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Men Speak Out: The Secret to Keeping Him Committed

by zfortadminin RELATIONSHIPS

Are you willing to let your Man take the Lead? How adventurous are you in Love to step out of your comfort zone and try out a suggestion from your partner? 

 

Should we help him feel like a “conqueror”? Allowing men to take the lead sometimes helps men stay committed to the relationship. From  Death of the Cheating Man: What Every Woman Must Know about Men Who Stray.

Helping a man feel like a conqueror will help him want to stay committed. It may sound odd to women, but it can be easier than you may think.

Why do men love a “ride-or-die woman”? “She doesn’t get in the way,” one of my buddies told me about his wife. It’s true; she allows him to do the things that cause him to feel like a conqueror and that helps him to feel like she’s going to ride with him no matter what. When a man feels that he has this type of woman, he will go the extra mile to stay committed because he sees her as an asset to his life. And ladies, keep in mind that just because you are in a relationship, doesn’t mean that you’re an asset…many women become liabilities.

Men love to feel like a woman will do something out of her comfort zone for us. In other words, she’ll ride, no matter what. It’s all about the little things that help us keep our heads in the commitment.

For instance, a man wants to take on a task that you see is menial. If a woman makes him fight or justify it, then she may cause him to flee. Allowing him to do it without hassle, and trusting that he is a faithful man who simply needs to conquer something, will make all the difference in the world.

I’m not suggesting that women should give men whatever they want all the time, but it’s important for women to know that a man doesn’t always want what he’s asking for; he wants to know that his woman will ride with him if he asks. That makes him feel like a conqueror and that he has a ride-or-die type of woman.

It’s really that simple…the small things make a man feel like a king!

Little do most women know that a small task like pushing the elevator button can be important to a man. We have all been in the elevator when a little boy gets in and wants to push the elevator button and his mom lets him do it. What seems like such a menial thing to a woman can be a task of conquering for a man.

I used to have a girlfriend that battled me on simple issues like where we parked when we went somewhere. No matter where I wanted to park, she’d argue that we should park somewhere else. To her she had just as much right to pick the parking place as I did.

While she was in the right to voice her opinion about the parking decision, battling me over an issue where I needed to feel like a conqueror only served to cause me to try harder to conquer. So we’d argue back and forth and I’d park where I wanted to just to conquer, or I’d reluctantly give in and flee. For a while I pleaded my case to her and tried to get her to understand that little things were important to me as a man. But she decided that it was more important to her that we were equal in all decisions and in the long run, our relationship was lost in her conquest.

However, my next girlfriend saw that this was important to me, so instead, she placed her concerns on making sure that we were always on time and as long as we were safe, she allowed me to choose the parking without hassle. Again, it may sound like no big deal to a woman, but making that small decision helped me to feel like I had conquered, and in return, I made sure I accommodated her desire to always be on time.

Those little nuances serve to remind a man how valuable a woman is in the moments where he may tire of commitment.

On a larger scale, the thing that most faithful men complain about is that they can’t get sex when they want it in a committed relationship. When a man is single or cheating, he can have sex at random or whenever he wants it. But when he’s in a committed relationship, his sexual fulfillment is based 100 percent on the clock of his woman.

As I said earlier what many women may not see is that for a faithful man, being committed to a relationship gives us a sense of entitlement to sex. If we can’t have it at our leisure, we feel rejected and no conqueror thinks he should ever be rejected. If it persists, we won’t cheat, but it can cause us to pull away from the commitment.

Ladies, I understand that men always want sex and that can be inconvenient for a woman. Some women complain that they love having sex with their man, but they can’t keep up with giving it the way a man needs it—all the time.

When a woman shows frustration, she can cause a man to feel that he isn’t welcome to have what he believes is his. Because he can’t take the cave man approach and drag her into his cave, he may retreat in frustration. This causes a lot of men to pull away over time and want to get out of the commitment where he is faced with such restriction.

Instead of completely turning him away, another approach is for a woman to negotiate without him knowing. Let him know that if he’s willing to wait until the more convenient time, he can have it the way he likes it. This helps him feel like he can have it if he wants, but that she will fulfill his larger desire if he nurtures her needs as well.

As women find themselves at these little crossroads every day in relationships with faithful men, they can keep us engaged in commitment by allowing us the small things that make us feel like conquerors. Remember, just because a guy doesn’t cheat, doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have all the desires of a conquering man.

If you help your man feel like a conqueror, then he’ll be less likely to stray and look for other places or things to conquer. So don’t underestimate the power of the small things. Remember that if it seems small to you, it’s probably big to him.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

 

Impermanent Relationship Commitment… Just Right for This Couple

by zfortadminin LOVE, Sex

I wanted kinship, drama, and obsession with someone eccentric in my twenties; equality, worldliness, and stability with someone calm in my thirties; intimacy, attention, and adventure with someone exotic in my forties.

A few years ago, my husband, Rob, and I converted our traditional marriage to a polyamorous one. It’s been remarkably smooth. We’re very happy with our choice. And yet eventually we’ll probably divorce. Does this mean that polyamory failed us? Not at all.

Like many of our generation, Rob and I are children of divorce, and so when we got married a dozen years ago, we designed a quasi-Buddhist ceremony that made room for the concept of anicca, or impermanence. We wrote our own vows and left out the “until death do we part” and “forsaking all others” stuff: Instead, we spoke about the inevitability of change and pledged to support one another as we continued to evolve.

We meant it, but we had no idea what that might look like. We didn’t anticipate that our evolution could involve the desire for sex and relationships with other people.

But that’s what happened. In our previous relationships and with one another, we’d both been serial monogamists, but after we finished having babies, we looked around and realized that although many things about our marriage were stellar—close friendship, mutual support and admiration, compatible co-parenting—we weren’t ideal for one another sexually. We never really had been. Our libidos don’t match; I’m more “sex motivated” of the two of us. Our relationship had thrived despite a lack of romantic chemistry.

This is not an unusual revelation, of course, and in most marriages, it results in screaming matches, or swallowed resentment, or affairs conducted amidst lies and betrayals. But Rob and I didn’t see our “problem” that way—we didn’t even really see it as a problem. We saw it as a reality, and an opportunity for positive change. We became poly.

I look at it like this: Humans go through multiple phases over the course of a lifetime. It makes sense that our relationship needs shift, too. I wanted kinship, drama, and obsession with someone eccentric in my twenties; equality, worldliness, and stability with someone calm in my thirties; intimacy, attention, and adventure with someone exotic in my forties. Each phase has required partners with different personalities, interests, and energies. As I see it, it’s unfair to expect one person to evolve over many decades on a precisely parallel path to my own. Which is why I also believe that we should stop thinking about the end of a marriage as a crisis and start thinking about it as a reality.

Maybe longevity isn’t the best indicator of a relationship’s success. Why not measure marriages by the level of satisfaction reported, or the self-actualization achievable, or how much the people respect one another even after it’s over, rather than as an endurance test? In Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender and the Edge of Normal,the cultural critic Jack Halberstam calls our culture’s infatuation with long-term monogamy “the romance of permanence.” In a 2012 interview, Halberstam suggested that rather than have weddings to celebrate the beginning of a union, we instead throw parties to honor milestones like getting through a difficult job loss or health crisis together, or to reward surviving the sleepless years of early parenting, or to cheer an amicable and fruitful separation.

HAVING SPENT THE LAST FEW YEARS LIVING POLY WILL ACTUALLY MAKE DISSOLVING THE HUSBAND-AND-WIFE PHASE OF OUR RELATIONSHIP A LOT GENTLER THAN IF WE HADN’T TAKEN THAT LEFT TURN AT SEXYTOWN.

Poly people tend to view divorce in a less binary way than mainstream culture does. Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, a sociologist who studies polyamory, has written about how, in contrast to a dominant worldview in which a “successful” relationship is one which is “the two people involved remain together at all costs,” polyamorists have a broader and more flexible take on the demise of relationships. “Poly people,” she writes, “ultimately define their relationships as both voluntary and utilitarian, in that they are designed to meet participants’ needs.” We understand that the relationship might have to change when needs change. One of the people Sheff interviewed called this “moving apart without blame.” Maybe Gwyneth Paltrow, with her “conscious uncoupling,” was onto something after all.

In this regard, monogamous couples could stand to learn a thing or two from those of us forging an alternative path. For Rob and me, our guess is that having spent the last few years living poly will actually make dissolving the husband-and-wife phase of our relationship a lot gentler than if we hadn’t taken that left turn at Sexytown.

For the last few years, most days at my house look like this: my partner Mike, who lives with us, helps me with dinner while Rob tends to the kids. We all eat together, and then Mike and I put the kids to bed while Rob texts a woman he’s met on OKCupid. Once the kids are down, the three of us sit on the couch for a movie and a cup of tea. Sometimes Rob stays home with the kids while Mike and I go out dancing. Sometimes Mike and I stay home while Rob travels for work or goes on a date. Sometimes Rob and I go out to a play while Mike stays home. Sometimes Mike and I take the kids camping and Rob spends the weekend combing bookstores. Sometimes Mike and Rob watch football together while I volunteer. Sometimes we all take a family vacation together.

IT HELPS THAT BOTH THESE MEN ARE TIDY CANCERS WHO SHARE A LOVE FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICS AND SPORTS BLOGS; THEY ARE ALSO GUYS WHO HAVE ALWAYS ENJOYED LIVING WITH MALE FRIENDS.

Our arrangement wouldn’t work for everyone. It helps that, when Rob and I first became poly, our kids were very young, young enough so that this has pretty much always been their normal. It also helps that Mike didn’t have kids of his own, but is great with ours: my kids say they have two dads. And it helps that both these men are tidy Cancers who share a love for progressive politics and sports blogs; they are also guys who have always enjoyed living with male friends. And they’re wonderful, generous, thoughtful people who like each other, who love me, and who value the extra help and freedom that comes with having a third adult around: there’s a symbiosis they have together. We might argue about stuff like what to feed the kids for lunch or who threw out the last of the conditioner, but I honestly can’t remember a fight that stemmed purely from the fact of our poly arrangement.

Rob’s turning 50 soon, and he recently said that he’s thinking about the possibility of considering a shift within the next few years. We’ve been together for nearly two decades, and I know that his shifting need is not a reflection on me or an indication that I’ve fallen down on the job as his wife, any more than my relationship with Mike is an indication that Rob is somehow deficient as a husband. So we’re having an ongoing conversation about whether this might mean that he’d move out, and if such a move is an economically wise for us, and where the best place to move might be, and if separate households might necessitate a legal proceeding like divorce. Nothing feels dire, and no one feels hurt or rejected.

Practicing polyamory has helped us refrain from seeing this as a failure: failure to be everything to one another, failure to be people we’re not. Like many of the folks Dr. Sheff has reported on in her studies, we’re able to see a shift in the parameters of our relationship as an inevitable change rather than a reason for guilt or anger or blame. We love each other and we want each other to be happy, and part of being happy means getting our needs met. We want to support—not stand in the way of—one another getting our needs met, even if those needs involve reconfiguring our partnership. We know we can still be close and loving, no matter our relationship status.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

Have Something Uncomfortable to Share? Here is When

by zfortadminin DATING ADVICE

After a long stint of online dating, Gemma Halliday had finally found the needle in the haystack she’d been looking for: an attractive, gainfully employed guy with “nothing weird or scary about him” — or so she thought.

“He seemed really nice,” the 31-year-old romance novelist from Los Gatos, California, says of her first phone call with the suitor. He even had “cereal-commercial cute” kids and a picture-perfect home. Halliday learned something else, too.

The man also had a wife — who was in a coma.

“At first I was a little shocked,” Halliday says. “It was very ‘Desperate Housewives.’ In the back of my mind it was like, ‘What happens if she wakes up?’ ”

When to drop the bomb

As strange as the news was, Halliday appreciated his honesty. “Had he waited to tell me, I would have felt he was hiding something,” she says.

Undeterred, she decided to meet the guy for a coffee date, but as it turned out, “the chemistry just wasn’t there,” she says.

But for other daters with secrets — a history of sexually transmitted diseases, a conviction for drunken driving, an obsession with “Star Trek” — the tell-and-then-kiss approach doesn’t necessarily work.

Take Tony Gilbert, 46, from Los Angeles. Throughout his 20s and 30s the body-care products salesman suffered from severe psoriasis, a red, scaly skin condition that covered 20 percent of his body. Besides the itching and discomfort, there was the painful matter of having to tell a date that things might look a little “unsightly” but that “it’s not contagious.”

Rather than share those details over an initial cup of coffee, “I got to know [the person] first, and if I thought we might get intimate, I would tell them,” says Gilbert, who is now married and completely psoriasis-free, thanks to medication he has been taking for five years.

Good decision, says Kimberly Flemke, a therapist on staff with the Philadelphia-based Council for Relationships, a nonprofit relationship-counseling group.

“If you have a big secret, you want to have that trust established first so you know that the person is going to honor your privacy,” she says. “You can’t do that in a new relationship because you don’t know the other person yet.”

How soon is too soon?

Besides, waiting to reveal a potential deal breaker such as herpes or $300,000 in credit-card debt is just good dating decorum, says syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, author of “The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family.”

“You don’t want someone to reveal too much at first because that itself is a deal breaker,” he says. “If somebody sits down on the first date and says, ‘I’m into spanking,’ even if you are into spanking, [too], you might react negatively to that.”

On the flip side, “withholding information like ‘I’m a cross-dresser’ till the wedding night” is bad form, he says. Once you’re seeing the person a few times a week and sleeping together, it’s time to come clean about any secrets that could affect the relationship.

Even then, Flemke says, there are no guarantees your secret will be met with open arms.

Jude Chosnyk, a 48-year-old technical writer from Seattle, can attest to this. Once she became sexually involved with her then-boyfriend, he revealed that he thought he was “a woman in a man’s body” and began wearing women’s underwear and stockings to bed.

“At first I thought it was a fantasy thing,” says Chosnyk, who didn’t mind a little role-playing. But then, “it kind of overtook the relationship, especially in the bedroom. It turned me off, and that’s why I broke up with him.”

Context is everything

When spilling the beans, giving your secret a bit of context can greatly help your case, Flemke says.

“Instead of dropping a bomb and watching the person sit there and absorb the information, say that if you didn’t see the relationship going somewhere, you wouldn’t have said anything,” she explains.

It’s perfectly acceptable to tell your partner you’re nervous about how your big reveal might impact the relationship, she adds. That way, your partner’s likely to have “a little more compassion and empathy.”

Caitlin Weaver, 29, is banking on this.

After breaking off her engagement to her fiancé and canceling the wedding earlier this year, Weaver, who runs a financial research institute in New York, started an anonymous blog about her newfound singledom.

“The idea was to chronicle my commitment to staying single for six months,” she says. “But the problem is that now I have started dating someone, and I’ve been blogging about him.”

Her solution? To stop blogging about her boyfriend (although she still blogs about other aspects of her life) and fess up that she did. “We weren’t serious when we started dating,” says Weaver, who has been with her beau a couple of months and hopes the back story — that she started her blog as a way to “process” how she feels about dating — will help soften the blow.

“I think the fact that I do want to tell him means that we’ve built up some trust,” she says. Now, “it’s just a question of if the blog is a big deal to him.”

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

This is Why We Believe The Bitter Blogs and Cynical Tweets about Modern Relationships

by RJ Newellin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

What Do You Believe About Modern Relationships?

If you Google ‘Modern Relationships,’ you’ll find a medley of bitter blog posts and cynical tweets about why Millennials fail to commit. Our Facebook feeds are full of reasons why modern love is doomed.It can seem like everyone is happily single (because relationships are a waste of time), unhappily single (because break-ups are the worst), or soon-to-be single (because commitment is boring/stressful/hard). And those of us who are in relationships find ourselves crossing our fingers, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even some so-called experts are declaring a state of emergency for millennial relationships.

We believe them, so they’re right.

We say our generation is too busy, too self-involved, too distracted. Our generation blames technology, our upbringing, our finances, and each other. We swipe right, hook up, hang out, and disappear. But that’s just the world we live in. Right?

Wrong.

We all have a natural tendency to believe what we see. When our social media feeds are full of unhappy people bemoaning relationships, we can’t help but think that happy couples don’t exist. But the truth is, people in strong relationships are just too busy putting work into their partnerships to rave about how awesome they are online. And in today’s culture, avoiding social media can be like wearing an invisibility cloak.

Marriage used to be the only acceptable channel for love, sex and long-term intimacy. Nowadays, there are other options. And that’s great! There have been countless apps made to facilitate, simulate and imitate nearly every aspect of human connection. But with so many ways to diffuse our feelings, it’s easier than ever to see what we want to see, and believe only what makes us comfortable.

So what’s the real reason behind our failure to commit? Hint: It’s not me, it’s you.

Relationships are not any harder today than they were fifty years ago. The only difference between our commitment issues and that of our grandparents is simple: we just have fancy phones, now. Back in the day, a shitty relationship was still shitty, whether divorce was an option or not. Modern couples don’t have new problems; we just spend more time whining about them online.

The truth is, modern technology hasn’t changed your need for connection; it’s simply enhanced it. You, the socially connected-yet-chronically-isolated Millennial, are not too ‘damaged’ for love. You’re just more afraid of it.

It’s an easy problem to ignore; there’s nothing wrong with being single. And it’s great that we’ve accepted single life as an acceptable lifestyle in society. But there are ways to enjoy our options without writing off our need for love. Some of us really can be happy staying single forever – but too many people are simply living in denial of their needs. It’s more convenient to say we’re incapable of commitment, than to face the real issue (ourselves). With so many other big problems to deal with in life, it’s easier to buy into the notion that relationships just ‘suck,’ rather than investing time and energy into their success.

If you continually blame your heartbreak on society, know that your dream guy or girl might be, too. And denying love’s potential just makes you 100% more likely to never make that connection. Dodging relationship obstacles (rather than overcoming them) is the quickest route to failure.

Success in love is just like success anywhere else; it takes work. If you set out to run a marathon, only to quit the second you start feeling uncomfortable [or tired, scared or in pain]… you won’t even get halfway. If your goal is to make a million dollars, but you won’t take risks, bounce back from loss, endure criticism, or spend years in pursuit of that goal…you’ll never be rich. Why should love be any different?

We are fully capable of greatness. Our generation lives for passion, persistence and ingenuity. We are not ‘lazy,’ as trends had once predicted. But now that ‘lazy’ has been replaced with ‘anti-social,’ we have a new label to overcome. Millennials are devoted to making dreams happen. But when it comes to love, we’ve fallen and can’t get up.

Success in a long-term love isn’t harder for Millennials; it’s just not as mandatory. We don’t choose to see committed love as important as wealth, fitness, travel, or other #goals. We’re lonely, and it’s our own damn fault.

Changing your story begins by making a choice. If you want to find (and keep) the love of your life, a shift in perspective needs to happen. Happy relationships are like any other goal: we choose to fail every day that we don’t try.

Eat your vegetables, or don’t. Apply for jobs, or remain unemployed. Exercise daily, or complain that it’s too hard. Either way, success or failure is your decision. You can work hard to get better at love, or you can keep pretending it’s impossible. A mistake doesn’t have to mean ‘game over.’ Pain does not have to be death. You can let failure push you away from your goal, or use what you’ve learned to do better next time.

They say, “Success comes when opportunity meets readiness.” You may have a wealth of opportunity, but none of the readiness. And for right now, that’s okay. Skill and luck in love can only come with practice.

So get out there and practice.

You Fail in Relationships: Why?

by zfortadminin LOVE

Why are relationships so hard today? Why do we fail at love every time, despite trying so hard?

Why have humans suddenly become so inept at making relationships last? Have we forgotten how to love? Or worse, forgotten what love is?

We’re not prepared. We’re not prepared for the sacrifices, for the compromises, for the unconditional love. We’re not ready to invest all that it takes to make a relationship work. We want everything easy. We’re quitters. All it takes is a single hurdle to make us crumble to our feet. We don’t let our love grow, we let go before time.

It’s not love we’re looking for, only excitement and thrill in life. We want someone to watch movies and party with, not someone who understands us even in our deepest silences. We spend time together, we don’t make memories. We don’t want the boring life. We don’t want a partner for life, just someone who can make us feel alive right now, this very instant. When the excitement fades, we discover nobody ever prepared us for the mundane. We don’t believe in the beauty of predictability because we’re too blinded by the thrill of adventure.

We immerse ourselves in the inconsequentials of the city life, leaving no space for love. We don’t have time to love, we don’t have the patience to deal with relationships. We’re busy people chasing materialistic dreams and there’s no scope to love. Relationships are nothing more than convenience.

We look for instant gratification in everything we do – the things we post online, the careers we choose, and the people we fall in love with. We want the maturity in a relationship that comes with time, the emotional connect that develops over years, that sense of belonging when we barely even know the other person. Apparently, nothing’s worth our time and patience – not even love.

We’d rather spend an hour each with a hundred people than spending a day with one. We believe in having ‘options’. We’re ‘social’ people. We believe more in meeting people than getting to know them. We’re greedy. We want to have everything. We get into relationships at the slightest attraction and step out, the moment we find someone better. We don’t want to bring out the best in that one person. We want them to be perfect. We date a lot of people but rarely give any of them a real chance. We’re disappointed in everyone.

Technology has brought us closer, so close that it’s impossible to breathe. Our physical presence has been replaced by texts, voice messages, snapchats and video calls. We don’t feel the need to spend time together anymore. We have too much of each other already. There’s nothing left to talk about.

We’re a generation of ‘wanderers’ who wouldn’t stay at one place for too long. Everyone is commitment phobic. We believe we’re not meant for relationships. We don’t want to settle down. Even the thought of it is scary. We cannot imagine being with one person for the rest of our lives. We walk away. We despise permanence like it’s some social evil. We like to believe we’re ‘different’ than the rest. We like to believe we don’t conform to social norms.

We’re a generation that calls itself ‘sexually liberated’. We can tell sex apart from love, or so we think. We’re the hook-up-break-up generation. We have sex first and then decide if we want to love someone. Sex comes easy, loyalty doesn’t. Getting laid has become the new getting drunk. You do it not because you love the other person, but because you want to feel good. It’s all the temporary fulfillment we need. Sex outside relationships isn’t a taboo anymore. Relationships aren’t that simple anymore. There are open relationships, friends with benefits, casual flings, one-night stands, no strings attached – we’ve left very little exclusivity for love in our lives.

We’re the practical generation who runs by logic alone. We don’t know how to love madly anymore. We wouldn’t take a flight to a far-off land just to see someone we love. We’d break up because, long distance. We’re too sensible for love. Too sensible for our own good.

We’re a scared generation – scared to fall in love, scared to commit, scared to fall, scared to get hurt, scared to get our hearts broken. We don’t allow anyone in, nor do we step out and love anyone unconditionally. We lurk from behind walls we’ve created ourselves, looking for love and running away the moment we really find it. We suddenly ‘cannot handle it’. We don’t want to be vulnerable. We don’t want to bare our soul to anyone. We’re too guarded.

We don’t even value relationships anymore. We let go of the most wonderful people for ‘the other fishes in the sea.’ We don’t consider them sacred anymore.

There’s nothing we couldn’t conquer in this world, and yet, here we are ham-fisted at the game of love – the most basic of human instincts. Evolution, they call it.

Curated by Jeremy
Original Article

It’s Not the Climax Date on the Calendar That Matters

by Lisa Lauretain RELATIONSHIPS

This plan couldn’t be beat…until it was.

I’ve never cared much about Christmas, or Thanksgiving. I don’t go “home for the holidays.” I haven’t given Valentine’s Day a second thought since I was a teenager.

Precious Days

I’m not completely devoid of sentiment. I do have a couple of special days a year that I celebrate “religiously.” Halloween and New Year’s Eve have always had great significance to me. Halloween because it’s when everyone acts the way they wish they could the rest of the year, and New Year’s Eve because it’s symbolic of a new beginning, a wiping of the slate, a celebration of accomplishments from the year before and an acknowledgement of goals and dreams about what’s to come. Those are precious days to me and as such, I try to spend them doing special things with people who I find invaluable to my life.

This year, I spent Halloween with a friend rather than my partner, because my partner was out of town for a couple of months. When he’d announced his plans to be gone over my favorite holiday, I was slightly heartbroken, but understood. It was for the trip of a lifetime and I wasn’t going to let a one-day, city-wide costume party get in the way of that for him. It just meant to both of us that New Year’s Eve would be even more special.

Unforgettable Date with Mom

His mom was in town on over the holiday weeks, so on New Year’s Eve Day we went to a small island off the coast of Southern California and did some cave kayaking. It was amazing. I saw wild foxes, seals, dolphins and some whales; truly an unforgettable day. That night, however, was for us and his mom understood that, so she said we should take it for ourselves and do something special.

Epic Climax Date Plans

When he had asked me what I wanted to do, being the overly amorous gal that I am, I told him my only real goal for the night was for us to be climaxing during the countdown, and for a full release at “Happy New Year!” He agreed that would be an epic New Year’s plan. All that was left was location.

We’d originally intended to go camping, somewhere not too far, like Joshua Tree. However, the weather had other plans, deciding that torrential downpours followed by sub-zero temperatures would be a better way to spend New Years. So J Tree was out, however, there were closer places we could go. We explored all of our options, and as wet and cold as it was going to be, it seemed like the best plan would be to just stick to a hike somewhere close. We would get to the top of a mountain, screw each other’s brains out until the countdown was over, and then head home.

Dehydration…a Kicker

This plan couldn’t be beat…until it was. My partner, who avoided drinking water during our all-day kayaking trip because he didn’t want to pee in his wet suit, was extremely dehydrated. We took in a bunch of fluids and made some macaroni and cheese. Did I mention he’s lactose intolerant? Just a little bit, but apparently something like that is greatly exacerbated by a weakened system due to dehydration. Needless to say, he started to not feel very well.

Should I Stay or Should I Go

We took a quick nap before our hike and I woke up ready to go! He woke up…slightly less excited. I couldn’t tell at that point whether he just didn’t feel like going out or he was really ill. So I said I could go on my own. This was in no way meant out of spite or passive aggression, and he knew that. I simply wanted to be outside at midnight and I don’t like dragging people along when they don’t want to be there. He insisted on coming with me. He just kept saying, “I wanna be with you.”

What I should have said was, “okay, let’s stay here then.” But I still didn’t fully realize just how bad it was, until we got to the mountain. We got out of the car with our backpack filled with Trader Joe’s fireworks chocolate, sparkling apple cider, and a blanket. He wasn’t looking great, so I asked him if we should go back. “NO! I want it to be special.” Just minutes into the hike it became apparent to me just how ill he was. We were stopping every few minutes for him to collect himself. This was certainly going to be a special night. But not the type of special either of us had intended.

The Mountain at Midnight

We made it up to the mountain and during the midnight count down he was off in the bushes taking care of some nasty business while I toasted myself for my achievement of keeping cool and not being too grossed out. We headed back down the mountain and I drove us home. By this time more than ever I felt terrible for making him come with me and being so insistent on this being a special night.

Best Laid Plans Became a Care Package

I took care of him the rest of the night and the entire next day. While I nursed him back to health I realized something. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older now and don’t party anymore, or if it’s because I’ve finally found someone who I’m calm and comfortable with, but it didn’t matter to me that it wasn’t ideal. This night was actually the opposite of ideal. It was kind of the worst. I watched disgusting things happen to the person I was supposed to be doing altogether other kinds of disgusting things with. But despite this, I was glad to have spent the night with him. I was happy to have been able to take care of him and I was glad he was around. This leads me to ask the ever important question: what happened to me?!

Another Day for a “Special” Date

We made a deal to do a countdown later on this year, which we’ve set a date for. We’ll recreate New Year’s Eve well past its actual date, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’ll be together, and that we were together.

So this Valentine’s day, I urge you, dear reader, to treat it like any other day: special. Special not because it’s February 14, but because of the company you’re with and the moments you share. Even if those moments turn out gross.

5 Ways to Know if You Are in a Real Partnership

by zfortadminin RELATIONSHIPS

One of the perks of being married is having a life partner who is just as committed to making the marriage work as you are.

Unfortunately, not all couples enjoy a true partnership.

In a true partnership, both husband and wife can express themselves without fear of judgment, work together towards common goals and have equal influence over important decisions. They are able to grow emotionally psychologically and spiritually as a result of their happy marriage.

What Does It Mean To Be True Partners?

1. Equal influence over important decisions

An equal balance of power and influence in decision making is necessary for a healthy relationship. This is because no one wants to be in relationship where their opinions are constantly ignored or their decisions constantly overruled. Both husband and wife should be able to express their thoughts and opinions freely without fear of being shut down.

2. Equal commitment to the relationship

In a true partnership, both parties are equally committed to the marriage. They have a similar amount of emotional investment in the relationship and they both want it to succeed. If there is a problem in the marriage, they both work hard to find a solution.

3. Common goals

Your spouse is not just your life partner but also your partner in personal growth and self-actualization. When you have common goals, you motivate each other to grow and become better people. Also, working on your goals together strengthens your marriage.

4. Equal personal responsibility

In a healthy marriage both parties take equal responsibility for the problems in the marriage. They do not waste time playing the blame game or going over what should/ would/ could have happened. Instead, they admit their mistakes and focus on coming up with possible solutions.

5. Honesty

True partners are always honest with each other. They know that lying to protect the other person’s feelings rarely ends well. This does not mean that they are brutally honest with each other; they are kind and honest at the same time.

There is nothing better in marriage than having a true life partner. Follow this advice to learn how you can be a true partner to your spouse.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

How To Cheat Without Cheating

by Mercy Harrisin RELATIONSHIPS, Sex

 

If you have a cheatin’ heart but don’t want to act on it, here’s how to stop an affair before it starts.

Do you fantasize about secret hook-ups and flings? Are you disappointed by the emotional distance between you and your long-term partner? “Boredisappointment” is a word I’ve invented (just now, actually!) to describe those afflictions of relationship boredom — with a garnish of dashed hopes and dreams.

If you find this feeling all-too-familiar, say it with me: “I suffer from boredisappointment.”

Note that we didn’t say, “they gave me boredisappointment.” The key phrase here is “I suffer.” What you don’t want to do here (take it from me) is to blame your partner for all of it. Sure, they may have had the cold first and then passed the germs on to you. Or they’re just so damn noisy that now you’ve got a bad headache. Or maybe your partner was boredisappointed long before the thought entered your mind.

Whatever the reason, these are your feelings and they should be dealt with. Thankfully, and just as with any headache, cold, or food poisoning bout, there are things you can do (yourself) for relief.

The first step to overcoming infidelity is admitting you’re tempted to cheat. After that comes the fun part!

“What?” you ask. “What fun part? I’m about to destroy my ten-year marriage with the pretzel guy from Costco!”

Hold on now, Brenda. Put down the cheese dip and zip up your fly. You can learn how to stop an affair from happening by leaning into the feelings of cheating without actually doing it. Let’s take a look at four options that can do just that.

1. Cheat on your partner… by having a “naughty” sleepover with your platonic best friend.

Throw a “self-care” night with your closest platonic (emphasis on platonic) best friend, and soak up the sinfulness of it all. Junk food, face masks, roses and candles, confessions, whatever — do what you wish someone else would do for you.

Your romantic partner can’t meet every need in your life. This is why friendships exist. It’s unnecessarily painful to depend on one person for every aspect of your emotional well-being — not to mention unrealistic. But there are ways to get your emotional needs met without ruining your partner’s life. Gush over the grocery boy with your bestie and there’s no harm done. Letting the grocery boy gush on you, well… that’s what’s we’d like to avoid.

Pro tip: TELL YOUR FRIEND ABOUT YOUR URGE TO CHEAT. This (1) makes you accountable to someone outside of your partnership, (2) presents a great opportunity for advice from someone you trust, and/or (3) validates and affirms your boredisappointment without getting an STD.

2. Cheat on your spouse… with a project.

Why is it that when people cheat, they can always find time to do so — but when it’s a painting or building a zen garden, there are a million things more important?

In an interview for The Rumpus, Elizabeth Gilbert recommends approaching your creative project like it’s a secret lover. “Go have an affair with your book…just get some sexy lavender underwear from the girl in Coyote Ugly and go have a fling with your book.”

If there’s a story you’ve always wanted to write, paint, crochet, or sculpt, find secret times to do so. And if you’re feeling frisky, you’re in luck: from boudoir photography to romance novels to sexy dance classes and more, there’s a whole world of titillating activities for you.

Pro tip: To satisfy your urge for sensual risk, why not pose nude for an art class — or take an art class and draw somebody else? Often, the rush of seeing and/or being seen is enough to satisfy the urge to cheat — or (even better) get over it completely.

Couple On Kitchen

3. Cheat on your spouse… by pursuing a real adrenaline rush.

Try something dangerous; I dare you. Go skydiving or bungee jumping (with a reputable guide, of course). Go ride a horse and fall off. Do that thing in Vegas where you rent a racecar and pretend to be Ricky Bobby. Experts say that spontaneous excitement boosts your dopamine levels, which can satisfy the pleasurable rush you’ve been craving.

Now I’m not a psychic, but I have a feeling that tropical cliff-diving is a lot more worthwhile than fondling some guy you met at a fundraiser. Unless he’s Tom Hardy, he ain’t that cute.

Pro tip: Take your partner with you! You might be surprised with this one. There’s a certain kind of closeness that comes from defying death with a lover. Please don’t risk your life on my account, but… jump out of a plane. See what happens.

4. Actually cheat on your partner…but do it with your partner.

Maybe both of you are boredisappointed, who knows? Perhaps they’re even more boredisappointed than you are, but haven’t discovered LOVE TV yet.  Lucky for them, they have you. Cha-ching!

Instead of thinking about how to stop an affair, think of how you would start one — and then get your partner involved. Surprise them with a naughty email from a private account, or arrange a ‘secret’ tryst with them. Have them meet you on his or her break at work, or after hours at a surprise location. You can go all ‘role-play’ if you want, but trust me — sometimes, doing something that feels forbidden and secretive is the best way to feel like your true self.

Pro tip: Sexting isn’t just for single Millennials. Worst sext-case scenario, you can just send each other sexy spoofs and laugh about it. At least then you’ll both be smiling.

To have a good relationship, you need to take care of yourself.

You can stop an affair before it begins by acknowledging that your needs for novelty, excitement, play, emotional satisfaction, or pleasure aren’t being met – and then finding alternate ways of providing these needs for yourself. By all means, include your partner in as much or as little of this as you’d like, but this is on you. There are healthy ways to do this without ruining your life.

What are some other ways you can think of to overcome infidelity urges? Share your stories in the comments below! And for more reading on ethical cheating options, check out this perspective on polyamory or this one on nonmonogamy. (Yep, they’re different!)

When You Say “I Do,” Does That Mean “I Do Take Your Name?”

by ElisaShoenbergerin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

For women, a name change after marriage went from being an assumed practice to a contentious subject in the past few decades.

Following the feminist foment of the 70s, many women opted against a name change after marriage. Now in the first few decades of the 21st century, the issue is unclear. Some women elect to change their name while others come up with compromises such as hyphenation or decline altogether.

When I envisioned marriage, I had always assumed that I would take my husband’s name.

I hadn’t spent a long time thinking about weddings. It was always a passing thought as I imagined what it would be to take my then boyfriend’s name. However, as I was planning my wedding, the choice didn’t’ seem so clear.

There were certainly advantages to taking my husband’s name. My maiden name “Shoenberger” was constantly misspelled and a perennial issue my entire life as I have to check under both Shoenberger and Schoenberger. Moreover, when I was a child with a learning disability, the length of the name certainly made my life more challenging. My fiancé’s name was a mere four letters.

On the other hand, I had seen women around me go through the process of changing their name.

Coworkers went through the painful process of getting their identification cards, credit cards, and other signifiers of the modern world changed. I watched them juggling birth certificates, social security cards, marriage certificates and even a misspelled new driver’s license.

The worst case scenario was when I heard about an acquaintance who had missed out on a prestigious scholarship in the 70s because there was confusion over her maiden and married names. I also knew of several women who had gotten divorced but decided not to change their names back to their maiden names.

In a few instances, I had heard stories of acquaintances and friends around me that told me that taking their husband’s name was a deal breaker. If they didn’t take the name, their husband-to-be wouldn’t proceed with the wedding. The prospect of having a showdown like that was daunting.

But it was more than just the hassle of changing one’s name. There was a matter of legacy.

I know that some women had taken the custom of taking their maiden name and making it their middle name. However, I didn’t relish this.

My grandfather did not have any male children so his name is only passed on through the middle names of several grandchildren. I was immensely proud of bearing his name. As I thought about it more, I felt the same way about my last name. I wanted it to go forward, (even though I had a half-brother who also bore it). I realized how proud I was of it, misspellings and all.

After the engagement and the ring, are you considering a name change after marriage?

I decided to keep my name.

Thankfully, my then fiancé, now husband, had no thoughts on the matter. It was up to me, he told me. Which is exactly how it should be. My parents felt the same way as did my in-laws.

My grandmother, however, was aghast. For months up to and after my wedding, she’d bring it up every time I’d see her, making a face. She would always say, “I was proud of taking my husband’s name.” She strongly disapproved. But she was the only one who has overtly commented on my choice.

I talked to two other women about their decisions to take or not take their husband’s’ names. The first decided against it.

She told me, “I kept my name first and foremost because I have a professional standing with my unmarried name and my professional life would become disjointed if I changed names.”

Another reason she wanted to keep her name was to also keep her autonomy. She feared “that the second I became a wife, suddenly what I had done with my life no longer mattered.” In keeping her name, she felt it valued her and her husband as separate and accomplished people.

When I asked her how her decision was received, she told me: “[My husband] and his family were not happy. [He] really wanted me, at first, to change my name. That it was the “right” thing to do and that this is just how it is done.

“His family was not pleased either. They thought it was an affront that I didn’t take his name. I told them in no uncertain terms that if their son loved me and I loved him, that it didn’t matter one iota. This wasn’t the dark ages, and I have a career to myself under my given name.

“My friends really don’t care. All those people that have known me since high school, college, masters, law school, they just saw it as me being me… His friends, however, are far more traditionalist… I don’t want a traditionalist role, why should I have to have a traditionalist household? If there’s no law against it, it’s my life. I get to make the rules.”

I talked to another woman who did change her name.

I asked her why she made the decision and she said that the biggest factor was that she felt her maiden name was very generic. “My last name was shortened,” she said. “It’s an immigration thing. A lot of names were shortened to the same syllable… My name is the Jewish female equivalent of John Smith.” She added, “[my husband’s name] is pretty. It has a musical sound. If I had married someone else [with a different last name], I would not have.”

I asked what her family or now husband felt about the issue. She said, “The most important thing was that my family didn’t assume one way or another. Probably thought I wouldn’t. It was just completely my choice. If anyone had felt one way or another, I would have done the opposite. [My husband] didn’t care at all. If anything, he was surprised. Didn’t think I would actually put in the effort to do it.”

She said she didn’t face any personal backlash for changing her name, but she did encounter a lot of negative opinions online about the practice being anti-feminist — a viewpoint with which she disagrees. “As long as it is a choice, to make a choice is feminist,” she said. And then she added: “You can’t say it makes me the property of my husband any more than my maiden name made me the property of my dad.”

Ultimately, considering a name change after marriage should be one’s own.

That’s what feminism is really supposed to be about. Choice.