July 23, 1988

Twenty-​​four years ago I went on my first date with Jerry Hogeweide. We were liv­ing in Hong Kong, both of us vol­un­teers with the Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion, Youth With a Mis­sion. I had been crush­ing on Jerry for months and was thrilled when he finally noticed me. He, intro­verted and shy, espe­cially among women, had sum­moned the courage to invite me to go see a movie.  That first date went well. Mostly.

As we left the the­ater in Hong Kong’s Cause­way Bay dis­trict,  we had to nav­i­gate our way through densely crowded side­walks teem­ing with Hong Kong nightlife. Jerry’s step become quick, his pace a fury of urgency as if get­ting to the sub­way sta­tion was a mat­ter of life and death.  I walked as fast as my 5’4″ frame could carry me, but no mat­ter how much I punched it, Jerry began to get fur­ther ahead of me.  It sud­denly occurred to me that per­haps he was try­ing to lose me in the crowd. Maybe he wanted to dump me after just one date.  This thought pro­duced an ache in my chest as the pos­si­bil­ity of rejec­tion played out in my emo­tions. I slowed down my pace.

“Fine. If he wants to cut loose and get away from me, let him,”  I thought with a mix­ture of irri­ta­tion and hurt.

Jerry finally turned around. See­ing that I had fallen back into a sea of Chi­nese pedes­tri­ans,  he stopped and waited. “Are you try­ing to get rid of me?” I asked.

His face said it all before he spoke. So did his feet as he rejoined me. Jerry shifted down from his full throt­tle stride to a leisurely pace to remain in step with me.

We spent all our free time together for the next four weeks. One after­noon, while enjoy­ing a Sat­ur­day after­noon over­look­ing Hong Kong har­bor from a ter­race at Queens Pier,  Jerry stunned me with a mar­riage pro­posal. We were mar­ried two months later.Yes. From our first date to our wed­ding day was  a mere three month stretch. Yep.The man is a fast-​​moving human being.

As I write this post I am mind­ful of all kinds of direc­tions I could go. I could write a trib­ute to Jerry and tell you the amaz­ing per­son he is,  a faith­ful hus­band and hard work­ing part­ner, and a true water­man who has intro­duced me and our chil­dren to the sen­sual delights of play­ing in rivers and oceans. Or I could  elab­o­rate on my top three tips for stay­ing mar­ried and build­ing a part­ner­ship over the long haul. Or I could describe the many adven­tures we’ve been on as a cou­ple and as a fam­ily.  Instead, I want to review here on my blog the chronol­ogy of Throw­ing Things at My Hus­band when I Got Really, Really Mad at Him and how this reveals a mat­u­ra­tion in my myself as a woman and as a wife.

Every mar­riage will expe­ri­ence con­flict and every wife and hus­band will dis­cover how to express and resolve those con­flicts. Mine has been to throw things, my husband’s has been to duck. Our mar­riage has sur­vived for more than two decades because of Jerry’s extra­or­di­nary skill to duck. Like I said, he’s a fast-​​moving man.

Let me review with you in the spirit of True Con­fes­sions my embar­rass­ing her­story of out­bursts of temper-​​driven hurls at the father of my children:

1988  First year of mar­riage. First throw. My wed­ding ring. I have no idea what the argu­ment was about. What­ever it was, I got so angry that I pulled my ring off and hurled it at him.  Ring sur­vived.  Jerry sur­vived. So did our  mar­riage. 1988– Later in that first year.  Another throw.  This time I went for harder artillery : a clock. Not just any clock, but a really nice bed­side alarm clock that had been a wed­ding gift.  Clock broke. Mar­riage did not.

1989 – 1998 Over the first decade of mar­riage I threw some­thing at Jerry at least once a year. Var­i­ous items that were within reach dur­ing the heat of an argu­ment.  Such items have included a fanny pack, a pile of folded laun­dry,  the Bible (yes! at least twice over this time span),  a pen, and a cof­fee cup, which let me assure you that though I did indeed throw a cof­fee cup at my hus­band the cup was empty and I merely hurled it in his direction…not straight at him. As a for­mer soft­ball player, I could have hit him if I wanted to. But I wasn’t that mad.

1999 – 2008 The sec­ond decade of our mar­riage saw a change in my throw­ing fre­quency. I was mas­ter­ing more self-​​control and we were also argu­ing a whole lot less. Jerry only had to duck about once every two years, but man, when I did erupt with the tem­per tantrum of a four-​​year old, I let loose. There was the time I threw a full Big Gulp at him when we were on vaca­tion and were a lit­tle lost. Just a lit­tle, for Jerry has an amaz­ing sense of direc­tion. He was dri­ving, I was shot­gun and our young chil­dren in the back­seat. We were try­ing to find Moses Lake dur­ing our vaca­tion. After stop­ping to get refresh­ments at a 7 – 11,  Jerry was get­ting frus­trated try­ing to find the lake and he was get­ting frus­trated with me who was try­ing to tell him to go back to the 7 – 11 and ask for direc­tions. Men!  Some­how it esca­lated and BAM!  I slung my Big Gulp into his arm. Soda splat­tered every­where.  Jerry growled through clenched teeth, “You’re clean­ing that up!”    We found the lake. Jerry jumped in and swam the stick­i­ness away. I jumped in and cooled off. The kids jumped in and had fun despite their dys­func­tional par­ents, and yes, I cleaned up the car before we hit the road again.

It was another two years before I flung some­thing at Jerry again, an impor­tant detail for this high­lights the progress I was mak­ing in grow­ing out of my pen­chant for wifely tantrums. Though there was that bowl of noo­dles I threw at him in the kitchen. Of course I didn’t aim it right at him, just towards his gen­eral direc­tion.  Noo­dles splat­ted against the kitchen win­dow and all over the floor. The bowl, a red crock­ery bowl which was a part of my favorite dish set – and let me add the only time I ever broke a dish in a throw­ing fit– shat­tered into shards.  It was a mess, and moments later my best friend Kim showed up with her kids and my kids in tow. I had to hide the sim­mer­ing rage as I cleaned up the mess, lying to her that, “Oh, just a lit­tle acci­dent in the kitchen.”  I later con­fided to her the truth of the mess to which she laughed and told me some of her stories!

That is the last time I ever threw some­thing at my beloved husband.

I know that women read­ing this will have a range of responses. Some will smile and nod their head in recog­ni­tion of their own conflict-​​scarred mar­riages.  Some might be shocked, for such behav­ior in their own house­holds is unheard of and would have cause to threaten holy mat­ri­mony if some­one shucked a Bible at the other. And some might even won­der how my mar­riage has made it this far when I have behaved at times so unwifely.

I have con­cealed these facts about my mar­i­tal rela­tion­ship from most peo­ple. Mar­riage is a pri­vate affair. Plus, for so many, many years I tried hard to be a good, Chris­t­ian wife and every­body knows that Chris­t­ian wives do not throw bowls of noo­dles at the head of the home. I def­i­nitely did not share these details at the women’s prayer cir­cles I trav­eled in. Thus, there was an accom­pa­ny­ing level of shame and fear that my mar­riage was abnor­mal and headed for the bone­yard of relationships.

Chris­t­ian mar­riage books did not help. None of them mir­rored the kind of con­flict Jerry and I were stag­ger­ing through and none of them offered solace for the indi­vid­u­a­tion of mar­riage. We did not have a tra­di­tional Chris­t­ian mar­riage and not a sin­gle Chris­t­ian mar­riage book I read gave any kind of encour­age­ment for the part­ner­ship we were build­ing amidst our stormy peri­ods. I was stymied for the longest while if our mar­riage and fam­ily was dys­func­tional and if we con­tent­ment with Who We Are could  be realized.

Near­ing the sec­ond decade of our mar­riage I some­how dis­cov­ered the work of Dr John Gottman, a love and mar­riage expert who has writ­ten a num­ber of books.  Dr Gottman’s insights and sci­en­tific find­ings from study­ing mar­riages and how cou­ples resolve con­flict deshamed me about my mar­riage and throw­ing fits.  Gottman doesn’t advo­cate for phys­i­cal out­bursts like throw­ing books at your part­ner, but he does make clear that every cou­ple will find what works for them in man­ag­ing con­flict and their style of effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It was through Gottman that I real­ized my mar­riage is not severely dys­func­tional as Chris­t­ian books would sup­pose us to be.  In fact, accord­ing to Gottman’s find­ings,  Jerry and I have a strong part­ner­ship built on mutual respect, com­mit­ment and part­ner­ship.  Do we argue? Good,says

Our fam­ily recently went on a 3-​​hour raft­ing trip on Oregon’s Deschutes River.

Gottman who has a more than 90% accu­racy rate in fore­cast­ing a couple’s divorce by observ­ing How They Argue and Resolve Con­flict.   I dis­cov­ered from his work that he has observed what he calls The Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse, pre­dic­tors to the demise of a mar­riage.  They are  1) Crit­i­cism  2) Con­tempt  3) Defen­sivenss 4) Stonewalling .  I won’t unpack them here, but I’ll tell you that read­ing his work about these four mar­riage killers helped me real­ize that our mar­riage was much health­ier.  Gottman has also devel­oped what he calls a Love Map, which is sim­ply a list of ques­tions about per­sonal details about the other to help cat­a­log what you already know about your part­ner, as well as a tool to dis­cover more details and sto­ries about one another. Jerry and I took this tool on a kid-​​free trip one time and had a lot of fun review­ing what we knew about each other.  Who was your best friend in high school?  What car did you learn to drive in?  What would be your dream voca­tion?  Where did you learn to swim?

Gottman reas­sured me in so many ways that the storms our mar­riage has endured are nor­mal and that some mar­riages are stormy and louder than oth­ers. We each cre­ate the inti­mate part­ner­ship that works for us and every mar­riage will go through sea­sons and cycles.

July 23, 2012 is the twenty-​​fourth anniver­sary of my wed­ding day to Jerry. We’ve weath­ered a lot. He’s weath­ered a lot being mar­ried to a feisty woman like me. I don’t throw stuff at him anymore.

Maybe it’s time to buy some new dishes.  :)

***

Sim­i­lar post:  My Failed Chris­t­ian Marriage

                    Tat­tooed Chris­t­ian Women and the Hus­bands Who Love Them

For more info about Dr John Gottman and his excel­lent work, visit www​.gottman​.com (today their web­site seems to be down)  You can also find him on Face­book  and even on Pin­ter­est. 

Are you a tem­pera­men­tal wife? Ever throw some­thing at your part­ner? Share your con­fes­sion here!  Feel free to post a com­ment anony­mously to pro­tect your marriage’s privacy.