When I was in Boston, Jonna and I were talking about how Mike rides a motorcycle and when I tell people this, I'm often (OFTEN!) met with "How could you let him do that?" or "He must not really care about his family to be so reckless" or (my personal favorite) "You'll be a single parent one day." And every now and then, when we're fighting, I bring this up and say "WHY DO YOU RIDE A MOTORCYCLE? DO YOU NOT CARE ABOUT US?" But, see, I truly and wholly don't care that he does. He loves it and it brings him happiness and he's a well-trained and safe rider and it just doesn't bother me. I'll never ask him to stop, and I'm fine if he never comes to that conclusion on his own.
Jonna said something that sort of changed my life when I told her all this: "Why do we let what other people get upset about make us upset?"
Here's a post from Jonna about this topic and I just LOVE HER SO.
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One of my favorite quotes from the most ridiculous movies on earth is from, um, Rocky Balboa, when Little Marie announces to Rocky that, "It doesn't matter how this looks to other people ... how does it look to you?"
I think that's one of the best things to think about as we backpack our way through life, navigating relationship after relationship with our kids, our families, our husbands. The only person's opinion on how you lead your life that really matters is your own, and while the influence of others can be easily avoided in some cases, I've found that for me, it's dangerously insidious in others.
I have a good marriage. I'm not particularly talky about it, and I'm not smug about it, and I don't think that I really have any advice to give anyone else on how to have a good marriage, because, well, their marriage isn't my marriage, you know? All we can really do is look at, and talk about, our own experiences.
So, you know, for background's sake: My husband is my best friend. He makes me laugh, he drives me nuts, but at the end of the day, he's the one I want. Always.
Anyway. One of the things that HAS come up is, on occasion, I've gotten ruffled about something that I am not particularly bothered about, but OTHER people would be bothered about (and have informed me as such), and then, for reasons that make really no sense at all, I start wondering if I SHOULD be mad about this particular thing, and if people think I'm a patsy for not being mad about this particular thing. Like, am I in some wild abusive relationship because I'm not bothered by this thing that Kristin would be bothered by? AM I A PATSY?
Are you following this at all? Here, let me give you a non-personal example: My friend, let's call her Susan, has a husband who is a terrible baby daddy. Oh, he's a great DADDY, he's just an awful, no-good baby daddy. For most of her children's first three years of life, she's on her own; he's just ... useless. He doesn't get up with them in the night, he's terrified of staying alone with them, he's never put their youngest to bed by himself, ever, so Susan is sort of chained to the house so long as Amanda's awake.
Once they turn three, however, and become a bit more, um, kid-like, he snaps into gear and becomes virtually dad of the year, no kidding. It's crazy! Crazy!
And frankly, would not fly with me. At all. I'd probably kill myself, in fact, shortly after I killed him. And to hear her talk about it, it obviously bothers her a little, but not enough to really make a thing of it -- after all, she knew this after their first child (who has special needs), and continued to have multiple children with him. Otherwise, he's wonderful and thoughtful and loves her and takes care of her and surprises her with the most amazingly thoughtful gestures and she just ... well, it works for them, even if it wouldn't work for me. The nice part about marriage is that I don't have to be married to someone else's husband.
It's easy, as an outsider, to get all finger-wavy about the situation, right? I mean, she's ON HER OWN as a SOLO PARENT for the first THREE YEARS of her child's LIFE, oh my GOD ALL CAPS OH MY GOD. But ... it works for her, and she's accepted it, and accepted that as part of getting all the good stuff, that's part of what she has to endure, and she puts up with it, and not unhappily, I have to say. So what should she care what we think?
My husband is an insomniac, and has the worst sleep habits known to man. Most weekday mornings, he sleeps later than Sam and I do, and gets ready for work in solitude, coming out only to hang out with Sam and chit chat before jetting off into the workaday ether. He has no morning responsibilities with the family, really, and when I need to take a shower, I do it at night. Too often, when discussing this with people, I am met with, "OH NO HE DOES NOT!" and "That would NOT work for me! You need to stop that!" And then, inevitably, I pick a fight with Adam because I feel, stupidly, like I'm being taken advantage of, until I realize ...
I really don't care. I prefer showering at night. I like my mornings quiet, just Sam and me, toodling around the house. I'm happy. I'm happy with the way things are. My husband doesn't take advantage of me -- he does a thousand other things that are important to me, that make me happy. (You guys, the dishwasher. He empties the dishwasher EVERY. DAY., for no other reason than he knows I hate it.) If I really had a problem with it, we'd work together to change it -- he's not a Neanderthal douchebag, he's my husband and he loves and respects me. But I don't care about his morning habits at all. So am I really supposed to be upset that he's not proactively giving me something I never asked for and don't need in the first place?
Why am I getting mad about something someone else says I'm supposed to be mad at?
It doesn't matter how my marriage looks to other people. It matters how it looks to me. And I like how it looks.