It’s cognitive therapy with a spiritual twist. That’s how I think of the negativity-purging methods of popular teacher and author Byron Katie. And considering my feelings about both CBT and spirituality, it’s not surprising that I love it. Katie’s approach to challenging unhelpful beliefs has much in common with widely-used evidence-based counseling therapies, giving it credibility, while her unique techniques bring it a dynamic quality that’s a bit hard to describe. During my year of purging my unhelpful thoughts using her method, my growth was significant. Here is that story.
Everyone just leave my boobs alone, Goddamnit! That was the thought I was having several times a day. Of course, when I sat down to confront my problem, Byron Katie-style, I wrote something a bit more restrained.
I hate breastfeeding, I wrote. I’m sick of it. It bugs me. I hate the boredom, the discomfort. The whining for “boo-boo,” “boo-boo.”
It was June, and I’d recently given birth, and my barely-turned two-year-old nursed, too. At the time, breastfeeding was–no exaggeration–a part-time job. More than thirty hours a week I was spending with a person (sometimes people) fully attached, often doing nothing but waiting to be done.
Which is why after discovering The Work it was one of the first thoughts I brought to the method; it seemed like a pretty good test. CBT couldn’t touch it. At least that’s what I believed. And I doubted The Work could, either. But I’d just read another book of Katie’s, my third, I Need Your Love – Is That True?: How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval, and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead, and cover to cover, it was super inspiring. So one afternoon I got my pen and paper, and after writing down my negative feelings on the subject, I answered the four requisite questions.
Is it true? Yes. Obviously. Duh.
Can you be absolutely sure it’s true? Uh, I guess not.
How do you feel when you think this thought? Terrible. Trapped. On the verge of a scream.
How would you feel if you couldn’t think the thought? Well, I guess I’d feel … fine?
And then I turned the statement around to the opposite and found examples to confirm.
I love breastfeeding, I wrote. I don’t hate it at all. Look at all the benefits it provides my kids. Not to mention the benefits to me–all those burned calories while just lying on my side, doing nothing. And when the baby cries, it always makes her feel better, which of course makes me feel better, too. Plus, what other activity in my life will I ever do that is this easy and yet this important? It’s, like, the best-ever excuse to be lazy.
Then, as Katie does in several examples in her book, I returned to the first question: Is it true?
Well, no. I mean, not entirely.
Hmmm. That’s interesting.
Later that day, I thought about the exercise and checked in, asking myself if anything felt different. It didn’t, I concluded. I felt just the same. But then something strange happened: nothing.
The following morning when Jack, the two-year-old, woke me while groping for my breast, I didn’t feel the extreme annoyance I usually felt.
In fact, I didn’t feel much at all.
Holy crap. I smiled. Holy crap. I think it worked. I didn’t think it’d really work. But it did.
After this experience, my interest in The Work quickly increased, and soon I found myself substituting my CBT practice with the new method. Every few days or so, I’d jot down the thoughts that came to mind, then select the most troublesome to move with through the process. Here are just some of the feelings and ideas I successfully distanced myself from during that first incredible month:
I’m bloated.
I should go on a diet.
David should have [fill in the blank].
My friend should not have [fill in the blank].
I can’t sleep.
Caring for a baby is too hard.
All parenting is too hard.
To say the least, dealing effectively with these thoughts rather than letting them run amok was an improvement. So it wasn’t very far into July before I started hatching a plan.
That plan: this book. This serial. This story. About doing the Work for a year. Not much more to it than that–no detailed list of rules. Just dedicating myself to the practice and seeing where it takes me. Along the way, I’ll examine my current life philosophy, too, for the purpose of deciding whether or not these deep-down beliefs are helpful for me. I don’t want to only focus on the day-to-day stuff; I want to see big changes, big shifts, major differences in perspective.
I want the Work to be the game-changer I’ve been seeking.
Here are my six basic spiritual beliefs, which I will write about in this serial.
Spirituality is good.
People are holy.
Life is a game. There are no rules.
God is reality.
People have power.
My religion is peace, pain, hard work and appreciation.
I know. Scary, right? This is good stuff here. I like every single one of these. I’ve come to each of them like a child comes to a rock lying on the beach: I pick it up, turn it around in my hand. I notice the color, the uniqueness, even the flaws–but they don’t seem like flaws to me. After a moment of inspection, I might throw it back, but more often than not, I don’t. I put it in my rock bag and refuse to leave it behind, though on the car ride home it already seems out of place.
Beliefs are interesting. They’re important. They stabilize us. They help us relate to other people. We like our rock collections. We really, really like them. We carry them wherever we go. Sometimes, when we find other people whose rocks look a lot like ours, we even meet every Sunday for a while to describe them.
Rock collecting is a wonderful hobby. Spirituality is a noble practice. But do we have to take it quite so seriously?
Do our beliefs have to be so darn firm?
Which brings me to the first Byron Katie quote of the series–one that I’ll probably revisit later on.
“God is everything, God is good … Ultimately, of course, even this isn’t true … All so-called truths eventually fall away. Every truth is a distortion of what is. If we investigate, we lose even the last truth. And that state, beyond all truths, is true intimacy. That is God-realization. And welcome to the reentry. It’s always a beginning.”
The quote is from the second book I read of Katie’s, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life. It was co-written by her husband, Stephen Mitchell. The sentiment is puzzling, yet it rings true to me, especially since it echoes the Buddhist view of ultimate truth. I start with it this year for several reasons.
The first is that if Byron Katie is known for one thing, she is known for eradicating belief. To her, belief is dangerous. Undesirable. Scary. Belief is the root of all suffering, of every problem we have. Which is why her four questions encourage us to question our thoughts so relentlessly.
If you’re not familiar with this teacher, the above probably sounds a bit strange. Don’t worry. Hang in there. We’ll get to your questions. For now, let’s move on to the second reason.
The second reason the quote is so appropriate here at the starting line is that it makes me wonder what my time with The Work is going to bring. If nothing is true, really and ultimately true, where will that leave me by year’s end? Will inquiry excise my favorite, most comforting beliefs–steal my precious rock collection like a school bully? Or will my spiritual beliefs hold up, at least for now, and continue to help me get through this earthly adventure?
The final reason I chose this quote first is that it’s Katie’s direct answer to the first of my seven beliefs, namely, spirituality (God) is good.
Sure, she says. Sure, you can think that. But ultimately, no–spirituality isn’t good.
Like everything else, spirituality is nothing.
Welcome to the rabbit hole that is Ms. Byron Katie.
All this said, I don’t regret—not for one moment, not for one second—any of the years I spent as true believer.
Kurt
Niziak is a software trainer and data analyst from Massachusetts.
Mollie:
Have you ever significantly reorganized and decluttered your home?
What led to the decision and what did you change?
Kurt: Yes, but not consciously. Instead, it
somehow chose me!
Over a decade ago, my career and financial
situation was vastly different. In fact, my own “personal paper
route” (as I call it) was surprisingly easy. Financially, I was
preparing myself for a life of moderate wealth. The bottom fell out,
however, and I was forced to abide by a lifestyle which would be the
antitheses of what I once thought I had.
In July of 2018, I had a major fire in my once
well-furnished condo. I had stepped out of my home for a mere
thirty-five minutes only to return and witness that almost
all of what I had acquired over the years had vanished. I say the
word almost because, my most important possession (my dog) was
miraculously spared. (Thank God).
After the complete shock of losing almost
everything had slowly worn off, I was surprised to feel an incredible
sense of gratitude. I realized that as terrible as things were, at
least my dog was okay. This horrific event proved to be the genesis
of a priceless awakening. I began to understand that I really didn’t
need many possessions in order to keep on living on a day-to-day
basis. Material things somehow revealed themselves in their most
generic form, serving as nothing more than distractions.
Mollie: What is your lifestyle like now?
Kurt: I suppose that I am a bit more grounded. I
am cognizant about how we are all such insatiable consumers. I try
instead to take better care of the things that I do have, rather than
fantasizing about what I don’t have. Furthermore, before purchasing
or storing anything, I think about whether I really need it.
We all are conditioned to believe that our lives
can only improve via addition—as if we were painting a picture,
adding more and more layers. Unfortunately, this approach seldom gets
us the results we are looking for. Perhaps it’s a sculpture that we
should be creating instead, our goal only arrived at via subtraction.
We discard the pieces that are not necessary.
Mollie: Can you share a few specific tips for
cleaning, organizing and simplifying a home?
Kurt: In his wonderful book 12
Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan Peterson is
quick to point out an approach towards minimalism which (at first
look) appears rather benign. However, this simple concept has saved
me, time and time again, from the shackles of a personal two- or
three-day funk. Peterson states that one risks feeling depressed,
anxious and powerless should they fail to keep their bedroom clean,
or surroundings in order. Whenever I motivate myself to use this
simple tactic, it has never failed to
make me feel more balanced—more in control.
Cleaning, organizing, etc. are extremely powerful
minimalist tools. They help combat feelings of chaos. If things are
clean and in order, I have a better chance at having a more positive
experience in the outside world. Physical clutter seems to muddle my
brain and often prevents me from having any semblance of harmony. It
is so simple, yet it seems to always have positive results.
Minimalism (to me) is not merely the act of owning
less. It also leads to appreciating things more. It proves itself,
time and time again, as a
powerful life approach. All I know is that when I fail to encompass
minimalism, I am at risk of feeling like nothing more than the
proverbial hole of a doughnut.
I will say however, that my own personal happiness
has neither significantly decreased nor increased over the years. It
is just less complicated. One doesn’t end up wasting time fooling
themselves into thinking that acquiring more will improve one’s
life.
I do what I need to do in order to survive. I often (jokingly) say that I am just as miserable now, as I’ve always been. A bigger house, better car or more stuff will not enhance my life very much. These things might be nice to have but it becomes a fool’s errand to obsessively pursue. It’s just an example of victory through surrender.
A lot of times, when you discover something great, you overestimate its greatness just a bit. Well, okay, sometimes more than a bit.
Sometimes you get way too excited.
Every once in a while, though, your excitement proves justified. And when that happens, you cross the line. Before you were a fan, a follower, an advocate.
Now, you’re a believer.
Granted, when I discovered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, my hopes were high for good reason. According to articles by the National Institute for Mental Health, the National Center for Biotechnology Information and, of course, Wikipedia, CBT is the most-practiced evidence-based therapy for tons of emotional and personality disorders.
More important, when I tried it, it worked.
Unfortunately, I was late to the party; I’ve had depression my whole life, but didn’t learn about CBT till age thirty-eight. Yikes, right? I often wonder what I was thinking, not looking up popular depression therapies sooner. Then I remember exactly what I was thinking.
I was thinking spirituality was the answer.
Ouch.
I mean, spirituality is great. Spirituality works. But sometimes, other stuff works better. And every once in a while, you hit the proverbial jackpot, and you find a regular therapy that’s spiritual, too.
Which is where Byron Katie comes in.
Soon after discovering CBT, I found this teacher, and when I did, the above process repeated itself. Excitement. Enthusiasm. Fandom. Advocacy.
Then, full-on belief.
Here’s how that happened.
***
It was one of Those Moments. You know the kind. They feel normal at first, then later earn an unexpected spot on your greatest-hits playlist. It was evening, and I was depressed—much more so than usual. Worse, earlier that day I’d taken a three-mile walk and even that, my go-to strategy, hadn’t helped. I didn’t get an endorphin high. I didn’t clear my mind.
I felt just as bad after as before.
If you struggle with a mood disorder I don’t have to tell you what a frightening realization this was. Will I have to starting walk more than three miles now? I wondered. Has my body acclimated to this level of exercise? Heavily pregnant, with two other children in tow, I couldn’t imagine putting more time and effort into walking than I already did. And so, after dinner, after my husband had taken our two boys to the mall, I decided to try something different. Desperate, I went to my office to scan the titles on my bookshelf, looking for anything that might help.
I didn’t actually believe I’d find something.
But I did. I found The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns.
One year prior, I’d bought the Handbook on the advice of my doctor and then, after a brief review, dismissed it. Platitudes, I thought. Nothing new here. Nothing I haven’t heard a million times before. I had no idea it was a psychotherapy classic. (Why hadn’t the doctor told me that? Sheesh.)
That day, though—that greatest-hits day—I sat on the couch and for the first time, gave the method a chance. After reading a few chapters, I took its suggestion and started writing down every negative thought in my head. When I couldn’t think of any more, I stopped writing and counted the pages.
I’d filled seven pieces of paper on both sides.
Okay, I thought. Maybe the book is right. Maybe my depression really is caused by my thoughts.
Prior to that time, I knew negativity played a role in depression. But I had no idea how big that role was. I’m a positive person, I thought. I’m hopeful about the future. It’s a chemical imbalance that’s to blame.
And I still believe that. I’ve been moody my whole life—never lighthearted, even as a kid. But maybe, just maybe, there’s more to the story. Maybe part of the problem is solvable.
Because, it turned out, I wasn’t the optimist I thought I was. I was actually sort of the opposite, but in a different way. The kind of thoughts I wrote down that day had nothing to do with my faith in God or my many dreams of success. They weren’t about my overall health, or my financial or familial satisfaction.
They were about the little annoyances of life.
They were about the way my clothes fit, the kids’ morning moods, the tyranny of my family’s need to eat. Only a few of my troubles even mattered long-term. And yet, when I emptied the contents of my head, these silly little details were what I found. Obviously, my pessimism wasn’t as much about the significance of my negative thoughts as it was about the sheer number of them.
I had accumulated a bunch of mental crap.
And so, that night I began the process of excavation. And I haven’t stopped since.
Even after that first writing session, I noticed a change—a lifting, even a slight high. I felt the way I feel after a thirty-minute jog, or a long talk with a friend, or an especially enjoyable night out.
Holy crap, I realized. It worked.
And it did so when I was at my very worst.
And so, like I said before, after discovering CBT, my hopes were ridiculously high. Somehow, I knew that this was my game-changer, my next major level up.
Somehow, I knew it would be epic.
The cool thing is that I was right. During the month that followed the discovery, I was the most hopeful I’d been in my life regarding my ability to deal effectively with—maybe even overcome—my depression. Then, a shocking twist: I found another strategy, a variation of CBT. And for me, it was even more powerful. You probably already know what that method was. It was Byron Katie’s process of self-inquiry called The Work.
Byron Katie is a spiritual teacher, someone you may have heard of before. I had, too; the previous fall I’d even read her free ebook, The Work of Byron Katie: An Introduction. At that time, though, her ideas didn’t particularly appeal to me.
Truth be told, I wasn’t desperate enough to try it.
But after practicing CBT for a while, her name came up again, and I thought back on what I’d read. Wait a sec, I realized, Now that I think about it, The Work is a lot like CBT.
I decided to look into it again.
More about Byron Katie’s method later, and how it compares with CBT. Suffice it to say here that it’s a way to look objectively at your favorite (or not-so-favorite) thoughts. It gives you four questions to ask yourself that help you realize, deep down, what is true and what is, well, a bit crazy.
And as with CBT, my first experience with The Work didn’t disappoint.
Nick D’Urso is a freewheeling AirBnB rental owner. He teaches people how to make their money work for them (rather than the other way around) at NickDurso.com.
Mollie:
Have you ever significantly minimized your possessions and simplified
your life? Tell me the story.
Nick: In July 2019 I left my corporate job back home in Brooklyn, New York. I bought a car in Phoenix, Arizona to drive to Argentina. I pretty much left everything I owned except a few clothes, my laptop, a camera, and a drone. I built a bed in the back of the car and I have been living on the road ever since, camping at some of the most beautiful places in Mexico. I’m about to enter Belize.
My
car is my
home and the world is my
bedroom.
Mollie:
What did you buy along the way? Do you have good camping equipment?
Nick:
I haven’t bought much. I bought a new suspension for the car and two
front
lower control arms. The car is old
and I
was worried about the rust and being stuck in a country with no parts
if something happened. Other than that, I bought a cooler, folding
chairs, and a BBQ. At some point I’ll have to buy winter clothes when
I reach Argentina but I’ll tackle that when I get there. I also
bought a new phone using Google Fi because it works in over 200
countries on their unlimited plan.
Mollie:
How long do you plan to travel and what will you do after that?
Nick:
Everyone
asks me this question. Truthfully I’m planning this trip to find a
place where I can build another AirBNB
property close to the water so I can run scuba diving excursions. I
don’t have a time limit. My goal is to travel around the entire world
and it’s taken me 6 months to do all of Mexico. I promised my mom and
dad I would spend Christmas with them in 2020. But other than that I
don’t have a time limit.
Mollie:
What led to this drastic change?
Nick:
The thing that led me to this decision was being caught up in the
humdrum of everyday corporate life living in New York City. I
personally couldn’t take going to work every day to make money to
spend at a bar on the weekends with friends, over and over again. I
wanted to get more out of life.
Mollie:
What do you want to get out of life?
Nick:
I would like to teach people that money isn’t everything. It’s a
vehicle to get you to where you want to be. We’re all taught that we
need to go to school and get a job that pays well. Everyone wants a
raise and to earn more money. But the truth is that you most likely
make enough money and that money can actually make you more money but
your habits prevent that. People
look at my Instagram and ask me how I do this. I tell them I drive a
‘98 Chevy Blazer with a bed in it. You don’t need a lot of money to
do what I’m doing; you just need to change your habits. And that’s
the mark I want to leave. Money is great, but you don’t need to
exchange time to earn more. Other
than that
I would say I just want to be happy and meet amazing people all
around the world.
Mollie: What are your most prized beliefs
regarding minimalist lifestyle—the ideas you most want to spread?
Nick:
My most prized beliefs behind my minimalist lifestyle change is that
it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about you. I want to spread that
to everyone around. With social media nowadays, most people seem to
be in competition with people they don’t even know.
Mary Potter Kenyon is a grief counselor and the author of seven books, including Called to Be Creative and Refined By Fire: A Journey of Grief. She lives in Dubuque, Iowa. For more information, see MaryPotterKenyon.com.
Mollie:Have you ever significantly reorganized and decluttered your home? What led to the decision and what did you change?
Mary: In April 2018, I was
offered my dream job an hour from where I lived. I made the decision
to sell the four-bedroom, two-story house where my husband David and
I had raised the last four of our eight children. David had died in
2012 and my seventh child was poised to leave the nest, leaving me
with one daughter and a huge house. Not
only did I need to declutter in order to sell my house, the house I
purchased in my new town was 760 square feet. I had to do some
serious purging, with less than two months to do it.
I began by deciding which
furniture could come with me, and my heart sank when I realized my
four bookshelves, my huge solid oak desk and my
mother’s kitchen table would not fit. The owner of the house I was
buying agreed to leave a folding IKEA table in the kitchen, the only
kind of table that worked. Two living room chairs would need to be
sold. A beautiful closed cabinet that was filled with office supplies
and photo albums. A kitchen shelf. The one thing I knew had to come
with me was a shaker-style cabinet I’d inherited from my mother, but
it would need to be emptied of some of her things to make room for
the single shelf of books I would keep.
I went through closets of
clothing. As I pulled things off hangers, I priced those I thought
would sell. I even had a box of my husband’s shirts stashed away,
which my sister Joan agreed to take off my hands and make into
Christmas stockings for my children. I wasn’t just dealing with
stuff, I was dealing with memories, and I
shed tears through the process. I went
through thousands of books. The first two boxes sold for $150 at a
bookstore, alleviating the distress a little. By the time I held my
first garage sale, I’d whittled down my possessions drastically. The
most daunting task, though, was the paper:
a file cabinet and a trunk filled with letters, college papers,
photos, and even scrapbooks from high school. I handed my son a bag
filled with twenty daybooks (daily diaries)
to burn because I couldn’t bear to dispose of them myself.
After two garage sales, several trips to a thrift
store, and even filling my front lawn with items I advertised for
free on a local online giveaway board, I ended up with less than half
my original possessions. By then, it felt freeing to have dealt with
years of accumulated clutter—to have made decisions about which
things meant the most and gave me pleasure and joy when I looked at
them. I would come to regret only the loss of the desk and the
daybooks.
While I no longer have a
separate office, I do have my own space, a back room that spans the
entire width of the house and serves as both bedroom and office.
Everything in it was consciously chosen to survive the Great Purge of
2018. The bedroom portion is sparse: an end table and a twin
bed topped with a mockingbird quilt that matches the curtains.
Outside of a washer and dryer in the opposite far corner, the rest of
the large room is designed around the comfy brown recliner my
children gave me for Christmas. When I sit in it to write or read,
I’m surrounded by things that bring a smile to my face.
There is the Shaker-style cabinet I inherited from
my mother, filled with things I treasure: my collection of
autographed books, a hand-blown glass turtle my son Michael made, a
toy sheep from my childhood, and bricks my daughter Rachel painted to
look like the covers of my books. My grandmother’s trunk is topped
by one of Mom’s quilts and her hand-carved Saint Michael statue,
his sword upraised in regal glory.
Walls are adorned with paintings by my mother and daughter Emily, along with photographs taken by my son Dan, one framed and another on canvas. A rustic wooden rack is attached to one wall, the wire baskets holding stationery and greeting cards. Wooden letters with the cover designs of my six books on another wall spell the word “writer,” handmade by my daughter Elizabeth. Finally, there’s a book-themed lamp atop an end table Katie painted to look like book spines. I love my smaller space.
Here, an excerpt from the interviews section of the book.
ZURIE:
“We Have Two Big Rules in Our House”
Zurie
is 40 years old and has been with her partner for eight years.
Mollie:
What have some of your biggest disagreements as couple been about?
Zurie:
We don’t have children, just cats, which might be why our biggest
fight so far was about cats (except not really). Before that, our
biggest struggle was learning to grocery shop together without
murderous thoughts.
Mollie:
Tell me more about that.
Zurie:
It was a thing when we first moved in together. He works from home
and I was working in an office. We both dislike the task, so we do it
together (unless circumstances prevent it.)
I
made a comment a while back about two types of people (on a
spectrum): basically, planners and non-planners. My husband is
squarely a planner. Lists, schedules, plan of attack. I can (and do)
plan, but can also can make a quick decision just to get something
done.
So
basically, we had several things going wrong.
I’m
an introvert and being at the office all day exhausts me. He works
from home, so he’s excited to go out.
We
weren’t functioning off a list, so we were buying random things that
we did/didn’t need and still having to figure out dinners after.
We
both wanted to shop how we were used to shopping.
I
got mad at him for staring at stacks of American cheese for entirely
too long trying to determine the best price on something that I felt
didn’t matter. He challenged me when I just grabbed a gallon of milk.
“Why that
milk? Do you like it better? This one’s cheaper.”
After
several months and lots of sit-downs and me being mad, then him being
frustrated (not huge fights but intense talks), we’ve figured out and
refined our system:
I
frequently save recipes that I think we’ll enjoy that are healthy
enough for me and easy enough for him. We pick two for the week and
build a list off of that.
We
grocery shop on Sundays so I’m not tired and we have a date night
once a weekish so he gets out of the house. He has also finally,
just this summer, gotten a laptop to give himself the ability to
leave the house once in a while.
There
are brands I’m loyal to. When it’s time to pick up those, I tell
him to kick rocks off to the toilet paper aisle to find us the best
deal. I give in to him on the generic canned beans because I don’t
care and he lets me buy the expensive canned tomatoes without
argument.
It
works so much better now. We usually have as good a time as you can
at the grocery store. And I even stay quiet when he asks the clerk to
put the milk in bags (which is silly because the gallons have
handles!).
Mollie:
You seem like a pretty good problem solver. Do
you use these same negotiating skills in other areas of your
relationship?
Zurie:
We
don’t have to formally negotiate too often. We try and function as a
team so if one person is doing something, the other dives in to help.
We’ve got two big rules in our house:
Everyone
gets what they need.
You
have to ask for what you need.
Spats are usually due to me not being able to sort out what I’m feeling before I get crabby.
Mollie: I love those rules! The needs of one person can be dramatically different from the needs of another. Beautiful way to phrase this concept.
So what was the cat thing about?
Zurie: We fought about when to get a new cat after our last two girls died in the spring. I wanted to get a new one and he wasn’t ready.
Honestly, it was 100 percent me not slowing down to figure out what I was feeling so I could verbalize it. Eventually I just realized that I was in an enormous amount of pain and just wanted something to help. I was deeply disappointed that he wasn’t ready even though it was valid.
Once I worked through all that emotion, I was able to explain what was going on. I apologized and he listened and we compromised. We got new kitties sooner than he was ready for and later than I wanted, but they’re perfect.
Mollie: Is there something about your partner you have tried to change? What was your strategy? How well did it work?
Zurie: Sure, there are things we’ve tried to change about each other. He’s organized, but holy cow was his apartment filthy when he moved out. I’m clean, but completely disorganized. Before we moved in together, we talked a lot about chores and values. He sees the value in having things clean, though he just doesn’t notice it. I see the value in having things organized (being able to find my keys is amazing) but I’m not always as good about it as him.
I think we’ve both really tried to be patient with each other. There are times when I have to remind him that it’s okay if I haven’t put something back where it belongs because there’s a reason I didn’t or whatever. And I have 100 percent complained to myself after he does the dishes that he didn’t scrub down the stove. But I also know that criticizing will just make a person shut down, so I think a lot about “how much does this matter?” I’ve had to teach him how to clean the bathroom and the floors and the kitchen and the reasons behind it. He really gives it a good-faith effort, so I let go of the fact that he doesn’t see the dirt and is always surprised that it’s time to clean. It just doesn’t matter.
Mollie: Can you think of a time you became overly defensive in an argument? Tell me the story.
Zurie: When we first met, he used to tell a joke, then say, “Get it? It’s funny because …” and I used to feel like he thought I was so stupid or not funny if he felt he had to explain every joke to me. My dad was really hard on my brother and me and would ask us if we were stupid whenever we did something wrong, so he was really stepping on a land mine he didn’t know was there. I finally told him one night how much it hurt my feelings. I was angry and asked flat-out if he thought I was an idiot. He was horrified. Apparently, this was just something he had always said as part of a joke. He thought it was funny and had no idea that I took it personally.
While I was relieved that I was misinterpreting, I also made it clear that I was never going to be okay with it. He’d done it for so long that he wasn’t sure he could just stop. So we decided that he would make an honest attempt to say it less and I would make an honest attempt to let it roll off my back if he did say it. And honestly, I haven’t heard it in years.
Mollie: Do you think it’s important to apologize even when you weren’t exactly in the wrong, or do you save your apologies for the important stuff?
Zurie: We tend to apologize to each other when we feel it’s warranted. Honestly, we don’t fight dirty or often so I don’t feel that I’ve had to apologize when I wasn’t exactly wrong.
Mollie: Generally speaking, how much do you enjoy partnership? What do you like about it?
Zurie: I love being married. We haven’t reached a point yet where I’ve considered it difficult or a hardship. I really enjoy being on a team with him. I can be exactly who I am at any given moment with him. I can be ridiculous and silly or sad or a big baby and he understands and loves it. I love doing the same for him. I love hearing him sing songs to the cats or laugh at his podcasts while he works. I am so delighted and thankful to be with him and he seems to feel the same way. We married late-ish—I was thirty-seven and he was forty—so we’d gone through those mid-twenties struggles already and had started establishing our own values when we met. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Mollie: Do you have any ongoing arguments that can’t seem to be resolved, even with your great communication skills?
Zurie: Not that I can think of, so definitely nothing major. Things are tough right now for us, but not between us. I’m lucky: he’s funny, responsible, hard working, compassionate and loyal. We make a good team.
Here, an excerpt from the interviews section of the book.
CAL: “Finally, Our House Feels Like a Home”
Cal,
age forty-four, has four children with his wife of twenty years.
Mollie:
Is there an argument that just keeps coming up between you and your
wife?
Cal:
Many of the long-running arguments that we have seen to be centered
around the lack of defined roles in our relationship. We are both
products of the feminist movement—women aren’t going to be forced
to be at home taking care of children and cooking dinner! So the
systems of our household are perpetually left leaderless as both
adults strive for success and validation outside our home.
This
lack of definition has plagued us since the days we just started
living together and couldn’t agree on who did what chores and who was
responsible for what. It’s rather embarrassing to say that we still
run across these problems twenty years later. At least a few
generations ago they had one person who gathered resources and one
person who saw that those resources were well managed in producing a
family. Now we are both responsible for everything, and that leads to
chaos and frustration for us.
Mollie:
Can
you give me more specifics? Which chores are still up for grabs?
Which chores have you come to an agreement on?
Cal: We have written out three
sheets of information for the family. One sheet gives our vision,
values, expectations and measures of success. It’s funny that after
being married over twenty years we are still working out what our
vision for our home is. We’ve had other vision statements in the
past, but they seem to have a finite life span. The vision needs to
be renewed and revived periodically; for us, it seems like we can
agree on one for about two years.
The next sheet shows the
systems we are working on to make the household run more smoothly. We
started with agreeing on twenty minutes of cleaning and that’s going
really well thus far (maybe for the past two months). We’re still
working on figuring out the rest.
Finally, we have a chores
sheet. This is laminated (yes, we have a laminator and every family
needs one!). We assign and check off the chores using a dry erase
marker. There are six of us, and six people cleaning a single area
isn’t going to work, so we have two or three areas separated out into
five days (our goal is to clean five days per week). We schedule the
cleaning via group text message at least two hours ahead of time.
Then we assemble at the table, pick a day, assign the jobs, start the
timer, start some music, and clean for twenty minutes. If someone
finishes early, they get re-assigned to another job until we have all
worked for twenty minutes. We clean with whoever is home at the time,
even if it’s only a couple of us.
This cleaning system has
finally gotten our house to feel like a home. We all now have clean,
paired socks and vacuumed hallways.
Bedroom cleaning is handled by
a different system of weekly room inspections.
Mollie: Any other ongoing
arguments?
Cal: Nothing is jumping to mind. My wife and I are pretty low-key
people, but we have still managed to have some pretty turbulent times
in our marriage. This point isn’t one of them. Our kids are now 18,
16, 14 and 11. They are old enough that they are becoming
self-sufficient, but young enough not to realize how clueless they
are in the real world. It’s a frustrating time. I think we’ve been
handling it well, overall, but have been far from perfect.
Mollie: Finally, how much do you enjoy your marriage? Is it worth
the hardship?
Cal: I do enjoy my marriage. The sex is amazing, and that’s a large
part of male happiness. Consistent access to a female is success in
an evolutionary sense. Beyond just meeting physical needs, my wife is
a wonderful friend who I still enjoy having dinner with or
accompanying to one of our children’s events. I made a really good
decision before we started dating: I had just had a mediocre dating
experience with a pretty red-haired girl, who treated me like a
distraction. Based on that experience, I decided that the next person
I was going to spend my time with would be one who I enjoyed being
with. My
wife is remarkable in that I was always sorry
when the evening came to an end; there never seemed to be enough
time.
Twenty-three years later, I still think that was a
wise decision. I haven’t had the most exciting life from the outside,
but I’ve enjoyed most minutes because I made a really good choice. I
married an honest friend who I really enjoyed being around. Fights
come and go, but we still like having dinner, watching a movie or
doing a project together. Even when we are at our worst, there has
always been that underlying layer of friendship and enjoyment that we
fell back on. It’s a pretty amazing connection.
Meet a man who rents out his apartment to fund his world travels, a woman who got out from under a huge debt by selling her belongings, and several experienced home organizers.
Meet a man who rents out his apartment to fund his world travels, a woman who got out from under a huge debt by selling her belongings, and several experienced home organizers.
In addition, currently I have several Audible Audiobook versions to give away. Email me at mollie at mollieplayer.com if interested and I will try to get one of them to you.
Meet a man who rents out his apartment to fund his world travels, a woman who got out from under a huge debt by selling her belongings, and several experienced home organizers.
Meet a man who rents out his apartment to fund his world travels, a woman who got out from under a huge debt by selling her belongings, and several experienced home organizers.
Meet a man who rents out his apartment to fund his world travels, a woman who got out from under a huge debt by selling her belongings, and several experienced home organizers.
In addition, currently I have several Audible Audiobook versions to give away. Email mollie at mollieplayer.com if interested and I will try to get one of them to you.
