Phoebe Fox's Blog - Posts Tagged "sex"
5 Signs Your Relationship Is in Trouble
You made it through Valentine's Day.
Maybe it was a tender, heartfelt celebration of your union with candy hearts, flowers and singing birds.
Or maybe the über-romantic holiday left you feeling unsettled, insincere, worried. Now that Cupid's wings are out of your eyes, it could be time to reassess your relationship for any of these five warning signs that your love may be on the wane.
1. You're always arguing.
This one seems self-evident, but so often, it's not. I have a friend who frequently calls me to vent about her boyfriend's latest infraction: He lied, he no-showed a date, he didn't come check on her when she was sick. They fight -- loud, screaming things that are alarming to hear -- and then everything is aces. When she and I talk about their volatile dynamic in the lucid times, my friend agrees that his behavior makes her angry, that she doesn't feel cherished and that she's exhausted from fighting. Yet they stay together.
"Why?" I ask.
"I love him."
The lowest lows often accompany the loftiest highs, and when things are good it may be hard to let go of someone with whom you share great passion and, yes, love. But despite what the Roman poet Virgil and Hallmark may want you to believe, love does not conquer all. You can love someone and still be better off without them -- and when your relationship becomes filled with friction and dissatisfaction and resentment more often than the course of true love runs smooth, you're sacrificing your peace of mind (and heart) to an unhealthy, destructive dynamic.
2. You never argue.
Conversely, too much accord might be a signal of trouble -- namely that one partner (or both) is suppressing her real feelings, or subsuming himself in his partner, or has mentally "checked out" of the relationship. No two people with unique backgrounds, mind sets, ideology, etc., can live in perfect accord at all times -- sometimes I can even have lively arguments with myself.
That doesn't mean that screaming fights should be part of your couple repertoire. Everyone argues differently; the key is to respect your partner's differing point of view, as well as their means of expressing it -- but also to take into account how they are most comfortable handling disagreements. I have an atavistic, knee-jerk fear of shouting; raised voices utterly unnerve me, leaving me too freaked out to engage as a rational adult. My husband knows that about me, and is careful not to yell, even amid a heated discussion.
In a healthy relationship, two people feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, concerns and emotions -- even the difficult ones -- but can still stay cognizant of each other's feelings.
3. You're always mad.
Remember when you first started dating your boyfriend, and his habit of taking his pants off as soon as he walked in his front door and lounging around in his boxer briefs seemed like a charming quirk? If those same foibles you once found endearing now make you want to scoop out his eyeballs with a grapefruit spoon, you might have one foot out the door.
Sometimes before we're ready to admit that our feelings have changed or our relationship is no longer working, our raw nerves are trying to tell us the truth. Are you often irritated by your partner? Do you find you're quick to take offense to things he says and does? Does your temper flare up faster and easier than usual? Pay attention to those signs. It might be your primal emotions reacting to the truth of your situation before your mind is ready to accept it.
4. You're not having any fun.
And by fun, I mean sex. No, not really -- but partially. Of course, a marked change for the worse in your sex life is a red flag that something's "off," but not having fun is more global than that: lost delight in each other's company, no pleasure in conversation, a lack of mutual interests. Have you and your partner stopped sharing moments, in-jokes? Is he no longer the person you want to rush home to tell when something crazy or funny or outrageous happens in your day? Does the idea of doing things together no longer spark excitement or anticipation? Do you seek out other friends for "fun"? Or do you even disconnect entirely in your partner's company, mentally checking out?
Every couple's dynamic is different, but shared activities, experiences and humor are widely accepted to be the cornerstones of a healthy relationship. Once those start to go, the clock might be ticking.
5. You're happy. Really. You are.
This is the most insidious and easy-to-miss indication that your relationship may be on shaky ground. Many relationships, especially long-term ones, can settle into a complacent comfort zone as two people grow ever more familiar.
But familiarity is not intimacy. In fact, sometimes it engenders the opposite -- when we become convinced we know everything there is to know about our partner, we can go on autopilot and stop paying attention. Intimacy is being open -- not just willing to show your own vulnerabilities, but open to the unique, separate, always changing individual your partner is. Once we think we know everything there is to know about someone, we keep them slotted into that safe, comfortable category -- and we stop growing as a couple.
If things are perfectly fine between you -- pleasant, polite, comfortable -- but something is missing, take stock. This doesn't have to be a signal that things are over -- sometimes it's a much-needed wake-up call for a couple to remember to see the other person as another person- - not just a familiar appendage taken for granted.
But whether you decide to work on things or end them, don't put it off. There are only 361 days left till next Valentine's Day.
Maybe it was a tender, heartfelt celebration of your union with candy hearts, flowers and singing birds.
Or maybe the über-romantic holiday left you feeling unsettled, insincere, worried. Now that Cupid's wings are out of your eyes, it could be time to reassess your relationship for any of these five warning signs that your love may be on the wane.
1. You're always arguing.
This one seems self-evident, but so often, it's not. I have a friend who frequently calls me to vent about her boyfriend's latest infraction: He lied, he no-showed a date, he didn't come check on her when she was sick. They fight -- loud, screaming things that are alarming to hear -- and then everything is aces. When she and I talk about their volatile dynamic in the lucid times, my friend agrees that his behavior makes her angry, that she doesn't feel cherished and that she's exhausted from fighting. Yet they stay together.
"Why?" I ask.
"I love him."
The lowest lows often accompany the loftiest highs, and when things are good it may be hard to let go of someone with whom you share great passion and, yes, love. But despite what the Roman poet Virgil and Hallmark may want you to believe, love does not conquer all. You can love someone and still be better off without them -- and when your relationship becomes filled with friction and dissatisfaction and resentment more often than the course of true love runs smooth, you're sacrificing your peace of mind (and heart) to an unhealthy, destructive dynamic.
2. You never argue.
Conversely, too much accord might be a signal of trouble -- namely that one partner (or both) is suppressing her real feelings, or subsuming himself in his partner, or has mentally "checked out" of the relationship. No two people with unique backgrounds, mind sets, ideology, etc., can live in perfect accord at all times -- sometimes I can even have lively arguments with myself.
That doesn't mean that screaming fights should be part of your couple repertoire. Everyone argues differently; the key is to respect your partner's differing point of view, as well as their means of expressing it -- but also to take into account how they are most comfortable handling disagreements. I have an atavistic, knee-jerk fear of shouting; raised voices utterly unnerve me, leaving me too freaked out to engage as a rational adult. My husband knows that about me, and is careful not to yell, even amid a heated discussion.
In a healthy relationship, two people feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, concerns and emotions -- even the difficult ones -- but can still stay cognizant of each other's feelings.
3. You're always mad.
Remember when you first started dating your boyfriend, and his habit of taking his pants off as soon as he walked in his front door and lounging around in his boxer briefs seemed like a charming quirk? If those same foibles you once found endearing now make you want to scoop out his eyeballs with a grapefruit spoon, you might have one foot out the door.
Sometimes before we're ready to admit that our feelings have changed or our relationship is no longer working, our raw nerves are trying to tell us the truth. Are you often irritated by your partner? Do you find you're quick to take offense to things he says and does? Does your temper flare up faster and easier than usual? Pay attention to those signs. It might be your primal emotions reacting to the truth of your situation before your mind is ready to accept it.
4. You're not having any fun.
And by fun, I mean sex. No, not really -- but partially. Of course, a marked change for the worse in your sex life is a red flag that something's "off," but not having fun is more global than that: lost delight in each other's company, no pleasure in conversation, a lack of mutual interests. Have you and your partner stopped sharing moments, in-jokes? Is he no longer the person you want to rush home to tell when something crazy or funny or outrageous happens in your day? Does the idea of doing things together no longer spark excitement or anticipation? Do you seek out other friends for "fun"? Or do you even disconnect entirely in your partner's company, mentally checking out?
Every couple's dynamic is different, but shared activities, experiences and humor are widely accepted to be the cornerstones of a healthy relationship. Once those start to go, the clock might be ticking.
5. You're happy. Really. You are.
This is the most insidious and easy-to-miss indication that your relationship may be on shaky ground. Many relationships, especially long-term ones, can settle into a complacent comfort zone as two people grow ever more familiar.
But familiarity is not intimacy. In fact, sometimes it engenders the opposite -- when we become convinced we know everything there is to know about our partner, we can go on autopilot and stop paying attention. Intimacy is being open -- not just willing to show your own vulnerabilities, but open to the unique, separate, always changing individual your partner is. Once we think we know everything there is to know about someone, we keep them slotted into that safe, comfortable category -- and we stop growing as a couple.
If things are perfectly fine between you -- pleasant, polite, comfortable -- but something is missing, take stock. This doesn't have to be a signal that things are over -- sometimes it's a much-needed wake-up call for a couple to remember to see the other person as another person- - not just a familiar appendage taken for granted.
But whether you decide to work on things or end them, don't put it off. There are only 361 days left till next Valentine's Day.
5 Things That Should Be Missing in the Right Relationship
Despite all you’ve heard about the essential ingredients for a good relationship, sometimes the things you leave out are as important as what you put in. (Try adding butter to your lemonade and you’ll see what I mean.) Here are five ingredients that should never turn up in a healthy relationship recipe.
1. The Pit of Despair: Ever hear the myth of Tantalus? In Greek mythology he stands for eternity in a pool of water that drains when he tries to drink, under a bough heavy with fruit that recedes when he reaches for it. Tantalus is being punished for his evil deeds by the gods, but when we stay in a relationship where we’re constantly hungering for things just out of reach, we’re punishing ourselves—with a yawning emptiness where the love we crave is missing.
You know that pit of despair—it’s the one you feel when he says he’ll call and doesn’t; when he introduces you as “his friend”; when he cancels yet another date; when he swears he’ll never cheat again. The one that sucks out your soul as you obsess over uncertainties—Does he love me? Are we together? Will he show up for me? Is he with someone else? Will he ever leave her?—or compulsively monitor his Facebook friends.
In the right relationship, that pit is filled up with the solidity of certainty—not about every little detail (when I ask my husband whether he will install a new ceiling fan over the weekend, I am far from certain it will actually get done), but about the important core things: that he loves you. He will be there for you. He is in your corner. A healthy relationship may have occasional potholes of uncertainty, but not sinkholes.
2. Sturm und Drang: Imagine coming home every day and not knowing whether your house will be filled with a flash mob; or on fire; or gone entirely. Living with constant relationship drama is like that—you never know what you will come home to, and you can’t count on the shelter, safety, and warmth you’d hoped for.
Drama is exhausting. It’s draining. It chips away at trust and comfort and reliability. Romance novels have conditioned us to believe that great passion means fireworks—in and out of the bedroom. But constant fighting and making up isn’t a sign of how deep a couple’s love runs, but how much damage they’re willing to do to it. Hate may be the opposite side of the coin from love, but when hate’s on top, the love side is facedown in the dirt.
3. Misrepresentation and Fraud: Trying to build a relationship on lies is like trying to erect a high-rise on a cracked foundation patched with chewing gum: it’s never going to hold the weight, and sooner or later that structure’s coming down. Whether it’s little lies (“No, you look fantastic in that sheath dress“) or big ones (“No, I did not have sex with that woman”), if you can’t trust your partner’s word, what’s it worth?
Small “white lies” may seem harmless enough, but they’re not. When I check on my appearance with my husband, I’m not fishing for compliments (well, not just fishing…). I’m soliciting input from the person whose feedback I value most. I know that, like a lot of women, I have a hard time being objective about my own body. But my husband, I trust, sees me clearly, and can offer me perspective, a mirror of reality held up to my rampant neuroses. If he doesn’t give me his honest opinion, my mirror is warped (and so is my reality). That’s not a license for harsh criticism—where things like “do I look fat?” are concerned, a little sugarcoating goes a long way. But we want it sprinkled over the hard, cold truth—not to hide it, just to make it more palatable.
Lies undermine our ability to trust. They are duping your partner—whether your intentions are good or not. Even if they never get found out, you’re living one reality while your clueless partner is living another. In healthy relationships, partners trust and respect each other enough to tell the truth, even when it’s hard.
4. Covert Ops: My husband knows every deeply held secret of my past—good, bad, and ugly. I don’t keep things from him—even things as small as when I splurge on shopping. I don’t have to hide half the bags in the car so I can unpack my booty when he isn’t home and lie about putting on “this old thing?” when he notices I’m wearing something unfamiliar. We’re adults, and we’re open with each other. Keeping secrets is excluding your partner from part of your life, and that kind of compartmentalization breaks up the integrity of a relationship’s foundation.
Mystery, however, can be healthy. To this day my husband is blissfully unaware of the nitty-gritty grooming processes that yield my delicately arched eyebrows, microscopic pores, hairless bikini line, and immaculately maintained toenails. He doesn’t know the true terrifying depths of my occasional insecurity and irrational neurosis. This is healthy mystery, and a certain amount of that in a relationship creates appealing glamour. As I like to think of it, it’s just part of the magic.
5. Oneness: Jerry Maguire ruined a generation of women. No one completes you—you are complete already. Waiting for your ideal someone to come along and be the other half of you, yin to your yang, and meet all your needs implies that you are only a partial person until they arrive.
Married friends of mine built their entire world around each other—they were lovers, spouses, best friends, and each other’s social network. To the rest of the world they were the perfect couple—until suddenly they announced their divorce. No one can bear that big a burden of support, and no one person can meet all our needs. With apologies to U2, two hearts will never beat as one, and if they do, one of them is dead.
What ingredient ruined your past relationships? What’s the best thing that’s missing from the one you’re in?
1. The Pit of Despair: Ever hear the myth of Tantalus? In Greek mythology he stands for eternity in a pool of water that drains when he tries to drink, under a bough heavy with fruit that recedes when he reaches for it. Tantalus is being punished for his evil deeds by the gods, but when we stay in a relationship where we’re constantly hungering for things just out of reach, we’re punishing ourselves—with a yawning emptiness where the love we crave is missing.
You know that pit of despair—it’s the one you feel when he says he’ll call and doesn’t; when he introduces you as “his friend”; when he cancels yet another date; when he swears he’ll never cheat again. The one that sucks out your soul as you obsess over uncertainties—Does he love me? Are we together? Will he show up for me? Is he with someone else? Will he ever leave her?—or compulsively monitor his Facebook friends.
In the right relationship, that pit is filled up with the solidity of certainty—not about every little detail (when I ask my husband whether he will install a new ceiling fan over the weekend, I am far from certain it will actually get done), but about the important core things: that he loves you. He will be there for you. He is in your corner. A healthy relationship may have occasional potholes of uncertainty, but not sinkholes.
2. Sturm und Drang: Imagine coming home every day and not knowing whether your house will be filled with a flash mob; or on fire; or gone entirely. Living with constant relationship drama is like that—you never know what you will come home to, and you can’t count on the shelter, safety, and warmth you’d hoped for.
Drama is exhausting. It’s draining. It chips away at trust and comfort and reliability. Romance novels have conditioned us to believe that great passion means fireworks—in and out of the bedroom. But constant fighting and making up isn’t a sign of how deep a couple’s love runs, but how much damage they’re willing to do to it. Hate may be the opposite side of the coin from love, but when hate’s on top, the love side is facedown in the dirt.
3. Misrepresentation and Fraud: Trying to build a relationship on lies is like trying to erect a high-rise on a cracked foundation patched with chewing gum: it’s never going to hold the weight, and sooner or later that structure’s coming down. Whether it’s little lies (“No, you look fantastic in that sheath dress“) or big ones (“No, I did not have sex with that woman”), if you can’t trust your partner’s word, what’s it worth?
Small “white lies” may seem harmless enough, but they’re not. When I check on my appearance with my husband, I’m not fishing for compliments (well, not just fishing…). I’m soliciting input from the person whose feedback I value most. I know that, like a lot of women, I have a hard time being objective about my own body. But my husband, I trust, sees me clearly, and can offer me perspective, a mirror of reality held up to my rampant neuroses. If he doesn’t give me his honest opinion, my mirror is warped (and so is my reality). That’s not a license for harsh criticism—where things like “do I look fat?” are concerned, a little sugarcoating goes a long way. But we want it sprinkled over the hard, cold truth—not to hide it, just to make it more palatable.
Lies undermine our ability to trust. They are duping your partner—whether your intentions are good or not. Even if they never get found out, you’re living one reality while your clueless partner is living another. In healthy relationships, partners trust and respect each other enough to tell the truth, even when it’s hard.
4. Covert Ops: My husband knows every deeply held secret of my past—good, bad, and ugly. I don’t keep things from him—even things as small as when I splurge on shopping. I don’t have to hide half the bags in the car so I can unpack my booty when he isn’t home and lie about putting on “this old thing?” when he notices I’m wearing something unfamiliar. We’re adults, and we’re open with each other. Keeping secrets is excluding your partner from part of your life, and that kind of compartmentalization breaks up the integrity of a relationship’s foundation.
Mystery, however, can be healthy. To this day my husband is blissfully unaware of the nitty-gritty grooming processes that yield my delicately arched eyebrows, microscopic pores, hairless bikini line, and immaculately maintained toenails. He doesn’t know the true terrifying depths of my occasional insecurity and irrational neurosis. This is healthy mystery, and a certain amount of that in a relationship creates appealing glamour. As I like to think of it, it’s just part of the magic.
5. Oneness: Jerry Maguire ruined a generation of women. No one completes you—you are complete already. Waiting for your ideal someone to come along and be the other half of you, yin to your yang, and meet all your needs implies that you are only a partial person until they arrive.
Married friends of mine built their entire world around each other—they were lovers, spouses, best friends, and each other’s social network. To the rest of the world they were the perfect couple—until suddenly they announced their divorce. No one can bear that big a burden of support, and no one person can meet all our needs. With apologies to U2, two hearts will never beat as one, and if they do, one of them is dead.
What ingredient ruined your past relationships? What’s the best thing that’s missing from the one you’re in?
Genius Love Advice My Mom Didn't Even Mean to Give Me
Sometimes the most impactful life lessons we learn from our parents don't make themselves known until many years into our adulthood. In honor of Mother's Day, here's some of the most valuable wisdom I gleaned about love and relationships that my mom never knew she was teaching me.
1. "Nothing good happens after 10:00 at night."
For an embarrassing number of years, 10 p.m. was my non-negotiable curfew, long after all my friends were allowed to stay out later. Mom's reasoning was that nothing going on after that hour was anything a "nice girl" like her daughter needed to be involved in.
As much as it chafed (and on the few times I was able to fabricate my whereabouts and sneak out till a scandalous midnight and beyond), in hindsight I will grudgingly admit that most of the things I was sneaking out to do were probably not the best idea for a fairly naive young teenager.
As an adult, I realize Mom's advice applies extremely well in one specific area of dating: A guy who calls you late at night to get together probably isn't looking to take you out for a milkshake and fries. Thanks to Mom, I managed to recognize a booty call when I got one, and save myself from leaping at it when I was hoping it meant something more.
2. "For God's sake, put on some lipstick."
I was a little bit of a tomboy as a preadolescent, and when I did discover makeup in my teens, I favored mostly sparkly nude Twiggy colors. I didn't wear makeup so much as make my face glittery. Without fail, as soon as I got ready to go anywhere, "You need lipstick!" was my mother's clarion call.
When I was an actor, I became so enamored of the magic of cosmetics I had to check myself so I didn't doll it up like a drag queen, but that's not why this was good advice. While I'm very happy with my face with or without cosmetic intervention, I have to admit that when I really want to rock it, nothing gives me the kind of confidence skillfully applied makeup can. I use it to feel sexy or professional or polished, to draw attention away from blemishes or under-eye circles when I've had a late night or just to give me a little oomph on days when I'm feeling sub-par.
Do I need lipstick? Not really. But there's something to be said for the confidence and power a woman gains from looking her best.
3. "You can't have a relationship before you're ready."
In elementary school I had a massive crush on a boy in my class, Raymond. Raymond asked me to "go" with him, and when I excitedly came home and told my mom, her answer was, "Go where?" Followed immediately by, "No. You're too young."
As "going with" a boy at that age meant little beyond bragging rights at school and perhaps some passed notes, and because my mother of course had no way of monitoring that, naturally I told him yes anyway, and we "went."
The next week at a party in the basement of my best friend's house, while her mom sat upstairs doing her best to tune out the shrill 12-year-olds downstairs, I caught Raymond kissing my BFF, devastating me on two counts, and resulting in some fairly extravagant histrionics on my part.
My mom was right; I wasn't ready to date (none of us were). But more important, I learned never to embark on a relationship before I was ready, whether it was turning dating into something sexual, getting serious too soon or because I was rebounding and hadn't yet recovered from heartbreak.
4. "Measure twice, cut once."
My dad died young, so we were largely raised by my mom on her own and she was exceptionally handy. This was a rule that stuck with me; careful evaluation and planning ahead of time saves you a lot of frustration on the back end.
If I'd followed this advice when I was younger, for instance, it would have let me stop and think twice before dating a man who was very recently separated from his wife, and wound up dumping me to try again with her (on our way out of town for a romantic weekend). It's what reminds me now, when I get upset at my husband, not to vent my feelings without a filter, but to take a moment before I speak and think about my words and the impact they might have on him, to calm my initial childish impulse to lash out and instead measure my words before I do irreparable damage.
Once you make the cut, you're committed. If you've done it wrong you've ruined your materials. Mom was right; it's worth stopping to measure, twice or even more, before you do something irrevocable.
5. "Life is a series of choices."
This was usually what Mom said when one of us was in trouble, as in, we chose poorly... and consequences were headed our way.
But the words echo in my head frequently as an adult: When I chose a guy who had no interest in anything long-term or even particularly committed, and two years later he broke my heart. When I finally broke up with someone I didn't love but had stayed with out of a sense of guilt and a deep affection for his daughter. When I met a man who was kind and genuine and funny and open, and chose to take a chance on jumping into a life with him after only a few months. (We're in our seventh happy year together, four of them as husband and wife.)
Most of all, Mom taught me that the most important choice is happiness. No matter what life hands us, we can decide to let hardship overwhelm us and color everything else, or we can accept the difficulty... and choose to be happy anyway. Of all Mom's lessons, this is the biggest lesson, the one that has most shaped not only my relationships but the entire course of my life: Choose happiness.
Thanks, Mom.
1. "Nothing good happens after 10:00 at night."
For an embarrassing number of years, 10 p.m. was my non-negotiable curfew, long after all my friends were allowed to stay out later. Mom's reasoning was that nothing going on after that hour was anything a "nice girl" like her daughter needed to be involved in.
As much as it chafed (and on the few times I was able to fabricate my whereabouts and sneak out till a scandalous midnight and beyond), in hindsight I will grudgingly admit that most of the things I was sneaking out to do were probably not the best idea for a fairly naive young teenager.
As an adult, I realize Mom's advice applies extremely well in one specific area of dating: A guy who calls you late at night to get together probably isn't looking to take you out for a milkshake and fries. Thanks to Mom, I managed to recognize a booty call when I got one, and save myself from leaping at it when I was hoping it meant something more.
2. "For God's sake, put on some lipstick."
I was a little bit of a tomboy as a preadolescent, and when I did discover makeup in my teens, I favored mostly sparkly nude Twiggy colors. I didn't wear makeup so much as make my face glittery. Without fail, as soon as I got ready to go anywhere, "You need lipstick!" was my mother's clarion call.
When I was an actor, I became so enamored of the magic of cosmetics I had to check myself so I didn't doll it up like a drag queen, but that's not why this was good advice. While I'm very happy with my face with or without cosmetic intervention, I have to admit that when I really want to rock it, nothing gives me the kind of confidence skillfully applied makeup can. I use it to feel sexy or professional or polished, to draw attention away from blemishes or under-eye circles when I've had a late night or just to give me a little oomph on days when I'm feeling sub-par.
Do I need lipstick? Not really. But there's something to be said for the confidence and power a woman gains from looking her best.
3. "You can't have a relationship before you're ready."
In elementary school I had a massive crush on a boy in my class, Raymond. Raymond asked me to "go" with him, and when I excitedly came home and told my mom, her answer was, "Go where?" Followed immediately by, "No. You're too young."
As "going with" a boy at that age meant little beyond bragging rights at school and perhaps some passed notes, and because my mother of course had no way of monitoring that, naturally I told him yes anyway, and we "went."
The next week at a party in the basement of my best friend's house, while her mom sat upstairs doing her best to tune out the shrill 12-year-olds downstairs, I caught Raymond kissing my BFF, devastating me on two counts, and resulting in some fairly extravagant histrionics on my part.
My mom was right; I wasn't ready to date (none of us were). But more important, I learned never to embark on a relationship before I was ready, whether it was turning dating into something sexual, getting serious too soon or because I was rebounding and hadn't yet recovered from heartbreak.
4. "Measure twice, cut once."
My dad died young, so we were largely raised by my mom on her own and she was exceptionally handy. This was a rule that stuck with me; careful evaluation and planning ahead of time saves you a lot of frustration on the back end.
If I'd followed this advice when I was younger, for instance, it would have let me stop and think twice before dating a man who was very recently separated from his wife, and wound up dumping me to try again with her (on our way out of town for a romantic weekend). It's what reminds me now, when I get upset at my husband, not to vent my feelings without a filter, but to take a moment before I speak and think about my words and the impact they might have on him, to calm my initial childish impulse to lash out and instead measure my words before I do irreparable damage.
Once you make the cut, you're committed. If you've done it wrong you've ruined your materials. Mom was right; it's worth stopping to measure, twice or even more, before you do something irrevocable.
5. "Life is a series of choices."
This was usually what Mom said when one of us was in trouble, as in, we chose poorly... and consequences were headed our way.
But the words echo in my head frequently as an adult: When I chose a guy who had no interest in anything long-term or even particularly committed, and two years later he broke my heart. When I finally broke up with someone I didn't love but had stayed with out of a sense of guilt and a deep affection for his daughter. When I met a man who was kind and genuine and funny and open, and chose to take a chance on jumping into a life with him after only a few months. (We're in our seventh happy year together, four of them as husband and wife.)
Most of all, Mom taught me that the most important choice is happiness. No matter what life hands us, we can decide to let hardship overwhelm us and color everything else, or we can accept the difficulty... and choose to be happy anyway. Of all Mom's lessons, this is the biggest lesson, the one that has most shaped not only my relationships but the entire course of my life: Choose happiness.
Thanks, Mom.
10 Times Women Say Yes When We Should Say No
In the movie Yes Man, Jim Carrey, based on the exhortations of a self-help guru, decides to say yes to absolutely everything—with predictably disastrous results. While “lean in” and “keep an open mind” can be great bits of advice in many walks of life, where relationships are concerned sometimes a bit of negativity is the more positive choice. Here are ten times the power-call answer is often a strong, uncompromising “no.”
“Want to hang out?” This question isn’t always asked outright, but it can be. More often it’s implied in casual last-minute requests to get together, nebulous offers to join a guy among a group of other friends, and late-night booty calls.
“Want to hang out?” isn’t asking someone on a date, but women often interpret it that way, because we want to believe we’re being pursued, even when it’s the most lackadaisical of courtships.
It may sound old-fashioned, but a guy who wants to see you will make plans to do it—in advance, and more formally than an amorphous offer to orbit each other’s persons.
“Can I take you out?” Whether it’s out of lust, pity, guilt, boredom, or loneliness, most women have said yes to dates with men that they knew weren’t good matches. I once wound up in a two-year relationship with one of those, my instincts overridden by my attraction to the man.
But when we finally broke up, after two painful, heartbreaking years, it was for all the reasons I’d been reluctant to go out with him in the first place: We had major lifestyle, personality, and ideological differences. If I’d paid more attention to my gut instincts at the very beginning, I could have saved myself what turned out to be two years of spinning my wheels.
If your lizard-brain impulses are telling you you’re better off not going out with someone, pay attention! It’s a lot easier to say “no” to the first date than it is after months or years of a relationship.
“Is this good enough?” This is an implicit question, rarely asked directly—but it comes up early and often in dating in how someone treats you. I once waited nearly an hour for a date to show up. Embarrassing now—although he did call around ten minutes late and say he’d overslept and would be there soon.
Overslept. For our first date.
I should have left and let him reschedule, but I didn’t—and the entire rest of our short-lived relationship was marked by this same lassitude from him.
We generally lead with the best stuff in our bag of tricks when we’re trying to impress someone. So what you get out of the starting gate is either the most someone is capable of, or they aren’t trying that hard. Either way, it tells you what you need to know to decide whether they’re worth the investment of your time and emotions.
“He hasn’t called. Should I call/text/stalk him?” The short answer here is no. No, please, I beg you.
The long answer is this: If a guy isn’t contacting you, it’s probably not because he’s shy, insecure, or waiting for you to give him the green light. Not only do you not have to chase someone who’s really into you, but it chisels away at your self-esteem to do it.
You’re also working against biology—men are hunter-gatherers. If a man wants you, he’ll go get you; he won’t take the risk you’ll slip away. If he’s willing to, he’s showing you how much he values you—which isn’t much.
According to Dr. Duana Welch, author Love, Factually: 10 Proven Steps from “I Wish” to “I Do,” [link] research reveals that although men and women have similarly high standards for a life mate, men’s standards for a hookup are pretty much baseline: “In research, men have admitted that they're open to having sex with women who are low-IQ, drunk, unconscious, and/or unattractive,” Welch explains. “So if you call a man who wasn't interested enough to call you first, he will probably say he'd like to get together. But factually speaking, it's for casual sex, not anything long-term.“
If that’s what you’re looking for you’re almost certain to succeed, but if you’re hoping for something more, why chase after it with someone who can’t be troubled to lift his phone and call you?
“Can you do that for me?” I have a friend who does absolutely everything for whatever partner is in her life—she anticipates and tends to his every need, goes over and above to make his life easier, thinking to make herself indispensable.
Invariably he doesn’t reciprocate to her level. And invariably she gets furious, hurt, and ultimately brokenhearted when the resulting tension breaks the relationship up. My friend does too much—she takes on more than she can comfortably maintain without getting overstressed and burning herself out—and without coming to resent the fact that her beaus aren’t giving the same overly attentive effort to her.
Women are notorious helpers—we’re genetically wired for caretaking. But we have to maintain sight of how much we can take on—and how much we should take on for someone else, without losing sight of ourselves. Nurturing our loved ones is a wonderful way to show them we care about them, but a candle burning at both ends and from the middle eventually leaves nothing but a used-up puddle of wax.
“Are you comfortable with this?” I know a woman whose husband suggested that they turn their marriage into an open one. Despite initial resistance, she let him make his case and tried it, and years later they both still happily embrace that lifestyle, swearing that it’s done wonders for their relationship. This woman was willing to step outside her usual comfort zone and try something that turned out to be enjoyable and beneficial for her.
But often we say yes to this question even when we know that we’re deeply, fundamentally uncomfortable with what’s being suggested—whether it’s going on vacation with his ex, base-jumping into the Amazon, or acting out every scene from 50 Shades of Gray.
Women are often raised and societally conditioned to be accommodating, pleasant, easygoing. (If we’re not, we’re labeled harpies, viragos, ball busters.) But saying yes to something our whole being shies away from for the sake of not making waves is only going to yield resentment, fear, lowered self-esteem, and possibly even worse.
Take some chances, yes. Step outside your comfort zone once in a while—that’s one of the best things about relationships: that the other person can push you and help you grow in directions you never expected. But honor your own personal boundaries, and don’t say you’re comfortable with something if you truly aren’t.
“Don’t you trust me?” This question is sometimes asked outright, but more often it’s implied in statements that push boundaries you may not be ready to cross yet, like, “We’ll just snuggle,” “I promise I’m clean,” “Just the tip.” It might be an effort to convince you to do something you aren’t comfortable with if you do have the temerity to state your discomfort, like, “Come on, just send me one little naked selfie?” Or it might be in response to your questioning, doubt, or mistrust: “I swear that was my sister—we’re just really close.”
Trust is the foundation of a healthy relationship, it’s true—but if your gut is telling you that you shouldn’t place yours in the person you’re with, honor that primal wisdom.
“Will you marry me?” Years ago friends of mine got engaged despite frequent fighting. When the woman and I talked about their relationship issues one evening, she told me she wasn’t too worried, because if things didn’t work out it wasn’t forever.
Uh, yeah, actually. It is—or it’s supposed to be. That’s why they say “till death do us part.” Granted, a hefty chunk of marriages don’t work out, but the whole point of the institution is to approach it as a lifetime partnership, not a test drive. No relationship is sunshine and roses 24/7, but if you aren’t 100 percent certain that this is the person you want beside you come rain or come shine, don’t say yes to a proposal, no matter how long you’ve been together, or how romantic the moment.
“Can’t we try again?” This one is on a case-by-case basis, but most often the right answer here is no. There’s a reason you broke up in the first place—whether it was one party’s transgression, fundamental differences, or simple disinterest. But if your relationship went awry enough that one or both of you was willing to end it, chances are they won’t be magically fixed by starting things up again. In the wise words of Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken.
Remember the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Unless whatever element of the relationship that broke you up in the first place has been identified, addressed, and dealt with, then you’re just doing what a friend of mine calls “tipping the Coke machine”—once it gets rocking, sooner or later that sucker’s going over.
“Is everything okay?” “I’m fine” is my mantra. It should be blazoned on my forehead, monogrammed on my towels, etched into the foam of my cappuccino. It’s my answer whether I am, in fact, fine or not. And I’m not alone in that—ask most men their biggest pet peeve with women, and it’s usually this: that we say everything is okay when it isn’t. Acting as if it is doesn’t solve the problem or make us feel any better—in fact, it does just the opposite, making us feel worse and worse, unheard and unexpressed, until we blow like a powder keg.
Stating what’s bothering us doesn’t make us “high-maintenance” or naggy or shrewish. It relieves the pressure of suppressed feelings, and it honors your partner by trusting that he will hear it and not run away.
But that doesn’t mean you have a license to vomit up a litany of your partner’s wrongdoings—we can respect our own feelings and still respect someone else’s.
#
In the right context, “No” can be every bit as powerful as yes—and not always a negative answer. When have you said yes that you wish you’d said no? What made you do it? Did you realize it at the time?
“Want to hang out?” This question isn’t always asked outright, but it can be. More often it’s implied in casual last-minute requests to get together, nebulous offers to join a guy among a group of other friends, and late-night booty calls.
“Want to hang out?” isn’t asking someone on a date, but women often interpret it that way, because we want to believe we’re being pursued, even when it’s the most lackadaisical of courtships.
It may sound old-fashioned, but a guy who wants to see you will make plans to do it—in advance, and more formally than an amorphous offer to orbit each other’s persons.
“Can I take you out?” Whether it’s out of lust, pity, guilt, boredom, or loneliness, most women have said yes to dates with men that they knew weren’t good matches. I once wound up in a two-year relationship with one of those, my instincts overridden by my attraction to the man.
But when we finally broke up, after two painful, heartbreaking years, it was for all the reasons I’d been reluctant to go out with him in the first place: We had major lifestyle, personality, and ideological differences. If I’d paid more attention to my gut instincts at the very beginning, I could have saved myself what turned out to be two years of spinning my wheels.
If your lizard-brain impulses are telling you you’re better off not going out with someone, pay attention! It’s a lot easier to say “no” to the first date than it is after months or years of a relationship.
“Is this good enough?” This is an implicit question, rarely asked directly—but it comes up early and often in dating in how someone treats you. I once waited nearly an hour for a date to show up. Embarrassing now—although he did call around ten minutes late and say he’d overslept and would be there soon.
Overslept. For our first date.
I should have left and let him reschedule, but I didn’t—and the entire rest of our short-lived relationship was marked by this same lassitude from him.
We generally lead with the best stuff in our bag of tricks when we’re trying to impress someone. So what you get out of the starting gate is either the most someone is capable of, or they aren’t trying that hard. Either way, it tells you what you need to know to decide whether they’re worth the investment of your time and emotions.
“He hasn’t called. Should I call/text/stalk him?” The short answer here is no. No, please, I beg you.
The long answer is this: If a guy isn’t contacting you, it’s probably not because he’s shy, insecure, or waiting for you to give him the green light. Not only do you not have to chase someone who’s really into you, but it chisels away at your self-esteem to do it.
You’re also working against biology—men are hunter-gatherers. If a man wants you, he’ll go get you; he won’t take the risk you’ll slip away. If he’s willing to, he’s showing you how much he values you—which isn’t much.
According to Dr. Duana Welch, author Love, Factually: 10 Proven Steps from “I Wish” to “I Do,” [link] research reveals that although men and women have similarly high standards for a life mate, men’s standards for a hookup are pretty much baseline: “In research, men have admitted that they're open to having sex with women who are low-IQ, drunk, unconscious, and/or unattractive,” Welch explains. “So if you call a man who wasn't interested enough to call you first, he will probably say he'd like to get together. But factually speaking, it's for casual sex, not anything long-term.“
If that’s what you’re looking for you’re almost certain to succeed, but if you’re hoping for something more, why chase after it with someone who can’t be troubled to lift his phone and call you?
“Can you do that for me?” I have a friend who does absolutely everything for whatever partner is in her life—she anticipates and tends to his every need, goes over and above to make his life easier, thinking to make herself indispensable.
Invariably he doesn’t reciprocate to her level. And invariably she gets furious, hurt, and ultimately brokenhearted when the resulting tension breaks the relationship up. My friend does too much—she takes on more than she can comfortably maintain without getting overstressed and burning herself out—and without coming to resent the fact that her beaus aren’t giving the same overly attentive effort to her.
Women are notorious helpers—we’re genetically wired for caretaking. But we have to maintain sight of how much we can take on—and how much we should take on for someone else, without losing sight of ourselves. Nurturing our loved ones is a wonderful way to show them we care about them, but a candle burning at both ends and from the middle eventually leaves nothing but a used-up puddle of wax.
“Are you comfortable with this?” I know a woman whose husband suggested that they turn their marriage into an open one. Despite initial resistance, she let him make his case and tried it, and years later they both still happily embrace that lifestyle, swearing that it’s done wonders for their relationship. This woman was willing to step outside her usual comfort zone and try something that turned out to be enjoyable and beneficial for her.
But often we say yes to this question even when we know that we’re deeply, fundamentally uncomfortable with what’s being suggested—whether it’s going on vacation with his ex, base-jumping into the Amazon, or acting out every scene from 50 Shades of Gray.
Women are often raised and societally conditioned to be accommodating, pleasant, easygoing. (If we’re not, we’re labeled harpies, viragos, ball busters.) But saying yes to something our whole being shies away from for the sake of not making waves is only going to yield resentment, fear, lowered self-esteem, and possibly even worse.
Take some chances, yes. Step outside your comfort zone once in a while—that’s one of the best things about relationships: that the other person can push you and help you grow in directions you never expected. But honor your own personal boundaries, and don’t say you’re comfortable with something if you truly aren’t.
“Don’t you trust me?” This question is sometimes asked outright, but more often it’s implied in statements that push boundaries you may not be ready to cross yet, like, “We’ll just snuggle,” “I promise I’m clean,” “Just the tip.” It might be an effort to convince you to do something you aren’t comfortable with if you do have the temerity to state your discomfort, like, “Come on, just send me one little naked selfie?” Or it might be in response to your questioning, doubt, or mistrust: “I swear that was my sister—we’re just really close.”
Trust is the foundation of a healthy relationship, it’s true—but if your gut is telling you that you shouldn’t place yours in the person you’re with, honor that primal wisdom.
“Will you marry me?” Years ago friends of mine got engaged despite frequent fighting. When the woman and I talked about their relationship issues one evening, she told me she wasn’t too worried, because if things didn’t work out it wasn’t forever.
Uh, yeah, actually. It is—or it’s supposed to be. That’s why they say “till death do us part.” Granted, a hefty chunk of marriages don’t work out, but the whole point of the institution is to approach it as a lifetime partnership, not a test drive. No relationship is sunshine and roses 24/7, but if you aren’t 100 percent certain that this is the person you want beside you come rain or come shine, don’t say yes to a proposal, no matter how long you’ve been together, or how romantic the moment.
“Can’t we try again?” This one is on a case-by-case basis, but most often the right answer here is no. There’s a reason you broke up in the first place—whether it was one party’s transgression, fundamental differences, or simple disinterest. But if your relationship went awry enough that one or both of you was willing to end it, chances are they won’t be magically fixed by starting things up again. In the wise words of Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken.
Remember the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Unless whatever element of the relationship that broke you up in the first place has been identified, addressed, and dealt with, then you’re just doing what a friend of mine calls “tipping the Coke machine”—once it gets rocking, sooner or later that sucker’s going over.
“Is everything okay?” “I’m fine” is my mantra. It should be blazoned on my forehead, monogrammed on my towels, etched into the foam of my cappuccino. It’s my answer whether I am, in fact, fine or not. And I’m not alone in that—ask most men their biggest pet peeve with women, and it’s usually this: that we say everything is okay when it isn’t. Acting as if it is doesn’t solve the problem or make us feel any better—in fact, it does just the opposite, making us feel worse and worse, unheard and unexpressed, until we blow like a powder keg.
Stating what’s bothering us doesn’t make us “high-maintenance” or naggy or shrewish. It relieves the pressure of suppressed feelings, and it honors your partner by trusting that he will hear it and not run away.
But that doesn’t mean you have a license to vomit up a litany of your partner’s wrongdoings—we can respect our own feelings and still respect someone else’s.
#
In the right context, “No” can be every bit as powerful as yes—and not always a negative answer. When have you said yes that you wish you’d said no? What made you do it? Did you realize it at the time?
4 Things to Get Right to Keep Your Marriage from Going Wrong
Filmmaker Doug Block learned a lot about marriage by accident. A documentarian who also works as a wedding videographer, Block visited a handful of couples whose weddings he'd filmed -- anywhere from five to 20 years later -- and interviewed them about the state of their marriage. The result is his unexpectedly revealing, tender, and thought-provoking film 112 Weddings.
The hope and uncomplicated joy of a wedding is often a stark contrast to the real-life challenges of day-to-day married life. Some of Block's couples weathered the years well, and some did not, but all reveal a lot about our relationships, the expectations and hopes we put into them, and what marriage/commitment really looks like.
If weddings are the splash and fizz of opening night on Broadway, marriage is the slog of the dozens, hundreds, thousands of performances that follow. How are couples supposed to maintain the best parts of the early days of their relationship amid the slings and arrows of day-to-day life?
I asked Block, along with a variety of others -- mental health professionals, relationship experts, as well as laypeople, both married and divorced, happy and unhappy -- for the single best piece of advice they would give to people about creating a successful, healthy committed relationship.
What is it that couples need to do right to keep things from going wrong?
1. Pick Right
Most experts and laypeople alike will tell you that it doesn't matter how hard you work on your relationship -- if you pick someone fundamentally incompatible with you and your core values, no amount of effort in the world will help.
"People often couple for the wrong reasons," says Damona Hoffman, dating expert and founder of relationship site DatesandMates.com, citing convenience, expectations, and pressure to have kids -- other common reasons can be conflation of lust and love, fear of being alone, or even simple security. Hoffman, herself happily married eight years, advocates a "deep period of self-discovery" before jumping into marriage, to make sure you're picking someone you want to wake up beside for the rest of your life.
So what are the right reasons to marry someone? "If it's love alone or passion alone I see little chance of it succeeding," says A.J., currently going through a divorce after 14 years of marriage. Her list of must-haves includes aligned goals, sexuality, and spirituality. For Kelly Harrell, 22 years into her second marriage, the nonnegotiable is humor: "Things will get rough, and sometimes the only thing you can do is giggle."
Interestingly, almost none of the people interviewed talked about specific, concrete differences as a deal breaker in picking a mate -- political, financial, religious, etc. In the right relationship, it seems, the minor details can be worked out -- as long as the big-ticket items match up.
Or as Dr. Duana Welch, author of Love, Factually: 10 Proven Steps from "I Wish" to "I Do," and founder of the Love Science blog, simply puts it: "If you can find and be someone kind and respectful, your marriage will go well, and if you can't it won't."
2. Treat Each Other Right
Unsurprising, then, that kindness and respect come up frequently when people are asked about the most essential elements of a healthy marriage. "With those two characteristics all the variables in life, good or bad, are handled with maturity, and without anger and blame," says Marcie Walter, still happily married to her college sweetheart after 33 years.
The concept comes up over and over in various forms: honor, respect, compromise, communication, lack of judgment, openness, honesty, trust.
But what all the respondents' comments boiled down to, at bottom, was friendship. Every trait cited for how a person should treat his or her partner was -- not coincidentally -- the definition of how you should treat a friend. Many people flat-out listed friendship as their core piece of marriage advice.
"Be friends, always," says K. J. Scrim. "We have been married 35 years and our friendship has outlasted every part of our relationship. Friends are forgiving, helpful, love you for who you are, support you no matter what, will laugh at you as well as laugh with you, and listen better than anyone. When life throws you to the ground, a friend is the one person you can count on to lift you back up."
3. F*** Right
But what about passion?
Friendship is awesome, but if that's all that's needed for a fantastic marriage, then most of us would be content having roommates. Yet despite the Hollywood/romance novel industry representation of love as all-chemistry, all the time, only a few interviewees even mentioned sex.
But as Anne Rodgers, coauthor of Kiss and Tell, Secrets of Sexual Desire for Women 15 to 97, says, "Sex plays a huge role in a happy marriage... It's a couple's private world of pleasure." In her more than 1,300 interviews with women about their sexuality, "Again and again I found that the women happiest in their sex lives and marriages were either gifted with fairly high libidos themselves or blessed with husbands who were committed to ensuring that their wives' sex lives were satisfying in every way. This tells me that if your libidos don't match, communication is key."
That means it's not so much how often you have it, but whether the sex you're having meets your mutual needs and desires. One respondent calls this "aligned sexuality: are we both highly sexed (toward each other) or need a month to get around to each other? Or want a menagerie of people?"
Rodgers spoke with one 80-year-old who confessed that her husband, on learning of her deep fears of intimacy on their wedding night, deferred consummating their marriage. When his wife revealed that she enjoyed oral sex, he made it a regular part of their sexual repertoire, and thereafter she was always eager, decade after decade.
"So the men who listen are the winners," Rodgers concludes.
In other words, communication, respect, and compromise -- again, friendship -- are the key core qualities of even the sexual aspect of a happy marriage.
4. Fight Right
No matter how well you're navigating the seas of marriage, storms will come. It's how a couple weathers them that can separate a successful marriage from a failed one.
After all his research and work observing couples in various stages of marriage, this was the one area 112 Weddings auteur Doug Block zoomed in on as the most important for a happy marriage: "Learn how to fight well."
Mindy Woodhead, married to her partner for five years, agrees: "Figuring out how to communicate during the hard times and the rough times is the hardest part of marriage so far for me. So I think coming up with a mode of communication to process hurt and frustration while still dating is important."
But what does "fighting well" entail?
•"Calmly, without yelling or screaming, for one thing. And don't dredge up your whole history of complaints and grievances; keep it to the point at hand. I think the hardest thing in a fight is to shut up and listen without being defensive. And be quick to apologize, which in my case is easy since I'm in the wrong disturbingly often." (Doug Block, married 30 years)
• "Be polite. It's a mark of respect and can get you through times when you want to say something really, really nasty." (Kay, married 16 years)
•"Grace and forgiveness. No one ever wins a fight." (Meg Errickson, married 21 years)
•"The fine art of compromise. I think many people believe that means you have to give in but that's not it. You're a team now and working toward goals together, whatever that takes." (Stacy, married 26 years)
•"If you need to have a yell match that's fine, but after everything settles really try and understand [your partner] and what they are feeling." (Jennifer Ojeda, married 9 years)
•"Decide the rules of engagement, e.g., how to discuss problems, what is okay to say. You can't play by the rules if you don't have any rules." (Hal Reames, clinical psychologist, married 6 years)
Getting married is easy, but staying married is a learned skill -- and as with any other endeavor worth pursuing, it isn't necessarily one we're born with. But luckily there are plenty of experts for that.
"Get a therapist," says Syd Sharples, LCSW, an expert in collaborative divorce and relationship therapy, herself divorced, stressing that marriage counseling isn't just for couples in trouble. "And don't wait until you're in crisis to visit with them!"
(112 Weddings is currently available on iTunes, and on DVD and other digital platforms on July 14)
The hope and uncomplicated joy of a wedding is often a stark contrast to the real-life challenges of day-to-day married life. Some of Block's couples weathered the years well, and some did not, but all reveal a lot about our relationships, the expectations and hopes we put into them, and what marriage/commitment really looks like.
If weddings are the splash and fizz of opening night on Broadway, marriage is the slog of the dozens, hundreds, thousands of performances that follow. How are couples supposed to maintain the best parts of the early days of their relationship amid the slings and arrows of day-to-day life?
I asked Block, along with a variety of others -- mental health professionals, relationship experts, as well as laypeople, both married and divorced, happy and unhappy -- for the single best piece of advice they would give to people about creating a successful, healthy committed relationship.
What is it that couples need to do right to keep things from going wrong?
1. Pick Right
Most experts and laypeople alike will tell you that it doesn't matter how hard you work on your relationship -- if you pick someone fundamentally incompatible with you and your core values, no amount of effort in the world will help.
"People often couple for the wrong reasons," says Damona Hoffman, dating expert and founder of relationship site DatesandMates.com, citing convenience, expectations, and pressure to have kids -- other common reasons can be conflation of lust and love, fear of being alone, or even simple security. Hoffman, herself happily married eight years, advocates a "deep period of self-discovery" before jumping into marriage, to make sure you're picking someone you want to wake up beside for the rest of your life.
So what are the right reasons to marry someone? "If it's love alone or passion alone I see little chance of it succeeding," says A.J., currently going through a divorce after 14 years of marriage. Her list of must-haves includes aligned goals, sexuality, and spirituality. For Kelly Harrell, 22 years into her second marriage, the nonnegotiable is humor: "Things will get rough, and sometimes the only thing you can do is giggle."
Interestingly, almost none of the people interviewed talked about specific, concrete differences as a deal breaker in picking a mate -- political, financial, religious, etc. In the right relationship, it seems, the minor details can be worked out -- as long as the big-ticket items match up.
Or as Dr. Duana Welch, author of Love, Factually: 10 Proven Steps from "I Wish" to "I Do," and founder of the Love Science blog, simply puts it: "If you can find and be someone kind and respectful, your marriage will go well, and if you can't it won't."
2. Treat Each Other Right
Unsurprising, then, that kindness and respect come up frequently when people are asked about the most essential elements of a healthy marriage. "With those two characteristics all the variables in life, good or bad, are handled with maturity, and without anger and blame," says Marcie Walter, still happily married to her college sweetheart after 33 years.
The concept comes up over and over in various forms: honor, respect, compromise, communication, lack of judgment, openness, honesty, trust.
But what all the respondents' comments boiled down to, at bottom, was friendship. Every trait cited for how a person should treat his or her partner was -- not coincidentally -- the definition of how you should treat a friend. Many people flat-out listed friendship as their core piece of marriage advice.
"Be friends, always," says K. J. Scrim. "We have been married 35 years and our friendship has outlasted every part of our relationship. Friends are forgiving, helpful, love you for who you are, support you no matter what, will laugh at you as well as laugh with you, and listen better than anyone. When life throws you to the ground, a friend is the one person you can count on to lift you back up."
3. F*** Right
But what about passion?
Friendship is awesome, but if that's all that's needed for a fantastic marriage, then most of us would be content having roommates. Yet despite the Hollywood/romance novel industry representation of love as all-chemistry, all the time, only a few interviewees even mentioned sex.
But as Anne Rodgers, coauthor of Kiss and Tell, Secrets of Sexual Desire for Women 15 to 97, says, "Sex plays a huge role in a happy marriage... It's a couple's private world of pleasure." In her more than 1,300 interviews with women about their sexuality, "Again and again I found that the women happiest in their sex lives and marriages were either gifted with fairly high libidos themselves or blessed with husbands who were committed to ensuring that their wives' sex lives were satisfying in every way. This tells me that if your libidos don't match, communication is key."
That means it's not so much how often you have it, but whether the sex you're having meets your mutual needs and desires. One respondent calls this "aligned sexuality: are we both highly sexed (toward each other) or need a month to get around to each other? Or want a menagerie of people?"
Rodgers spoke with one 80-year-old who confessed that her husband, on learning of her deep fears of intimacy on their wedding night, deferred consummating their marriage. When his wife revealed that she enjoyed oral sex, he made it a regular part of their sexual repertoire, and thereafter she was always eager, decade after decade.
"So the men who listen are the winners," Rodgers concludes.
In other words, communication, respect, and compromise -- again, friendship -- are the key core qualities of even the sexual aspect of a happy marriage.
4. Fight Right
No matter how well you're navigating the seas of marriage, storms will come. It's how a couple weathers them that can separate a successful marriage from a failed one.
After all his research and work observing couples in various stages of marriage, this was the one area 112 Weddings auteur Doug Block zoomed in on as the most important for a happy marriage: "Learn how to fight well."
Mindy Woodhead, married to her partner for five years, agrees: "Figuring out how to communicate during the hard times and the rough times is the hardest part of marriage so far for me. So I think coming up with a mode of communication to process hurt and frustration while still dating is important."
But what does "fighting well" entail?
•"Calmly, without yelling or screaming, for one thing. And don't dredge up your whole history of complaints and grievances; keep it to the point at hand. I think the hardest thing in a fight is to shut up and listen without being defensive. And be quick to apologize, which in my case is easy since I'm in the wrong disturbingly often." (Doug Block, married 30 years)
• "Be polite. It's a mark of respect and can get you through times when you want to say something really, really nasty." (Kay, married 16 years)
•"Grace and forgiveness. No one ever wins a fight." (Meg Errickson, married 21 years)
•"The fine art of compromise. I think many people believe that means you have to give in but that's not it. You're a team now and working toward goals together, whatever that takes." (Stacy, married 26 years)
•"If you need to have a yell match that's fine, but after everything settles really try and understand [your partner] and what they are feeling." (Jennifer Ojeda, married 9 years)
•"Decide the rules of engagement, e.g., how to discuss problems, what is okay to say. You can't play by the rules if you don't have any rules." (Hal Reames, clinical psychologist, married 6 years)
Getting married is easy, but staying married is a learned skill -- and as with any other endeavor worth pursuing, it isn't necessarily one we're born with. But luckily there are plenty of experts for that.
"Get a therapist," says Syd Sharples, LCSW, an expert in collaborative divorce and relationship therapy, herself divorced, stressing that marriage counseling isn't just for couples in trouble. "And don't wait until you're in crisis to visit with them!"
(112 Weddings is currently available on iTunes, and on DVD and other digital platforms on July 14)
Why You Have't Found the One
One of my good friends is a certified matchmaker—a gay matchmaker [www.H4M.com], to be exact (she’s not gay, but her clients are). Recently we were talking about a phenomenon she’s been encountering in her business: Clients will call in reporting on one of the dates she’s set them up on, from among her highly curated and very exclusive clientele, telling her how easy the person was to talk to, how the time flew, how much they had in common, and how often they laughed.
“Good,” she’ll say. “Let’s coordinate the second date.”
“Oh, I don’t want a second date. There wasn’t a deep connection.”
What. The Hell.
Having a similar reaction to mine, my friend then asks what they mean—and out it comes: There were no fireworks, the earth didn’t move, their souls didn’t recognize their counterparts in each other.
“Do they realize they are living in a Nicholas Sparks movie?” I asked her.
Her answer? No. They don’t.
This was the moment I realized that relationships have become an endangered species, driven to extinction by hookups and hangouts and “drinks and apps” and swiping left while everyone waits for the Great Love that is waiting for them as soon as they find their perfect soul mate.
Lately the youth hookup culture has been getting a lot of press in articles like this [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/201...], blaming the Internet or Gen Y ennui or Tinder toxicity.
But as my friend’s comments pointed out, the phenomenon isn’t limited to college kids and twenty-somethings. A woman I know, in her fifties, brushed by a man perhaps ten years older as he clearly tried to engage her in conversation. “Ew,” she said when we pointed out his interest. “He’s not hot.” She then went on to lament her flatlined dating life: “Everyone who wants to date me is wrinkly and saggy and middle-aged!” My (perhaps impolitic) answer: “So are you.”
Meanwhile this woman has spent several years with a “hot” man who treats her terribly—late-night booty calls and marginalizing her from the rest of his life and never, ever any discussion of “where this is going.” She says she wants more from him—but she’s willing to accept so much less.
She’s tired of the merry-go-round; she wants to get off this stupid circular ride with the horses going up and down, up and down and never really going anywhere. But she’s never going to find what she’s looking for.
Because what she’s looking for doesn’t exist.
Relationships aren’t Ryan Gosling and his abs lifting you over his head in a Dirty Dancing pose that leads to deep, meaningful conversation and rocking sex night after night after night.
They’re Steve Carrell wearing tennis shoes and Gap jeans and aerating the lawn in cleats.
Commitment is farting and clipping toenails and love handles. It’s paying the bills and cutting the grass and doing the laundry. It’s thinking about having sex, but honestly you’re just so damn tired, and really, you can do it anytime, so why not just roll over and fall asleep tonight? And the next night. And sometimes the next.
It’s wanting pizza and having Chinese. It’s feeling like going out with your girlfriends, but instead staying home to watch TV with your sig-O because you know he had a hard day. It’s hearing the same damn complaint about his job for the fiftieth time in a row, and having to come up not only with a new way to say “I’m so sorry,” but to actually sound like you effing give a crap.
But you know what else it is? It’s coming home every single day to someone who smiles to see you and asks how your day was—and most of the time actually cares about hearing it…even when you make the same damn complaint for the fiftieth time in a row.
It’s someone who peels all the hard-boiled eggs because he knows you hate to do it, and checks your connecting flight when you’re traveling so he can text you with the gate information as you get off the plane.
It’s loosing all your carefully contained neuroses in the occasional magnificently terrifying and pathetic showcase of insanity…and someone listening to all the crazy and loving you anyway and still seeing you as a strong, confident, capable person when you finally manage to herd the demons back into their little cave for a while.
It’s two completely different entities finding a way to coexist—and more, to complement each other, to bolster up each other’s weak spots, burnish one another’s shiny areas, hold a mirror unflinchingly up to show us clearly not only our strengths but our shortcomings, so we can grow.
It’s hard and glorious and infuriating and tender and terrifying and elevating and fragile.
And the number one requirement for finding and succeeding at it is knowing all of this…and wanting it anyway.
Knowing that you will have to work at it, and that there will be compromise, and that the payoff isn’t a shining grail of constant oneness and communion and spiritual elevation and mind-rocking sex, but just a general steady sense of well-being and belonging and happiness…and, if you’re lucky, occasional, unexpected, tender moments of oneness and communion and spiritual elevation. And yes, even mind-rocking sex.
Oh—and someone who has your back every day of your life, and walks beside you holding your hand, and thinks it’s hilarious and adorable that you cry at weddings even if you don’t know the bride and groom, and gets your endless obscure eighties TV references, and will spend ten minutes intently discussing things like why people think clams are so damn happy and why coffee makes you poop.
Maybe at the bar on Friday night, sitting in a booth with your posse and casually swiping left and right among an endless string of young, available hotties, it seems like the parade is never going to end, and why would you ever want to give up all this awesome freedom for that?
But life isn’t that epic, raucous Friday night. It’s 20,000 mundane Wednesday nights that will follow—Forgettable Wednesday [http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-li...].
And on your 6,562nd Forgettable Wednesday you may find yourself wishing you weren’t alone, or chasing after someone who doesn’t seem to want you, or sliding out of the unfamiliar sheets of some interchangeable hot boy…that instead you were sharing it with someone who, if you are both very lucky, will be your partner and best friend and confidant and lover and cheering section, and keep you from growing old alone.
“Good,” she’ll say. “Let’s coordinate the second date.”
“Oh, I don’t want a second date. There wasn’t a deep connection.”
What. The Hell.
Having a similar reaction to mine, my friend then asks what they mean—and out it comes: There were no fireworks, the earth didn’t move, their souls didn’t recognize their counterparts in each other.
“Do they realize they are living in a Nicholas Sparks movie?” I asked her.
Her answer? No. They don’t.
This was the moment I realized that relationships have become an endangered species, driven to extinction by hookups and hangouts and “drinks and apps” and swiping left while everyone waits for the Great Love that is waiting for them as soon as they find their perfect soul mate.
Lately the youth hookup culture has been getting a lot of press in articles like this [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/201...], blaming the Internet or Gen Y ennui or Tinder toxicity.
But as my friend’s comments pointed out, the phenomenon isn’t limited to college kids and twenty-somethings. A woman I know, in her fifties, brushed by a man perhaps ten years older as he clearly tried to engage her in conversation. “Ew,” she said when we pointed out his interest. “He’s not hot.” She then went on to lament her flatlined dating life: “Everyone who wants to date me is wrinkly and saggy and middle-aged!” My (perhaps impolitic) answer: “So are you.”
Meanwhile this woman has spent several years with a “hot” man who treats her terribly—late-night booty calls and marginalizing her from the rest of his life and never, ever any discussion of “where this is going.” She says she wants more from him—but she’s willing to accept so much less.
She’s tired of the merry-go-round; she wants to get off this stupid circular ride with the horses going up and down, up and down and never really going anywhere. But she’s never going to find what she’s looking for.
Because what she’s looking for doesn’t exist.
Relationships aren’t Ryan Gosling and his abs lifting you over his head in a Dirty Dancing pose that leads to deep, meaningful conversation and rocking sex night after night after night.
They’re Steve Carrell wearing tennis shoes and Gap jeans and aerating the lawn in cleats.
Commitment is farting and clipping toenails and love handles. It’s paying the bills and cutting the grass and doing the laundry. It’s thinking about having sex, but honestly you’re just so damn tired, and really, you can do it anytime, so why not just roll over and fall asleep tonight? And the next night. And sometimes the next.
It’s wanting pizza and having Chinese. It’s feeling like going out with your girlfriends, but instead staying home to watch TV with your sig-O because you know he had a hard day. It’s hearing the same damn complaint about his job for the fiftieth time in a row, and having to come up not only with a new way to say “I’m so sorry,” but to actually sound like you effing give a crap.
But you know what else it is? It’s coming home every single day to someone who smiles to see you and asks how your day was—and most of the time actually cares about hearing it…even when you make the same damn complaint for the fiftieth time in a row.
It’s someone who peels all the hard-boiled eggs because he knows you hate to do it, and checks your connecting flight when you’re traveling so he can text you with the gate information as you get off the plane.
It’s loosing all your carefully contained neuroses in the occasional magnificently terrifying and pathetic showcase of insanity…and someone listening to all the crazy and loving you anyway and still seeing you as a strong, confident, capable person when you finally manage to herd the demons back into their little cave for a while.
It’s two completely different entities finding a way to coexist—and more, to complement each other, to bolster up each other’s weak spots, burnish one another’s shiny areas, hold a mirror unflinchingly up to show us clearly not only our strengths but our shortcomings, so we can grow.
It’s hard and glorious and infuriating and tender and terrifying and elevating and fragile.
And the number one requirement for finding and succeeding at it is knowing all of this…and wanting it anyway.
Knowing that you will have to work at it, and that there will be compromise, and that the payoff isn’t a shining grail of constant oneness and communion and spiritual elevation and mind-rocking sex, but just a general steady sense of well-being and belonging and happiness…and, if you’re lucky, occasional, unexpected, tender moments of oneness and communion and spiritual elevation. And yes, even mind-rocking sex.
Oh—and someone who has your back every day of your life, and walks beside you holding your hand, and thinks it’s hilarious and adorable that you cry at weddings even if you don’t know the bride and groom, and gets your endless obscure eighties TV references, and will spend ten minutes intently discussing things like why people think clams are so damn happy and why coffee makes you poop.
Maybe at the bar on Friday night, sitting in a booth with your posse and casually swiping left and right among an endless string of young, available hotties, it seems like the parade is never going to end, and why would you ever want to give up all this awesome freedom for that?
But life isn’t that epic, raucous Friday night. It’s 20,000 mundane Wednesday nights that will follow—Forgettable Wednesday [http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-li...].
And on your 6,562nd Forgettable Wednesday you may find yourself wishing you weren’t alone, or chasing after someone who doesn’t seem to want you, or sliding out of the unfamiliar sheets of some interchangeable hot boy…that instead you were sharing it with someone who, if you are both very lucky, will be your partner and best friend and confidant and lover and cheering section, and keep you from growing old alone.
