Marriage Monsters: Monster Hunting
Fighting back often means hunting down the monster. Most people assume that hunting begins with gathering the right equipment. Even in horror flicks the main character usually stops to gather guns, ammo, silver crosses, baseball caps and a thermos of coffee. These items are retrieved from the basement, or the basement of a parent/friend/neighbor who conveniently stockpiles such items.
Hunting down the monster, though, begins with understanding the enemy. Sun Tzu in the Art of War puts it this way “know your enemies and know yourself”. We don’t cover the knowing yourself part in this series. That involves a Zen master surrounded by ninja warriors and is beyond our scope.
Knowing the enemy often sounds like the easy part. It’s not until we waste our time fighting the mechanical creature pillaging the city that we realize they are actually controlled remotely by the mad scientist. He’s the real villain. Misdirection is everywhere leading us to think we know who we’re fighting when we really don’t.
The same thing is true with marriage. We often assume the villain is the gorgeous new coworker or our spouse’s new hobby. We create monsters out of all sorts of things and begin fighting them. It’s rather silly in some cases, like Don Quixote fighting the windmills. If you’re like me and you haven’t actually read that book, imagine Luke Skywalker fighting R2D2 or the Ghostbusters crew trying to capture taxi cabs. In either case we have pointless and meaningless battles.
In some marriages the spouses assume each other to be the monster. If your marriage took place in a Las Vegas chapel of which you remember very little, you might want to consider that an option. Otherwise, it’s probably not the case. Despite the fact that your husband is covered with hair or has fungus-infested toenails, he is not a monster. Even though your wife’s cooking may resemble a witches brew, she is not the monster.
So if you want to amass a great monster-hunting arsenal, go right ahead. Feel free to strap ammunition to your chest and tie a bandana around your head like Gizmo in the movie Gremlins. Grab some trail mix and a survival knife, if you still have one. (But I’m warning you, the waterproof matches probably won’t work any longer.) Gather your tools because in the next few posts we’re going to take on some of the worst of the marriage monsters.
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