Blogging While Angry (At Least It’s Not a Moving Violation)

One of the things I have been doing lately is identifying my “triggers” – things that people say or do or circumstances that will set me off or get me worked up in some way. Well, I just had a run-in with a couple of my triggers, and my blood pressure and pulse are both still high enough that I feel the need to blog about it.

Most of you know that I am pretty insecure. I can’t really remember a time when I was not insecure. From the time I was in elementary school, I have thought of myself as unattractive and unloveable. When you’re insecure, it can be hard to trust people. Then I married a man who acting in a way that reinforced these beliefs about myself and made it even harder for me to trust others than it already was. For instance, I find myself questioning whether or not people who claim to be my friends really like me or if they are just too nice to tell me to take a hike. I also often find it hard to believe that Josh really loves me – or at least loves me enough not to leave me or cheat on me, even though all evidence points to Josh loving me more than any other person or thing in the whole world, including himself.
I don’t go around feeling badly about myself all the time and I don’t have a constant lack of trust, but these experiences are not infrequent and they are always lurking in the shadows of my mind.

Another fact about me: I am really annoyed by arguments that excuse bad behavior because “everybody does that.” You know, besides breathing, sleeping and eating, I am not sure there is anything we can say that “everybody” does (and think of all the people who need help to do even those basic things), so I just don’t like those types of broad generalizations. I also have never understood why “everybody” doing something wrong makes it okay to do. I also hate the arguments excusing bad behavior because it’s “natural.” For instance, a couple of years ago on Facebook, one of my female friends posted a link to an article about some politician being caught in adultery and lamented our inability as a society to realize that it wasn’t logically sound to expect a man to be monogamous. Biology and evolution are to blame for men’s wandering ways, and women should just accept the fact and not expect their husbands to be faithful. The only reason we’re upset by such things is because society has conditioned us to be. Poppycock, I say.

So imagine how I felt today at lunch with my friends when I was talking about the boorish behavior of married men, sitting around having lengthy discussions about how hot women who are not their wives are and being told “all men do that.” At which point, I started to get really annoyed. (I was already slightly annoyed by some of the conversation leading up to this.)

I know not everyone shares my view on things, but to me, a man, married or not, who sits around talking about how hot women are is an immature man. I’m not talking about saying a girl is cute or beautiful or attractive. Josh and I have had conversations with each other where he or we have acknowledged that a certain female is attractive or pretty or what have you. That does not bother me at all. I am well aware that there are very many attractive people in the world and that my husband has eyes and a brain and can recognize beauty. And that doesn’t upset me and I don’t think there is a thing wrong with that.

Talking about women as being “hot” is a totally different thing. There is element of lust there that I think both objectifies the woman being spoken about and is disrespectful to the woman to whom you are married or are dating. A few years ago, I was witness to a conversation wherein a 40-year old married man with three children made several comments (in front of his wife) about how hot a certain actress in a movie was and how good she looked in her skin tight leather costume and how that was the whole reason to go see the film. I think that is gross. And just so you know, I also think this is gross behavior for women to engage in. It’s one thing to think a guy is handsome. It’s quite another to go see New Moon so you can drool over Taylor Lautner without his shirt on (and if you are old enough to be his mother or even his aunt, that’s even worse).

I can understand why young people get caught up in this kind of behavior, but at some point, shouldn’t you grow up enough to be past it? And if you’re unsure of when that point should be, I would suggest that if you are married – no matter your age – you should be past it. And I don’t think convincing yourself that “every man” behaves in such a way should make you feel okay that you do it.

But I didn’t say any of that to my friends. My response was that Josh doesn’t do that. So then my friends said “well, not in front of you, but he does that with his friends.”

And my blood boiled.

Dear friends, please do not tell me that my husband does things behind my back. Please do not try to convince me that Josh doesn’t tell me about it because he knows it would upset me, but of course he is having those conversations with his friends. I would be upset if Josh were the type of guy who spent his time in that way, but I would be more upset if I thought he were lying to me. Which he very well knows. Also, please don’t try to convince me that you are a better judge of my husband and his behavior and his character than I am, simply because you know he is a man and you know what “every man” is like.

I don’t know if you can ever really know another person. I thought I knew someone once and it turned out I was very wrong. So I can only go on what people tell me and what I hear and see myself and hope they are being real. What I see and hear from Josh is that he is a man who finds it disrespectful to “check a woman out” – a worldview he had before he ever met me and that his co-workers and friends used to tease him about. What I see and hear from Josh leads me to believe he wouldn’t lie to me. There are things Josh has done in his past and in our marriage that he is not proud of, just like me. But Josh has been open with me about all those things and has never made excuses for his mistakes, but taken full accountability for them. He is an honorable, good man. I don’t need you trying to convince me otherwise.

I know I shouldn’t have gotten mad. In truth, I think my friends were upset with me for saying that it was gross for men to talk about women being “hot” because their husbands do that. And they probably need to believe that every man does that so they feel okay about the fact their husband does it. And because they talk that way about men. There are some things we see eye-to-eye on, but there are whole areas where our views on right and wrong are totally divergent. I get that. And I’m absolutely certain I could have handled the situation better and that the whole thing started because I was talking about things I should have known better than to talk about in front of them in the first place. And I know I got upset because their few words on the matter unleashed that monster of insecurity and distrust that lies in wait for the perfect opportunity to bring me down and make me doubt.

But I also know that they’re wrong.