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.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is Not a Christian

I've seen several instances online of people referring to Dr. Laura, in a less-than-approving-way, as an evangelical or fundamentalist Christian.

These people are apparently incapable of doing even the bare minimum of research online, or are deliberate liars, or simply don't care enough to get their facts straight.

Dr. Laura is not a Christian. She doesn't claim to be. She doesn't proclaim Jesus Christ her Lord and Savior. (I'd love to hear her do that, though!)

Her background, as far as I can tell from reading her stuff and listening to her, is this:

She grew up in what she describes as an "interfaithless" home, meaning one parent was Jewish by birth and the other some form of nominal Christian, and she was not raised in any standard religious tradition or consistent religious practice.

Prompted by some questions from her son about being Jewish (as she considered herself and her son), she started a spiritual search that eventually led her to Orthodox Judaism.

She practiced that for a while, and then stopped practicing Orthodox Judaism, but still considers herself Jewish as far as religious affiliation.

Over and over again on her show, she places family cohesion in a single religion over a spouse's newfound desire to pursue a different religious path. An "evangelical Christian" would likely encourage everyone become an evangelical Christian. Dr. Laura doesn't do that.

As long as I'm on the subject of Dr. Laura, I wanted to call attention to some of the stuff I recently came across on her website.

First up is this pretty good listener letter written by an older woman to a younger (college student) woman about sex outside of marriage, and why it should be avoided. What the letter never discusses is that the girl being addressed probably got some enjoyment out of having sex with her boyfriends. This approach assumes that the younger woman's feelings of guilt and regret will outweigh her hormones and hedonistic inclinations, and they may actually do so at the time she is reading the letter, after a recent break-up. But it could be a very different story when she is alone with the next boyfriend. Ignoring this reality, and why one behavior is ultimately better in the long run than an immediately enjoyable behavior, is what prevents these kinds of essays from being more effective... especially coming from an older woman with a lower libido and access to regular marital sex.

Too often, the situation is presented as some guy "taking advantage" of a woman or that she has "nothing to show" for having had sex. Like he was supposed to give her two mules and a herd of goats. What does he have to show for having had sex with her?

In this blog entry, Dr. Laura discusses a group of mistresses and a wife who conspired to break the law to get revenge on a guy they all seemed to find irresistible.

Of the people who commented on a recent news story in which several so-called "mistresses" and a wife blindfolded and bound a man and then Krazy Glued his penis to his stomach, 68% of them LAUGHED. They actually LAUGHED at this story.

They wouldn't have laughed if it were the other way around, i.e., if several men glued a woman's genitals closed.

Bingo. No, then it would have been hate crime and evidence of a "culturally ingrained violence against women".

Finally, there's this blog entry, where she takes to task a female professor who says that men who do more domestic chores are better husbands.

When women call me complaining about such things (usually women who are at home), I ask them if they drive their husband’s route in traffic every day, or if they deal with difficult bosses or co-workers, or if they aren’t able to take breaks whenever they choose or take care of all the car and house repair issues. They say "no," but expect him to do housework in addition to all his other responsibilities.

In those situations where both husband and wife have full-time jobs, and there's a "war" about who’s going to take care of household chores, I say they should budget and pay for part-time housecleaning help, or one of them ought to reassess their life and decide if having no one at home to make a nest is worth the money they both make.

There are biological and psychological imperatives in females for nesting/child care, and in males for conquering/protecting. When these are turned inside out, there is usually (but not always) a reaction in the female to feel less respectful and
sexual toward her mate.

The whole blog entry is worth a read. She goes on to say...

A better study would be to find out what household situations make MEN happiest, because those are the ones which, overall, are going to attract the men who make the best husbands. Happy husbands spend more time with their families, and would swim through shark-infested waters for them.

Thank God for Dr. Laura.

Marriage Delay

Over at Biblical Manhood, you can find a substantial argument by Anakin Niceguy that men are not primarily to blame for delaying marriage - or not getting married at all. The rising average age that couples marry worries some advocates of early marriage and "marriage mandaters".

As I commented on the blog entry, I think the delay also has to do with how the workplace climate/job market has changed in recent decades.

Regardless of the faults of women or men, one reason for a delay in marriage is that it generally takes longer now for a man to become established to the point where he can financially provide for a family. These Early Marriage Mandaters think it is unrealistic that men will maintain purity if they marry later (and just who is interacting with men in these cases, hmmmmmm?) or not at all, but they don't think it is unrealistic for a man to marry, be a good husband and father (meaning, to them, always doing all of the things his wife wants him to do, cleaning up around the house, playing with the kids and changing their diapers, being there for breakfast and dinner) while AT THE SAME TIME completing his education... while already working in a job that earns enough income to provide for his family AND being active in church activities... and climb up the professional ladder while not "disrespecting his wife" by networking with female professionals.

Sorry... most of us do not live on isolated family farms anymore. Unlike our fathers and grandfathers, we are competing with women for seats in university/grad school classes and job openings and for payroll dollars. Getting professionally established often involves evening events or working late, working weekends, business trips, and relocations. It is also taking men (and probably women, too) longer to figure out who they are and what they want in life, especially with more choices than ever.

But getting back to what AN wrote...

I'm really hard pressed to argue to any childless guy who has been able to live well on his own or shacking up, has no desire to be a father, and has no qualm about sex outside of marriage (or, a low sex drive) why he should get married at all - and that seems to be a growing number of men.

As for men who are followers of Christ, I would still advise them (if they were to ask me) to be single and celibate and only marry only if a set of narrow circumstances are persistent. Those would include, among another things:

1) a desire on his part (not his family’s or anyone else's) that he be a husband
2) that he be in good standing to be a husband
3) he has found a woman he strongly desires with whom he is compatible and who likewise has a desire to be his wife and is in good standing to be a wife.

... but it seems like a confluence of those conditions seems to be more and more rare.

Yes, our grandparents were happily married for life starting at early ages, but grandma wasn't conditioned from an early age to disrespect and disparage men and normal masculinity. She didn't expect her husband to be just like one of her girlfriends, only with the ability to lift heavy objects, scare off some would-be predators, and open jars. She wasn't conditioned to expect she would have it all. She wasn't bed hopping. She didn't have old crushes and new smooth-talkers contacting her via online communications. She didn't have "no fault" divorce and all of the other family law elements that encourage nasty divorces and the spouse earning less income to file for divorce. Our grandparents usually didn't start out their adult lives facing many more years of school and massive debts. Grandpa could earn enough to support a family, even without college.

Our culture has changed, and marriage is not immune to those changes. An old-fashioned guy and an old-fashioned girl can get married young and have a happy and lasting marriage, but it is more difficult than ever for that to be the case.

I suppose men can be blamed for letting things get this way, because supposedly we once controlled everything with an iron-fist patriarchy, and if that is the case our fathers must have consented to these cultural shifts, presumably by letting their libidos overcome other internal influences and listening too much to the wrong women. Because now, the system definitely favors women in general, and when it comes to men, in general, it seems to reward the hedonist jerks and and punish the marriage-and-family-minded nice guys.

So if you are happily married to a godly wife or a godly man, thank God you have beaten the odds. That's the way I feel.

That's Business

The Dr. Laura Show is leaving KFI, its flagship radio station in Los Angeles, where her show was before her national syndication and has been during her national syndication up to this moment. She'll subsequently be on a much less powerful and popular station - KFWB AM 980. I have no doubt that she'll raise their ratings, but it will be nearly impossible for her to get the same ratings (or reach) that she did on KFI. There's always satellite radio and StreamLink, should KFWB or another radio station carrying her in the area not reach a listener's house, car, or office.

It is interesting to see CBS-owned KFWB, which used to be headline news 24/7, taking on talk, when earlier this year CBS-owned KLSX FM flipped from talk to Top 40, thereby depriving us of Adam Carolla, Tom Leykis, and others.

I especially miss Leykis, even though we disagree and some very basic things about life. I also still miss Howard Stern, who had been on KLSX before leaving for satellite radio, to be replaced by Carolla.

I learned as a kid not to get too attached to radio personalities or station formats (thanks to KMET 94.7 and KIQQ 100.3) Glad I learned that lesson early.

Frankly Speaking

Frank Pastore is a retired MLB pitcher who went from atheism to devout (and educated) Christianity. He has an afternoon drive talk show on local Christian radio station KKLA 99.5 FM. He calls it "the intersection of faith and reason". I generally like him, how he does his show, and what he says on his show about theology and politics.

But I do have a quibble.

He posts "run sheets" about what happened on his show, with links to websites of the guests or the material he discusses.

According to his run sheet, on Wednesday, July 22, from 6:28pm to 6:38pm, he discussed this:

Single moms, how can we as the church help you? Men's groups, shame on us for allowing their need to go unanswered!

Before I really get going, I want to at least commend Pastore for actually using the word "shame" instead of just the tactic, as is so common in today's culture, including the church, when it comes to men. Also, I did not hear the segment, but I have heard other segments of his show lately on issues of gender. With that said...

Excuse me? Why is it the responsibility of the "men's groups" at a church to take care of single mothers? Yes, I strongly believe it is the role of the church to care for those in need, including showing those in need ethical, moral, and legal ways to get out of being needy so that they, in turn, can help others. I certainly think it is better that people in need get their help from the church instead of the state.

But it is the role of the whole church. Not just the men, not the "men's groups", to take care of those in need. In the instance of single mothers, it should first and foremost be other women in the church who are ministering to their needs. It certainly isn't the role of men's groups to provide single mothers with companionship and attention.

I like that Dr. Laura makes a distinction when it comes to single mothers. When someone identifies themselves as a single mother (or father), she asks if they are "divorced, widowed, or never married". There is a difference. Most single mothers picked the wrong man with whom to make babies, or they made babies with a generally good man but treated him badly and/or divorced him and took custody of the children. These days, there are a few who deliberately used official or de facto (intentional one night stand or casual fling) sperm donation – intentionally depriving their child of a father. There are widows whose husbands were killed by some fluke or unpreventable terminal illness or negligence on the part of others, or in the line of duty, and they have my sympathies. There are also widows who picked a guy prone to violent or self-destructive behavior, which lead to his premature death.

These things are relevant because the church needs to approach these different women differently. A mother whose husband was killed serving his country or community doesn't have the same issues as a mother who keeps getting pregnant outside of marriage with different men.

Just as there should be roles in the home, it does make sense for there to be roles in the church. Men's groups can be tasked with things like security, doing auto repair and handyman and moving for any members of the church in need, or the church itself. Likewise, women's groups can be tasked with baking, shopping, babysitting, etc. When our first child was freshly born, different couples would bring us home cooked meals. In reality, the wives were doing the cooking. (And God bless them for doing it.)

But men's groups should not be tasked with most of the needs of single mothers. It isn't appropriate. If the father of those children is in the church, then the men's groups can lead him in in the direction of being a good father to his children, and possibly towards reconciliation/marriage to the mother of his children. The men's groups can help in the same way they would help any other person in the church. We shouldn't expect, say, a member of the church who is a plumber who gives a discount to other members of the church to do free work for a single mother simply because she is a single mother.

Otherwise, it should be well-grounded women in the church who are meeting the needs of single mothers.

I will not hold my breath waiting for Pastore, or other people in Christian media, to say "Women's groups, shame on you for allowing the needs of single fathers to go unanswered!"

In general, the church should not be asking men to take care of the needs of women without also asking women to take care of the needs of men. Most of all, the church should be teaching people how to rely on God and how to address their own needs (if God has left it to them) before seeking help from others.