An Ugly Divorce

I have avoided writing about Jon and Kate Gosselin. I don't find it to be particularly interesting and more importantly I feel badly for their children.

I haven't any false ideas about marriage. I do not believe that every relationship is made to last and I am not of the opinion that people should stay married just for the children.

Anyhoo, I signed onto CNN and saw that Jon Gosselin says that he despises his wife and decided to give my two cents. I couldn't tell you if she is the worst wife ever or the best. I don't watch their show, but when I read that I got irritated.

Irritated because two adults decided to become reality television stars, decided to chronicle their lives on television. That is all fine and good, but now they are chronicling what appears to be a very ugly divorce on camera.

Now they are placing their children in a terrible position. They shouldn't have to worry about strangers asking if their mom is a bitch or their dad is a jerk. They shouldn't be able to have the end of their parent's marriage immortalized on camera. It is wrong.

Save The Last Dance For Me- 75 Years of Marriage

Not so long ago I explained my belief in astrology. It is very simple. If I like my horoscope than I believe wholeheartedly in it and if I don't I write it off as being nothing more than superstitious bunk. I do the same thing for most of the new agey stuff.

Don't tell me that if I ask the universe to give me a gift it will come true. Because if that was true than back in high school good old Ann Stacey would have been really attentive to my needs. But I digress.

This afternoon I saw something that might have made me question my beliefs a bit. This afternoon I watched two 95 year-olds dance themselves back in time. And then I saw them kiss in a way that made me remember that Sarah was older than my grandmother when she gave birth to Isaac.

Great googly moogly, grandma and grandpa kissed each other like they really meant it. If nothing else they managed to make my son ask why grown ups like to kiss so much.

I told him not to worry about it and to watch them dance because he might not get to see it again to which he replied, "are they going to die?" I rolled my eyes in mock exasperation and said yes. For a moment he stared at me and they I told him that I didn't expect it to happen today.

But the truth is that this might have been the last dance and that makes me a bit sad. My grandparents are one of the constants of my entire life. For forty years they have always been a part of it. I have seen them dance at untold numbers of family parties, weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs etc. They always spent time together out on the dance floor. It occurred to me that I am not sure when I last saw them dance.

I hadn't realized until that moment that dancing is one of the images I have of them. But when I think about it is easy to envision them gliding around the floor. Confession time. I remember being about 15 and thinking that if I could dance as well as my grandfather it would make it a lot easier to find a girlfriend.

For a brief time I tried practicing in front of the mirrored closet doors in my parent's bedroom, but that didn't last long. As a 15 year old boy dancing wasn't something that I was real comfortable with. I didn't want to talk about it and wasn't about to ask for lessons. Maybe I should of have.

Nah...

Anyhoo, it was all part of an anniversary party that we threw to celebrate their 75th year of marriage. The best part of it was seeing how much fun they had. Later on we went back to my parent's house for dinner.

I got a kick out of watching them sit on the couch holding hands. It was very sweet and I couldn't help but wonder what they were like 75 years ago. They got married twice. The first time was a secret wedding at the court house. So for a year they lived at home and pretended to be dating.

I'll share more about them in part two of this story.

The Search For Happiness

You can call this post The Search For Happiness. It is one of those posts in which I find myself thoroughly unsatisfied with the end result. I had 800 words or so written down but I decided that I just didn't like it so I nuked it and started over. This is the result.

As a child I had a lot of different dreams about what I would be when I grew up. Many of them were the typical things that you might here. Professional athlete, Fireman, President, Lawyer, Doctor, Sports writer.

As time passed so did my interest in some of those dreams. I suppose that you could say that my interest in being a pro athlete never did pass, but my ability didn't allow for that particular dream to continue. I'll write more about this in a different post.

My interest in some of those other professions waxed and waned over the years for a variety of reasons. Some of it was due to practical reasons and some of it due to what you could call extenuating circumstances. It is fair to say that part of the personal challenge for myself and a number of my friends is the lack of burning desire to become a (fill in the blank). I'll readily admit to feeling mild jealously to those few people I know who are doing exactly what they love.

I don't want to live to work. I work to live. See I can rattle off all the little cliches. I don't want a job, I want a career. But there is so much truth in those thoughts. Life is very short and I want to enjoy it with passion and with gusto. I want to wake up feeling like I am ready to attack the day. It still happens from time to time, but not with the frequency I want.

If you ask why I can give you a list of reasons and I can give you a rudimentary framework for how I am trying to change the areas that are deficient. But I would be remiss if I didn't try and explore how I got to this place and why.

The simplest answer is that people change. I am just not who I was. Many of the things that used to be important to me are just not all that exciting or interesting to me. Many of the things that I thought that I wanted fall into the category of not necessary.

When the boys and I sit down and discuss this we all agree that life experiences are responsible for creating this change in us. It is a bit unsettling. I have always found big changes to be a bit tough. But I also know that I can't continue along the path I am walking on without making some adjustments.

One of the guys told me that he fears that he won't find a place where he feels truly happy and that right now all he wants is to focus upon being happy in the moment. I understand that. I have always been a bit restless and felt this sort of wanderlust. I have wondered if that is always going to prevent me from really enjoying life. But when I think about it I realize that I have a lot of really good memories and some of them are in the very recent past.

The very recent past. That gives me hope and strength. It is a reminder that I am not looking backwards and saying that the best is behind me. It means that there is no reason why the best is not yet to come.

This search for happiness is a very personal and intimate thing. For me at times it has been a struggle and I suspect that there are going to be some very tough moments ahead. But I have to do as I teach my children.

That means I need to identify the problem and try and determine what the solution is. And as I tell the children it means that before I ask for help I need to determine if I can solve it myself. Too bad it is not as simple as the challenges that they come to me with.

In the not so distant future the kids and I are going to have more discussions about how to deal with a challenge head on. I see too many of the parents of their friends creating future issues by always fixing things for their kids, but that is a separate issue altogether.

What I do know for certain is that if I want my children to succeed on their own quest for happiness I have to give them the tools to do so. One way to do so is to let them learn from their father's experience.

And that is all I have to say about this for now.

If You Could See The Future Would You Want To

In the midst of all of the current chaos I have heard a number of people say that they wish that they could see the future. It is kind of a nice dream. It sounds like the sort of thing that would be useful. It is a practical skill. See the future and you can be sure that you'll always make the right decisions. At least that is the theory.

There was a time in my life that I used to be one of those people who wanted to know what was going to happen. I'd like to say that it was because I wanted to plan ahead. I'd like to say that it was because I wanted to stay a step ahead of the game. Those were certainly part of the reasons why I wanted that particular skill at that particular time.

But the rules of the blog dictate brutal honesty so I have to acknowledge that it was also because I was a 20 year-old kid who was heartbroken. A relationship had ended and I really wanted to know what was going to happen. Friends who tried to console me told me all sorts of good stories. I heard about their breakups and why they thought that splitting up had been a blessing in disguise.

The reasons varied. Sometimes it was because they led to new opportunities and sometimes it was because the couple had to have time apart so that they could grow and then come back together. But the common theme there was that splitting up was ultimately a good thing. There were one or two exceptions. I heard from a couple of people who said that breaking up had been the worst thing ever. I remember telling one of my friends that he should never consider being a therapist. I think that I said something to the effect of "you'd be the guy who handed the suicidal patient a gun."

Anyhoo, I was like so many other people. I just wanted to know what was going to happen. Would the struggle be worth it. Was it going to lead to some incredible experience or relationship. Was the end really the beginning of something new. I remember looking up at the sky and saying that I was ready for the door to open. It was in reference to that line about one door closes and another opens.

If you ask me today if I'd like to be able to see the future I am not so sure that I would want to. I don't really want to know when I am going to die. Sure you could make an argument that if we knew when we were going to die we'd live our lives differently. I already try to do that. I try not to make excuses to do certain things because you don't know when the end is coming. Still, I don't want to know the exact date. It is more interesting to me to wonder if I have another 200 years.

I am curious to see what sort of people my children are going to grow up to be. I wonder what sort of careers they'll have and what they'll be like. I wonder what my own life will look like in five years. What about ten or twenty or fifty years. What kinds of memories will I have. Will I have lived the life I wanted to live.

Foresight would be nice. It'd be useful to have some sense of things. I'd probably find it easier to relax. I wouldn't worry about going bankrupt or dying of some dread disease because I'd already know about it and be prepared.

I am no different than anyone else. If I could change the past there are some things that I would have done differently. There are jobs that I wouldn't have taken and relationships that never would have been. But I can't help but wonder what I might have missed out upon. There are so many interconnected threads. If I don't follow one path I'd never hit the fork in the road that led me to the other one that gave me that great whatever.

So I think that I am kind of glad that I can't see the future. While I appreciate the thought of not suffering through some of the struggles in the same way I come back to the appreciation of surprises. I can't and won't say that they are all good, but there is something nice about not knowing. The uncertainty has its own rewards.

I suppose that it all helps to explain why sometimes I like to gamble and take a risk here and there.

What do you think?

Gay Marriage- Proposition 8

This post will probably be relatively graphic in nature so if you're easily offended this is your chance to skip it. If you want to know what I think without the gratuitous commentary you can find it here and here.

I have been wracking my brain trying to find a way to understand the thought process of those who oppose gay or same sex marriage. I have tried to understand their logic. One supporter of Prop. 8 told me that for thousands of years marriage has been understood to be between a man and a woman.

Ok. We could make the same argument about how it was understood that the Earth was flat, the moon was made out of cheese or that the sun revolves around the Earth. All of these were proven to be false, but for a considerable period of time these positions were understood to be true.

A guy at the gym tried to tell me that he was against it because it was unnatural. He was granted the gift of being told that he is an idiot to his face. A short time before this talk he told me that he and his wife love anal sex. So I told him that a lot of people think that shoving his friend up his wife's ass is unnatural. Not to mention a number of the other things that the two of them enjoy doing together.

Someone else told me that they thought that gay marriage would promote promiscuity. Now it just so happens that I know that this guy shtupped his way through college. A graduate of YULA he was famous for his escapades with a number of different women. So I asked him how he could justify his position when we knew that he had been sticking John Thomas wherever and whenever he could.

He laughed and said that it was different. I asked him about a moment in his school days when the mother of a girlfriend walked in on them. He still remembers her saying "Oh, I see that you're busy." Managed to laugh at the memory and then tried to tell me again that it is different.

But the thing is that it is not different. Heterosexual and Homosexuals have sexual urges that we act or do not act upon. Heterosexuality is not a guarantee that a marriage will be successful. It is not a guarantee that they won't divorce, cheat, or have the same domestic issues that all couples do.

So I find myself asking what the big deal is. I find myself asking what people are so scared of. Oh I know, someone told me that this would open marriage up to crazy things. Someone might marry their dog, their sheep or their motorcycle. Well, I think that I am ok with saying that if you choose to marry an animal you have a problem. Animals are not people and while they deserve respect there are limitations.

But that is how some people try to get around on this issue. They come up with a totally ridiculous example and say that it is representative of everything that falls under that category.

I just don't get it. If two people love each other and want to make a loving commitment to each other why would we try to prevent it.

Repairing a Broken Heart- The Modern Man

If you haven't noticed or I haven't told you I like music to accompany my writing. Sometimes it helps to set and maintain the tone of whatever it is I am working on. Sometimes the music is supposed to help you, the reader better understand and sometimes it doesn't mean a freaking thing.

As a point of interest, whenever I link to a song on YouTube, unless otherwise noted the music is the most important piece.

Love Reign O'er Me- The Who
Somewhere Down The Road- Barry Manilow
Sweet Home Alabama - Lenigrad Cowboys & Russian Red Army Choir

In an earlier post I mentioned that I have several friends who are in the process of splitting up with their spouses. They are not the first friends of mine to get divorced, but they are the first to do so at this time of life.

For those who care, here is the distinction between the two. There were a few who got married in their early twenties and by the time they had hit their mid to late twenties their marriages were over. No children or property was involved either time.

Now it is different. Now there are kids and there are assets and there are complications that didn't exist for those other friends. Not to belittle or marginalize them, but splitting up then was far less complicated.

And now the boys are dealing with their relationships and trying to process what it all means. The conversations feel a bit surreal. Are we really old enough to have these discussions. Can we really be in a place where we wonder about how we got to this place, where we ask how things got so crazy and mixed up. Can we really be old enough to talk about custody issues and to wonder if it is possible to fall in love more than once.

Are we really old enough to wonder if we have reached a place where you can never fix a broken heart. Because that is precisely what one of them asked me. He is confident that dissolution of the marriage is the way to go and that they cannot get past their differences. But he says that his heart is broken and that he can't imagine ever feeling anything for anyone again.

I am tempted to show him the Pablo Neruda poem, or at least a quote from it:

"What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me, and this may be the last poem I write for her."

But I think that I'll hold off. I am not sure that it would help or that he would appreciate it. It is a funny thing to be a man today. Our fathers and grandfathers would deal with this sort of thing stoically, no doubt or weakness to be shown to others.

Now we modern men are told that it is ok to show feeling, that it is cool to cry. But at the same time we still receive the messages of old, that it is better to show strength. Better to laugh it off and say that there are lots of fish in the sea,

I feel for him, I really do. Because I wonder what sort of outlet he has. I have told him that he has my ear. I am happy to listen, to grab a beer or watch a movie. If he wants my advice I am glad to give it to him.

Advice, now that is a dicey proposition. Relationships are really complex creatures. I have learned to be quite careful in what I say. His soon to ex is in simple terms a major bitch. I don't know a single friend of his who liked her. But I don't want to say that. I don't see how it is going to help and on the off chance that they somehow reconcile I don't want to make things awkward.

When he asks me how to fix a broken heart and wonders what I would do I have to tell him that I think it is a really hard question to answer. It is not because I haven't got an opinion or prefer to sit on the fence. I just think that it is different for everyone.

If someone were to break my heart now I am not quite sure exactly what I would do. I have my ideas. I have my thoughts and my sense is that I'd follow my gut. But again that is a personal thing. If you really are in love with someone I am not someone who just says goodbye. I go the distance. And yet again I have to say that this is a personal thing.

Repairing that broken heart is one of those chores in life that requires you to find your own way. You have to wander around and find your own path.

Special note to anonymous from this post, I included Barry Manilow again. Here is another just for you. ;)

Crossposted here.

Not All Marriages Are Meant To Last

Some posts are sad by nature and some are sad by association. I am not sure if that makes sense to anyone else, but it does to me. And since this is my blog it is my vote that counts. Anyway as I grow older and presumably gain more wisdom I get to bear witness to more life experiences.

Marriage, divorce, childbirth, life and death. I have seen a little bit of everything. Can't say, or won't say that I consider myself to be an expert on any of it. But if there is one thing that I have learned it is that we all have separate paths to walk and that there is no one right way to live life.

Some people have accused me of trying to take a stance of being a fence sitter. I suppose that it is nice to live in a world in which everything is black and white, good or bad, etc. I wish that it were so easy. I wish that I could divide the world up in this manner, but I just can't.

It doesn't mean that there aren't areas in which I draw lines or that I don't have very clear feelings about what is right or wrong, I do. But I learned a long time ago that in some areas of life it is not so easy to make these claims.

Denise and I have been friends for many years. We met at youth group event a thousand years ago, attended the same summer camp and have a number of friends in common. I was at her wedding as she was at mine. So it is fair to say that we have been a part of each other lives and that we have grown up together.

A while back she confided in me that she and her husband were having some problems with their relationship. For a while I did nothing but listen and try to absorb it all. From an outsider's perspective you'd never guess that they were unhappy. They are good actors, but that also comes from trying to protect the children.

Anyway, Denise told me her story and then waited for my response. I was very cautious in how I replied. I tried to go for the safe response and suggested that she consider going to counseling with him. She told me that she really didn't see the point and that in her experience once the love was gone it never came back.

So I asked her if she wasn't going to go to counseling why she would stay in her marriage. In response she told me that her husband was a child of divorce and that he had told her about how horribly it had affected him.

I didn't say anything. She pressed me for a response and gave me the speech, "I won't be angry, just tell me." On a side note I hate that speech. It is no safer than the "does this make me look fat" talk.

Anyway, I hemmed and hawed and decided to give her my real opinion. Here is a rough outline:

1) I do not believe that all marriages are made to last.
2) Divorce doesn't have to be a nightmare for you or for the children. Sometimes it can be the best thing.
3) Staying married solely for the children is not always smart.

Please remember that I am not a doctor, social worker or miracle man, I just play one on television.

On a serious note, Denise was surprised when I told her that I didn't think that all marriages are meant to last and that I am not an advocate for staying married solely for the children.

I won't rehash the entire conversation, but I'll share this. I think that marriage is a wonderful thing that a good marriage is amazing. And I'll say as I have many times that relationships take work. You have to take care of them or they start to suffer and bad things can happen.

But the thing is that sometimes even if you try to take care of them you find that you and your partner grow apart. As you age sometimes you just go in different directions. Sometimes you can bridge that gap. Sometimes that works and sometimes you find yourself so far apart that you don't recognize the other anymore.

At some point you have to commit to working together to find new things in common or you have to accept that you have chosen to go a separate way. But if you do choose to take that separate path you are really sailing in uncharted waters.

Denise came right out and asked me if I thought that she should get divorced. I told her that I couldn't answer that question. I am not a part of that marriage. I can't say whether it is beyond repair or not. It is not my place.

All I can do is listen. I really don't know what she'll do. As our last conversation she was going to try and hang on until her youngest graduates high school. If I remember correctly that is around 14 or 15 years.

But if you ask me, it won't last that long. Based upon what she told me I just can't see it lasting that long. They don't do much as a couple anymore. They're more like roommates. She is a serious romantic. At some point in time she is going to miss that and she is going to begin to grow more irritated with him.

Unless something happens, I give it five years, but what do I know. I am not part of that relationship. Maybe it is better than she suggests.

Crossposted here.

A Tale of Two Widowers

This is the sort of post that I struggle to write. I struggle because I have a story to tell and I want to convey the message in a particular way but I am not quite sure how to do it. It is a story of life and death, of the power and pain of love.

It is moments like this where I wish that I could write music because such a tale deserves an appropriate soundtrack. A full orchestra that could impart the highs and lows of this story because I am not quite sure that I can do it justice. Since that is just not possible I am going to do my best to fumble my way through this. All I can do try my best to catch the Silver man, so here we go.

Just a few short hours ago I was at a holiday dinner with my family. The table was covered in with a beautiful linen table cloth and adorned with china and silver. Several assortments of flowers were spread out throughout the table. And of course there were lots of guests surrounding the table.

Now I could tell you about the peals of laughter emanating from children like silver bells or I could share the sounds of my grandparents and relatives discussing the election and the rabbi's sermon. It wouldn't be hard because those are probably things that you can relate to.

But then I might miss out on sharing a tale of two widowers. Two men who lost their wives roughly a year ago. Two men who sat at the table and enjoyed the meal, but whose eyes and words revealed the depth of the pain of loss.

It seems unfair that I can't tell you their individual stories because it is. It is unfair because they lost the light in their candle long before they ever expected to see them go dark. It is unfair because it is unfair. Sometimes evil people live much longer lives than good people. It is unfair because life is unfair.

And it bothers me that I have to teach my children that no matter what we do life will never be fair. It bothers me that I have to teach my children about death and that no matter what they or anyone else does, they will experience death. One day the people they love the most will be gone and all they will have left will be memories.

But I'll do my best to teach my children to seek the positive side of all this. If the loss doesn't hurt than there is a problem. I have often thought that to a certain extent you can expect the loss to be as painful as the love was joyful.

I spoke with both of these men at different times this evening and I spoke with both of these men during shiva calls. And part of what struck me is how deeply they loved their wives and how their losses wounded them.

At separate moments they both made a point of telling me to make sure that I truly live my life because the person I love most could unexpectedly be taken from me. It is a theft like no other. I can't say that I truly understand what they are going through, but I can say that I am convinced that the hardest pain to deal with is mental pain.

You can always find a way to get around the physical pain, but mental pain is a harder nut to crack. How do you turn off your memory. How do you forget and would you really want to.

So I find myself lost in thought about the words that they shared with me and how to apply them to my life. I don't want to wake up and say that I failed to live my dreams because I failed to try. It is one thing to have tried and failed and another to have never done so.

I can find a way to live with the failure of having tried and been unsuccessful, but I don't think that I can live with never having tried. Someday is a great way to put off the future, but someday doesn't always come.

And so I find myself pondering the new year with similar thoughts and questions to those I had last year. If I have any sort of resolution it is to make a greater effort to live my dreams and to do the things that I need to do to have a happier and more meaningful life because you really don't know when it might all come crashing down upon you.

Crossposted here.

Sex And Marriage- They have It Every Day

Believe it or not, I sometimes choose not to blog about a topic or decide that I need to rethink a post. When that happens I save it as a draft with the intention to revisit it later on. Every now and then I forget to revisit the draft and the post languishes in limbo.

Anyhoo, I just "discovered" this half finished post and from June and decided to finish it and share it with you.

The New York Times is running an article about a couple of married couples and their experience having sex every day. It generated some discussion among various people I know so I thought that I'd throw it out here. So let's grab a couple of excerpts from the article.

"Or would you turn to your mate and say, “Honey, you know, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we do it for the next 365 days in a row?”

That’s more or less what happened to Charla and Brad Muller. And in another example of an erotic adventure supplanting married ennui, a second couple, Annie and Douglas Brown, embarked on a similar, if abbreviated journey: 101 straight days of post-nuptial sex.

Both couples document their exploits in books published this month, the latest entries in what is almost a mini-genre of books offering advice about the “sex-starved marriage.” The couples, though, are hardly similar. The Mullers are Bible-studying steak-eating Republicans from Charlotte, N.C. The Browns are backpacking multigrain northerners who moved to Boulder, Colo."

I suspect that for a basic need like sex we'd find more similarities among people than differences. Although I would imagine that culture plays a big role. The emphasis added in the next excerpt is my own.

"According to a 2004 study, “American Sexual Behavior,” by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, married couples have intercourse about 66 times a year. But that number is skewed by young marrieds, as young as 18, who couple, on average, 109 times a year.

Either way, those statistics put the Mullers and Browns in Olympic-record territory. That they thought a sex marathon would reinvigorate their marriages might say as much about the American penchant for exercise and goal-setting as it does about the state of romance.

But the couples may also be on to something. “There’s a strong relationship between rating your marriage as happy and frequency of intercourse,” said Tom W. Smith, who conducted the “American Sexual Behavior” study. “What we can’t tell you is what the causal relationship is between the two. We don’t know whether people who are happy in their marriage have sex more, or whether people who have sex more become happy in their marriages, or a combination of those two.”

I can't say that I find that last 'graph to be particularly surprising or insightful. Not trying to be snarky, but it straddles the fence a bit too strongly for my taste.

This made sense to me:

"Charla Muller and Annie Brown both talk about how mandated physical intimacy created more emotional intimacy. “It required a daily kindness and forgiveness, and not being cranky or snarky, that I don’t think either of us had experienced before,” Charla said.

Annie said that she and her husband reached a place in their relationship that they have seldom approached since. “It was just this intense closeness,” she said. “We were so aware of wherever the other person was mentally and emotionally and physically.”

What do you think?

100 days of sex

All done in the name of the science:

Denver Post lifestyle reporter Doug Brown and his wife, Annie, were featured on NBC's "Today Show" this morning discussing a book about their sex lives.

Doug Brown wrote the book after Annie suggested that they have sex every day for 100 days. She said that after 14 years together, their sex life had become stale.

"Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned on their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!)," details the journey.

"Immediately, I had second thoughts," Annie Brown told interviewer Ann Currie in this morning's interview.

"When I would tell my girlfriends about it, immediately, their mouths would drop open and they'd ask, 'Are you crazy?' "

"You couldn't do this for the rest of your life. ... It was exhausting," said Doug Brown.

But he recommends couples push themselves at least once a week, regardless of fatigue.

Annie Brown said there were lasting benefits after the experiment was over.

For the full story please click here.

The Story of Two Souls (Replayed)

I wrote this post quite some time ago. It must have been picked up by someone because all of a sudden the traffic has spiked around it. Anyway, since it seems to be so popular I thought that I'd run it again.

This story has a beginning and a middle but there is yet to be an ending to it and in some ways that is most fitting because it is a story of love and not just any kind of love but one that is all consuming.

The love we speak of is the kind in which you are addicted to the other person, they are your air and your blood. They share your heart and own a piece of your soul. It is the best kind of love and the rarest to find outside of the love of a parent for their child.

Daniel and I had been friends for quite a few years when he first mentioned Anne to me. They were both married to other people and happily so, but somehow they had met online through a bulletin board they both posted upon.

At first it hadn't been anything more than a minor flirtation that slowly matured and developed into a deep friendship and then into a raging inferno of love and lust. It was not planned and it caught the two of them by surprise as it was clear that the feelings that they had were quite deep and very strong.

In some ways it was a very different and unique kind of love. Daniel and Anne were not strangers to love as they had both had past loves and of course they were both married to people that they thought were besheret. Neither one of them had gone to the chuppah with any thought or sense that one day they would view the work week the way that they had viewed their weekends for it was only at work that they had real freedom to write and speak with each other.

Their love was different because of how they had met. They were an online match, almost a cliche in the information age but it was an accurate description. So it was when they began communicating with each other they were able to avoid the pitfalls and challenges that sexual tension in men and women brings. There was no concern about whether he should try and kiss her or if she should let him. No worries about finding the perfect dress, shirt, jeans, heels, cologne or perfume. It was very freeing.

Anne and Daniel bypassed all that and concentrated on communicating with each other because words were all they had. And something interesting and amazing happened, there was complete honesty. It was the kind of honesty that you sometimes feel when you share your life story with the stranger who sits next to you on a long flight.

I remember well the day that Daniel told me about how happy he was and how scared. Somehow he had stumbled into or onto a relationship that he knew was different. Every time he spoke with Anne his heart sang and he knew that she was someone special.

Anne felt the same way. Daniel said that he felt foolish at how fast she figured it out and how at ease he felt when she told him she loved him. There was no awkward moment and no uncomfortable silence. He smiled and repeated it back to her. He loved her too and he apologized that he had to say it over the phone and that he wasn't able to show her in person his true feelings.

That moment changed their lives in a dramatic way because it called their current married status into question. It changed their relationship, molded it and forged it into something that had to be characterized as a torrid love affair. It was a burning love based upon friendship, respect, and believe it or not incredible desire.

When Daniel told Anne that he was going to find a way to come and see her he could feel her heart pounding and he knew that when they finally kissed he was going to have to hold her firmly because her knees would buckle. That kiss would be another defining moment.

Shortly thereafter they found a way to meet. It was only for a few hours but when they hugged each other it felt like they had always been together. Lovemaking was something that could not be described as anything but the merging of two souls in common cause and desire. They moved together as one and their goodbye was bittersweet. For though they knew that they would see each other again it felt as if a hole was being ripped out of their being. There was a huge gaping wound that bled and ached.

If there is such a thing as love at first sight they were the couple that would have experienced it. Later that week Anne received a card from Daniel that said:

"One kiss. One touch. One man and one woman and nothing will ever be the same. You know it and I know it and we live it."

She cried tears of joy. At her desk she looked out of the window and wept because she could imagine losing this man but wasn't sure how she could manage to get him. She had never wanted to be the other woman. It wasn't even a passing thought.

Until she met Daniel she had thought of herself as being very happy with her marriage and her first husband. Her first husband, that is how she thought of the man she lived with. He was the father of her children and someone she cared about but not someone she wanted sharing her bed any longer.

She was a good wife and a good mother. She doted on her children and she tried to keep the first husband happy in all ways, but every time she slept with him her heart cried out as if she was being violated.

For his part Daniel was in a similar situation. He felt trapped and experienced bouts of extreme sadness at the time he had lost and would not be able to spend with Anne. She was so good to him and did so much to make him happy but he never could completely forget about his own home life.

It was also good and he was also a good husband and a good father. But Daniel knew that it was only a matter of time before it was obvious to everyone that his heart had a new flame and it made him feel guilty.

He hadn't gone searching. He hadn't done anything to short circuit the marriage but somehow he had found someone new and he couldn't imagine living without her. Sometimes he would try and be practical and think logically about it. He'd think of walking away and telling her that he was sorry, that it was too late.

But every time he thought about it a dull pain in his head appeared and a sharp ache in his side. And he knew that one day they would leave their current spouses and go to each other. One day they would have to face the pain of ending one love affair and beginning a new one and though the thought of it pained him he was more upset by the guilt he felt at the excitement of starting a new life.

So there you have much of the story of of Daniel and Anne. It is tale with a beginning and a middle but the end is not yet written. Some loves can only be delayed but they can never be prevented.

I wrote a second part to this. You can find it here.

Loveless Marriage Part 2

This part two of A Loveless Marriage. You can read the original post here. BTW, for those few people who know me and are curious who is this about, I am not going to tell you. I have intentionally adjusted things so that you won't be sure who it is about. If he/she wants you to know, they'll tell you.

I think that one of the most horrific events I have ever been to was to D's funeral. If you are lucky you will never have to see parents bury their child. I remember more from that summer and that day than I mention. The look of shock and horror on his parent's faces was something that I won't forget.

And I won't forget our tears either. I say our tears because there was a group of us there who were tight. We had basically grown up together and in many ways losing D was like losing a brother.

When the phone rang and you told me your story I sat and listened. I tried to be quiet so that you could get it out. I didn't want to offer any suggestions on what to do or how to fix it, at least not until I was sure that you were ready and interested.

What I didn't share during that first phone call was a memory from D's funeral. If you recall we buried him. I couldn't stand the idea that some stranger would do that. They didn't know him. They didn't love him. It didn't matter how sensitive or nice they were, they would never understand the profound loss we suffered

It was the middle of summer and we were shoveling under a hot sun, in black suits. I was drenched in sweat. As I took a break from shoveling you came and stood next to me. For a moment we said nothing and then you hugged me. You buried your face in my chest and sobbed. My own tears fell on your head. It was a moment when n o t h i n g m a d e s e n s e.

I remember the shrieks of pain and sorrow. I remember holding onto his grandfather's jacket as he stood graveside, scared that he would slip and fall into the grave, or drop dead on the spot. I felt angry. I felt sad. I empty. At times I was numb.

Fast forward to the present and listening to your recitation of how your marriage was failing. You know that I don't have an opinion about that. I offer no judgment on whether you married the right guy. I don' t know him well enough. He seemed nice enough, but nice enough isn't the same as being the right one.

And when push comes to shove I believe in the right one. I don't think that relationships last without work. I don't believe that you and your spouse stay the same. I change. You change. We change. Sometimes we grow together and sometimes we grow apart.

My opinion about a lasting relationship hasn't changed. Some relationships will not last. It is not always nice. It is not always fair. It is life. I hate saying things like that, they sound so trite.

You told me that you think that you have to survive within the marriage until the children go to college. I don't think that you can plan that far in advance. Five years ago you never would have believed that you could be in this place.

He may not be a monster. He may not be an addict, a gambler or have any relationship destroying vices either, but the cracks in the dam started a long time ago. You don't wake up and realize that you don't love him anymore without there being more to the story. It didn't happen overnight.

It is not an indictment of you or him. It is not a comment on what kind of wife, mother, husband, father you are. It simply is what is.

If there were no children you'd be out and you know it. The goal of protecting them is the right thing to do, but let's be real about it. Don't martyr yourself to an unhappy decade just to try and spare them.

I say that out of love and concern for you and them. You won't make it. Resentment will build and things will deteriorate, or so I suspect.

The question to me is not about surviving until the kids are older. The question is what are you going to do now. What are you going to do this month, this summer, this fall, this winter, this year. What is your plan.

The angst you feel is because you haven't got a plan. You don't know what you are doing and you don't do well without one.

My best advice is to figure out a short term plan and then re-evaluate later on. Break it up into chunks and then look back.

Remember that feeling we had at D's funeral. We weren't even 30. Things can happen. Car accidents, cancer, plane crashes, lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Don't suffer through a decade and hope that you'll find happiness down the road. Life is too uncertain, too fragile.

Don't forget that your friends love you. Whatever direction you choose we'll be there to laugh or cry with you. Try not to sing, because then we will cry. ;) Just kidding.

And don't forget that this post will self destruct in 30 seconds. ;) You know how to find me.

Who is Middle Aged

America is a culture that is obsessed with youth, or so I hear the pundits say. Pundit, now there is a term that is relatively meaningless. Just one more way to describe a person with an opinion that is not necessarily based upon expertise in the field they are commenting upon.

I am going to be 39. There, I said it. That is twice in one week. My birthday is Friday. In a year I am going to be 40. How many television shows or movies have I seen about people turning 40 and their struggle with middle age. Far too many.

I don't consider myself to be middle aged. Here is my formula for determining when I am middle aged. I have two grandparents who are 94. Take their age and divide it in half. Once I reach that age I might be middle aged. So I have a few years left.

My concerns with aging are relatively simple. I don't like the new aches and pains that seem to show up. That crick in my neck didn't ask for permission to hang out. It doesn't pay rent or contribute anything other than aggravation. The freeloader just hangs out and reminds me that I can't sleep in certain positions anymore.

I played two hours of basketball today. I feel pretty good, but tomorrow morning I'll pay for it. I'll wake up and for the first five minutes or so my posture will resemble a question mark.

Aging is not something that I fear. I am not ready to die. There are so many things to do and so many things to see. When I spoke with my friend about her marriage I spent the majority of the time listening, but I did make a few comments. The primary one was about living life.

Life is not meant to be floated through. It is not something that you just kind of show up at. Life is meant to be participated in. You can't stand on the edge of the room and watch everyone else do a Viennese Waltz around you. You need to grab a hold of your partner and do a little Tango, quickstep your way across the room and back.

We all have moments of fear and doubt. I get that. I understand it. I have made so many mistakes, so very many. Most of my regrets are not about what I did, but what I didn't do. Sometimes my fear paralyzed me and that is what makes me sad.

I can't say that she should live as I would. I can't tell her to do things just as I would and expect her to live like that. Some major decisions are only for her.

But, we have a special friendship and if I wasn't completely honest I would be untrue to what we have. There is a reason why you can find so many quotes in my blog. In fact, I think that it is time to share some of them again. I'll do that in the next post.

This Will Strengthen Your Marriage

I wonder if the people who make this TwoDaLoo are familiar with the pink version here. For those of you who are salivating at the idea of sharing this intimate moment with your loved one, here are the specs:

The TwoDaLoo features two side-by-side toilet seats with a modest privacy wall in between. An upgraded version includes a seven inch LCD television and iPod docking station.

Suggested Retail Price: $1,400.00

Chores for two: Why men don't pitch in

I don't know how I stumbled onto this article, but something tells me that if I had somehow ended married to this amazing catch I'd be divorced.

It is a polemic about household chores and who does more. As you might have gathered this woman goes on and on and on about how hard women work and how men do not do anything around the house.

Call me what you will, but I found her shrill rant to be annoying. And the poor schlemiel she is married to, whatever is he going to think of her portrayal of him. Let's take a look at this.

"And yet everyone acts as if Jeremy deserves some kind of medal just for making a run to the supermarket. No one has ever suggested that I’m a heroine for doing the things every mother is expected to do. I admit that my husband helps out more than many men, but here’s another news flash: It isn’t because he’s such a fabulously enlightened being. Left to his own devices, he would doubtless park himself in front of the TV like some sitcom male-chauvinist couch potato while I did all the work. The reason Jeremy “helps” as much as he does (an offensive terminology that itself suggests who’s really being held responsible) is simple: He doesn’t have a choice.

From the beginning of our relationship, I made it very clear that I wasn’t going to be any husband’s unpaid servant. If Jeremy wanted to be—and stay—married to me, let alone have kids, he couldn’t stick me with all the boring, mundane stuff nobody wants to do. We were going to share the work, or we were going to forget the whole deal.Unlike my first husband, who announced after our wedding that he didn’t like the way the French laundry did his shirts and he now expected me, the Wife, to wash and iron all of them, Jeremy recognized both the righteousness of the principle involved and the intransigence of the woman he’d married, and proceeded to pitch in.

That was 17 years ago, and while we haven’t exactly achieved equity, we’ve come a lot closer to it than most of our peers, judging by all the dreary surveys proving that men are slugs and their wives are superwomen. So how have I accomplished this? By holding my husband’s feet to the fire every single day of our lives, of course." (emphasis added by me)

It must be nice to be married to a stereotype, a caricature of a person. The poor husband couldn't possibly do anything by himself. Of course by using sex you can get your way. No really, you can offer it as a bribe or cut it off, just ask the amazing author.

Yes, dear readers, it’s true: Maintaining some semblance of parity in your marriage requires you to deploy the same kinds of nasty tactics you swore you would never stoop to as a parent but nonetheless found yourself using the minute you actually had a kid. Bribery and punishment work; so do yelling and complaining. Threats are also effective, as long as everyone knows you mean business. With husbands, tender blandishments and nooky are particularly useful, as is the withholding of the aforementioned.

Who wants to be married to Cruella Devil. If she is half as nuts as she comes across in this piece I'd tell the man to run to the nearest divorce lawyer and get the hell out.

My word.

A Life Without Regrets

Music that accompanies this post includes:

My Way- Frank Sinatra
Suspicious Minds- Elvis Presley
Hurt- Johnny Cash Cover version
Whiskey Lullaby- Brad Paisley & Allison Krauss (Live version here)
You're Gonna Miss This- Trace Adkins

Believe it or not my children and I talk about a lot of things besides body parts and funny noises.

Lately my son and I have spent quite a bit of time talking about what happens when you grow up. He wants to know if you have to get married and how you decide what kind of job you are going to have.

I really enjoy these discussions. He is still so very innocent and open to so many different ideas and possibilities. A blank tablet. I often wonder what he is going to draw there. What kind of man is he going to grow up to be. I do my best to try and give him some guidance, teach him what to look out for, who to avoid and how to get all that he wants.

The bottom line is that I want my children to live a life without regret. One day, a thousand years from now when they look back I want them to have more than a wistful smile. I want them to talk to their grandchildren about having lived a very full and rich life. I suppose that some people might ask what that means.

The answer is that it is different for everyone.

I am not sure if anyone can really say that they lived a life without regret. There are always things that we do that we look back upon and shake our heads. We're human. We're fallible. You can't always hit a homerun, sometimes you can't even get on a base. But if you can stay above the Mendoza Line things are probably going to be ok.

It is funny in a weird coincidental sort of way that the big guy decided to have these conversations with me. This is the first year in a long time that I have really been aware of my birthday. For the longest time I have been between milestones. I still am. In May I'll turn 39. Just one more year until 40.

Forty doesn't sound old to me. As a kid I remember people making a big deal out of it. So many comments about 40 being when you have a midlife crisis. I have two grandparents who are 94. That is more than double my age so I figure that I still have a while before anyone can truly call me middle aged.

Still, it is hard not to take a look at myself and wonder if this is all there is. It is hard to look in the mirror and not recognize the guy looking back at me. In my mind I see that 19-20 year-old guy. Flat stomach, full head of hair, metabolism that let him eat with reckless abandon. He is still there. I know that he is.

Yet, the look in my eyes is different. My mother used to speak of a mischievous glint in my eye. My sisters all say that they can always tell when I am up to something. That glint is accompanied by a smile and sometimes a full laugh.

Except, the guy looking back at me seems to be missing those things. It is an older face, worn and a bit weathered. The lines and the never ending five o'clock shadow give an edge that never used to be.

Musical interlude:

Boys of Summer- Don Henley
Just Another Day- Jon Secada
Just Another Day live- Oingo Boingo (Video version)

Still, I am not as melancholy as I might sound. Sentimental, but not totally mired in sadness. Confused and unsure about a few things, but age has given me a few gifts, more on that later.

If you asked I could give you a list of regrets. It is not a huge list. There are a few key items on there that I still might be able to change. I have a lot of time and infinite energy to try and grab that brass ring. The ponies go up and they go down. Sometimes you just have to have faith that when you go up you end up with the silver instead of the brass.

Seeing as I have Oingo Boingo playing in the background let me share some lyrics from We Close Our Eyes. I kind of like these.

"And if you come to me
And if you touch my hand
I might just slip away
I might just disappear
Who am i?
And if you think Im worth it
And if you think its not too late
We might start falling
If we dont try to hard
We might start falling in love

(chorus)

We're on the healing path
We're on a roller coaster ride
That could never turn back
And if you love me
And if you really try
To make the seconds count
Then we can close our eyes"

So I sit on his bed and listen to him read a story to me. This boy, this very large boy who once fit into my arm. The baby I held in a pretend Heisman Trophy stance asks me what he should be when he grows up.

"Happy." That is all I want. Just for you to be happy.

But at seven he is too young for major philosophical discussions so we try to focus the conversation. I explain that he should learn every day, that knowledge is a tool that he can use to take him anywhere. I sound like such a cheesy greeting card, but it is true.

He wants to know if he can get a job working with me. He says that it will be really cool and that he'll be a good listener. I smile and tell him not to worry about it. I don't mention that today I heard that a few more of the boys are getting divorced. I can't help but chuckle thinking about it. He doesn't like girls, he'd be happy to hear that the boys were going to live on their own.

Ok, secretly he does like girls. He won't admit it but he loves it when they chase him.

He asks why I didn't work with my dad and we have a brief conversation about why people have different interests. He nods his head and tells me that it sounds a little weird to him when I call my parents "mom" and "dad." He has seen a lot of pictures of me as a child, but he can't quite reconcile the boy I was with who I am today.

That is ok, I am not sure I can either.

A Sexually Incompatible Marriage

CNN has an interesting article about sex and marriage. It caught my eye for any number of reasons.

Just judging from the responses to my old post Does Having Children Prevent an Active Sex Life this is something that many couples wrestle with. (The comments on this post were made using Haloscan. Since I disabled and removed it from the blog you obviously won't see them there. But trust me, there were plenty.)

Let's take a look at the article.

(LifeWire) -- He's a 38-year-old executive. She's a 34-year-old homemaker. He says they never fight, and in many ways they're compatible -- but not when it comes to sex.
"It's almost like a checklist," says Jon (who asked that his real name not be used) of their once-a-month lovemaking. The problem, he believes, is a lack of desire.
Sexually unfulfilling marriages aren't limited to new parents or aging baby boomers with hormone imbalances. They can ensnare even the relatively young and the recently married. When they are unable to blame kids, stress or physical issues, many couples struggle unhappily to identify -- and resolve -- the problems behind their lackluster sex life.
Couples end up in sexually unfulfilling marriages for a variety of reasons, says Marty Klein, a licensed marriage counselor and certified sex therapist in Palo Alto, California. One reason, he says, is America's obsession with marriage.
Laura Berman, a Chicago sex therapist and relationship expert, agrees. "We put the blinders on when we're dating," she says. "We focus so much on the wedding, we don't notice the warning signs."
Those who believe passion inevitably fades may downplay the sex factor, picking someone they think would be a good father or a good wife even if they're not an ideal lover, Berman adds.
"I chose her because I thought it would enhance me in some way," Jon says of his wife.
Berman has seen it before: "People choose partners who have the right resume but maybe not the entire package."
Other couples enter into relationships with so-so chemistry because they think they're in love and overlook key differences, says Klein.
Bobbie Jonas, a holistic health practitioner in Calistoga, California, acknowledges she ignored obvious warning signs during her courtship. "I was more interested in a way out from home," she says of her first marriage. Poor communication compounded the effects of weak chemistry. After 10 years, they divorced.
"Couples wondering where the sex went should be asking if it was ever really there," says Berman.
That explanation makes sense to Jon. Although he said he and his wife, who live on the West Coast, started off with great chemistry, the cracks in the relationship began to show before they traded rings. After a four-month dry spell during their engagement, his wife brought up the idea of canceling the wedding. "I just really wanted to get married," Jon says. "I felt that it was what I was supposed to do."
Now Jon is having an affair with a woman -- also in a sexually unsatisfying marriage -- for whom he feels intense passion. "I didn't realize the importance of sex," he says.

I know from conversations with the boys that several of them are less than happy with the state of affairs in their bedroom. It is kind of a funny change. During our single years the guys didn't spent much time bragging. You might hear about who they were dating, but in general there wasn't any talk of conquests.
And now I look at what we talk about and I have to shake my head and smile. There is the guy who complains that before marriage his wife loved oral sex and now hates it. There is the guy who complains that his wife is never in the mood and then there is the guy who says that he can't keep up with his wife's sex drive. And let me tell you, he receives an enormous amount of crap about his complaints.

I can also say that I know of two couples who intentionally did not have children because they were convinced that it would kill their relationship. Kind of reminds me of a guest post that ran here last year called Pressured into Parenthood- A Guest Post.

So dear reader, what do you think?

How to Train a Husband

File this Newsweek story under the "We're Not As Stupid as You Think" category. Before we comment on this story let's take a look at a story from a U.K. publication that provides the average time it takes for a man to propose.

"The average man proposes two years, 11 months and eight days after first meeting their love, research has revealed."

And it takes the average married man five minutes to tell the newly engaged man to run and never look back, but I digress. Let's take a look at this ridiculous Newsweek story.

"Attention, frustrated wives: if you want your husband to start listening to you and stop leaving his socks on the floor, all you need is a little patience and a lot of mackerel. Such is the putative relationship advice of Amy Sutherland, a journalist who spent a year at an animal-trainer school and decided to apply the trainers' techniques to her husband's annoying habits. According to Sutherland, the key to marital bliss is to ignore negative habits and reward positive ones, the same approach animal trainers use to get killer whales to leap from their tanks and elephants to stand on their heads. So to teach her husband, Scott, to stop storming around the house when he couldn't find his keys, she practiced what trainers call Least Reinforcing Scenario, which means she ignored his outbursts, and didn't offer to help with the search. To prevent Scott from hovering over her while she tried to cook, she engineered "incompatible behaviors" by setting a bowl of chips and salsa at the other end of the room. Soon she had a key-finding, salsa-eating mate and, she says, a happier marriage."

Sounds like a great marriage to me. It is so easy to picture her putting out her dear spouse's water bowl for him. Of course none of this accounts for her behavior and that she might have more than a couple annoying habits of her own.

"While Sutherland claims that animal-training techniques work on both genders, in another new book, "Seducing the Boys Club," Nina DiSesa advocates a gender-specific approach to changing people's behavior. DiSesa, who was the first female chairman of the ad agency McCann Erickson, argues that women should use their femininity to manipulate the men they work with and advance their careers. Instead of criticizing an employee's ad proposal, she flatters him for his "brilliant" idea, then sweetly asks if he had any other inspirations. "Women use these tactics with men all the time," she says. "We're mothers, wives, girlfriends, sisters. We know how to handle men, we just don't do it at work."

Blah, blah, blah. How many times have I heard/read the same foolish comments about how women control men. Most of us are very aware of what is going on. Don't think that our response is solely based upon your master manipulation.

"While DiSesa's tactics may appall feminists, the appeal of Sutherland's approach is obvious: no tearful couples-therapy sessions, no tantrums about unmet expectations. But Sutherland says it's not a quick fix. In fact, she was the one who wound up being retrained, as she taught herself not to take her husband's actions personally, and not to react when he did things that annoyed her. DiSesa also says she retrained herself to stop criticizing and confronting the men she worked with, and instead use "S and M," seduction and manipulation, to get her way."

Right, bat your eyes and we'll swoon. We just can't help ourselves, especially if we think that helping you we'll lead right to your bedroom. It is laughable. Actually the part of Sutherland being retrained is kind of funny.

Whatever. Treat us like children or animals and you get what you deserve.

Geek Weddings

Some of these were kind of fun.

The Couple That Pees Together

If you have accused your spouse of not giving a crap this is for you.
Happy Valentine's Day sweetheart.
Thanks for the tip Gail.