Speaking Intimately in Public

As I mentioned in my last post, R. and I attended the "Focus on Marriage" satellite simulcast yesterday. This is the third "marriage enriching" event we have attended this year. With a decade with children now under our belts and our attention being pulled in every direction except toward our marriage relationship - this time of drinking in some sound teaching has been very refreshing.

In all three instances, however, there has been a common element which makes me quite uncomfortable: Speaking Intimately in Public.

This is that inevitable portion of the service, in which the speaker makes you look each other in the eyes and say something intimate. Sometimes the speaker will supply the words, at other times, they make you come up with your own.

R. is uncomfortable with it, too. I know this because if she is uncomfortable doing something she won't do it; at one event, I had to do some of my intimate speaking in public to the back of her head.

When I was a kid, there was an evangelistic family that would come through the areas in which we lived from time to time. And they had a practice for several years of ending their services by making husbands and wives look at each other and repeat their marriage vows. My Dad did not like these exercises: he never has been one to be very verbal about his love and though he seems a little hard on the outside, he cries very easily.

We kids loved it because we didn't have to do anything and Mom and Dad would be on the spot... Dad with tears trickling down would repeat the vows. Eventually we started visiting my grandparents when these folks came to town.

R. and I are - in many respects - a quiet couple. Most mornings we barely speak before coffee. Early in our marriage, I thought she was angry. Finally I learned that she just doesn't want to talk in the mornings, and not being naturally energetic in the mornings myself - I've adjusted.

While I do believe it is important that we assure each other of our mutual love often. I do not like it when we are pushed through a prescribed pattern, all in an effort to force communications.

I don't like it, but I will do it.

R. will - on the other hand - boycott something if she doesn't want to do it. That leaves me in the unenviable position of trying to participate -alone.

Now let me confess something: As much as I would like for you to think otherwise - I care about what people think. In fact, I spend an inordinate amount of energy at times trying to behave in a certain manner because I think people are watching.

This is a problem because - in my neurotic fashion - I figure that if people are all watching me and I am speaking intimately to my wife in public and she is ignoring me ... then they must think that we have a rotten relationship.

I am learning- with God's help - that most folks don't really exert that much concern on me. In other words, they really don't think about me all that much.

Recently, I have further discovered that when I follow the dictates of the speaker in such instances, I am saying those intimate words - not because I mean them - but because I do not want people to think that I don't mean them or that R. and I have a rotten relationship.

So while it would be nice if she participated - it might also be nice if I participated with the right motives. It appears that she is the one with the problem, but alas - it is me. In the words of Pogo: " We have met the enemy and he is us."

Oh by the way, here's an important tidbit that I have picked up on as it relates to my marriage (and this post illustrates the point). When I complain to God about my wife and ask Him to fix her... invariably it will turn out that I am the cause of the problem.

When I think R. should change - when I think she has a problem, I have pretty much learned now to just go ahead and ask God what it is that I am doing wrong.