first proposed Stories help with his "disposal" problem, she didn't know if she could do it.   "How do I do it?" she thought.  "Where do I hide bodies?"  Well, she figured hiding bones was much easier than whole bodies.  And so much more profitable. 

Looking at the blend, she had the urge to taste it.  Scooping with her finger, she brought it to her lips...

I know what you're thinking, "that kinda sucks".  I know!  Still, writing it made for a fun15 minutes.  The subject matter was actually inspired by a conversation I had with the originator of the competition, Stories -also the story's antagonist- so please don't think me so morbid...or sordid.

I was further awarded this little gem for content, which doesn't support my contention of not being so gruesome by nature.  Alas...

Anyway, thanks to all that voted for me, and thanks for the nifty award, Stories, I'm undeserving.  Next time, I want a cash award, though.