Marriage rules without ever explicitly mentioning them.

I have never really been able to fathom an old saying that goes

"What loves, teases each other",

because I have lacked the living practice to do so.

I got together with my husband when we were just in our early forties.
I find it difficult to express adequately what he means to me without exaggerating or idealising him.

In fact, especially after the first infatuation wore off, I often saw him as stupid, stoic, overestimating himself or illusory. We fought with each other, as all couples do (not, that I see anything 'normal' in it but it's a fact). I attribute much of the reason that we didn't break up in the face of these struggles to his very stoicism that I disliked so much. Just pretending "nothing happened" even though I had insulted, attacked and mercilessly confronted him with his worst moments. He let me starve on his long arm more than once. How I hated him in those phases.

One episode, after I got furiously mad at him,

and we didn't see each other for several days, and I thought of breaking up with him, sending him emails to which he didn't react, he suddenly stood in front of my door. What did I do? I simply, wordlessly invited him in. It was strange. First all this anger and then he comes over and I reject any thought of separation. We went on like that for quite a while.

When I expressed that he didn't seem to give a damn about what I said to him and that he retreated to his ivory tower, this prompted him to respond: "No, that's not true. I take what you say to heart and I think about it."

And I: "That's nice for you, but you don't let me take part in this reflection and so it's rather as if you always settle everything only with yourself and then when you return from your enclave, everything is already decided. How am I supposed to know that what I said affects you, moves you, if you don't show it? What use is it to me if you say that when you were alone you paced, you were enraged, if you withhold such wrath from me?"

And he: "Are you really ready to see and feel that fury?"

Whereupon I became still. Was I ready?
Something else, unsaid, was in the room.

He knew about my past as the child of an angry father, we had often talked about our childhood. He assumed that his anger would remind me of my father's. Not knowing, or not being able to be sure, that I could not fear him from the bottom of my heart and therefore reject him if he went out of his skin.

And really, I had to ask myself

whether I wasn't challenging myself too much, like a child who calls out "Catch me if you can!", and is scandalised when it finds that the other person not only has no trouble catching it, but can also overpower it. As long as this is not acted out in a playful manner but becomes deadly serious, it jeopardizes the relationship.

You see, if he wouldn't have answered with a question and would have said instead: "It's because I want you to be protected from my rage", my answer would probably have been: "If you already are aware of this, you need not be angry in the first place". A statement, born out of my thinking but not imagining. Because he never acted furious towards me, I was not able to imagine him as a raging and violent man.

Through my husband, I realized that

words actually don't have power if one does not give them power.

I mean it in the sense of "how long does the impact of a sentence last in my mind and heart?", and not that words cannot hurt or provoke me in the given moment (and given, it always is). Which they certainly can.

It depends on how long I let them be effective.
Because they are effective, I can decide to embrace this effectiveness to the fullest. Only to let it go thereafter.

A Play it became

I realized that I can decide whether I play fiercely or sincerely.

After I - somehow - have embraced the matter, and because of doing that letting go of it as a consequence, this put me ever so often in the stance of playing it loose from my hips.

I went about to tease my man, rather than making it so serious, as if he has to realize indeed (!) that he gets in trouble!
The moment I have grasped the thing, what trouble could that be? What threat does my man have at hand, really, and vice versa?

The living practice to tease

It's not something I necessarily learned.

My husband offered himself to me as a training ground and partner. Of course, he didn't tell me so, because if he had told me that he was offering himself to me as someone who would give me an opportunity to mature and learn how to deal with provocation, that would have been an anticipatory provocation for which I would have immediately closed myself off, as it would have seemed arrogant, conceited and inappropriate.
If it just stands in the room as an opportunity in which I have faith, it's different. This wise act outweighed so many other stupid ones.

I assume that it may not have been as crystal clear to my husband himself as I am writing here now, but in a certain way influenced the foreground thoughts in his ulterior motives. In my opinion, he only has achieved it because he had understood certain important things in life before I had, and acts according to them without making a serious "I am so wise"-fuss about it. If he does and that happens as well, we have disharmony.

This became like an open secret now between us.

What does that mean in practical terms?

Well, my husband annoys me every day, many times. Deliberately now. For we have agreed on the rules we established between us, without actually having spoken about "rules" at all.

We interact not with the intention of seriously annoying each other, but un-seriously. To offer ourselves a gym mat on which I can exercise (which puts him to exercising as well).

At first (five or six years or longer, who knows?), I still fell for it

and got mad or sad, justified myself even before he accused me of anything, after each of these teasers, or else when it was I myself who had given the pitch for such a tease, which my husband did not let pass without a chance.

Like this:
"The flowers need watering."
My husband: "Should WE water the flowers or would you like me to water them?" Me: "What is this now? I just said that the flowers need to be watered."
My husband: "Yes, but you don't say who should do it. So I ask you, do you want me to do it, because otherwise you would do it yourself and you didn't even mention it?" Argh!

"It's so cold in here."
"Would you like me to turn the heating on for you, dear?"
(me, embarrassed, as if I were a child who couldn't decide for herself to make the room warm. Alternately feeling caught acting like a princess on a pea).

"The fridge is empty."
"Well, then it's time you went shopping."
(Me, indignant at this cheeky reply).

"The eggs didn't turn out." (My body language signals dissatisfaction while at the same time wanting my husband to praise the failed breakfast egg I cooked).
His reply: "That's right. They are much too hard. You have to do better."

And so on it goes. He comments on me almost at every thing I do and every thing I say. He also nags a lot. I am under steady cheeky commentary.

Daily life gives us plenty of ordinary occasions.

Now, what happened over time?
Simply I got used to it and because of this constant training, repetition in act and counteract, in having been teased over and over and over again, I learned to tease back. Which, to my very first shame (!) I realized that in my past I had taken those nasty situations - which I see now as chances - way too seriously and countered by "You don't say this to me! Don't boss me!", "You are stupid yourself!" "Don't think I am dumb!"

Did I change my words in the meantime?

Not at all. When we let teasing happen, I also say
"You are stupid." And my man: "No, you are." And I: "No, you are more stupid than me." And he: "What? Did you say anything? And I: "Can't hear you."

Only this time the attitude behind this is different. It's light hearted and what it reveals is the very stupidity behind any accusation of what the other is or is not, does or does not do.

We play the game of one-upmanship.

We play
"I know better than you know."
"I am better than you are." "No, wrong, I am the best." "Pfft. I am the best of the best!"
"I am more humble than you are."
and so on.

When we visit my brother

and he watches us acting upon our daily doses of tease he gets the joke instantly. Our quarrels became a habit as much as having breakfast.

We are served with countless chances for training. If I managed to be teasing but my attitude was not pure, and I still kept the notion to talk to an enemy, the practice was going to show me. I was dissatisfied with what back feeding I received from my man, despite my cheekiness (which was contaminated with non-joy).

An older relative told me how his mother once said to his wife:

"Mina, if yer crack the whip, yer get dirty yerself".

What other than a good laugh was my reaction?

In times I forget to be playful, like when I want to avoid at all costs to "look bad", then it all the more happened that I did. Same, when I tried to play it too cool. It made me looking too eager to be (seen as) cool.

I expect to continue to play the game of life with my husband. This will not spare us from non-joy though. Now, that is stating the obvious, right?

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picture source: my own.

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