Poof! You’re A Parent

I got married when I was 16. I wasn’t ready for the instant upgrade from teenager to adult. It was like saying, “I’m an adult now!” miraculously made me one. I had to grow into the role just like everyone else. I was terrified at the thought that I had assumed the identity of an adult through the simple act of signing a piece of paper.

It took several months to view myself as a wife. I was reminded that I was married throughout the day because my wedding band would make my skin sweat as it pressed against the folds of my fingers, irritating the webs of my hands. I needed to dry and readjust the band several times a day. I would be annoyed, and say, “What the heck is bugging me? Oh yeah, I’m married.” The ring’s symbolic meaning changed over the duration of my marriage. It originally reminded me of happiness, love, and commitment; surprisingly, that ring became a binding reminder of my discontent, and realizations that we didn‘t love each other enough. This is why I will never put another ring on my finger.

A relationship is a choice, not an obligation.

After I left my husband, it took some time to not feel married. It was a weird thing to take the wedding band off my finger knowing that I would never put it back on. I had emotionally severed myself from my husband and was resolved in my decision to no longer honor my marriage. I was done!! But I still found myself wrapping my right hands fingers over my left to adjust a ring that was no longer there. Reminding myself, “Oh, I’m divorced,” it was funny to me that I was using the same method to get comfortable with my new socially contemporary title of divorcée.

Fast forward a few months. Now that I’m remarried, I find myself confronted with a whole new set of titles that my mind needs to catch up to. When someone asks me about my husband, I have this puzzling mental image of my ex. It’s not something I stress over — it’s more of a funny-how-the-mind-works kind of feeling. I just know it’s going to take some time to habituate my life.

The tension-filled disapproval of my marital status has been weird. This marriage is both mine and my new husband’s second marriage. For some reason, all of the people who oppose find comfort in not accepting the fact that we are legally wed.

I had to take a step back and think about the possible reasons people choose not take our marriage seriously. It became clearer to me that people have individual grieving and healing processes. I was done with my marriage the second I turned off the front porch lights of my house locked the door and closed it behind me. It symbolized closing an old, dormant chapter in the book of my life, and helped me move on. Not everyone works the way I do.

For a lot of people we still belong to our exes, and it hurts when the mind reminds them that we aren’t. I am sensitive to the pain we caused but I also know it was deservingly just. Remember:

a relationship is a choice not an obligation.

Another thing I am facing is the flip-flopping status of my “stepparent-ness.” People on “Team Us” are calling me a mother, and everyone else says I’m playing house. I want to make it clear that I do not feel like a parent. When people call me “Mom” I can’t help but feel annoyed. My mind hasn’t caught up yet, and I’m not really sure what role I feel comfortable playing in their lives. I am a stepparent by virtue of my status (regardless of preparation), but just like being told I’m an adult (before I was ready) it doesn’t make me one. I need to grow into the role.

The Mollifying Benefits Of Pornography…

I was skimming over a friend’s book collection a few months ago. I browsed through her numerous books covering every topic from world travel to quantum physics. There was one book that stuck out like a sore thumb from the other mature and sophisticated reads: Jenna Jameson’s How To Make Love Like A Porn Star. I was instantly intrigued, and wondered how this sexy how-to book got mixed in with the other tame and acceptable mainstream topics.

It got me thinking about what was socially acceptable. Sex is always something not openly displayed for the world to see. We have to actively search for it, and then we store it under our bed or in our nightstand. It would be interesting if people could be honest about who they are and display their porn collection in the living room next to their National Geographic and TV Guide. It might lead to an open discourse about the unrealistic expectations the sex industry sets. As I read Jenna’s book it became clear that she is a very weak-minded person that has allowed (and invited) countless occasions for mental and sexual abuse to take up residency in her soul. I’m not sure she realizes how unworthy she really is to offer any advice to girls and women. All I got from the book was that:

Girls in porn don’t have orgasms on camera EVER!!!

Boys that start viewing pornography at a young age before their first sexual experience condition themselves to only have sex like a porn star. This causes so many problems. Boys aren’t learning how to please their partners — they are learning how to jack hammer their mark for the most visually pleasing pop shot. The lesson they’ll never learn is:

Girls are tricky; we need things to climax, and
Sex like a porn star doesn’t cut it.

I hope that most girls are comfortable enough to have that difficult conversation. If they don’t, then they enable their guys to think their performance is effective. Guys are usually too simple to catch on to your rhythmic groaning and your lack of vaginal moisture. I know you would rather keep up the illusion of being a satisfied sex kitten, but

You’re not helping your relationship by pretending.

It will escalate overtime if you don’t speak up. If you have ever made love like a lover you know that cheep thrills and fetishes don’t measure up to satisfying sex. Making love like a lover is where both partners are equally invested and care about pleasing the other. I think the adventures in sexual experimentation are really attempts to find satisfaction from meaningless sex. The search for meaning in meaningless sex will always leave you feeling empty and searching for more, as the craving for the next thrill sets in. I have heard about this getting out of hand.

Couples that aren’t pleased sexually
=> Start to entertain the thoughts of sexual exploration
=> Then they flirt with the desire to fulfill a vivid fantasy
=> Ultimately, they act on it

If you’ve entered into the binding restrictions of marriage, and if you think you have found a shortcut to conscience-stricken gratification by manipulating your spouse into situations that make you feel less guilty about having sex with other people, I’m afraid all you did was thicken the plot. It never satisfies the craving — it just makes the problems crystal clear. He wasn’t wanting to heat up your sex life, girls… he was wanting to heat up his. To the guys: your wife just went along with it to make you happy. You selfishly inflicted her with conflicting emotions about love relationships, true intentions and sex, just so you could get your rocks off. You should have:

Spared her the sexual abuse and just told her you don’t love her enough to not want to see her

get plowed by another dude...

I always tend to agree with the testosterone-driven side of the relationship equation. Estrogen-enriched beings are passive-aggressive loons who have fine-tuned the parallel arts of entitlement and victimization. We really are the reason for our troubles, and the fact that our simple counterparts aren’t mind-readers and can only go by what we tell them or don’t makes the fault entirely ours. I love the saying, “The only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked,” which means that leaving important questions off the table till after dessert is

an entrapment strategy.

All of our relationship expectations should be digesting before the appetizers are even ordered. I’m trying to find a way to mentally allow myself to place the blame entirely on the guy, but I don’t think I can do it. It’s a calibration from both sides.

I‘ve had 5 girlfriends sporadically placed through my life that were in troubled marriages because their husbands preferred pornography over marital sex. My friends had convinced themselves that pornography was the only problem in their marriages. I don’t get it why would a guy choose the humiliating option of airbrushed fantasy over the bitter, angry, overweight, still-in-the-same-pajamas-when-you-get-home-from-a- hard-days-work-to-no-dinner-on-the-table, nagging ball and chain. I felt sorry for the guys; their wives did everything in their power to make their husbands miserable for inconveniencing their delusion and for forcing their wife (with all the adjectives above) to view reality. With one exception, all of their marriages have resulted in an inevitable divorce. So I conclude that

Pornography doesn’t cause bad marriages it keeps you in them…

Entrapment…

It really sucks that all of the huge life molding choices take place in our youth. Our decisions on education, marriage, body piercing/tattoos, children, and sexual orientation are all made before we are set-in-stone adults. It’s really scary if you think about it. We have made all of our life-changing accommodations under the influence of hormone-induced rebellion.

I got married when I was 16. At that point in my life I couldn’t foresee my husband and I growing apart. We were madly in love. I felt lucky and blessed to have dodged the whole incestuous dating game and heartache crap. I was getting a head start on being a grown up.

It was interesting to witness the gradual progression of my maturity. I was growing into a person I could be proud of. In contrast, my husband remained forever stuck in his vegetative state of slothful laziness. I felt guilty for being humiliated by him. It was something I struggled with often. His lack of manners, and his inability to offer even the smallest stimulating thought was arduous. I would dream that one day he would be the person I needed: someone who challenged my opinions, and someone who didn’t have a sick addiction to fast food and his Xbox360. I would look at him and think, “How the hell did I end up with someone vastly different from myself?”

People would ask me how we ended up with each other. We just look awkward together. He was unkempt and overweight, and I was fit and pulled together. I spoke with articulate clarity and he spoke with a slurred southern drawl, and used every stereotypical redneck phrase known to man. It made me feel like I was married to someone who didn’t respect me enough to try to look nice for me. He just couldn’t be bothered. I remember having difficult conversations with him about how I wish he was interested in something other than video games, or how I wished he didn’t eat unhealthy food. His reply was always “no you don’t.” This made me the bad guy, metaphorically putting a huge ink stamp across my forehead that said, “Doesn’t have a sensitive bone her body!!” The tricky situation I found myself in was this: by me confessing that I had a problem with his weight, I was somehow unsupportive and was the cause of his self-loathing. But in truth he had no intention of changing, and by calling me insensitive he could guilt me off of his scent so he could keep living how he wanted.

I find it very telling that after our separation he started to lose weight, and dress differently. See… he’s setting his trap for the next sucker. I think it’s the only way lazy people can get someone to marry them. You have to trick them into falling in love with you by marketing yourself as someone else and then when you get them you flip the switch and tell them it’s their fault you got fat and lazy. Now tell the truth — how many times have you seen this scenario play out?

It’s a cautionary tale we need to be teaching to our children. Don’t prematurely seal your fate. You will grow and change along with your choices. Don’t make the wrong ones or you will trap yourself in a life that isn’t you…