A War of Four
My wife mentions committing violence in the name of truth when I complain that she doesn’t understand me. My belief that truth will prevail doesn’t seem to apply at all to marital relationships.
Honesty is not the best policy
“I’ve gained 20kg since I got married.” A friend I hadn’t seen in a while asked why I had gained so much weight at a couples’ gathering a while back. I force a smile and responded. My friends all looked at H as if on cue and said “Your wife must be taking really good care of you.”
I realized that my wife wasn’t in a good mood on our drive back home from the gathering. “Why is it my fault that you’ve gained weight?” asked H. “I never say it was because of you,” I replied. “It’s the same thing. Saying you got fat because you got married is the same as saying it was because of me.” I was puzzled as to how my words could be interpreted in such a way. “Honey, I was just telling the truth. I got married and then I gained weight. What else should I have said?” H raised her voice and replied, “And what is wrong with those friends of yours? Why are they dragging me into it when you said you gained weight because you got married?”
Shakespeare once said “This above all; to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” In other words, honesty is the best policy. I took deep breathes as I meditated on Shakespeare’s words and said “Honey, my friends didn’t mean to say that it was your fault. Why are you making such a big deal over a joke?” to which H shouted back “Then you should have said you got fat because you ate too much!” That hurt. My honesty did not pay off and I resented myself for trusting Shakespeare. I know our argument started because of authenticity, or rather the lack of effort in trying to authentically acknowledge each other’s emotions.
Why I was bad at dating
I wasn’t very good at dating if I’m being honest. I don’t have any game. I always thought that truth was what was important in a relationship and couldn’t understand why anyone would need game. Maybe that’s why my relationships were so rocky. I couldn’t and didn’t want to hide my love and I didn’t want to taint my truth by engaging in shallow tricks such relational tug of wars. There were still times that required me to keep my distance but I had no idea exactly when I should approach or pull out. Thanks to my lack of finesse, my wife broke up with me multiple times before we finally managed to get married.
But the same problems persisted in my marriage. I can’t stand being misunderstood so I would be obsessed with relaying my truth when we fought. “You know that’s not what I meant. Why do you keep twisting my words?” “You know that’s not what my parents meant!” H would ask why she was expected to be understanding any time anyone said something they didn’t mean. She would go on to say “Stop focusing on your truth and your intentions and think about things from my perspective and how I must be feeling for once!” She’d then add “No wonder you were so bad at dating.”
I’m the same way with my child. “I know daddy told you off today, but I did it because I love you.” would be met by “You think the kid is going to understand when you tell them you love them after going off at them? They’re going to think love means to scold someone,” and H would accuse me of committing violence in the name of truth. She said my intentions were irrelevant.
A Four Way Fight
H went straight to bed without even brushing her teeth when we got home. It felt awkward approaching her while she was so angry so I went and lay down next to my sleeping child. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought about what happened that day. I tried to figure out where things went wrong, but I still couldn’t understand why H was so mad.
I really have gained a lot of weight after getting married. I tried to spend more time with H after we got married. We sought after famous restaurants and had delicious food and had dates at cafés which served decadent desserts. Meanwhile, my social circle began to get smaller and I stopped attending my weekend workout sessions. And I gained weight. I chose to do all those things but I chose to do them for H. I chose not to work out because I wanted to spend more time with H. So I guess “I’ve gained 20kg since I got married” actually means “I gained weight because of the choices I made for her.” That’s why H interpreted “after getting married” as “because of me” whereas my understanding of the phrase was “because of my choices.”
Even though I told H that my choices were what led to my weight gain, high blood pressure, and diabetes, she still felt somewhat responsible for my choices. It was only after this realization that I was able to gain an elementary understanding of what it meant to be a married couple. There is no such thing as a completely independent decision once you get married. Everything is intertwined with your spouse to some extent which means you also share the responsibilities. That is why my friends had interpreted that H was responsible for my weight gain by extension, and I had said it was on me, and H had gotten mad that she had been made into an irresponsible person because of my friend’s interpretation of what I had said.
There were four people in the car that day we had the massive row. There was the me that I see and the H that H sees. There was also the me that H sees and the H that I see. The me that I see and the me that H sees are sometimes the same, but a lot of the time, they’re different. Misunderstandings, mistrust, and conflict are inevitable if we don’t acknowledge this discrepancy. There’s the me that thinks that I was responsible for my weight gain no matter what. But then, there’s also the irresponsible husband that pins the blame on his spouse that H sees. These different interpretations of me breed misunderstandings which lead to conflict.
The me that I see and the me that others see is pretty much the same when I’m at work. But the lines become blurred when it comes to marital relationships. The me that I see and the me that my spouse sees can be very different, which is why truth and intentions don’t always get through. My intentions are about the me that I see, which is why it makes it easy to ignore the me that my counterpart sees. And this discrepancy is what makes me and H angry. Maybe we’ve been trying to fit people into the mold that we see them to be this whole time. Love gives birth to fantasies and fantasies to marriage, but a marriage that is still filled with fantasies bears conflict.
The truth shall prevail?
I think of sayings such as “Honesty is the best policy” and “The truth shall prevail” when I’m faced with conflict, and they may apply to relationships between coworkers and friends, but they’re nothing but lazy and selfish statements when it comes to the relationship between spouses. The truth often leads to misunderstandings and misunderstandings are difficult to resolve. Just as the belief that we have to work on increasing the self-esteem of our children distorts education, our belief in the truth distorts our relationship with our spouse. Pushing the me that I see onto my spouse in the name of truth is equal to violence. Marriage just might be the process of slowly breaking down the multitudes of judgments you have about your spouse and accepting the image that your spouse has of you, while simultaneously persuading your spouse to see you as you see yourself. A lot more things are needed than just truth and good intentions. Truth will not right all wrong when left alone. It needs to be accompanied by a myriad of other conditions such as renouncement, acceptance, dissolution, and persuasion.
I went to lie down on the bed with H a few hours later. I said “Honey, I’m sorry.” She wasn’t asleep. She replied “You speak in extremely vague terms for someone who studied philosophy. Next time say you gained 20kg after you got married because you didn’t take care of yourself.” She schooled me on how to talk like a philosopher. I could finally relax.
Why I call my wife my partner
I introduce H as my partner to other people. I write about her like that too and many people wonder why I would call her that. Let me put it in precise terms like a real philosopher should. H and I are acting partners. I try to act as the me that I see as well as the me that H sees. I become the image that H has and expects of me and act out the roles she expects me to play. It sometimes differs from who I really am or what I really want. But when I say and do things that I don’t want to do, I’m reminded of the gap in expectations that I and my spouse have for myself, and I realize how fiercely I still love my wife from the fact that I chose to be in that gap.
Of course, H is also acting right alongside me. I know she’s acting to match my mood and circumstances and it makes me feel grateful and loved. I also act as to not create situations where she has to act like that. I used to get busted for my bad acting all the time in the beginning of our marriage but after 10 years, I’ve now reached a point where it’s difficult to tell where the acting ends and the real me begins. What exactly is truth? Shakespeare talks about being true to oneself but the truth, when it comes to marriage, means to deceive yourself until you can lay down even the basic truths about yourself.
The philosopher Zygmunt Bauman said that love is something we learn every day and that it is the act of laboring to create and adjust on a daily basis. Love is the encounter of two separate individuals which is why conflict is inevitable. But people in love will push and pull and adjust to maintain their relationship despite all the conflict. Our acting is our own unique way of adjusting. It took me 10 years of marriage to realize that the truth in marital relationships lies in relational tug of war. You can’t hold your partner’s hand too tight or too loose when it comes to marriage. It’s similar to negotiating since it requires compromise, and it’s kind of like foreplay in the sense that you’re trying to grasp what you can’t have. It’s also akin to love in that there is no end or completion. My love and my acting is labor, and its hard work.
Laboring for a kiss
If you omit the process of laboring every day to create and adjust in any relationship, be it between spouses or between parents and their children, you are likely to treat your counterpart as an object to manage rather than a person with their own will. Marriage is complicated, so married couples have to constantly learn by pushing, pulling, negotiating, fighting, and giving up for something as small as a single kiss. So it’s fair to say that married couples need to labor for kisses. Love, marriage, and married couples can never be whole in and of themselves. Have you been ignoring your spouse’s will because of your truth? Have you been pushing your emotions onto your spouse in the name of good intentions? Have you not been trying as hard because you believe that the truth shall prevail? That is the moment that love degenerates into management.
If anyone else asks me “Why did you get so fat?” at our next gathering, this is what I’m going to say. “I gained 20kg after I got married. That’s what happens when you eat a lot and don’t exercise.” And I’ll ramp my acting skills up a notch and say “H is trying to help me lose weight but it’s difficult. I guess I’m not determined enough.” My friends might reply with some nonsense like “Your wife should take better care of you.” I’ll wait until the laughter dies down and hit them with something they would never say to a member of their own family. I’ll look at H and say “I’m going to do it because I love H.” H, who is sitting beside me right now reading my manuscript, says “If you love me, you’d lose weight before our next gathering…” In other words, my love is labor and its hard work.
