How to live with a passionate [read: obsessive, driven, fanatical, and somewhat egotistical] partner
When I say the word “passionate,” I’m not talking about the down on your knees, overly-romantic type fanfare. I am referring to how I describe a person who is passionate about whatever specific interest they hold dear to their heart. Other words such as obsessive, driven, fanatical, and somewhat egotistical also come to mind. What if these tend to describe your partner?
On divorce and the “you just didn’t try hard enough” myth
I didn’t know what to expect from friends and family, and strangers when I announced my divorce. I had kept many of my relationship “issues” away from family — not wanting to harm our image as a couple should we work things out — so it came as a surprise to some of them. Though, for the most part, family and friends (especially) have been supportive, there is a certain rhetoric around divorce that really started to bother me.
What do you do with emails that are not intended for you?
I have a name that’s not common in my generation, but is common in older generations. When I signed up for email, I chose the simplest form of my name. Now that the other 50 or so people in the US who have my name are also using email, I am having problems with receiving their personal emails. How do you handle emails not intended for you?
My accidental social media experiment: How Facebook changed the way we define friendships
I have had a love/hate relationship with Facebook since the get-go. Yet, most of my online family, as well as former co-workers, classmates, and even long lost friends and family now connect there. Then the holidays came this year. A time of numerous social gatherings with friends and family you don’t see nearly enough. And a little phrase kept sticking in my brain. The first time I kind of just laughed it off. “Oh yeah, I saw that on Facebook.” Could I be divulging too much on social media?
So I decided to try my accidental experiment. I deactivated my Facebook account.
How do you talk about deal-breaker topics?
(Un)Fortunately, we can’t always convince everybody to agree with our personal brand of freedom and equality. By now I have realized that screaming “This is so unfair! Why don’t you want to understand?” is not the smartest way to begin any kind of conversation. How do you cope with constant mentioning of idealogical deal breakers — homophobic, racist, misogynic, and many other discriminatory comments — with people you can’t necessarily break things off with.
Battling the boredom during long-term, long-distance relationships
I have been in a four-year-long relationship with a lovely man, who asked me out over the phone as he was going through security at the airport to leave the country for four months! After he returned I still had two years of college, eight hours away, to finish up. So, while I am by no means an expert, I can say that I have some experience with the long distance experience. Now, let me just say, long-term, long-distance SUCKS but here are my tips so that you don’t get bored with the standard text/call/Skype routine…
Avoiding turbulence: Keep in contact with family at home while traveling abroad
When we started planning our first international family trip, we had a few co-parenting hoops to jump through; negotiation and compromise is often the name of the co-parenting game. For this trip to happen, I had to assure my son’s father that he would continue to have the routine contact he enjoys in our daily life, and that we would keep him apprised of our travel plans. As I sat down to work all the kinks out in this travel agreement, I learned several valuable lessons we will continue to employ as we enjoy traveling as a family and keeping all branches of our family tree satisfied and smiling.
Christmas: Emotional baggage topped with a bow
My fiance and I are from different cultural/religious background. He’s Jewish, and the closest thing I have to a set religious upbringing is Catholicism. What we both have in common is a tendency towards atheism and skepticism. We had a number of discussions about various holidays, but there was one issue that we never could get resolved: Christmas.