StandingWater Creations

The other day, she was talking to another girl and they were speaking, at some length, on the way some of the boys in their lives choose to dress. I believe the word they used was like, “dorks.” In order to counteract this method of dress they were suggesting to each other ways they could get their significant others to dress in a way that was more appropriate in their opinions. Most of the suggestions consisted of them making purchases for the guy and, over time, getting rid of anything they didn’t particularly like.

There was no suggestion of a conversation about dress and grooming, merely the subtle change in attire over a period of time. All done to undermine what the guy likes to wear in lieu of what the girl has decided is more appropriate for station, upbringing, desired class, or simply out of some perceived notion of style.

Granted, I think that a lot of women have more sense of style than most guys. There are exceptions to that rule, but for the most part, if I were to have to judge a girls sense of style or a guys, I would probably go with the girls.

But that’s not really the issue, at hand, here. Guys sense of style or girls. I think the issue at hand is the level and lack of communication between people. Here, right now, this very moment it’s a matter of a girl and a guy getting married and the girl is already planning ways to undermine the relationship.

Think about that for a moment. The girl is already planning ways to undermine their relationship. She is planning how to manipulate her fiancé and spouse. And sure, sure, it’s a simple, small little matter that probably doesn’t mean a hill of guacamole in the long run, but it is one element to a relationship.

I think I could’ve, possibly, ignored that had there not been other aspects to their relationship that have come to light in the months that I’ve known both the future bride and groom. I work with one, I had a class with the other. They seem to like me. I don’t know what my feelings toward them are.

Still, anytime the girl wants to make a decisions she will say something like, “We have decided….” And then I wonder, ‘Did “we” really decide or did “you” decide and apply “we” to the decision?”

It doesn’t really matter. I’ve only really dealt with these two passively and I can tell you it is we transposed over me. Simply done. The girl wears the pants in the relationship and then acts as though the guy actually wears the trousers. She said, “We decided that it was okay for me to eat chocolate whenever I wanted to.” Which, in my less-than-humble opinion, is a really stupid thing to have to make a “we” decision about. But the statement was made and I kept quiet. Someone else asked, “Did you both make the decision or did just you make the decision.”

The girl answered, “Well, I asked my fiancé what he thought.” Therefore, a “we” decisions was made in a matter that really didn’t.

I believe, from observation, that a lot of her “we” decisions is that way. She decides and maybe asks his opinion and then applies a tag to what is going on that is neither “me” nor “I” thereby sharing the decision whether it was or not.

I’m pretty certain there’s some kind of a lesson or story or something in this, but the truth of the matter is that when they, two coworkers, got talking about how to manipulate their guys into wearing what they thought the guys should be wearing I just about swore, turned off my computers, packed up my things, and left the building. Yes, that is correct, Elvis left the building. And, at the same time, I was accosted by the ideas and notions and contradictions in what was being said.

These girls want guys to dress in a manner that does not suggest “dork” to the outside world. Great. Congrats. Good luck with that. Get the guys to dress so that the world doesn’t look at them for what they are, or at least appear to be.

But here’s the problem. You meet. You date. You fall in love. And then you change.

I’ve read one or two books about relationships. Not that any of it has sunk in enough that its applicable to my own life, but I’ve read a few books. Almost across the board they state a common malady in relationships. Girls get married to change the guy. “He will change for me,” or, “I can change him.” And also, almost across the board, the books all state that you cannot change your spouse, you cannot change the bad boy, you cannot cause a leopard to change its spots.

Guys are going to be guys. Dorks are going to be dorks. Style is going to come in and go out. And you have to fall in love with the person, not what they wear.

I think this adage, I may have just made it up, “Love them for who they are and they will change to please you,” is probably very applicable. You know, the dork in the relationship (truth told I think they’re both dorks and they both have problems with dress and style) is truthful in that he is accepting the future bride for who she is. She, however, chooses not to accept him for who he is. I wonder if she even realizes this about herself. She doesn’t really like him even though she is marrying him.

“I will mold him in my image,” she says to herself and then plots ways to undermine who the dork is. Who he is.

So, this was rather frustrating to me. For me. I really did get up and leave abruptly because I found the comments stupid, naive, and ultimately, they suggested undercurrents that undermine the long term relationship. The thought that caused me to get up and walk out was, simply, “Some people have to learn principles on their own.”

I am not suggesting that I am some guru or savant who has all the answers. Quite the contrary – if I understood relationships and girls and dating and the process toward marriage I think I would’ve taken that leap and gotten married, had a dozen kids, found a career to support my family, and lived married-ever-after. Yup. That’s the key. Kids. Marriage. Career.

What really gets me is that we, as a church, send our 19 to 21 year old young men and, generally, 21 to 23 year old young women on missions. Some people claim this is to teach them about compassion. And that is probably true. Others claim it is to help them to grow, emotionally, over that two year period. And that may be true as well (though current observations of RM’s would denote something entirely different). But, I believe that we send these young men and women out into the mission field so that they can learn to relate with and interact with someone else on a level that is not completely superficial. You have to learn to interact with people differently when on a mission with planning, teaching, living together… on occasion shopping together, tracting, working through issues, finding solutions, etc. etc. etc. You have to learn to communicate in a way that you don’t learn in the military, at war, or working through a career… and the outcome is that you become emotionally deeper, better able to handle situations and circumstances that leap out at you, and, in the end you prepare yourself for marriage and further training on leadership in the church and community.

You serve a mission to learn to communicate. That’s probably the principle reason you go two-by-two instead of three-by-three or one-by-one. You go in pairs so that you can learn the intimate art of communicating with someone else.

It doesn’t count, communicating, if you can read the other person and they have no clue as to what you are thinking or are going to do or what you feel or if you’re angry or not. You have to talk. You have to communicate. You have to open up and share. You have to do exactly what is required in a dating and marriage relationship to succeed or you will fail.

So, I am writing this and the thought hits that I was dating this girl (she’s now married as is true of the vast majority of girls I’ve dated in the past) and we get into a little tiff as I am driving us somewhere. Her immediate reaction was to stop talking, physically move to the other side of the car, and get mad. Now, at the time I really liked this girl, a part of me still does; so, my immediate reaction was to pull my vehicle over to the side of the road, kill the engine, and find out what had just happened. Hot to cold in less than a second is never a good sign and when you want a relationship to continue you work through the cold moments. The faster the better. Festering problems are never good and my reaction was that she was more important to me than wherever we were going.

You can tell this, in part, because I remember her and this event and I can’t, for the life of me, tell you where we were going or what we did.

We talked. She told me what she thought I’d done. I immediately apologized, made amends, and then promised that I would change so that it did not happen again. I could’ve mouthed off or said something that made her uncomfortable, it doesn’t really matter. Not to me. The point was that I found it important to fix the problem, to talk about it, to make things right, and her reaction, even after I pulled over, was to ignore the problem, not talk about it, to let it go right now in lieu of plans that meant nothing to me outside of the relationship and in the end I think our relationship grew because, in my mind, the person is always more important than the event or the plans.

You have to stop, talk, and get through the awkwardness of early communication in a relationship before you can have trust and before you can really build a strong relationship.

So, back to where I started. The mistake this coworker, girl, is making, and probably many other girls, is that she assumes that any changes she wants to make will be okay with him because love trumps everything else. Not true. She loses by trying to change him rather than just love him for who and what he is. He is a man who has been raised to dress the way he does without regard to girl. The girl has a responsibility to talk to him and tell him what she doesn’t like and to find out if there is a way to help with dress differently so that her opinion of the way he dresses can mesh with the way he wants to dress.

But some people have to learn things the hard way. They have to make all of these mistakes and hope that the ambiguous emotion of love really does come into play and that they will be able to work through the problem rather than build and build and build a much larger problem because you didn’t figure out how to talk to your significant other early on about stupid small things like clothes or food or what side of the bed you want to sleep on. (Personally, I like dead center.)

Learn to talk, to communicate, and quit trying to manipulate things to your being. If you love him, and he trusts you, he will eventually change because he wants to and not because you’ve forced him to. He will ask for you help, you will talk to him about things, and in the end, you will both be happy.

But what do I know?

Very little, to tell the truth. Very little.