Archive for the 'Relationships' Category
Love and Marriage…. it’s not just an old Frank Sinatra song.
So today is mine and John’s anniversary. Two years ago today, we were married in a beautiful church in New Orleans with everyone we love around us. So much has happened since then.
We are phasing out of our newlywed years and getting down to the nitty gritty of what this married life is all about. Yes, we are best friends. Yes, we know one another better than anyone ever has or ever will. Yes, we make sacrifices for one another. But those of you who are married know the deeper issues; those days when you want to kill one another followed by a love stronger than you ever thought possible for someone other than your children; those days when you realize you are actually a better quality of person because of your other and vice versa; those days when you can look at each other and realize that the two of you have built an entire world consisting of children and pets and careers and homes and experiences that are strong and exists solely because of your love. Marriage is being able to throw a container of cottage cheese at your husband, thus starting a cottage cheese war, while you are both sobbing incoherent mutterings about everything being the other’s fault because you are both so exhausted from the eight-week-old baby hanging off your breast or in his tired arms at 2am and the five-year-old playing shoot ‘em up cowboy as loudly as he can for attention in the midst of a sexual drought that neither one of you can remedy due to the aforementioned state of exhaustion. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.
I found a poem about a year ago and wasn’t smart enough to write down the author — it is so beautifully written that the creator deserves full credit and accolades. It says it better than I ever could, so enjoy. John, this one’s for you:
Anniversary
That you and I, I and you,
this twenty-fifth year after
you stamped your foot, shattered
the glass, and friends, so many dead
or forgotten, applauded in a ballroom
long abandoned, twenty-five years
of Monday good-byes, monthly wars
with stacks of bills, bags of garbage,
frozen gutters, nights filled
with pink medicines, fevered cheeks
on shoulders, the other hand reaching
for the pediatrician’s call, termites
chewing, and hours waiting
for the door to open, holding
our own daughter’s head vomiting
beer into our own leaking toilet,
that now, as mirrors mark the descent
of breasts, the tub catches silvered
pubic hair and our eyes wear pouches
and hoods, as though expecting rain,
that you and I could smell the salt
of each other, coming together after
long absence, silent, still, staring up
at the darkening ceiling, naked in a house
with empty, orderly bedrooms, the last
of dead roses and discarded boyfriends
tossed out, your hand touching mine,
our breathing slowing,
the wonder of it all.
Posted in Marriage, Relationships | No Comments »
Don’t Date Him Girl
There’s an amusing (yet useful) website called DontDateHimGirl.com. The website is designed to help women stay away from man-scum. They have a Find A Cheater search engine that will give detailed reports on infamous male cheaters. Included with each search result is a fine description of why the cheater should never date a girl again. Many of the descriptions also include picture of the notorious cheating bastard.
There’s plenty to get and do at DontDateHimGirl.com other than finding a cheater. You can also buy fancy DontDateHimGirl.com clothes, read featured articles for dating tips, and keep track of what’s current via their blog.
Thanks to Brittney at Nashvile Is Talking for the heads up!
Posted in Dating | No Comments »
Family Ties
I think I have finally gotten over worrying about becoming my mother. It took me almost three decades, but I am (almost) there. I have spent a lot of time wondering where this common disquiet amongst women comes from. I think I have become more interested now because I have daughter. I would be horrified if she ever felt like being able to relate to me, or making some similar decisions in her life, was the end of her world. I got a little insight this weekend — my Aunt Rose and Uncle Bob came to visit.
Aunt Rose has three sons, no daughters. I am about the closest thing she has ever had to a daughter — she and I are pretty tight. We talked a lot about my mom and my relationship with her. We spent many (many…) hours talking about family history, the good and the bad, and really got to the bones of what our family is about. I talked to her about how I and just about every girl I know has an innate fear of becoming like their mother — of repeating histories and making the same mistakes as the women in their family. I brought this up to her because it seems this emotion isn’t shared with women of her generation — at least it isn’t with her and my mom. They seem to work their hardest to be exactly like their mother, even though they know that she wasn’t happy for a lot of her life. As she talked about her mother, I realized it was pretty complicated — you have to know the long a drawn out history of my family, which I won’t delve into, to really understand. But the bigger picture is this: for them, they are, in some strange way, trying to make their mother’s life work out long after her death, hence the urge to recreate her emotional choices. It almost seemed a duty — which made me wonder why I don’t feel that same duty to my mother. This led to another conversation with a girlfriend of mine — we both have wonderfully, crazy, brilliant mothers whom we love more than life itself, we just don’t want to ever be identical to.
We talked about the inevitableness of some of it and how we have already made decisions that set us apart and have taken us on a different journey. What we realized was that we simply wanted to have the ability to define ourselves without any preemption. We didn’t want to be sized up based on what the women in our clan before us had done or not done. As younger women we had yearned for a clean slate. Thankfully, none of us are born with one. The older we get the more we realize that if we are anything close to the greatness that we have in mind for ourselves, it will be because of all the history and layers of the women in our family - not in spite of.
Posted in Adolescence, Daily Living, Parenting, Relationships | 1 Comment »
It’s Valentine’s Day. Ho Hum.
While we were getting ready for bed last night my husband, with foamy toothbrush in mouth, says to me “So, do you wanna just go in on a Valentine’s Day presents for each other — you know, just get one thing for both of us?”. I stopped, face full of creamy white face cleaner and hair pushed back in a headband circa 1982, and stared at him with a look that I’m quite sure said “Only if you want to die by the hand’s of a woman wearing a headband circa 1982″. I got angry and didn’t say anything. I slumped off to bed and made a big deal about it.
I never get mad about these things, I don’t know why I did last night. I guess I just wanted to wake up to a surprise of chocolates and roses for once — all the hackneyed things that intelligent women never admit to really wanting because it makes them seem ridiculous and trite. I wanted to be spoiled for once.
I got over it (a little) and we kissed and said goodnight. When I woke up this morning, my usual cup of coffee was waiting for me on the nightstand and my husband was in his regular post in the kitchen packing our son’s lunch for school. I pulled myself out of bed, went and got the baby and sat in the kitchen, drinking my coffee and watching my husband.
This was my Valentine’s Day present. His wonderful presence and his constant daily reminders of how much he loves me, us — the perfectly made cup of coffee, with just the right amount of cream put in as only he knows how; the dishes that always get washed without even the slightest involvement from me; the beautiful way he cares for our children, drawing them pictures for their lunchboxes so that they, in the midst of the crowded, loud cafeteria, don’t feel like we aren’t together (at least a little) at a meal time..
As cheesy as it sounds, I realized this morning that every day is a pretty rare gift. I’m a lucky girl, no matter how you look at it. Valentine’s Day does get a bit Ho Hum when you get married, but for all the right reasons I think.
Posted in Marriage, Relationships | 1 Comment »
Wedding Bell Blisters
My only girl cousin is getting married in less than two months. She is taking the whole wedding planning event a lot better than I did. She is excited and eager and wants it to be the fantasy that all us girls are raised to believe it should be. Much to my mother’s dismay, I dealt with it by hiding and arguing a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to be marrying my husband — it wasn’t the union I was concerned about as much as the “event” planned around it. Somehow the idea of a wedding never made me glow with passion or teeter with girlish excitement. It actually had quite an adverse reaction. However, I am a girl whose parents are, for the most part, rather catholic and uber-traditional. Scratch that — my dad offered me a rather large chunk of money to elope to Las Vegas but it would have, truly, been the death of my mother. She and my father eloped at the tender ages of 18 & 19, never even had so much as a celebration dinner and, thus, had been planning her — er — I mean my wedding since the day I was born. She wanted each guest to have little bells to ring, I said no. I wanted to dance out of the church to Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” 
just like they dance out of the bar and down the street in the video shaking their shoulders and squinting their eyes like they meant business, she said no. We just didn’t see eye to eye on anything. I eventually just reliquished most control and made ammends where I could. Her porcelain, generic groom and bride wedding cake topper was sneakily traded for a golden male roller skating trophy figure and a female buddhist deity named Tara. We made “corrections” where we could, but ultimately, it ended up being my mom’s dream come true. And ultimately, that’s ok. When it is all said and done, the thing I remember most — after the amazing look on my husband’s face after they pronounced us husband and wife — was my mom seeming more proud of her family than ever. She was the mother of the bride and she looked beautiful and all that she had planned, the trimmings and trappings as they say, looked beautiful. It was just as she had meant for it to be, save a few touches courtesy of me. She earned that and I am happy that I could oblige.
For you ladies out there in the midst of planning the biggest day of your, or your mother’s, life — there are several wedding resources to help you through the madness and revelry.
Posted in Marriage, Relationships | No Comments »
Looking For A Date Often Involves Familiar Faces
New research from the University of Liverpool suggests that when people look for a potential partner, they’re usually drawn towards people who have familiar looking faces.
The research team found that people find familiar faces more attractive than unfamiliar ones. They also found that the human brain holds separate images of both male and female faces and reacts to them differently depending on how familiar it is with their facial features.
The research team plans further research to determine why the brain makes a link between familiarity and attractiveness. They currently believe that certain familiar facial features send a message of safety and approachability - both of which are desirable traits.
Posted in Dating, Relationships | No Comments »
Will The Jerk-O-Meter Help Relationships?
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed what they call the Jerk-O-Meter. It’s software intended for mobile phones that tells the caller if the person on the other line is paying attention to their conversation.
Anmol Madan, the project lead for the Jerk-O-Meter, claims that the software is intended to improve relationships, not end them. The researchers see it as a way to keep people truly engaged.
I have serious reservations about this technology. If implemented, this software may override simple human intuition, and decide through it’s computer calculations that the person on the other line is a jerk - even if they aren’t.
I can’t help but remember the airplane scene in the movie Anger Management. Adam Sandler’s character was being verbally accused by an airline stewardess, because she thought he was being unruly, even though he wasn’t. Eventually, there came a point where he started to get verbally defensive, and was then attacked by a federal marshal and arrested.
The Jerk-O-Meter will create defensiveness for defensiveness’ sake. If the software tells Caller 1 that Caller 2 is being a jerk, Caller 1 may say something to Caller 2 about it. How should Caller 2 react? If most people were Caller 2, they would react defensively, especially if they don’t think they’re being a jerk - as the computer suggests they are.
Anmol Madan and the researchers at M.I.T. have a dream of bringing people closer together. Unfortunately, their Jerk-O-Meter dream is a pipe dream.
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Biggest Bathroom Pet Peeves Among Newlyweds
Getting married and sharing a bathroom is a big deal for many newlyweds (those married for two years or less). A recent survey conducted on behalf of Roto-Rooter Plumbing and Drain Service (yes, a plumbing company), came up with the top 5 bathroom pet peeves among newlyweds.
- Leaves dirty clothes on the floor (47 percent)
- Leaves sink a mess (44 percent)
- Never cleans the toilet bowl (37 percent)
- Never replaces the toilet paper (37 percent)
- Tries to have conversations while I’m using the toilet (30 percent)
I qualify for at least a few of these things, or at least I did during my first years of marriage. However, I was surprised to see leaving the toilet seat up missing from the top ten.
Posted in Marriage, Relationships | No Comments »
Why Do Couples Seek Divorce Late In Life?
Margaret Dickson in Up and Coming Magazine reports:
Several of my children’s friends have married in their early 20s, and I have looked at these beautiful young people filled with so much hope and so much promise and wondered whether they will still be together when they reach their statistical life expectancies in their 70s and 80s. I hope so, but I also know that as they work on their careers and building their families, they will also have to work on keeping up with each other.
Posted in Divorce and Separation, Relationships | No Comments »
More college-educated women adopt husband’s surname
Nicholas Zamiska of Everything Michigan reports:
In a reversal of a three-decade-long trend toward more married women keeping their own names, increasing numbers of college-educated women are taking their husbands’ surnames, according to a Harvard University study.
Posted in Marriage, Relationships | No Comments »
