Make love, not war!

I am still thinking about what it means to love your husband, and the title of this entry, an old slogan from my youth, well, not my youth, but the time of my youth, came to my mind,   Make love, not war!  As I thought about those words, the truth of them blossomed to me – you cannot love someone and fight with them – make war with them.  It is kind of an either/or!

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people tell young lovers to “just wait until you have your first fight” normalizing fights as something that should be expected.  People fight to win leaving a bloody trail behind them!  They take a position, a belief, and dig their feet in, using whatever ammunition they can find to make their case. And  now couple expect to have fights; it’s OK to fight, but…

Words!  Ugly words dredging up past failures, past errors in judgment are hurled at each other like sharpened knives, like the piercing point of an arrowhead.  Those words which really carry curses, like you always or you never zing though the air into your mate’s heart, digging deep scars, words recorded to burnish the edges and the shine from the words of love you once pledged.

Wives, you must count the cost of every word you say because you cannot unsay them; you cannot take them back.  Oh yes, you can, and should, apologize, but no pile of apologies can ever erase hurtful words from his memory. Those jabs, those bloody wounds leave behind scars, echoes, and I think they become tools the evil one can and will use to discourage and defeat husbands.  And after a while, as the pain accumulates, the love and commitment becomes a memory buried under words which have become evidence of rejection, disrespect, and, yes, hate.

Does that mean we should stifle any ideas that might be in conflict with his?  No!  But we must remember to lace our communication with love.  We can find ways to share our ideas in such a way that they are received as helpful, not hurtful.  True confession, I used to think it would be helpful if I tried to explain why someone might have said something hurtful to my husband, sometimes the words or behaviors were not aimed at my husband, but he absorbed them… He interpreted my trying to explain how the other person could think that as my defending the other person and my agreeing with the other person.  I am so grateful that he told me that was how he felt.  There was no fight. Instead there was communication, especially helpful communication about behaviors I could change.

Last night I used bacon bits in green beans, a disaster!!!  Don’t do it.  They swelled up into moist bit of soy, ugly.  He ate them graciously, but after dinner, he suggested very kindly that I might not want to use bacon bits again.  And, instead of being crushed that I had failed so monumentally – they really were bad – I thanked him and reassured him that I wanted to know what he liked, and didn’t like because I wanted to please him.

I read an article years ago about “counting the cost of your no’s,” a NO not always being the use of the word no, but taking the opposite position, and I pass it on to you now.  Before you speak, listen through his ears.  Think about what it would be like to be on the receiving end of those remarks, and make love, not war.