Dysfunctional Relationship Labels That Don’t Exist (but Should)

Someone once said that trying to understand romantic relationships was like trying to nail Jello to a tree.  Okay, it was me; I said it.  The fact that two people can even stand the sight of each other after having been in close proximity for more than a few years is - in and of itself  - mind-boggling, given the various pitfalls that purportedly await your average couple.  But, I digress.

Apparently there are people with nothing better to do with their time than label dysfunctional relationship types.  There’s ghosting - essentially fading away before the other’s eyes - and gaslighting, which the Urban Dictionary describes as “systematically withholding factual information from, and/or providing false information to, the victim - having the gradual effect of making them anxious, confused, and less able to trust their own memory and perception”.  There’s caretaking, codependency, and even a thing called crowd-sourcing.  The latest to catch my attention is cuffing, or entering into a relationship once it gets cold outside, so as to not have to be alone during the holidays, and when it’s… well, cold outside. 

So fine, let’s just slap a label on everything while we’re at it:

Pinwheeling:

Inventing reasons to not be accessible to the other person as their demand on your time increases; e.g. “She was having me go all shopping and whatnot with her, so I had to pinwheel out of there”.

Snorkeling:

Literally sticking your head underneath whatever you can get your hands on; a throw pillow, an empty fast food bag, the dog bed, in order to not have to see or hear the other person.

Belly flopping:

Being as horrible a person as possible so you can tactfully and gracefully bow out, insisting you’re not “good enough” for your partner, thereby absolving yourself of any real responsibility.

Tire kicking:

Comparing your relationship to your friend’s, ostensibly to identify ways to make yours better, but really just looking for cracks in the other’s relationship in the hopes of “trading up”.

Bear poking:

Finding fault with everything your partner says and does in order to provoke them into teeing off on you so you can play victim.

Cartwheeling:

Similar to Pinwheeling, but at a much more frenetic pace.

Shadowboxing:

Pretending that the daily grind of your existence is making you miserable when it’s really your partner – literally everything about your partner – that’s making you miserable.

Button pushing:

Testing the limits of your partner’s patience and tolerance in every conceivable way to ascertain exactly how far they can be pushed before they go all Freddy Krueger on you, and then accusing them of being “too sensitive” or thin-skinned.  Similar to Bear poking, Button pushers are infinitely better at passive-aggressive methods and tactics.

And I’m sure there are a few more, but that’s all I have time for now.  Apparently I’ve been Castle building and am about to be Barrel rolled.

10 Things You Don’t Want to Hear in Bed

As longtime readers are aware, I will occasionally delve into the thorny topic of relationships.  Hot, sweaty, writhing, pulsating, gasping for air relationships.  The time has therefore come – and very possibly passed – to tackle one of the more vexatious issues: things you never want to pass your partner’s lips during intimacy.  In that spirit, here are the 10 things you never want to hear in bed:

10. “I thought you had the handcuffs key.”

9. “It is in.”
8. “Yes, that’s it.  Yeah, right there- wait, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo: the British, Prussians, Turks or Spanish?”
7. “That reminds me, it’s two for one night at Samurai Sushi.”
6. “Found the remote!”
5. “Don’t worry, it happens to all men sometimes.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
4. The Jeopardy theme song.
3. “I bought zucchinis at the market today, in case you want to know how that feels.”
2. “Are you finished?”

And the number one thing you never want to hear in bed:

 
1. “If you stop now, I promise I won’t call the police.”

Fifty Shades of Beige

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, the “erotic romance novel” Fifty Shades of Grey comes to the big screen in a few months.  Women everywhere are eagerly anticipating the opportunity to project themselves into the persona of the female lead.  Assuming they squint their eyes and have a glass or two of wine beforehand.

But, as erotic as the novel may be, the fact is – it’s just a fantasy.  I mean, you could never actually engage in the acts depicted in its pages.  You could?  Well, just keep that to yourself, huh?

No, for most women, fantasy is fantasy and reality is reality, and never the twain shall meet. But that doesn’t mean you can’t add a little spice to your intimate interludes.  So, allow me to introduce you to Fifty Shades of Beige:

Pet names:

Some of these can lean to the risqué side, though none I could mention here.  Best you and your partner stick to more modest monikers, such as “Honeybun”, “Sweet Cheeks” and “Mr. Jackhammer”.

Dialog:

It’s okay to push the boundaries beyond the sweet nothings you and your partner typically whisper into each other’s ears.  A couple of my favorites are “Baby, I’m gonna flip your pancakes right off the griddle”, and “I’m in overdrive and my mud flaps are singing”.  But - be sure to avoid phrases like” I never noticed that mole before”, or “Can we hurry this up?”, or “Did you have chili rellenos for lunch?”

Bondage:

Sure, it sounds like fun, but I can tell you from experience being tied up and not being able to reach that itch in the bend of your knee is not all it’s cracked up to be. I recommend having your wrists and ankles loosely bound with a scarf or dish towel, or whatever’s handy, in case the doorbell rings, or you remember it’s almost time for Biggest Loser.

Discipline:

Again, it may look erotic, but that Cat-o’-nine-tails can actually leave marks.  Ouch!  You should probably go with milder forms of punishment such as: “Well, Mr. Jackhammer, it appears you missed that box of oily rags and gardening gloves when you were cleaning out the garage.  No Sports Center for a week.”  Or, “You’ve been a bad girl Sweet Cheeks, forgetting to stick the meat thermometer in the rump roast.  I’m going to have to de-activate your Twitter account until you learn your lesson.”

Role-playing:

As much as you may think you’d like your lady to dress up as a French Maid, or Jennifer Lawrence, or that one substitute teacher from high school, I can tell you from experience, you’ll just embarrass yourselves.  Come up with more believable scenarios.  My personal favorite is Humorless State Trooper and Tipsy Blonde Speeder.  Which reminds me; I’m pretty sure it’s my turn to be the State Trooper.

Afterglow:

Many couples ignore this all too important aspect of intimacy.  Be sure to take a few minutes to bask in the warmth of the moment, the falling away, the heartbeats returning to their normal pace.

Okay, five minutes should do it.  Sports Center or Biggest Loser is probably on.

Nice Unknowing You

“Everything comes and goes” sang Joni Mitchell on Down to You from her 1974 double platinum album Court and Spark, “marked by lovers and styles of clothes”.  And, anyone who’s blown out as many birthday candles as I knows this full well.  It’s a constant stream of interactions, this thing we call life; a highway with innumerable intersections, clover-leafs, and exit ramps.

As I’ve alluded to in other writings, many of our relationships in this “day and age” are transient.  Fleeting and withering, our acquaintances often take flight like leaves on the Autumn breeze.  The bff from high school, the co-worker from two jobs back, the former neighbor that promised they’d keep in touch, sometimes gradually, other times it’s a here today, gone tomorrow scenario.  Like gears in a cosmic machine we mesh, then shift to mesh with other gears.

Sometimes we “grow apart”, as its generally phrased, other times we “don’t have time” for those in our periphery any longer.  And on occasion, we just come to a place where we simply no longer see eye to eye.

But everyone you’ve ever known has touched you in some way, and you are who you are – to a large degree – because of those interactions.  We are social creatures, and we should never underestimate the impact those whom we’ve been privileged to know have left on our lives, and we on theirs.

If I may be allowed a second lyrical reference, Billy Joel exemplified my point in his song Say Goodbye to Hollywood: So many faces in and out of my life, some will last, some will be just now and then.

So treasure the lives that have touched yours, if only for a time and a season, and know you have also touched theirs.

If only for a time and a season.

The Point System

I’m going out on a limb here and assuming everyone has heard of the three stages of marriage.  Modesty prevents me from disclosing them in detail, but in stage one, the newlyweds “get busy” all over the house.  In stage two, they only get busy in the bedroom, and in stage three they utter an expletive involving carnal knowledge to each other as they pass in the hallway.

 

Personally, I don’t think a marriage should be doomed to regress in this manner, so I set out to determine exactly what precedes this degeneration. And what I found out is this: Just about any and everything.

That’s right.  That woman you reckoned an angel from above when you first met has since sprouted horns and now conjures the scent of brimstone when she enters the room.  Your knight in shining armor has morphed into a cross between that one stock boy at the Sav-a-Lot that leers at you while you pick through the zucchini, and Gary Busey.

So, if you’re married and want to keep the flames burning, my advice to the ladies is simple.  Men want three things: Food, sports, and “getting busy”.

My advice to the men is a little more complicated.  If you want that third requirement, you must understand the point system.  Here’s how it works: When you awake in the morning (or afternoon, whatever the case) you get 100 points.  If you make it thru the day and retain even a single point as evening arrives, you will likely get some “busyness”.  But alas, there’s a catch.  And that is: just about everything that’s in a man’s nature to do will cost him points.  Yep, just about everything.

Fortunately, there are a handful of things that will actually accrue more points.  Flowers, for example will get you 25 points or so, more if it’s not a special occasion.  Those “just because” flowers will typically fetch 35 to 50.  An hour of housework (without being asked) will add at least 15 points to your coffers, and an act as simple as asking how her day was will ring up another few.

But, most everything you do will cause your stack to dwindle.  Through the use of complex algorithms, I’ve determined the most common point killers.  You should probably take notes.

Forgetting birthday or anniversary – minus 250 points
Forgetting her name - minus 1000 points
Calling her by your ex-girlfriend’s name - minus 5000 points
Taking her to the monster truck show and shot-gunning a six pack in the parking lot – minus 75 points
Getting caught looking at another woman – minus 100 points
Getting caught thinking about looking at another woman – minus 10 points
Leaving your dirty underwear hanging on the bathroom doorknob – minus 25 points
Asking her if she’s gained weight – minus 100 points
Asking her if her girlfriend has lost weight – minus 500 points
Asking her if her girlfriend has had a “boob job” – minus 1500 points
Asking her if her girlfriend has ever mentioned having a ménage à trois – minus 10,000 points
Tapping foot waiting for her to get ready – minus 1 point per tap
Blowing off the neighborhood barbeque to play golf – minus 50 points
Blowing off her promotion party to play golf – minus 250 points
Blowing off the birth of your first child to play golf – minus 1,000,000 points
Playing golf - minus 20 points per hour
Making snide comments, yawning, and sarcastically aping the dialog in her chick flick - minus 15 points
Downloading photos of Kate Upton to your phone – minus 10 points per photo
Getting drunk at her high school reunion and throwing up in the tri-color rotini – minus 500 points
Referring to her Mother as “that wine-swilling, Xanax popping witch” – minus 666 points
Cleaning out saving account to invest in that topless car wash your cousin is starting – minus 25,000 points
Slapping her on the behind and pointing to your watch – loss of all points accrued that day

So, my advice guys is to buy a calculator, and keep it handy.

Things Men Won’t Say

Well, it appears the truce in the Battle of the Sexes is holding and everyone is trying to get along and be sensitive to each other’s needs and so on. And, I think that’s great.

But - we will never, I repeat never - be “like your girlfriends.”

Men will always be men, and woman will always be women.  We’re “wired” differently, or so it’s said. We have a different chemical make-up. Whereas the female of the species is chock full of estrogen, potassium, and that one chemical that makes their feet cold enough to shatter tungsten steel, men tend to lean towards chlorine, zinc, and trace amounts of nitro glycerin.

In other words - it’s not our fault that we can never be like your girlfriends. We have highly unstable chemicals coursing through our veins.

So - for the love of everything good and decent - please stop trying to make us like you. Seriously, how boring and inexplicably weird would it be if there were no discernable differences between us? No Yin to go with the Yang, if you get my drift.

And so it is that now - in the spirit of mutual understanding and continued harmony - I bring you Things Men Won’t Say. Ever:

“Honey, I just peeked into your closet and you don’t have nearly enough shoes.”
“Sure, you can go bar-hopping with your alcoholic, nymphomaniac girlfriends. Stay out as late as you like.”
“Darn, there’s nothing but sports on TV. Where’s the Sex and the City boxed set?”
“Why don’t we ever talk about the relationship anymore?”
“Oh, look! There’s a sale at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Grab your purse!”
“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: violent sports are a clear manifestation of a pseudo-ambiguous sexual urge coupled with a repressed oedipal conflict.”
“How about we just stay in and give each other pedicures tonight?”
“I get that from my Mother.”
“If one more person asks what’s up with me today, I am just going to scream.”
“Sex, sex, sex. Can’t we just cuddle every now and then?”

One more thing, ladies. We know when you throw out our ratty old t-shirts. We take out the garbage.

10 or 11 Ways to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed

I was in a doctor's office waiting room the other day. Or, maybe I was getting my oil changed; I don't remember exactly. Anyway, there was one of those so-called "women's" magazines on the table there, and emblazoned across the cover was the caption 101 Ways to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed. So, I flipped over to page 238, and there in between an ad for laundry detergent and a scratch and sniff thingy for perfume was the article. I admit, I didn't read all the items, but I read enough to know that none - and I emphatically mean none of these suggestions would drive any man "wild" - unless he'd been marooned on a deserted island or something and hadn't actually seen, smelled, or touched a woman in several years. There were things like strip poker and making a bra out of Fruit Roll-ups and such. I checked the by-line, and sure enough - the article was written by a woman. Which is kind of like having a large-mouth bass write an article on the best fishing lures to use. I mean, the bass knows the best lures to use, but do you think he's going to tell anyone?

I hope the analogy isn't lost on the reader.

In any event, no one can stick with anything long enough to do 101 of anything, so following are 10 or 11 sure-fire, slam-dunk, lead-cinch-lock ways to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed:

* Wait until the night before he leaves town on a business trip. Tell him you're having your girlfriend over the following evening, you're staying in, and getting really, really drunk.
*Tell him you've been thinking about doing that thing he really wants you to do. And, you're going to have to think about it some more. A lot more.
*Tell him your girlfriend told you she did that thing he really wants you to do with her boyfriend, and she didn't like it.
*Eat corn chips. Loudly.
*Wear the sexiest lingerie you have to bed. When he notices, bolt upright and say "I feel like such a tramp".
*Practice the kazoo.
*Come to bed in a pair of frumpy flannel pajamas with your face covered in cold cream. Ask him if he's "up for it".
*Wear the sexiest lingerie you have to bed. When he notices, bolt upright and tell him you think your yeast infection is back.
*Wait until he's almost asleep and start humming Don't Worry, Be Happy under your breath.
*Tell him you've been thinking about doing that thing he really wants you to do, and you've decided you'll do it. But, before he can touch you, you burst into tears, run to the bathroom, slam the door loudly and sob uncontrollably until he's asleep.
*Wait until he's almost asleep and whisper in his ear that you've been having an affair with his boss, or brother, or best friend. When he bolts upright in bed, remind him he still hasn't fixed that leaky faucet.

Well ladies, there it is. No need to thank me; your satisfaction is my reward.

Six Billion Degrees of Separation

Most everyone has heard of Six Degrees of Separation. So had I, but - I couldn't tell you exactly what it was. So I wik'd it. And - I still can't tell you exactly what it is. But I now know that it is or was 1. a play, 2. a Facebook application, and 3. a game of some sort involving actor Kevin Bacon. I still don't get that part of it, but I digress.

Six Degrees of Separation is also a theory which basically postulates that if Person A knows Person B, and Person B knows Person C, and Person C knows Person D, and Person D knows Person E, then Person A must know Person E. (You can substitute colors or General Motors car models for the letters - it works out the same.) Of course like any theory, this one had to be tested. And tested it was. And - is still being tested. Theorists, mathematicians, and psychologists chose up sides to argue either for or against the validity of the theory. And, while interesting enough, the point of the theory is in my opinion, moot.

Growing up in a small city in Southwest Virginia, we had three radio stations: rock, country and what they used to call easy listening (Tony Bennett and Henry Mancini and the like). There were three TV channels. So, at any given time I could usually tell with some degree of certainty what TV show my neighbors were watching, or to what radio station the car going down the street was tuned. There was one newspaper, so everybody got the same slant on everything. And, since it was such a small city, the six degrees theory would absolutely have proven true there; it was probably closer to three or four degrees.

In other words, we were connected by the sameness, the sheer banality of our existence.

But that is not my point.

Today there are thousands of TV and radio stations. There's the internet. There are billions of hexadecimal bits of voice, data, and images pinging off satellites every second of every day. People located on three different continents can engage in a web meeting, each seeing and hearing the other as if they were in the next room. Today, when you take photos of your vacation, you do not have to wait until you're back home and the photos are developed so you can have everyone over to watch "slides". Thanks to cell phone cameras, your friends and co-workers can see them in real-time. As it's happening. Today I could not begin to tell you what TV station my neighbors are watching, or if they're listening to their iPod, or playing online Scrabble with 1,500 other people. Today, there are dozens of social networking sites where people can catch up on every minute detail of what you are thinking, feeling and doing at any moment. They even give you emoticons to communicate your mood, if you don't feel like typing it out.

But that is also not my point.

Several years back I was driving home from somewhere or another. It was late at night and there was nothing much on the radio. I happened upon a person talking about the unequal relationship between society and technology. He noted that society was foolishly embracing technology as some kind of ethereal, benevolent savior. Foolishly because, as he noted, society needs technology, whereas technology does not need society. Technology is decidedly not human, and we of course are 100% human. Technology does not need food, water, or an HMO. It does not care if the power grid on the East coast of the United States goes down, or if a computer virus infects tens of thousands of users. Technology will not shed the first tear if every satellite, receiver, transponder, router and iPhone simultaneously burst into flames. Yet we cling to the belief that technology has somehow brought us - the roughly six billion inhabitants of planet Earth - closer together.

Whereas I believe the exact opposite is true.

It is specifically because we have so many options that we are now more engaged with the technology than we are each other. Because of the aforementioned social networking sites, I know that this or that acquaintance had a "bad day", but often I do not have the opportunity to look into that person's eyes and relate - one human being to another - to their angst. Or that another downloaded a song from their favorite artist, but we will not sit on opposite ends of a sofa and listen, with one or the other (or both) breaking into an air guitar solo.

Don't get me wrong - I think it's great that we have the technology. We can post photos and videos, and send little messages to each other. We can engage in general silliness or send heartfelt best wishes or condolences. But what's missing here is the human touch, and we humans like physical contact. We are a touchy-feely species.

So here we are, the roughly six billion inhabitants of planet Earth, enveloped within a virtual blizzard of electromagnetic waves, but in many ways further apart than at any other time in history. But, there are things we can do. Look up that friend that lives across town and invite them to lunch. Have your parents or in-laws over for dinner. Take a batch of fresh-baked cookies (or a pitcher of margaritas) to that neighbor you occasionally nod to over the backyard fence. Turn off the TV, log off the computer, turn off the cell phone. Get out. Go for a walk, and smile at anyone you may encounter along the way. Go to a park. Give your spouse or child or significant other a hug and a kiss the next time you see them. Tell them what they mean to you. Help a child with their homework, or an elderly neighbor with their yardwork. Do volunteer work at a retirement home, or hospital or hospice. And know that although you are but one of six billion, every day you have an opportunity to enrich other's lives, to connect on a personal level, to become more human.

And then - then you'll know that the number of degrees which separates us has been reduced by one.