Cubs and Other Cougar Partners

I'm not talkin' wild animals. Dear Abby checked in on the cougar issue. The follow-up for this one is still on the way, I think. It will be interesting to see the responses.

"COUGAR" IN NEW YORK wrote:

I am a 59-year-old woman who has been dating men in their 40s.

Good for you.

At first, I refused because I thought they were too young for me and people might laugh.

People might be jealous and envious, too.

Since then, I have decided that as long as they know from the beginning that I'm not looking for a serious committed relationship, I'd be happy to go out.

Good policy.

Abby, why do you think younger men are attracted to older women?

Dear Abby responded:

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because many older women are independent, self-confident, worldly and not looking for commitment. Those qualities can be very attractive if a man isn't looking for commitment either.

Yeah, pretty much. If a guy is just looking for someone to be on his arm, and doesn't want the bratty drama of someone closer to his age or significantly younger – someone more likely to "fall in love" or get an idea that this will lead to a lifelong commitment – then it can be a good thing. An older woman, in addition to being more socially adept when the couple encounters other people on their date, is more likely to recognize when she is developing an attachment that she shouldn't and take corrective action. Often, she keeps up on current events and can talk about them, unlike a lot of younger women.

If a guy is just looking or sex, older women bring experience, a lack in inhibition, and more of an ability to be discreet.

Either way, she is less likely to be financially needy – in fact, she may actually reverse the money dynamic and pick up the tab and buy the guy gifts. There’s the risk – that the older woman will attract a gigolo.

Also, just like with gals, it makes a young guy feel like he's somehow superior to his peers if someone older and more accomplished/established is interested in spending time with him. Usually this notion is self-delusion.

I wrote about my first relationship with an older woman in this blog entry.

As far as I know, the oldest woman I was ever involved with was in her 50s. If she was older than that, well, then she looked young for her age. I was in the waning years of my 20s at the time. As far as I know she was childless. We spent about two weeks together, and she definitely knew what she was doing and how to please a guy. We both knew at the time that we were not going to be a couple. We didn't live anywhere near each other, and that wasn't going to change. She reported in one of our last contacts that she'd married a guy closer to her age – a guy who had been in her life as long as I'd been in contact with her. She'd previously presented their relationship as platonic, but for all I know she was married to him all along... though I doubt it and I hope not.

Yes, in general, younger women are physically more attractive to men than older women. However, that doesn't necessarily translate into a good date or good sex. So while women are out there dating older men and thus not available for guys their age, some guys their age will happily pass the time with the older women. It can work for dating. It rarely is a good idea when it comes to marriage.

Temper

I screwed up recently at home. I lost my temper because I was frustrated about something (not someone) that was causing stuff to break. When I lose my temper, I don't break things (after all, I was upset about something being broken to begin with). I don't belittle people, I certainly don't throw things – at people or otherwise – or hit or push anyone. What I do, though, is cuss, or swear, or what have you. Mainly it is the s--- word. Perhaps even the f--- word.

I know I shouldn't do it, and I know I especially shouldn't do it when my kids are within earshot. But I do – every now and then.

My punishment doesn't involve putting money into a swear jar.

My punishment is my wife dropping the possibility of lovemaking later that day/night. She may not look it that way. She says my losing my temper "isn't a turn on" so forget about any plans to fool around later. So, essentially, she is saying she is turned off by my fit.

Here's the thing though, at least with the most recent fit. Right now, for reasons I'm not going to get into, my wife's body is pretty much off limits anyway. Temporarily (for reasons I do believe are valid), she won't let me make love to her in any form other than kissing and rubbing her shoulders. I wish it wasn't so, because I really like to do whatever I can to bring those kinds of pleasures to her, and I enjoy her body.

But being the good wife that she is, she still - though not as often as I'd like - wants to take care of me... Except when I have had a fit.

Maybe I just don't understand female sexuality, but I didn't think a woman had to be sexually aroused for her hand or mouth to work. Since it's not like we're going to be attempting intercourse, I'm not sure why she needs to be turned on anyway. That is what makes me think this is a matter of punishment, not simply a matter of my actions turning her off.

Of course I'd like for her to be turned on. I'd like to also take care of all of her itches.

I suppose it is one of the differences between men and women. Most men would only withhold sex from a woman with whom he's sexually active if he has lost trust in her, and thinks she has been fooling around or is trying to trap him with a pregnancy he doesn't want. She could have just destroyed our prized collection of mobster movies, bought more shoes she doesn't need, and wrecked our favorite car through negligent driving. We'd still gladly jump into the sack. We might leave or kick her out right afterwards, but we wouldn't turn down sex. Some women, conversely, withhold sex as a punishment, and treat sex like a bargaining chip.

Any thoughts? I mean, besides the fact that I need to bite my tongue?

Today's Show is Brought to You By the Letter I

Wow, there was a bit of a theme running this morning on Yahoo: incest.

If you read this blog, you know I check Dear Abby regularly. I find it on Yahoo while looking over the news there.

In the installment of Dear Abby that was posted today, GRIEVING IN MASSACHUSETTS wrote:

For 15 years I was a happily married homemaker with a wonderful husband. "Duncan" and I attended church together, frolicked through the fields, even exterminated rodents together. He was my best friend. It was bliss.

Last year I found out my father had had an affair with Duncan's mother the year I was born, which makes him my half-brother!

Well, yes, if Duncan's mother was not fooling around with anyone else. I guess the implication here is that she was unmarried.

The news was too much for my husband. He had a fatal heart attack not long after.

This is yet another reason not to have sex with anyone other than your spouse, and not to donate eggs or sperm. In this case, this woman's father and Duncan's mother were likely in the same social or professional circle, and so it wasn't a stretch for GRIEVING and Duncan to meet and fall in love and marry. But there was likely another aspect that was at work, something that happens when siblings or children grow up apart from their sibling or parent, and are later reunited. Some people label it "genetic sexual attraction". Duncan probably reminded her somewhat of her father - and for good reason. Duncan probably saw a bit of himself in her. And since they didn't grow up with the mindframe of "this is my sibling", they instead first looked at each other as a male and a female.

Unless there was some reason that both Duncan's mother and GRIEVING'S father were not around leading up to the wedding, it was evil on their part to compound their earlier sin by not warning their children that they might be (or likely were) half-siblings.

You've probably also heard (or will hear of) Mackenzie Phillips' claim involving incest. The Associated Press reported:

Former child star Mackenzie Phillips said Wednesday her father, John Phillips, who was a leader of the 1960s pop group the Mamas and the Papas, raped her when she was a teenager and that her sexual relationship with him later became what she termed "consensual."

Mackenzie Phillips writes in her new book, "High on Arrival," that she had sex with her father on the night before she was to get married in 1979 at age 19, according to People magazine.

I hope that this is really a way to sell more books, and not reality. Of course, her father isn't around to defend himself.

She told "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in an interview that aired Wednesday that her siblings "definitely have a problem with this."

Well of course they do! They are probably wondering why their dad didn't find them attractive enough to have sex with, too. Or maybe he did, and he was "cheating" on them with you.

Phillips, who starred on TV's "One Day at a Time," said the sexual relationship with her father lasted a decade and ended when she became pregnant and didn't know who had fathered the child. She had an abortion, which her father paid for, and "and I never let him touch me again."

Most likely, the child was not abnormal (beyond the parentage – drugs were likely more of a harm to the child than her grandfather being her father), and even if the child had some abnormalities, why kill an innocent baby created by consensual behavior? Why not adopt out? To hide it all from the media and your husband (if you were married at the time)?

Also, how can a husband compete with the bond his wife has with her father if it is also a sexual bond? What a rotten thing to do to a spouse. So "consensual" incest does have victims - children and spouses included.

Phillips said the sexual relationship, although she believes it became consensual, was "an abuse of power" and "a betrayal" on her father's part.

Yes, and that is one of the problems with it, although there are other consensual sexual relationships that are an abuse of power, too.

"I can't be the only one this has happened to," Phillips said. "Someone needs to put a face on consensual incest."

Why? Hey, if anyone is going to do it, I'd rather it be Angelina Jolie. (I am not accusing Jolie of actually being, as rumored, incestuous. But she is a hotter "face".)

Actually, people have already tried to put on a face on this. There have been features in the mainstream media on consensual incest, especially involving siblings who grew up apart. That one famous person claims to have done it likely isn't going to make a difference. And again, why do we want there to be a difference? Shouldn't this be one of those things a person keeps private? Or does she want to warn others of the perils of consensual incest?

Given the drugs and how the Phillips started (by her own claim), I don't know if this was really consensual. Certainly the writer to Dear Abby did not consent in that she did not know her husband was her half-brother, so that was definitely not consensual.

Will we see more famous people coming forward with tales like this?

The Five Basic Groups

There may some exceptions, but I think most heterosexual adults fall into one of these five categories when it comes to relating to the opposite sex.

1. Present Day Peer Pressure Norm – These are people who seek a girlfriend or boyfriend by dating and having sex, and if they find a boyfriend/girlfriend and that lasts long enough or conditions otherwise make it convenient, they move in together – or one moves into the other's place. If that lasts long enough, or perhaps because of pregnancy or children, they get married. The timing of the wedding is often determined by when it will be convenient to have the best party they can.

2. Independents – These are people who do not want to not want to marry and have children under current conditions, and do not seek sex. They'd rather live alone. They do not rely on someone of the opposite sex to entertain them on a regular basis, or financially support them. My guess is that there are many more men in this category than women, many of them identifying as "Men Going Their Own Way".

3. Marriage and Family Minded - These are people who are - or seek to be - married, and usually to be parents as well. They tend to place these desires over immediate sexual gratification and over living high on the hog.

4. Pleasure Seekers – These are hedonists, materialists, narcissists, game-players, or people who desire material possessions/expensive living and/or exploring sexual freedom over and above any desire to be parents or to be married, and intentionally behave toward these ends. Women in this category tend to seek to extract as much wealth from men as possible, by marriage if necessary. Men in this category tend to seek as much sex from as many different women as possible.

5. Passive/Confused – These people let life wash over them. They may get married because their partner pressures them into it, or simply asks. They may become parents because their partner asked for it. They don't display strong desires or a cohesive pattern of behavior towards a lifestyle goal. They may not have any idea what they really want. Guys in this category take sex when it falls into their laps (so to speak), unless, perhaps, they happen to be married to someone else, and tend to knock up their girlfriends or casual dates simply because they were too lazy to use a condom. Women in this category are easy prey for males who just want casual sex, and men in this category are easy prey for women who want someone else to pay their bills or just want some attention. These people are not likely to be the kind of people who accomplish a whole lot, professionally or otherwise. They tend to let their immediate feelings and emotions "lead" them, especially their sex drive.

Notes:

Pop culture mostly assumes and reinforces category 1.

As far as I can tell, followers of Christ, if they are being true to their faith, can only fall under 2 or 3.

Some people in category 2 date, but those who do so should be very clear of their intentions with their dates; they are best off dating other people from category 2 if they are going to date at all.

People in category 3 should avoid dating/courting anyone in any other category.

People in category 4 should avoid dating people in categories 2 and 3. When people from 4 date each other, unless they are both looking just for casual sex, it is a battle to see who “wins” – in other words, how much money a golddigger can get out of a guy relative to how much sex he’s getting, or how much sex a guy can get spending as little as possible. Leykis 101 is in this category, teaching guys how to "get more sex for less money".

Some people in 2 and 4 are in those categories because they are highly driven individuals who want to focus on career, wealth building, and other personal interests or things that are either solitary or done with friends and believe that serious relationships, marriage, and parenting are a hindrance to these things.

People in categories 1, 4, and 5 may be likely to engage in "hook-ups". Guys in category 4 count on it.

It is possible that someone will change categories based on life experience, religious conversion or awakening, or whatever.

Am I being too simplistic? Am I missing a significant category? I plan to referring back to this list in future blog entries – that’s the point of this list in the first place.

Scary Parole Possibility

It’s like a plot from Law & Order: SVU. I wouldn’t be surprised if they use this.

A prosecutor from Orange County, California, traveled to a state prison to argue against paroling a serial child molester who was a fugitive for almost 30 years. Larry Welborn of the Orange County Register has the story. And if you go to the website, you can see a picture of this guy. Creepy.

George Joseph England, 65, was captured in Florida in 2006, extradited to Orange County and sentenced to four consecutive one-year-to-life-in-prison terms for molesting three young girls in Costa Mesa in the mid 1970s.

He also molested a Vietnamese girl – whom he purchased from her mother while the war raged in Vietnam – for years while he claimed her as his adopted daughter, according to prosecutors.

Have you lost your appetite yet?

When he sentenced England to prison in September 2006, Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald said "I expect that you will die in prison."

But after serving only three years for the molestations in Costa Mesa, England became eligible for his first parole hearing because of the laws that were on the books in the 1970s.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Rebecca Olivieri, of the DA's Special Prosecutions Unit, will attend the hearing to oppose parole for England on behalf of the Orange County District Attorney.

I hope Ms. Olivieri was highly persuasive.

He was convicted of those charges in Orange County Superior Court in 1977, but was allowed to remain free in lieu of bail pending his sentencing so that he could tidy up his affairs.

But instead of showing up in court, England removed the Vietnamese girl from protective custody and fled, spending the next 29 years as a fugitive until he was captured in Florida.

Oh, Floridian alligators - you failed me. You could have incapacitated this guy in such a way and place so that the abundant insects of Florida could have had their way with him over several painful days. Oh well. Prison must be loads of fun for this guy.

UPDATE: He was denied parole for now, but he'll be up for release again soon.

She Didn't Get the Liberation Memo

There's nothing like young "love" problems as expressed in a letter to Dear Abby.

DESPERATE IN TUCSON wrote:

I'm 19 and currently dating a guy I can't stand.

So much for liberation. Generations of women and girls didn't have a choice in the matter, but you do, sister. Don't waste your freedom.

I don't know what to do.

Dump him. You are being unfair to both of you, and probably a lot of people around you.

He's leaving next year and my friends tell me I should just bear with it until then.

Why? You could be spending your time better and so could he. Are your friends afraid you'll be worse to deal with without him? Why would they want you to endure him?
Do they all insist on double-dating? Will they not hang out with you for girl time?

I also don't feel comfortable with premarital sex, but he's sure he can change my mind.

That's because he's young. Why would he want to change your mind? If he wants to pursue sex at his age with girls he doesn't even really like, he's better off with a girl who at least has experience. Less work, more fun, less likely she will stalk him down the line.

He constantly reminds me how "patient" he can be about it.

Especially if he is getting some somewhere else, which he may be. But perhaps he considers you a challenge. It is stupid on his part.

I feel like hiding in my room and not answering the phone.

You are letting this ruin your life. Dump him and move on. Don't take his calls. Do not hear him out if he hounds you in person. If he persists, get a restraining order. It he gets violent, prosecute.

There are over six billion people in the world. That one person is not right for you as a romantic prospect still leaves more people to learn about than you'll ever have time to date. It is ridiculous to waste your time and energy on someone who is such a mismatch for you.

I speak from experience.

Life got so much better for me when I resolved not to ever again continue to date someone when it was more trouble than it was worth. Someone doesn't have to be a bad person to be trouble as a date. Someone can be a great person and not right for you. So I promised myself I wasn't going to put up with any crap, or do things I didn't want to do in order to get along with someone to whom I had no obligation. I wasn't going to fight, argue, or be disrespected. And it worked. Less time and money wasted, less heartache. That approach is part of what helped me find my wife.

At 19, you should be first and foremost focusing on your education/career. In dating, you should be dating different guys, learning more about what you like and don't like in them. Why tie yourself down to one person until you are ready to marry? That was one of the mistakes I made at 19. But I deluded myself into thinking there could be a future with my girlfriend at the time. You are under no such delusion.

Be free! Revel in your liberation!

A Widower and Male Day Care Provider

Both of these guys recently had their letters printed in Dear Abby.

BETWEEN LOST AND FOUND wrote:

I lost my wife of 10 years after a long battle with cancer.

That is one of the worst things that can happen to someone. Ugh. The poor guy.

I am 50 and have a 10-year-old son. If it wasn't for raising my son, I don't think I'd even want to live anymore, but the good Lord gave me this job, and I want to make sure I do it well.

He's depressed. That is not unusual after what he's been through. Our lives have inherent worth regardless of whether or not we have a partner, though.

It is very lonely at times without a woman around.

Yes, that it is typical for a widower to feel that way. There are guys who live full lives without ever getting married, though. He needs to keep himself involved in things he enjoys than he can do with his kid, friends, or by himself. If he is just talking about sex and doesn't have a moral compulsion to abstain outside of marriage (which I officially endorse), then he can get snipped, make sure his sperm count is zero, and have casual encounters when his kid is at school, sports practice, or at a friend's house, so that his kid doesn't have to deal with the women. But try to avoid bringing these women back to where you live, sir, or they could be a problem for you and your son when things sour. Try to keep those casual encounters at their place.

When I do get out and meet women 40 to 50 years old and they hear I have a spoiled kid at home, they turn away.

They don't want to deal with the baggage. You son doesn't need them. He needs you. Nothing will ever replace his mother, but he needs your attention more because she isn't here.

I know at my age I should be a grandpa.

Says who? Maybe that is the way you thought your life would go, but it should have been evident when you didn't have a child until age 40 that you weren't going to be a grandfather at 50 - whether or not your wife survived.

Is there any chance for me to find another lasting love to spend the rest of my life with?

Yes. But give it time. Concentrate on your boy. He needs you. You'll make a better choice in a partner when you get some distance between the loss of your wife and when you find someone else. I think of Paul McCartney, who apparently had a wonderful marriage with Linda, and then she died, and then he expected to find something like he had with Linda again, married Heather Mills, and paid dearly for it. Lasting, happy marriages are not the norm these days, unfortunately, and if you had one happy marriage, consider yourself ahead of the odds.

Dear Abby responded:

Plenty of women would find you attractive, and not be turned off by the fact that you are raising a son. I'm talking about single women with children of their own to raise.

How about we not mess up everyone's lives more than they are already messed up? The Brady Bunch was light-hearted idealistic fiction. It rarely works out anywhere near that well. His son doesn't need the competition, the favoritism, and the drama.

PAUL FROM PENNSYLVANIA wrote:

As a child care provider for a local program in my hometown, I am often treated differently because I am a male.

That could be because of sexism. It could also be because men and women are different. There's probably a mixture of both.

If women can do anything men can -- including the same job -- shouldn't the opposite be true?

It's not really true. Men are generally physically larger and stronger and can run faster than women, and are generally unable to naturally carry a child inside of them and lactate to feed that child. Men even tend to have a different biological reaction to crying babies than women.

Do you think society will ever completely accept male teachers and child care workers?

Probably not. Teaching used to be a decidedly male profession – think seminaries. But times change. Secretaries used to be male, until typing became the norm and the hands of women proved better at typing. Some things change over the years, but some things don't.

Dear Abby responded:

Male teachers and child care workers can give fatherless children something that female teachers cannot -- a male role model with whom they can identify.

It is interesting that Dear Abby seems to think male role models are important, yet from what I've read in her columns, she doesn't think there is anything wrong with a two women deliberately bringing children into a fatherless situation. Maybe I've misread her. I'd love to be wrong about this.

While it may be good advice to encourage a single/widowed/divorced mother parenting a child with no father in the picture to seek male role models (her own father, her brother, teachers, coaches) to be a strong male presence mentoring the child, my advice to males is to avoid putting yourself in the position where you can be accused of abusing someone else's child. Men are not trusted, and the accusation alone is enough to ruin you for life. These men, especially if they have their own children to take care of, need to consider protecting themselves over the needs of someone else's child. It is sad, and if more guys took that advice there would be fewer mentors for kids, but that is the world we have created. Male teachers and coaches should never be alone with a student behind closed doors, for example – that way, it will be much more difficult to accuse them of abuse.

Suicide

I came across this on a Los Angeles Times blog entry by Shari Roan.

About 32,000 U.S. adults kill themselves each year. But millions more think about suicide or even make plans to kill themselves, according to a new national survey. The 2008 survey found that an estimated 8.3 million people ages 18 and older -- 3.7% of the adult population -- had serious thoughts of suicide in the previous year.

I used to have suicidal thoughts, but that was mostly when I was under 18. I never actually made plans to kill myself. I was an emotional kid, full of passion, and it was easy for other kids to get a rise out of me or tears by picking on me. The nature of where I lived meant dealing with the same jerks throughout most of my childhood, and they would gladly use something embarrassing from years back to nastily hound me. If I got into a fight instead of just letting myself be teased or literally pushed around, I would get in trouble for fighting. I can remember my father getting called in to school because I bit another kid in the arm. The thing is, I bit his arm because he had it wrapped around my mouth from behind. I begged my parents to let me transfer elementary schools. They declined, saying I would have the same problems. As it turns out, my school got shut down and I spent a year at that other school (along with some of the other students from my old school). Even with some those other students, my problems lessened. Maybe I matured, but I doubt that was it. Unfortunately, everyone was back together the next year as there was only one junior high school, and so there were hell to deal with.

I also hated things like my voice. I was very self-conscious about it. If my father told me to (usually in more polite words) to shut up, I was convinced it wasn’t because I was speaking out of turn, but because he hated my voice. Looking back, he never actually gave me any indication that he didn’t like my voice, and it probably didn’t bother him at all. Ironically, as an adult, people compliment me on my voice all of the time. It has changed a lot, of course. I remember uh… actress… Denise Richards saying she was teased for her odd looks as a young teenager, and the irony was that later, when she grew up a little, she was considered beautiful. It is kind of like that with my voice. I got picked on for my hair, too, but like my voice, my hair turned out to be one of my best features.

There was also the sudden loss of my best-friend-from-birth when we were barely eleven years old. He was killed in an accident.

It didn't help that I paid attention to the news, and between some of the crap they fed to us in public school and the alarmist doom-and-gloom news, it seemed like life was hell and was only going to get worse. The air and water pollution were going to kill us if AIDS didn't. There may have also been some inherited biological depression - I never bothered to seek a diagnosis.

I look back and see that in general, I had a very good childhood. But kids don't have perspective. So there were times I felt like it would be better if I killed myself.

Thankfully, I was still young when I decided that life was too short as it was. Then, in my late teens, I picked up a hobby and a related job far enough away from where I grew up that I was essentially getting a blank slate. People would see me for who I was then, not the seven-year-old or eleven-year-old kid I once was. It was a tremendous help. I get plenty of respect and compliments in my professional life and my hobby life. I still have trouble accepting compliments from anyone other than my wife. My mother, generally a great mother, somehow gave me the idea that anyone outside of the family who complimented me was doing it for some ulterior motive. Old notions can have a hard time dying.

Something else that helped was that I discovered that my life doesn't belong to me. It took years for the full understanding of that to sink it, but it helped to at least know from the start that God didn't want me to kill myself.

It has been many years since I've had a suicidal thought. I do believe that there is almost always hope to improve whatever situation one is in. I would implore almost anyone that suicide is not the solution. I write almost because it could very well be better for the rest of us if a murderer, rapist, or child abuser who can't seem to stop such behaviors took themselves out of the picture. For everyone else - there are people around to help. There are solutions to problems. Life can improve. Just find help.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline coordinates a network of 140 crisis centers around the country to provide help at any time of the day or night.

Here's their number: 1-800-273-TALK

Suspected Burglar Killed

If you've read my past blog entries on crime, you know that I think that just about anything bad that happens to you while you are trying to commit a property or personal crime is your own darn fault. I have little sympathy for someone hurt or killed while trying to harm someone else.

Jack Leonard and Robin Mayper report in this Los Angeles Times blog:

A suspected burglar was killed early today [Sunday] when a heavy metal gate fell on him as he tried to break into a South Los Angeles business complex, authorities said.

Police believe the man was trying to slip past the gate in the 1800 block of East 41st Place near Alameda Street when he was crushed, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Faryl Fletcher

I would include the guy's name, but they didn't have it yet.

The real tragedy is that some family member of this guy will probably get lots of money from the gate manufacturer and the property owner.

CRI Off SoCal Airwaves

The 3pm weekday hour used to be so crowded with radio shows I wanted to hear. Tom Leykis and Larry Elder are both gone. I just found out that "The Bible Answer Man", the Christian Research Institute's radio show, has been off the air in the Los Angeles area for at least a month.

That tells you how often I was listening lately. (If I've been listening to radio at that hour, it has usually been John & Ken on KFI.)

I've written about the BAM show before - just check the "CRI" or "Christian Research Institute" tags at the end of this entry.

To think that southern California is where the program had its origin for so many years, and now it is barely heard anywhere in California. I remember when both KKLA 99.5 and KWVE 107.9 (Calvary Chapel's radio station) ran the program at the same time, until KWVE dropped it and had their own call-in apologetics show.

I guess CRI President (and show host) Hank figures "Who needs KKLA? We've got XM and podcasting!" But I have yet to get into the podcast habit myself. I feel like such an old man.

Hank, Larry, and Tom... now there is a diverse bunch. Diverse opinions and views make ya think, though.

Friends First Revisited

We can revisit the "friends first" issue with this edition of Dear Abby. WANTS MORE IN NEW JERSEY wrote:

I'm a 22-year-old male who has never been in a serious relationship.

Good. You shouldn't be in one until you are 25, or have achieved your dream and are established and looking for marriage.

About six months ago, I went away to grad school and met a girl. We have become good friends. We talk a lot and I flirt, but I'm not sure if she's flirting back.

She laughs at my stupid jokes and touches me when we joke around, but I think she may regard me as just a friend. I enjoy having her as a friend, but I can't stop thinking about how I'd like to be more than just friends.

It could be too late. She probably thinks of you as her gay friend.

Should I take the chance and tell her how I feel and risk our friendship -- or let things remain the way they are?

This is why you should be dating at least a few women. If this woman is interested in you "romantically", it would become very obvious when she realizes you are going out on a date with another woman. She may even try to compete for your attention.

Be prepared to be dropped the minute she finds a guy who actually makes a move. Such is the case with a lot of male-female "friendships". Either you are just being somewhat of a platonic surrogate, or her new guy will not want you around, because he knows you would make a move if you ever worked up the guts.

Dear Abby responded:

A clue that she might be mutually attracted to you is the fact that she touches you.

Women do that with their gay friends.

Chances are, if she did consider him a possibility early on, she's long since moved on mentally. Unless she likes being reminded that she's not attractive enough to this guy for him to make a move.

Look, I used to be the guy who silently pined away for the girl. I'm sure there were a lot of junior high school kids in the same boat. I should have grown out of it by high school, but I didn't. It’s no way to live.

Man up. Learn to accept rejection. If you are most like most single guys, you consider any woman who doesn't repulse you to be a potential date. So ask different women. Some will say yes. What’s your goal? Are you a marriage-and-family-minded guy? If so, then your dates now will help you pick your wife – later... when you are done with graduate school and professionally established. If you're just looking for "a good time", then you can find that easily. But don't become friends with them first, because that'll just give them the wrong idea.

Teen Boy Worries About Being Inexperienced

Let's lighten things up. Time to check in on Dear Abby again. IN THE MINORITY IN PALATINE, ILL. wrote:

I'm a 16-year-old male high school sophomore in what I think is a pretty common predicament. A lot of my friends have had sex, and some are having it pretty regularly.

Really? Have you seen them doing it? Some of them probably are. There are probably some who have done it that you don't even know about, but some that you think have might not have had sex at all.

Abby, I've never even kissed a girl!

This isn't a problem.

When I was your age, I was in the same boat, and I went on to have some great relationships and I found a great wife. But back when I was your age, I thought I was some sort of freak for not having a girlfriend and for not having kissed. Actually, I had a girlfriend of sorts, but she was more like a pen pal. I know it seems like "everyone" has a girlfriend and is having sex, but it just isn't true.

I know you're bombarded with sexual thoughts and wanting to connect with girls and be as "accomplished" as you think your friends are, but you're better off focusing on your studies and a hobby or sport, finding out what you like to do and what you can do well, researching your options and planning your educational and professional future, and spending time with friends and family. Before you know it, you'll be 18, high school will be behind you, and life will be radically different.

You do not need to get an STD, knock up some girl, or get involved with some immature girl who will put you through an emotional roller coaster. Also, if you focus on the other things, you are more likely to be professionally and financially successful. And guess what? The more successful you are, the hotter the women you will be able to choose from. I know, I know... you want that companionship NOW - but time will go by faster and faster. Trust me. A lot of your friend who are having sex? In fifteen years a lot of them will be miserable. If you stick to the game plan, they will be envying you.

How can I deflect attention from myself when my friends ask me how far I've gone?

Tell them you prefer to keep some things private. If they accuse you of being gay or inexperienced, say, "If that's what you want to believe, I can't stop you." If this is really a problem with your friends, then maybe you need some new friends.

And what can I do to make sure I am not in this spot forever?

This will take care of itself if you see above. My best advice is that when you get to college and you seem to be handling your studies and any job you have well, try approaching some girls that catch your eye. Try to avoid girls from work unless you do not care about keeping your job. Ask a girl in class if she wants to study with you, or work on a project together. Ask them out – give a specific night. Some will say no, but if you keep at it, some will say yes. You have to risk the "no" to get a "yes". It hurts, but you'll learn to deal with it. Go out with them, but don't do anything to give them the impression that you are looking for a serious relationship, because you shouldn't do that until you are older and more established. Don't tell them you are only dating them. Try to date different women so you can get an idea of what you like and don’t like in dealing with them and don't get too serious with any one of them.

Dear Abby responded:

Some of your friends may be having sex, but I have a flash for you. A lot of the boys who say they are may be lying to each other.

And some of them are doing it with a teacher. But it's irrelevant. He shouldn't be having sex, and there's nothing wrong with not having kissed a girl at that age.

Here comes the worst advice she could give this kid:

In order to kiss a girl (etc.), you first have to become friends with one.

No! NO! NOOOOO!

Kid, don't listen to that. Once you get in the "friend" category, you'll never get to kiss her, except maybe the way her gay male friends kiss her - on the cheek. "Friends first" is a lie women tell men, sometimes just because they want the attention or someone to do their bidding - meanwhile, the guy goes without affection because once she places you in the "friend" pile, it is a miracle if you ever get into the "romance" line with her. They make romantic comedy movies like that, but they also make movies featuring singing chipmunks. That's what we call fantasy.

I'm not sure about girls, but women know within the first few minutes of meeting you if they would ever want to make out with you. If they don't want to, but you are nice or somehow useful, you'll end up in the friend pile.

Yes, ideally, your girlfriend should become your friend, but after you have already established the situation as a potential girlfriend/boyfriend relationship. I was friendly with the women I dated before I dated them, but not their friend, unless we had already established a flirting "relationship". The one exception was my first lover, which I wrote about here. But the key there was that she was attracted to me from the start.

Dear Abby's advice is a demonstrable lie. Boys much younger than you are getting kisses... and oral sex and intercourse from girls without being friends. Now, my best advice is above, and I would not encourage a boy to engage in that kind of activity.

You sound like you don't know what you want other than some affection. That's all the more reason you should occupy yourself with other stuff. However, if you really want kisses and sex and won't listen to my best advice, you can get those things without making your life too complicated or working too hard at it.

The age of consent in Illinois is 17. So, if you want to do everything legally, then you should wait until your 17 and only go after females 17 or older. Older women who date younger guys often do so for mostly physical reasons. Still, even at 16, you can probably find some unmarried older women hot for a young guy and willing to break the law. We're talking late 20s (which is older to you) and older. That's a risky way to go, though. You may end up buried in the back yard, or paying child support if the condom leaks, and then you've screwed up the life of a child, provided she even lets the child live.

These women can probably be found around town, and you can get to them if you offer to take care of their lawn and handyman jobs around their place for "college money". That gives you a legitimate reason to be at their place. Most of the females 17-20 that you even want to date are seeing older men or in serious relationships - that's why going older works.

To get a kiss from another 16-year-old or 15-year-old or whatever... well, I certainly didn't know how do to that when I was your age, but I know it isn't by being their friend. I had female friends at that age. None of them kissed me or gave off a vibe that they wanted me to kiss them. Perhaps you should go to a party and try to get a girl that catches your eye (and doesn't have a boyfriend) to go somewhere more secluded... or maybe for a walk. If you can't get a kiss from her there, you can try to at least establish that you'll call/text to set up a date.

As long as you don’t act like "the friend" or desperate, you can move the situation towards a kiss. Maybe you can go see a movie together. Don't talk too much on the date, because anything you say may turn her off. Remember, you're not looking for a wife in that situation, just a date. Ask questions about her and what she likes to do and what interests her. Don't let on if you think what she says is silly or lame. Just keep her talking. She'll feel more and more comfortable with you and thus, more willing to kiss. If nothing else, you'll learn more about life from her.

I hope that helps.

It just occurred to me that you are probably being raised by your mother without your father around. In the old days, a lot of fathers would take their boy to a prostitute to break him in. I strongly advise against that. Besides, it is being given away for free now. But if I am correct about your parental situation, you may have noticed that your mom talks about what a jerk your father is/was. Notice: she didn't say he's a friend. He wasn't a friend. He was such a jerk that he turned her on. So much so that she had sex with him.

Alcoholism, Infidelity – Part II

This blog entry is the last part (for now) of a short series dealing with my gripes. You can read the introduction here. You can read the first part of this gripe (the entry immediately prior to this one) here. I wrote about the things I'm thankful for about my wife and our marriage in this entry.

My wife knew she wanted to save her virginity for marriage before she even knew what that meant. She was told her mother married her father (as his second wife) as a virgin, and so she wanted to marry as a virgin. She grew up pretty much being a churchgoing "good girl", and when she was born-again as a college student, she had all the more resolve to marry as a virgin. In this regard, save for her mother, she is the black sheep of her family.

She knew from date one that I was not a virgin.

Marrying a virgin wasn't one of her requirements in a spouse, nor was it one of mine. Yes, both of us actually had a list of requirements in what we needed in a spouse, and it was very helpful. Actually, all other things being equal, I probably would have chosen a woman with a little experience over a virgin, for several reasons - one of them being that... I was not a virgin. While I admire moral resolve and appreciate my wife saving herself for marriage, whether or not my wife was a virgin was not important to me in the same way that, say, having common goals was. My wife was (and is) very attractive, and she never lived in the boonies, so I know she must have had many opportunities to have sex. So I knew that her virginity meant one of two things: 1) She had strong determination and self control; 2) She was not very horny. I suspected it was #1. Makeout sessions later confirmed my guess. But I'm getting off-track.

On that first date, after she confirmed through her questioning that I was not a virgin, I told her if that if it was going to be a problem that I was not a virgin, we should call it a night, move on, and save ourselves a lot of trouble. She quickly said it wouldn’t be a problem.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have told her at the end of the date to seriously reconsider the issue about not expecting her husband to be a virgin. Obviously, her emphasis on being a virgin meant certain things that had implications for how she was going to view her husband, based on his history. The past doesn't change, after all, and so again, there's nothing I can (or could) do about the past. I need to deal with the present in planning for the future.

My past experiences and her father's infidelity (and the infidelity on the part of her revered maternal grandmother) have been somehow connected in her mind. That's my explanation for some of her actions and some of her requests of me - plus, she has told me that "if they could cheat, anyone can cheat". Also, my MIL didn't "allow" any talk of her husband's first wife, even though he had two children with her. MIL could talk about her ex-boyfriend, though.

My wife's explanation for her postnuptial behavior, which goes against her "it's not a problem" assurance, is that she had no idea that once she experienced the intimacy of sex herself, her feelings would change. She said she didn’t know it was going to be this way until after she experienced it herself. Thus, things that didn’t bother her before now bother her – that's her explanation for the change in her attitude that she admits to having.

The attitude change has manifested itself in various ways. She distrusts me almost as though I have behaved like her father. She wants me to report to her any contact (e-mails, instant messages, etc.) I have with anyone I dated, no matter how mundane, as I remained friendly with most of them – which she knew early in our dating. She insisted I drop all contact forever with one of them. There is one anomaly to this, where my wife is supportive of ongoing communication with my ex-fiancee and her husband. Usually that means the once-in-a-blue-moon phone conversation that takes place in front of my wife, as we all like to talk with each other. I suppose our ongoing contact with my wife’s most serious boyfriend from the past (whose penis she handled many times... they were together for years) has something to do with this, as she probably feels obligated towards some "fairness" in this area. Probably because of her feelings, I have let contact with all other past dates die off. While I know that a lot of people don't keep in contact, the thing is I was friends or somewhat friendly with a lot of these women before we started to date, and our partings were amicable.

She insisted I destroy "life drawings" (nude, in case you are not clued in) I had made with a longtime girlfriend as my model. (I was a de facto art major in college for a couple of years). She does not want me having lunch with female coworkers, saying that many affairs start exactly that way. There have been a lot of little things here and there where this attitude has reared its head.

I can’t see myself ever cheating on her, though I will be careful not to let my guard down anyway. I'm the kind of guy who enjoys pointing to my wedding ring, is quick to bring up my wife (positively) in conversation, and doesn't want to look at an adulterer when I look in the mirror.

The ironic thing I believe she is the one in our marriage more likely to cheat:

1) I honestly believe she is much more attractive to men in general than I am to women in general.
2) My experiences have revealed me to be a very loyal guy to the women I was with in the past without a commitment, and I take my vows extremely seriously.
3) Her family has the history of infidelity, not mine. As far as I know, nobody in my family (parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts) has ever cheated.
4) The curiosity factor isn't there as much for me, due to my past experiences.
5) She is the one who is in a house with bedrooms, showers, etc. much of the day without me around, complete with visits from people like repairmen.
6) I have more to lose.

I don't know... maybe all of that doesn't matter because I was not loyal to what at the time was my unknown-to-me future wife. Maybe, statistically, I am the one more likely to cheat because she exercised more self control before marriage than I did. Regardless, I'd rather jump in front of a truck than cheat.

I have to believe that things would be different in our own marriage if her father had never strayed in his. Her father, past infidelity and alcoholism-enabling aside, is the sweetest guy. The infidelity is far back in the past now - his mother-in-law died and my mother-in-law, with her mother gone, finally cleaved to her husband, which she should have been doing since their wedding. MIL, by the way, is great - when she is sober. We simply can't count on her to be sober, unfortunately.

Lovemaking before I go to sleep is often not what it should be or doesn't happen often enough because, as I explained in my other gripes, I'm getting far too little sleep to begin with. My wife has never rejected me, but the routine is that we put the kids to bed, she puts me to bed, and then she stays up a few hours later. She doesn't want to change her sleep patterns to match mine, and I don't begrudge her that time alone at night, since she is otherwise always looking after the kids, and sometimes me as well. Unfortunately, because of our different sleep hours, we don't cuddle or spoon as we sleep. Ironically, (or is it paradoxically?) I did cuddle and spoon when I would stay overnight with the women I was involved with in my bachelor days.

Having me "nap" and then getting to it when she is ready to go to sleep (and I have had some rest) doesn't work, because her orgasms tend to fend off sleep much the same why mine (like most men), ease me into sleep. She has never outright rejected me (bless her), but she does worry that I won't get enough sleep, often bidding me goodnight with an insistence that I get some sleep and a suggestion that we do something the next day – even though the next day's schedule is often going to be the same. I suppose I could fix this (my end of it, not her worries that I'm not getting enough sleep) by being more demanding. I actually believe I would lose weight easier if I was occupying my mouth with my wife more, so there's an added plus to letting me spend more time bringing pleasure to her.

Two other relatively minor sex items:

1) My wife shot down using food/sweets (think whip cream, chocolate syrup, etc.) in our lovemaking. She says she doesn't want to associate those things with sex. I don't understand why she would have that reservation. Wouldn't that make eating those foods even more enjoyable? Hmmm, now that I think about it, maybe she thinks it would cause me to eat more stuff like that and gain more weight? But it seemed like it was about her, not me, and she already eats sweets without gaining weight. Maybe she's just really clever it that regard; finding a way of shooting it down without saying "you don't need any more calories." Part of my attitude towards marital lovemaking is that anything is fair game and should be tried at least once if a) the spouse consents; b) it doesn’t involve any other person or animal; c) it can be done in relative privacy so as not to be immodest in front of others; d) it isn't harmful. Experimentation and "mixing it up" are good. Not every session needs to be epic or follow the same pattern or have the same tone or pacing. Sometimes, it is just play; other times, an intense expression of passion. So, I would like to use this as playful thing, but she doesn't.

2) My wife "took something off of the menu". While we did make it to our wedding night as far as maintaining her virginity in the physical sense, things did get too naughty leading up to that. She did something that has to do with fellatio - something I really liked a lot. Although she claims she never did it (or fellatio in general) before, she did it three times with me - each time of her own initiative, each of the three times she performed fellatio on me prior to the wedding. Since the wedding, she has been "unable" to do that particular thing again - and I know, because I've asked and we've talked about it. Thankfully, she has not stopped fellatio in general. Perhaps she is feeling guilty for having done it while we were engaged, though she has no problem (thank God!) enjoying cunnilingus as I do that on her - even though that happened before we married as well - nor the fellatio in general. To my wife's credit, she discussed this with her mother (how many mothers and daughters discuss the finer points of fellatio? But then my wife's parents were forthright about where babies grow from the earliest ages of their children) and my wife says is willing to work on it... just not right now for temporary reasons I'm not going to get into. Unfortunately, this thing is strong turn-on for me.

Hey, maybe all of my other gripes would bother me a lot less as long at that one thing was restored to the menu. ;-)

Well, there you have it. My gripes. As you can tell, things are generally great, considering these are what I have for gripes. I mean, other some other husbands, by their accounts, are living in hell, while I am usually happy.

Maybe I can make things even better? What do you think? Do you see a need for my wife in all of this that I am not meeting? If I can make things better or me, then that will be good. If I can make things better for her, than that would be better. Like I said, I know she could gripe about a bunch of flaws of mine. I try to praise and thank her several times a day, and she does the same to me. For the most part, I do feel appreciated.

Alcoholism, Infidelity: Not My Problems, Except They Are

This blog entry is part of a short series dealing with my gripes. You can read the introduction here. I broke this topic into two parts, so this entry is part one. I wrote about the things I'm thankful for about my wife and our marriage in this entry.

Disclaimer: I actually generally like my in-laws and we get along very well. My wife claims they really like me (and I let her know that my family really likes her).

We can't trust most of my wife's family as babysitters. (We can trust my mother, one of my sisters, and my sister's husband, but we don't live close enough to them.) The one sibling of my wife's we have relied on before has a baby of her own to deal with now, and as our children get older we may not want to leave our kids with them anyway, as their worldview is so different than ours and they vocally deride much of our worldview.

The others are eliminated for general irresponsibility and substance abuse.

My mother-in-law's main excuse for drinking is that my father-in-law, the guy she chose to stick with despite California’s marriage and family laws being generous to divorcing wives with higher earning husbands, fooled around many years ago with some of their au pairs. Why they had au pairs when my mother-in-law was a stay-at-home mother, I don’t know. Possibly because she was so busy doting on her mother, which is one reason her husband fooled around on her, according to my wife. (Example: MIL married as a virgin, meaning that her experienced, previously-married husband agreed to they wouldn't have sex until they were married. My MIL was content to sit and talk with her mother into the night after the wedding reception – a sign of how the marriage would be.)

Or maybe she was already getting drunk. I don't know.

Of course, any excuse will do.

As a result of this substance abuse and infidelity in my wife's family, I get to suffer.

I have never been drunk in my life.

Neither has my wife.

In her case, it is because she's never touched alcohol. However, most of her siblings also have substance abuse problems - which is why they can't be babysitters.

It is also why I can't enjoy some wine at home.

My wife knew I drank occasionally before we even had our first date. She did not insist on a husband who doesn't drink.

My father regularly drank red wine in the evening, and I can't remember any ill results. Heck, it probably allowed him to stay with my mother as long as he did. My mother drank very rarely. She saw buying drinks as a waste of money. My paternal grandfather felt the same way.

With my family and personal medical history, I should probably be drinking red wine for the health effects.

My wife, however, insists that there won't be any alcoholic drinks in her home, because of what it did to her family while she was growing up. Maybe I just don't get her objection since it wasn't a problem in my family and didn't mar my childhood.

I point out to her that she stocks our kitchen with ice cream, candy bars, and various junk-sweets, even though I really should lose weight and much of my family has struggled with being overweight. She refuses to stop bringing that stuff home. She just expects me not to eat any of it - and, mostly I don't. I need to cut back on the ice cream, though. Yet she can't afford me the same freedom when it comes to wine, even though she has never personally had a drinking problem, whereas I have long had a problem keeping my weight under control.

She has told me that I'm free to drink wine when we are out at dinner or at a reception or whatever, and she can be the driver on those occasions. That would be too rare to have the desired health benefit, more expensive, and I have a much better driving record than she does anyway, so I prefer to drive.

Oh well... enough of this gripe.

We'll get to the good part - sex - in the next part; what I think will be the last part of this series for now.

Things I Love About My Wife

Okay, I have a couple of more entries to make about my gripes, but it is time for some balance. Not too long ago, I got tired of seeing how much people were using online social networking to "publicly" (non-anonymously) complain and whine about their spouse and their marriage, and not enough time focusing on the things they do like and on the good things about their marriage. Or, they'd spend hours answering stupid questions about themselves, but would they spend any time on making their spouse’s life better?

The list below is based on something I posted for everyone, especially my wife, to see. It has been altered to protect her identity and I made it a lot less "safe for work" because, well, it is easier for me to do that here on this blog and her family doesn’t read this. (People gave positive feedback to my posting, though they did not follow suit and do the same kind of posting themselves, which is what I was hoping to spark.)

In no particular order, and certainly not all-inclusive, I present...
37 Things I Love About My Wife

1. She gave me a daughter.
2. She gave me a son.
3. She is raising our kids and doing a darn good job of it.
4. Her devotion to breastfeeding.
5. She has a high pain tolerance, which is why she doesn't complain even with the breastfeeding has meant lots of painful pumping.
6. She's good with my family.
7. The strength of her faith.
8. We share political views.
9. She has achieved her professional and personal dreams, despite her disability.
10. She makes family her priority and would do anything for our family.
11. She tells me and shows me that she respects me and loves me.
12. She believes in my dreams and generally encourages me.
13. She acknowledges and appreciates the little things I do.
14. She almost always apologizes before I can even say something (which is especially good, because I tend to stuff it instead of saying something).
15. She laughs at my jokes.
16. She generally looks out for me and cares about my needs.
17. She packs my lunch.
18. She greets me warmly when I come home.
19. She makes our dinner.
20. She is generally careful about money, to the point of researching things large and small before she purchases.
21. Other than a mortgage, she didn't bring debt to our marriage.
22. She does the laundry and washes the dishes and doesn't complain about doing it.
23. She's handy with fixing stuff around the house.
24. She shares one of my biggest hobbies/interests.
25. She has spent a lot of time organizing my stuff (see #24).
26. She doesn't make me guess what she wants for gifts.
27. She keeps her hair long.
28. Her cute nose.
29. Her beautiful breasts.
30. Her lovely ass.
31. Her willingness to shave her vaginal area bare and let me enjoy it after she has.
32. She's in shape and generally beautiful.
33. She's the best kisser I've ever kissed (there may have been as many as a dozen women I kissed before my wife, with three of them being LTR's.).
34. She has never rejected me in terms of providing some form of sex, even when her sex drive has been nonexistent (during pregnancy and some other unusual times).
35. That has usually meant fellatio, which I enjoy immensely.
36. She has asked for suggestions on how to be better in this area.
37. She married ME!

Physical Limitations

This blog entry is part of a short series dealing with my gripes. You can read the introduction here.

My wife is beautiful. Her body is a feast for the eyes.

My wife also has a physical disability. Before I write anymore about it, I want to state clearly here that I am well aware that no matter how inconvenient it is for me, my wife's disability is something she deals with day and day out, and has for a long time now – long before I came along, and that I should count my blessings that I don't have a similar disability. I did know she had the disability before we married, but I didn't expect it would impact our life the way it has. That could be my fault for not being more observant or engaging my wife in activities that would have revealed more. Or, perhaps in putting her best foot forward, she wasn’t as forthcoming as she should have been.

With that being said...

It didn't prevent her from working long hours on her feet, often with children. It didn't prevent her from walking hand in hand with me on our dates when we did a lot of walking. She doesn't collect disability payments from the government.

The disability is bad enough, though, that she insisted on having a house with no stairs, and it is also why she doesn't take the kids to the park (they may outrun her, or someone else may take them and outrun her), why she saves errands for my days off, and why she usually has me pushing her in a wheelchair as I walk around the very places she and I used to walk hand in hand - before we got married. When you throw in a kid or two in a stroller, we're limited in what we can do without another responsible person along to help.

The thing is - she never used the wheelchair before we married (she doesn't use it around the house, shopping, or most places). She didn’t even own one.

She seemed capable of doing just about anything before we got married. I imagined that one of the benefits of having her be a SAHM was that she could take care of more of the errands and getting the kids out and about while I was at work. I didn't understand how things would actually turn out, and perhaps there is a way I could have gotten a better idea ahead of time, so I could have planned better; like taking a kid somewhere with us for the better part of a day. Unfortunately, we didn’t have nieces or nephews that fit that age range at the time. If I understood more about her disability or how she thinks about it before we married (and her family situation), I would have insisted more forcefully that we live closer to my family, so that they could assist us.

There have been some get-togethers with other mothers and their kids, and sometimes she'll take the kids over to her parents' during the day, so it isn't like they never get out while I'm at work. Just not often enough.

In this aspect of the marriage, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. Sure, you can marry an Olympic athlete and an accident or disease can leave them disabled... but that's not what happened here.

Since there was a little time between when some of her physical limitations started to change things (immediately after marrying) and when we started to actively try to have children, I did raise some concerns with her about taking care of the children. She insisted that she could handle taking care of them, and perhaps she finds everything hunky dory the way it is now. Whenever I bring up that the older kid needs to get out more, she gets defensive and doubts her ability to offer proper physical supervision. So that's why I try to take the kid out when I get home. On the one hand, I think I may have gotten a better understanding of the limitations if we had waited longer to marry. However, the year following our wedding, due to external factors, was very difficult, and going through that without being married to each other would have been so much harder. I can't do anything about that now anyway. I need to look for solutions.

I do try to be sensitive to her limitations. I probably overdo it in being protective of her, with her usually assuring me, "It's okay, I can do it." Getting the children out and about more is the one area where she is the one quicker to say she can't do it. The difference, probably, is that she is willing to take risks with her own comfort, but is overly cautious about the safety of her children.

A few members of my family could help. They'd love to either go along on errands to help keep an eye on the kids, or babysit the kids while she gets out. Ah, but we don’t live close to them. We live close to her family members, most of whom are eliminated from consideration as babysitters due to substance abuse. That's for next time.

At least we get to use handicapped parking.

By the way, I'm not demanding when it comes to things like how the house looks, or what we have for dinner. It's not like I expect her to keep the kids entertained AND keep the house spotless AND make a gourmet dinner AND run all of the errands – all with a disability. A "messy" house does not bother me, as long as it is sanitary. Laundry piles here, toys there... that doesn't bother me. And I'd be fine with peanut butter and jelly for dinner, though my wife often cooks up a nice dinner, and yes, she does the laundry - bless her.

My Commute

This blog entry is part of a short series dealing with my gripes. You can read the introduction here, along with the first gripe, which explains why I live where I do.

My commute and the traffic is almost always slow. Rarely is my drive "straight home" any less than 45 minutes. If there is an accident along the way, it will easily be over and hour. The going-to-work commute is usually shorter. But I don't mind the commute itself. Really. It is my alone time for the day. (My wife also knew from the start that I am a person who enjoyed my alone time, and she enjoyed hers.) I can think without interruption, I can listen to what I want to listen to, without considering what my wife would like to hear, or what I don't want my children to hear. For example, my diverse taste in music includes harder classic rock, whereas my wife isn't fond of that style.

The problem comes in that when I combine my long working day with this long commute. I always have a long working day because I have a short workweek. Sometimes, I need to work later than "normal", which makes the working day even longer.

This means that when I do get home from work, there isn't a lot of time to spend with the wife and kids or do anything else before I should be getting to bed. This means I almost never get a full night's rest during my workweek, and often it becomes more like an extended nap.

Hey, no problem, right? I have a short workweek, so I've got plenty of time for the wife and kids and relaxation on my days off, right? Well, sometimes. Usually my wife saves the errands for my days off, so that I can do them while she is watching the kids at home, or vice versa, or so that we can do them as a family. So my days off are often filled with running errands I thought my wife would be handling when we married as well as the typical honey-dos that any husband should expect.

If my commute was shorter, perhaps I'd have more time to spend with my family, more time to spend with the guys (that's practically nonexistent right now, as it has been for most of the marriage), or more time alone with more freedom to do what I want during my alone time instead of being limited to "thinking" or listening to talk radio/music as I try to avoid getting hit by other drivers.

Perhaps I will find employment closer to home. It's highly unlikely my current employer will be moving any closer to our house.

These days, I get home and try to get my "older" kid out to the local park for fun and exercise, and I can right now, but as the days grow shorter that won't be the case.

So why doesn't my wife do that earlier in the day? Well, it has to do with the same reason she didn't want a house with any stairs, and why she saves most of the errands for my days off.

I'll get into that in my next installment.

(Writing out these gripes reveals that I have very little to gripe about in the overall scheme of things. I have a job, I have a working vechicle, and most importantly I have a great wife and children. Still, I want to make things better, if I can.)

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

Although I've talked a lot about my past mistakes, things I didn't like about past relationships, and male/female relationships in general, and I am blogging somewhat anonymously... I try to avoid using this forum to complain about my wife or our marriage.

Yes, I'm happily married. My wife is an amazing woman and I'm deeply in love with her. She keeps herself in shape, she keeps her hair long, she feeds me (yes, these are important things), she's generally a great mother, she's very good about our money, she understands that even if she isn't in the mood that I still need some, she tells me how much she appreciates me. I could go on and on about what a great wife she is.

But I am not blind to problems in our relationship. I do have some gripes (and I know she does, too, but this is my blog). Everything is not perfect. But that’s an elusive goal in this life anyway.

I also admit that whatever complaints I have are partially my responsibility, because I chose this woman to be my bride and I do have some power improve things in the marriage.

I don't want to complain to others who actually know us, and perhaps by sitting down to write about these things I will find some sort of solution, even it is comes down to a simple attitude adjustment on my part. If you have any suggestions, I’m open to considering them.

So let me get to my first gripe.

Where We Live

This plays a role is most of my other gripes.

I had a spoiled childhood in terms of where I grew up. Oh, I didn't grow up in the lap of luxury. By regional standards, it was middle class. But the neighborhood was special. I know a lot of people think their hometown is special. But this place really was and still is. I can tell because news media types and authors who do stories involving the city say so. I can almost guarantee you have seen this place, even if you've never been to my state. A lot of my classmates who left town upon high school graduation have moved back, especially after having kids or their kids reach school age - not to live with family, but because of the town and schools. The public schools are some of the better ones you'll find anywhere, and kids who really lived in different districts would lie about where they lived in order to get in to them.

I had moved out of this town for college. A few years after graduating, I moved back to this town to be close to my job. Our state has traditionally been full of movers. Everybody came from somewhere else, and they don't stay in one place very long. But in my hometown, once a family moves in, they seem to stay for generations. So there is a small town feel, even though it is part of a sprawling megalopolis, surrounded by a continuous sea other cities on each side. People speak English, even if some form of Chinese was their first language. The signs are in English. I don't want to get more specific than that.

I grew up on a tree-shaded street with single family homes and seemed like most of the houses were homes to families who had children somewhere close in age to me or my siblings.

My wife grew up in a different part of southern California, and although she has fond memories of her childhood home, she has no desire to live in that neighborhood today.

When we were discussing marriage, the plan was to move close where I would be working as soon as it made sense. Upon marriage, I moved in to her place (a condo) because she was paying a mortgage and I was paying rent for an apartment, and so living in her place made more financial sense while we made plans to find a house. This meant pretty much exactly the commute I had moved from my "college" apartment to avoid. But it was temporary, right? Ah, but things have a way of changing after marriage.

When we were finally able to upgrade into a single family home, my wife did most of the looking. My work location had been moved by my employer, but the commute was still about the same. Although I had always wanted a single family home with yards and the whole bit, two things had caused me to be open to the possibility of instead upgrading to a larger condo or townhome in a better neighborhood than her condo: 1) It was clear that neither of us was prone to spend much time in the tiny backyard we already had, nor keep the weeds from growing – how were we going to handle having larger yards of our own? 2) Housing in our region is expensive, and we could be in a nicer neighborhood with more security if we went with a condo instead of a single family house.

My wife would not consider the possibility at all. She actually cited as a reason that the only person she knew living in a condo when she was growing up (wealthier than I) was a single mother. And this was supposed to be a reason not to settle in a condo. Plenty of axe murders have lived in single family homes, but so what? Once me wife gets an idea in her head, it is nearly impossible to change it.

Another restriction: No stairs. I’ll get into why later. But it never occurred to me that stairs would ever be a problem for her. It never came up while we were dating. A house with no stairs - that severely reduced our options. Of course, we had to be able to afford the place, too - no crazy no-money-down ARMs for us.

When push comes to shove, she wanted to live close to her family, and they lived close to our condo. I have wondered why she just couldn't have been honest about this before we got married, so I knew what to expect. She insists that she wasn't counting on me to pick up a job with an employer closer to the condo, so that makes it seem to me like she always felt this way. On the other hand, it is possible that she was influenced somewhat by things that happened after we got married. Moving closer to my job would bring us closer to my family - and although she praises my mother as a great MIL and grandmother, she has been bothered by some things about my family since we married, including that she thinks I am too close with one of my sisters.

Now, I think she may be projecting a bit of her family on my family here, because she has a sister and brother who have moved out of her parents' place together, moved back in, and have moved out together again. They "party" together, frequently sit in the hot tub together, and I think they have even messed around with the same woman (though the sister dates men). My siblings and I don't have a history of even hanging out together sober, much less partying and stealing make-out buddies from each other. Mostly, I keep in contact regularly on the phone with one sister, and we talk about our parents and siblings. That's about it. Mainly, my sister wants to know about my kids.

So, we ended up with a house in what I'm sure used to be a great neighborhood in an overall city that I really do like. But most of the residents in our neighborhood don't speak English as their first language if at all, graffiti is an issue, a woman comes by every evening yelling in Spanish in hopes that someone will come out to her on the sidewalk and buy tamales from her, and I kid you not - the other day I saw a rooster walking around (no, there isn’t a farm nearby). Police helicopters circle overhead most nights. The elementary school sucks, but "we're planning" to homeschool, so what does that matter? (Except I fear that may change, too, like planning to settle near work.)

I wasn't expecting to be able to afford to live in the neighborhood of my youth. But I did think it would be possible to live close to it, and we'd be closer to my work and family.

My wife repeatedly tells me she loves our house, so I'm glad for that. To be fair, in addition to wanting to be close to her family (that's something I will get to later), she probably fell in love with the interior of the house. I'm also happy that I do have my own man cave in the house. Unfortunately, we had to install a whole HVAC system when we moved in – using the duct spaces originally in place for the old heater, plus adding some - and the living room/dining room was an addition with a beautiful ceiling, but it doesn't have insulation. While the rest of the windows in the house are new, the windows in this room are older. So it isn't the most energy efficient, and the AC has to be run hard in the summer. And, of course, work as is far away as ever.

So this brings me to my commute, which I will discuss in the second installment in this series.

What Ever Happened to Surprising Someone?

What do you think about requests for certain gifts? What about wish lists? SOLICITED IN ARIZONA wrote into Dear Abby:

My mother-in-law has a terrible habit. She tells us what she wants for gifts in the form of e-mails with Web links to things she wants.

While that is getting out of line, my wife and I have found letting people know about our Amazon.com wish lists is a good thing. I know that if I buy her something from that list, she will not be disappointed. But letting someone know about your wish list should be as aggressive as you get.

One year, she bought a pair of $700 earrings and told her fiance that he bought them for her birthday. He actually had to reimburse her.

No, he didn't. He could have kicked her to the curb, and he should have. Does he want a lifetime of that?

I have a problem with someone telling me what she wants when I haven't asked. I also don't like being told how much to spend.

It is important to have a variety on the wish lists that includes low-cost items.

My husband is used to it. He doesn't know how to say no to her.

Lucky you.

My wife gets a little bent out of shape when someone ignores her wish list. My attitude is that any gift to me is welcome, whether it is off of my list or not. Nor do I even expect a gift at all. Why? Gifts are supposed to be voluntary. That is what makes them gifts. I value home-made gifts from my wife most of all.

EHarmony Is Not a Christian Dating Website

It is a matchmaking and relationship enhancement business.

Yes, it was founded by and based on the research of a Christian, but so what? It is no more of a "Christian" business than Harvard or Yale are Christian universities. Even less so, as Harvard and Yale were originally founded to train Christian ministers, while EHarmony was founded with the goal of reducing the divorce rate.

The website was originally marketed through Christian outlets.

But over the years, the website has expanded its outreach.

I frequently see blog or forum postings claiming that EHarmony rejects atheists or any non-Christian.

As far as I can tell, the service does reject some atheists or other non-Christians, but it also rejects some Christians. The service does not reject people based on their religious or philosophical beliefs per se, and plenty of non-Christians have been accepted by the service and have used it. So no, the service doesn’t reject atheists because they are atheists. However, if someone indicates they are an atheist, they want another atheist, they feel very strongly about this, and they are very serious about finding someone very close in location to them... perhaps nobody who meets those parameters and is compatible with the applicants' personality and other conditions is in the EHarmony system. In that case, the service tells you they can't find matches for you at that time. I think it also does this if other limitations you have placed result in too few matches. Instead of taking your money, they reject your application. What's wrong with that?

Now, EHarmony.com doesn't do same-sex matching. But apparently a lot of people looking for this and thus complaining about EHarmony are unaware of their sister service, Compatible Partners, created to settle a lawsuit... or the many other online matchmaking services for gays and lesbians.

If you're going to criticize something, do so on the basis of reality.

Note that EHarmony also rejects applicants based on age, being legally married, having "too many" past marriages, depression, instability, or some other factors your personality test results indicate would keep you from being marriage material right now.