I can sit here at this computer and I could, if I felt like it, talk to the students up here. It's obvious to them what I'm doing. I'm writing. That's not a secret. I'm hanging out on Facebook and Pinterest and listening to music on my Amazon Cloud Player. But I don't have to maximize the screen and make the letters really big to allow them to read from afar. I don't need to expand every melancholy quote or filtered photos of puppies on Pinterest so they can see it too.
And when I'm in other public places, ordering coffee at a Starbucks or buying deodorant at Target or checking my mail box in the lobby. I never holler at other Starbucks customers, "I'm buying this coffee because I stayed up all night watching Golden Girls!" When at Target I don't tell the girl at the check-out line that my last deodorant made my armpits itchy. And when I check the mail I don't wave to the security officers smoking near the door and tell them I'm waiting for my electric bill, because it's overdue and I lost the first invoice and needed another one sent. I don't shout my every action to strangers--out of respect for myself, for the people I love, and because it's simply not anyone else's business.
One of the reasons I sounded, perhaps, so indignant in my last blog post is because I have a big problem with bloggers who tell their secrets to the world. I understand, to an extent, that these secrets can help people. Quite a few bloggers, women specifically, have written inspiring things which spurred me into a new perspective or state of mind. Usually they're talking about themselves. The blogs I'm talking about are "wife" blogs, "mom" blogs, "Christian woman" blogs.
Most of them are good--so good! But then they write, "My husband and I had an argument today." Rather than explain how they overcame the conflict, she describes numerous details about the argument that don't quite seem relevant and a minute later I am angry with her husband, a man I don't know and shouldn't judge.
I understand, it's a marriage blog, you should talk about marriage. And writing from experience proves to be the best and most effective method. Marriage bloggers should write about arguing and not arguing and finances and parents and all that good stuff. But we can comprehend the message, we can see her points and learn from the situation without knowing all the details of her marriage. ("Her" being any random wife/mom/Christian woman blogger.)
It might sound very old fashioned of me, but the reason this sort of "airing of the dirty laundry" makes me so recklessly frustrated is that it shows very little respect for men--and for your husband. It is my firm belief that the feminist movement and the media have made it extremely acceptable to degrade, disregard, dismiss, and generally disrespect men and therefore our husbands. Pick a commercial you've seen or heard recently--if it has a man and a woman in it, the man will almost always be the less intelligent, less respected, less "with it" individual. But I digress. That's a topic for another day.
The point I'm attempting to get across is that my husband is worth respecting. I don't want to use him, our marriage, our problems (and yes, they exist!) to gain popularity in the social media.
I love my life. My "whatever." Like I said last time. I love my marriage. I love my husband.
I may occasionally open up about my life, let you in on some secrets, show you the darker side of Katherine Megan Foutz Voss, and do things like tell you my full name. I may very well reveal things that make you uncomfortable because life is gritty and difficult and heartbreaking. Life is uncomfortable. But I don't have to say a thing about my marriage, or about my husband.
Marriage--my marriage--is sacred.
That's how God created marriage. Everything I experience as a wife is mine to keep, I am not required to share despite how often I might actually do it. I could, with all justification, keep my entire marriage a secret from the world because it was created for me and my husband, not for the world. And in the same way, how I feel about my husband isn't necessary information for the social network, especially if that information contains negativity or complaining. As wives, we are prone to complaining about husbands--we've been doing it since the beginning of husbands and wives. He left the toilet seat up, he fed the dog Cheetos, he forgot it was your 2-and-a-half-months-iversary. Whatever. We get together and gripe about the things our husbands do because it's hard for women to let their guards down, and sharing complaints about common ground (husbands being that common ground) is much easier. We don't have to be vulnerable if we're just complaining about our Mister.
So my entire blog post, about what I want, was sort of fueled by that. I find it so discouraging that bloggers are required to be "new" and "edgy", and that often times we're just complaining about things to become popular and relevant. I don't want to complain about Joseph to make you like me.
Still. I just want to be. I hope it all makes sense, if you're reading this.
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