What Lentil Soup Taught Me About Marriage

As my long-time readers know, I love to scout for life lessons in the most mundane of places, such as elevators, foreign countries, and airplanes. Over the weekend, I stumbled over such a lesson while making a pot of lentil soup. For you to understand the lesson, however, I must give you some back-story.

Not too many years ago, I used to hate to cook. I think this is because, during those years, I used to follow recipes.

When I attempted to follow recipes, I always ended up frustrated, usually because I could not find a specific ingredient or just didn’t understand the instructions. The entire time I was cooking, I would worry that I’d screwed up the dish. Sometimes, due to the self-fulfilling prophecy effect, I WOULD screw up the dish. For instance, I’d get so rattled that I’d accidentally leave something in the oven and forget about it.

Something about parenthood changed all of this. I don’t know precisely what it was. I think it was a combination of the fact that I just stopped caring with the fact that I was too sleep deprived to read a recipe correctly. Whatever it was, I dramatically lowered my standards. Rather than shooting for gourmet orgasm-on-a-plate perfection, I instead aimed for “something edible that doesn’t give us all e coli.”

And so I just started throwing slop together. At first, these creations tasted like slop. Then I went to Italy and learned about the goodness of olive oil and garlic. Now my sloppy creations taste pretty good.

Enter the lentil soup. My husband requested it. It’s one of his favorite soups. I love my husband so I told him I would make it this weekend.

I did not look for a recipe. I just thought about lentil soup and what might go in it, and then I went to the store and I bought a bunch of stuff that I figured one would put into lentil soup.

I did not buy lentils.

Lentils obviously should go in lentil soup, whether one is following a recipe or not. I knew this. I didn’t buy them because I thought we had some. As it turns out, we only had about a quarter cup of lentils. I wasn’t sure if that was enough to make lentil soup since I wasn’t following a recipe and didn’t really know how many lentils I needed. I decided to just wing it and see what would happen. This is roughly what I put in the soup:

• Some olive oil
• A whole large onion, chopped
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 1 shallot, chopped
• 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• A bunch of chopped fresh oregano and rosemary
• 3 carrots, sliced

I sautéed all of that. Then I added a bunch of water and a large can of chopped tomatoes. Then I added 3 chicken thighs. I brought it all to a boil. Then I simmered it for a long time. Then I added the lentils and 3 quartered red potatoes that had been sitting around for a while and were starting to sprout buds and really needed to be eaten. At some point I removed the chicken thighs and pulled the meat off the bone and added it back into the soup. I also added some salt every now and then. And at the end I realized we had some cabbage that was about to wilt, so I chopped that and tossed it in, too.

Let me tell you: I enjoyed every hour that I stood in front of that soup pot. I hummed. I tasted. I smelled. I felt young.

It was every bit as enjoyable as going to the spa and getting a hot stone massage.

Except better.

I served the soup with fresh Parmesan cheese on top.

My husband sat before his lentil soup. He took a spoonful. “This is good,” he said. “What kind of soup is it?”

“There are a few lentils in it,” I said. “I made it because you asked me to.”

“It’s lentil soup?” he asked.

“Well, it’s lentil-chicken-potato-onion-cabbage-carrot-garlic soup, but we can call it lentil-inspired soup I suppose,” I said.

He said he liked it, whatever it was called.

Now for the marriage lesson. Can you guess what it is? Think about it. You might come up with a different lesson for all I know, and yours might be even more insightful than mine.

But here’s mine.

There was a time when I treated my husband like a dish I was trying to create, and I obsessively followed recipes (marriage advice) in order to get him to turn out the way I wanted. This, my friends, was not fun. I was often frustrated by the recipes—because I sometimes didn’t understand them. Sometimes the recipes didn’t quite seem right for us. Other times they seemed foreign or silly or just wrong.

And while they all generated some results, the results weren’t always predictable. For instance, one hugging exercise promised that I would feel a deep connection to my husband. Yet when I tried this exercise I felt one thing and it was this: bored.

Eventually I stopped following the marriage recipes precisely. I began creating my own signature marriage. I got creative. After all, not a single marriage improvement book has ever suggested I get a bikini wax to save my marriage. None of them suggested taking a vacation without my husband, either.

But those ideas seemed interesting to me, so I tried them, and I tried them without an attachment to the end result. I just decided to see where they might lead us. I tried them with as open a mind as a person can have.

This not only enriched my marriage, it also allowed me to enjoy the process. No longer was it a stressful nail biting experience. Sure, the end result isn’t necessarily predicable, but nothing in life is.

And while I’m sometimes surprised by this approach, I’m never bored.

I’m not saying that you should all stop following all expert marriage advice. After all, I have a book and there’s some marriage advice in it and I would like you all to buy and read it. I’d also like you to continue to read this blog because I like all of you and enjoy reading your comments. No, I’m not saying that at all. I am saying, however, that you make it yours. No one piece of advice works for all marriages. Some tips will work better for you than others. You might find that an unconventional approach works best. Or you might find that traditional advice works, along with some advice that no one has ever put in a marriage book or blog. Make it yours. Own it. And have fun. It’s your marriage after all.

UPDATES

* I had a traffic spike over the weekend, which brought many newcomers to the site. You might have noticed that a small percentage of the newcomers didn’t get what the site was about and left some comments on the site that could be hurtful to others. I’m guessing that this will happen more and more — especially as I continue to do media publicity about my book. Please refrain from responding to such anger and negativity if you can. It just creates a vicious cycle. Instead, I’d appreciate it if you could bring such comments to my attention. Then I can decide how best to deal with them in order to keep the discussion we all have here enlightening, safe, and nurturing. Thanks!

* I was quoted in this article about Why Women Cheat on Bossip.com.

* I’ll be on Mom TV’s “Life Simplified” Tuesday (tomorrow) at noon EST. Please tune in.

* I wrote this article for FoxNews.com called The Art of the Throw Down.

* Real women, including me, share what makes them melt.

* I’m quoted in this Match.com article about what I learned from my parent’s marriage.