It seems so unreasonable when you put it that way:  My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink.  It makes her seem ridiculous; and makes me seem like a victim of unfair expectations.

We like to point fingers at other things to explain why something went wrong, like when Biff Tanned crashed George McFly’s car and spilled beer on his clothes, but it was all George’s fault for not telling him the car had a blind spot.

This bad thing happened because of this, that, and the other thing.  Not because of anything I did!

Sometimes I leave used drinking glasses by the kitchen sink, just inches away from the dishwasher.  It isn’t a big deal to me now.  It wasn’t a big deal to me when I was married.  But it was a big deal to her.  Every time she’d walk into the kitchen and find a drinking glass by the sink, she moved incrementally closer to moving out and ending our marriage.  I just didn’t know it yet.  But even if I had, I fear I wouldn’t have worked as hard to change my behavior as I would have stubbornly tried to get her to see things my way.

The idiom “to cut off you nose to spite your face” was created for such occasions.

Men Are Not Children, Even Though We Behave Like Them

Feeling respected by others is important to men.  Feeling respected by one’s wife is essential to living a purposeful and meaningful life.  Maybe I thought my wife should respect me simply because I exchanged vows with her.  It wouldn’t be the first time I acted entitled.  One think I know for sure is that I never connected putting a dish in the dishwasher with earning my wife’s respect.  I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time.  It’s why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is “I got this,” and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.  I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”

But She Didn’t Want to be my Mother

She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.  She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.  I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time.

Men Can Do Things

Men invented heavy machines that can fly in the air reliably and safely.  Men proved the heliocentric model of the solar system, establishing that the Earth orbits the Sun.  Men design and build skyscrapers, and take hearts and other human organs from dead people and replace the corresponding failing organs inside of living people, and then those people stay alive afterward.  Which is insane.  Men are totally good at stuff.  Men are perfectly capable of doing a lot of these things our wives complain about.  What we are not good at is being psychic, or accurately predicting hour our wives might feel about any given thing because male and female emotional responses tend to differ pretty dramatically.

“Hey Matt! Why would you leave a glass by the sink instead of putting it in the dishwasher?”

Several reasons.

• 1. I may want to use it again.
• 2. I don’t care if a glass is sitting by the sink unless guests are coming over.
• 3. I will never care about a glass sitting by the sink. Ever. It’s impossible.  It’s like asking me to make myself interested in crocheting, or to enjoy yard work.  I don’t want to crochet things.  And it’s hard for me to imagine a scenario in which doing a bunch of work in my yard sounds more appealing than ANY of several thousand less-sucky things which could be done.

There is only ONE reason I will ever stop leaving that glass by the sink.  A lesson I learned much too late:  Because I love and respect my partner, and it REALLY matters to her.  I understand that when I leave that glass there, it hurts her — literally causes her pain — because it feels to her like I just said: “Hey, I don’t respect you or value your thoughts and opinions.  Not taking four seconds to put my glass in the dishwasher is more important to me than you are.”

All the sudden, it’s not about something as benign and meaningless as a dirty dish.

Now, it’s a meaningful act of love and sacrifice, and really?  Four seconds?  That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing too bid to do for the person who sacrifices daily for me.

I don’t have to understand WHY she cares so much about that stupid glass.

I just have to understand and respect that she DOES.

• Then, caring about her = putting the glass in the dishwasher.
• Caring about her = keeping your laundry off the floor.
• Caring about her = thoughtfully not tracking dirt or whatever on the floor she worked hard to clean.
• Caring about her = taking care of kid-related things so she can just chill out for a little bit and not worry about anything.
• Caring about her = “Hey babe.  Is there anything I can do today or pick up on my way home that will make your day better?”
• Caring about her = a million little things that say “I love you” more than speaking the words ever can.

Yes. It’s That Simple

The man capable of that behavioral change — even when he doesn’t understand her or agree with her thought-process — can have a great relationship.

Men want to fight for their right to leave that glass there.  It might look like this:

“Eat shit, wife,” we think.  “I sacrifice a lot for you, and you’re going to get on me about ONE glass by the sink?  THAT little bullshit glass that takes a few seconds to put in the dishwasher, which I’ll gladly do when I know I’m done with it, is so important to you that you want to give me crap about it?  You want to take an otherwise peaceful evening and have an argument with me, and tell me how I’m getting something wrong and failing you, over this glass?  After all of the big things I do to make our life possible — things I never hear a “thank you” for (and don’t ask for) — you’re going to elevate a glass by the sink into a marriage problem?  I couldn’t be THAT petty if I tried.  And I need to dig my heels in on this one.  If you want that glass in the dishwasher, put it in there yourself without telling me about it.  Otherwise, I’ll put it away when people are coming over, or when I’m done with it.  This is a bullshit fight that feels unfair and I’m not just going to bend over for you.”

The man DOES NOT want to divorce his wife because she’s nagging him about the glass thing which he thinks is totally irrational.  He wants her to agree with him that when you put life in perspective, a glass being by the sink when no one is going to see it anyway, and the solution takes four seconds, is just not a big problem.  She should recognize how petty and meaningless it is in the grand scheme of life, he thinks, and keeps waiting for her to agree with him.  She will never agree with him, because for her, it’s not ACTUALLY about the glass.  The glass situation could be ANY situation in which she feels unappreciated and disrespected by her husband.

The wife doesn’t wand t divorce her husband because he leaves used drinking glasses by the sink.  She wants to divorce him because she feels like he doesn’t respect or appreciate her, which suggests he doesn’t love her, and she can’t count on him to be her lifelong partner.  She can’t trust him.  She can’t be safe with him.  Thus, she must leave and find a new situation in which she can feel content and secure.

In theory, the man wants to fight this fight, because he thinks he’s right (and I tend to agree with him):  The dirty glass is not more important than marital peace.

If his wife thought and felt like him, he’d be right to defend himself.  Unfortunately, most guys don’t know that she’s NOT fighting about the glass.  Shes’s fighting for acknowledgement, respect, validation, and his love.

If he KNEW that — if he fully understood this secret she has never explained to him in a way that doesn’t make her sound crazy to him (causing him to dismiss it as an inconsequential passing moment of emo-ness), and that this drinking glass situation and all similar arguments will eventually end his marriage, I believe he WOULD rethink which battles he chose to fight, and would be more apt to take action doing things he understands to make his wife feel loved and safe.

I think a lot of times, wives don’t agree with me.  They don’t think it’s possible that their husbands don’t know how their actions make her feel because she has told him, sometimes with tears in her eyes, over and over and over and over again how upset it makes her and how much it hurts.

And this is important:  Telling a man something that doesn’t make sense to him once, or a million times, doesn’t make him “know” something.  Right or wrong, he would never feel hurt if the same situation were reversed so he doesn’t think his wife SHOULD hurt.

“I never get upset with you about things you do that I don’t like!” men reason, as if their wives are INTENTIONALLY choosing to feel hurt and miserable.  When you choose to love someone, it becomes your pleasure to do things that enhance their lives and bring you closer together, rather than a chore.

It’s not: Sonofabitch, I have to do this bullshit thing for my wife again.  Its:  I’m grateful for another opportunity to demonstrate to my wife that she comes first and that I can be counted on to be there for her, and needn’t look elsewhere for happiness and fulfillment.

Once someone figures out how to help a man equate the glass situation (which does not, and will never, affect him emotionally) with DEEPLY wounding his wife and making her feel sad, alone, unloved, abandoned, disrespected, afraid, etc….Once men really grasp that and accept it as true even though it doesn’t make sense to them?

Everything Changes Forever.

–This originally appeared on Must Be This Tall To Ride

–Matthew Fray, Writer, single dad, amateur therapist, bad Twitter user.  Blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride   (Huffington Post)

 

 

Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest and most complete studies of adult life ever conducted.  Waldinger described some of the secrets to happiness revealed by the study in a recent TED talk.

The study followed two cohorts of white men for 75 years, starting in 1938:

268 Harvard sophomores as part of the “Grant Study” led by Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant

456 12-to-16 year-old boys who grew up in inner-city Boston as part of the “Glueck Study” led by Harvard Law School professor Sheldon Glueck

The researchers surveyed the men about their lives every two years and monitored their physical health every five years.

1.  Close Relationships:  The men in both groups of the Harvard study who reported being closer to their family, friends, or community tended to be happier and healthier than their less social counterparts.  They also tended to live longer.  By comparison, people who said they were lonelier reported feeling less happy.  They also had worse physical and mental health, as defined above.
2. Quality (not quantity) of relationships:  It’s not just being in a relationship that matters.  Married couples who said they argued constantly and had low affection for one another (which study authors defined as “high-conflict marriages”) were actually less happy than people who weren’t married at all, the Harvard study found.  However, the effect of relationship quality seems to depend somewhat on age.  A 2015 study published in the journal Psychology and Aging that followed people for 30 years found that the number of relationships people had was, in fact, more important for people in their 20’s, but the quality of relationships had a bigger effect on social and psychological well being when people were in their 30’s.
3. Stable, supportive marriages:  Being socially connected to others isn’t just good for our physical health.  It also helps stave off mental decline.  People who were married without having divorced, separating, or having “serious problems” until age 50 performed better on memory tests later in life than those who weren’t, the Harvard study found.

All of this suggests that strong relationships are critical to our health.

 

More later………

#1.  Watching TV during dinner.

Why it’s bad:  Having dinner together offers valuable face time with your partner.  Turning on the tube competes for attention and cuts in on your time to catch up and connect after so many hours spent apart.

How to stop:  Set aside 30 to 45 minutes of one-on-one talk time with the TV off every night.  This shows your spouse that when you’re not at work, you’re devoted to your home and family.  During this time, ignore your phone and leave the BlackBerry in another room.  You’ll feel closer within days.

#2.  Going too long without sex.

Why it’s bad:  If the amount of sex you’re used to having starts to slide, your body and brain can get used to the decreased intimacy, causing you to go even longer without wanting that closeness.

How to stop:  Don’t wait until you feel like doing it.  Initiate sex when you’re open to doing it, rather than when you have the desire.  This will jump-start your feelings so you’ll crave it more often.

#3.  Going a whole workday without talking to your sweetheart.

Why it’s bad:  You’ll start growing apart emotionally after subconsciously feeling like the other person doesn’t think about you (and your needs) during the day.

How to stop:  Initiate daily contact by sending a quick “How’s your day?” email.  And make the effort to do something nice every day (pick up his fave dessert, call from the store to see if she needs something).  It shows forethought and consideration for your partner’s needs.

#4.  Tuning each other out.

Why it’s bad:  You’re disengaging from each other.

How to stop:  Make an effort to do small things such as kissing before saying good-bye, making eye contact when talking, and complimenting each other frequently throughout the week.  Does he not seem to hear you talking during certain times (ahem, when ESPN is on)?  Don’t try to make conversation while the TV is on.  If it’s important, press mute; otherwise, save conversations for dinner or your bedroom, where you’re less likely to be interrupted.

#5.  Not fighting.

Why it’s bad:  Disagreements are good in a marriage because you’re expressing your individuality.  Talking about issues when they first happen makes them easier to fix than if you wait until after they’ve festered.

How to stop:  Bring up what’s on your mind in a way that shows your admiration and respect or each other’s thoughts and feelings.  Like, “It hurts my feelings when ______ .  I was hoping we could figure out a new way to handle the situation together.”  This will set the tone of the conversation as loving and calm, but you both have to compromise to keep it that way.

#6.  Going out more with friends than with your spouse.

Why it’s bad:  It sends the message that your friends are more worthy of your time.

How to stop:  Schedule nights out with your crew a few times a month, but make sure to let your partner know in advance.  It’s important to have these friendships as long as they don’t make your married time sparse.  And it’s always best that these friends are people your partner knows and trusts, so there’s less reason to worry.

#7.  Being too close.

Why it’s bad:  As much as you think burping, scratching, picking, or farting is funny or cute, it can backfire and cross the line.  It may be a reflection of your closeness, but there should be a limit.  Otherwise, you’re leaving your partner with a very unsexy image of you.

How to stop:  Start a new rule.  If you wouldn’t do it in front of your work friends, don’t do it in front of your honey.  To get your mate to refrain, say: “I know we’re close, and we can share everything, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d leave the room, or leave me out, when you do that.  It’s not very sexy, and I don’t want anything that makes you less sexy to me.”

#8.  Sharing too much with your parents or in-laws.

Why it’s bad:  This shows a lack of loyalty to your spouse.  Your parents shouldn’t have any information that your spouse doesn’t have.  And they shouldn’t know anything he wouldn’t want them to know.

How to stop:  Be loyal to your spouse even when she’s not present.  If you wouldn’t say something in front of her, don’t say it at all.  You would want the same in return.

(Dr. Susan Fletcher is a licensed psychologist in private practice and the author of “Parenting in the Smart Zone”.)

 

 

This is a re-print of an article in Time Magazine, August 31, 2015, authored by Susanna Schrobsdorff.  While I don’t endorse the opinions of Time, I have read and posted a number of Ms. Schrobsdorff’s articles.

In this article, she has a number of interesting comments about aging, how are popular media is against this and the connection between aging and the development of wisdom.  Worth a read.

“According to her birth certificate, Sandra Bullock turned 51 last month.  But because she looks exactly the same as she did in Miss Congeniality, a movie filmed back in the 20th century, BuzzFeed deemed her “immortal” and everyone else routinely calls her “ageless”.  Bullock is just one of a number of celebrities in their 40s and 50s who’ve had birthdays recently but have not gotten older, unlike the rest of us in their age bracket.  Take Halle Berry.  One website put a photo of her 20 years ago next to one of the newly 49-year-old Berry and dared us to choose which was which. “This Is What 49 Looks Like,” it said.  If that’s what 49 looks like, I must be 71.

And how about Tom Cruise? You can click through slide after slide of him looking identical decade after decade, in Mission Impossible film after Mission Impossible film. It’s like Groundhog Day, but some of us are waking up older, while our cultural signposts don’t change.  The other day, I walked out the door to find a totally nude 57-year-old Sharon Stone on the front page of the New York Post.  Even accounting for Photoshop and Stone’s exceptional genetics, her body looks disconcertingly the way it did in Basic Instinct in 1992. My elder daughter wasn’t even a thought when that movie came out.  This month she’s going to college, and she and Stone look a little like sisters.

This endless agelessness is particularly unnerving because middle age is a time of such change in your body, in your identity, in the way people see you.  It actually feels a lot like another adolescence-a period when you’re hyperconscious of how you compare to your peers and how they’re aging.  Like a teen, you even have a bit of an obsessions with photos because you’re not sure exactly what you look like in the world.  Is that really my neck-or is it just the light?  Who is that woman? And yes, you look at the stars you grew up with, the one you saw in films and on TV when you were all young.  They they don’t seem to change, even as you do, it adds to the dissonance, the clanging disparity between your mind’s view of yourself and your new physical reality.

Of course, we know that the rich and well known have always looked more “rested” than the rest of us.  Stylists of every kind, nutritionists, personal trainers and retouching can do that.  But even a generation ago, famous faces evolved.  Look at a picture of Grace Kelly at age 52 in the early 1980’s.  She looks like a beautiful, well-tended-middle-aged woman.  Today, she’d look old for her age.

The goal now is to ward off aging while you are still young, using all the magical nonsurgical options medicine has to offer, like preventive Botox that starts in your 20’s or micro-needling, in which tiny sterile needles pierce the skim and trick the body into initiating skin repair.  Or how about the process whereby your own plasma is injected inot your face, the “vampire facial”.  Celebrities like Kim Kardashian, who is just 34, are already talking openly about using some of these techniques.  Kardashian even went on camera while getting a vampire facial.  It’s easy to imagine her and her famous friends looking the way they do now right into their late 50’s.

Eventually these procedures will become less expensive and ordinary people my daughter’s age will have these options and the delimmas that go with them.  Already anti-aging is starting to be considered maintenance, like coloring your hair.  And it’s partly a survival tactic.  In an era when 20-somethings start billion-dollar companies, youth is prized and looking older can have an economic cost.  My friends and I find ourselves openly debating tactics that we used to make fun of. Is it too late for Botox: Does fat-freezing work? And how much time do you have to spend in the gym to keep the body of a 35-year-old after 50? It’s all so exhausting.  But members of the next generation have it tougher. They’ll have to ask, Do I want to spend my youth trying not to get old? And when do we stop?  I was kind of looking forward to getting off the maintenance treadmill someday. For my girls, that day might be never. I’ve already seen “Sexy at 70″ headlines.  Will everyone be expected to go to their graves looking hot?

I also have to wonder what else we are retarding along with age.  How do you move on if you’re working so hared to say the same?  And besides, if you’ve known the ache of watching a daughter pack up for college, you know you can’t stop the clock. Nor would I switch places with her. My girl’s options are endless; her beauty is effortless. But she’s not convinced of that. Dizzy on a buffet of possibility, she and her peers believe they have to be, and do, everything at once.  That’s the gift and the burden of youth. Like the rest of us, they’ll have to learn how to choose what’s worth hold on to and what to let go.”

 

More later.

 

This is one in s series of blogs taken from Men’s Health Magazine.  I don’t advocate all that is in Men’s Health but do read it.  Occasionally, I have found interesting articles or question/answer column entries.  This is one.

Question: I think it is time to take my dad’s care keys away.  What’s the safest way to approach the subject?

Answer: Start with three words: “I am worried.” This puts the focus on you, making it less likely that your pop will feel ambushed, says David Solie, M.S., P.A., author of How to Say It to Seniors: Closing the Communication Gap with Our Elders. Mention that the fear he had when you first started driving is how you feel whenever he gets behind the wheel now.  Then gently point out any issues that may have put him and others at risk on the road.  Has his eye-hand coordination or reaction time slowed? Is his vision impaired? How’s his hearing? If he doesn’t take it well, ask him “How will you know when it is time to stop driving?” This may make him pause and consider the consequences, says Solie.  But if your opinions still collide, seek outside help.  Some state DMVs accept caregivers’ requests for retesting older adults’ driving skills.  Or ask his doctor to talk to him directly, suggests Solie.  No one likes a backseat driver, but your dad may take his physician’s advice more seriously than his own son’s.  Once he’s ready to hand over the keys, make a plan that will allow him to stay mobile via public transportation or a car service.

Men’s Health, June, 2015

This material is taken from a workshop given by Jim Fogarty, Ed.D.

 

Emotional Manipulators (EMs) may begin relationships by being charming but they eventually become emotionally inaccessible.

You may sense that, in the beginning of the relationship, your every need is being fulfilled.

EMs deceive other in, at least, three ways:

Exaggeration.

Distorting the truth.

Lying by omission.

Guilt trips become more common in the relationship.

You notice you apologize more frequently.

You become tearful and fearful but you can’t walk away from the EM.

The EM persuades you to do things that you would not normally do:

Distance yourself from your family/friends.

Behave in ways that violate your values and/or morals.

Engage in risk-taking behaviors, i.e., take financial, sexual or other risks.

In the early moments of the relationship, the EM pretends to have a superior view of life compared to you and you feel privileged to be with him/her.

EMs may attempt to gradually gain more and more control of your life with the pretense of having a wonderful relationship with you.

Some EMs use constant anger to punish or to motivate their victims.

Gradually, over time, EMs receive all the benefits of the relationship and you receive few, if any.

EMs have a history of many failed relationships but they explain these failures as being victimized by the others involved.

Your opinions are never quite good enough, giving you a “second-class” status.

EMs present themselves one way in public and another way in private.  For example, when in public, they may present themselves as very Godly people. However, in private, they may treat you in very ungodly ways.

Most, if not all, of your friends may be very impressed with the EM while others may despise the EM.  They either love or hate him/her.

In personal relationships, EMs have “roaming eyes”.  In business relationships, they subtly suggest that they don’t need you and/or that they don’t need their job.

EMs over react to small irritations.

The EM will pressure you to violate your personal boundaries.

EMs may act in immoral ways but then attempt to make you responsible for their behaviors.

EMs have many grandiose plans for the future that never happen.

EMs give vague indications that something is bothering them.  You find yourself doing everything you can to figure out what it is.

Some EMs want you to have an attitude that it is “us against the world”.

The problems that EMs have are never their fault.

When trying to convince others to do something, the reasons that EMs offer are always emotional rather than logical.

EMs use phony exaggerations, i.e., “You are THE BEST thing that has ever happened to me.”

EMs believe that you need to be fixed.

EMs generalize about others, i.e., “All women are emotional.”

In the beginning, you may feel euphoric when you are with the EM.  Eventually, however, you feel judged and you begin to believe that something is wrong with you.

Physically abusive EMs may begin by hitting or throwing things in the midst of a temper tantrum.

 

 

If you see these in your partner, contact me or talk to someone who is mature, can hold your confidence and will be honest with you.  Typically, trying to discuss with an EM his/her characteristics, standing up to an EM or leaving an EM is difficult to do. Most need the assistance of a third-party to do such.

 

More later…..

 

This is the third and final installment of a blog on….what to say to a friend who is ill.  It is derived from an article I read in More magazine, April 2014.  Today, I will address what NOT to say to a sick friend.

“…Often we rush into a friend’s home or hospital room and without taking time to think, offer up boilerplate platitudes to fill the awkward silence.  Here are some you should really try to avoid, according to several experts.

‘I know how you feel.‘  The truth is, you probably don’t, says New York University psychologist Irene S. Levine, author of Best Friends Forever.  This sort of remark makes it clear, she explains, that ‘you haven’t bothered to reach deeper, toward real empathy; you aren’t seeing the patient for who she really is right now.’

‘But you don’t look sick!’ This isn’t what a patient likes to hear.  She may think that means you believe she’s not really sick and may end up feeling that she hasn’t been heard.  How much nicer to hear a simple, “It is so good to see you” or “How are you feelings today?” says Rosalind Joffe, a career coach who has MS.

‘You have to think positive’ It is frustrating to hear platitudes such as ‘It’s all about attitude!’ – comments that sound as if the sick friend simply lacks the willpower to get well.  Instead, says Elizabeth Kaplan, pho has helped several ill friends, ‘you can acknowledge to a friend that her disease really sucks, that it is unfair.'”

 

More later……