John Shore

Archive for November 2007


What? Me, Mediocre?

In Family, World on November 26, 2007 at 1:08 pm

Hello, all! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

So my wife Cat has this week off. Fun! Though, alas, it has made me a Blogger Lagger.

So, to catch up. Below is a bit of a posting I began last week that I can tell I won’t finish this. Here’s as far as I got on a piece I was going to call “Top 10 Reasons I Like Being A Guy”:

So I’ve received a few letters from people who took my last few posts (Six Tests to Determine If He’s Mr. Right ,To Single Women: Men. Don’t. Change, and Men Are Spoiled) as evidence that I don’t like men. But those writers are sadly moronic mistaken. How could I not like men? I am a man! I love men!

Wait. I love being a man, is what I meant.

Oh, honestly. I can’t take you people anywhere.

Anyway, here are my “Top 10 Reasons Why I Love Being A Guy.”

1. Never having to give birth. Pretty much my favorite thing about being a guy — heck, one of my favorite things about life — is knowing that I will never have to use my body to host and grow someone else’s body. Not that doing so isn’t a sublimely wonderful experience; I know it is! But clearly God understood that no person who looks anything at all like me should ever, ever go grocery shopping in maternity clothes. Which once again proves that God knows what he’s doing.

2. Built-in outdoor plumbing. I have yet to stop being extremely happy about having built-in outdoor plumbing with me wherever I go. Women are pretty stuck having to use public restrooms — but to a guy, the whole world is a public restroom. Or any part of the world with a bush on it is, anyway. Or any plant at all, really. Actually, as long as gravity is working, any guy is pretty good to go. None of us knows the mind of God, of course, but if I had to guess, I’d say that God designed man the way he did because he knew the pleasure it would one day bring him to hear people saying the word “zipper.”

And that’s as far as I got. My other reasons were going to be Sophomoric Humor, Make More Money, Don’t Have to be Emotionally Complex, Minimal Grooming Required, Allowed to be Stupid, Can Move Things, Get to be Intimidating … and … that is as far as I got.

Gender-differences humor. It’s so … stupid. Anyway, I can tell that’s as far as I’ll ever get with that piece. If anyone out there would care to pick up where I left off by either expanding upon or adding to my Top 10 Reasons It’s Good To Be Male Guy, that would be loverly.

Let’s see … what else? Oh! Check this out! Remember my Fortune Cookie of Doom — the one I wrote about in “My Terrible Fortune“? Well, two nights ago Cat and I went out for Chinese food again, and as much as I know this has got to sound like I’m lying, I swear this is what my fortune said this time:

“It could be better, but it’s good enough.”

Cat goes, “Wow. I’d say someone wants you to come to terms with your mediocrity.”

So I let her walk home.

No, but … what … how … is there? … when … ??!! Well, I give up. First I’ll experience small success, then whatever it is is “good enough.”

That’s it for me. No more Chinese food. From now on I’m strictly a pizza boy. Life is hard enough without the spirit of Buddah constantly sapping my motivation.

Let’s see. What else? Oh! Two nights ago Cat and I wandered into a Circuit City (since I wanted to buy for myself a DVD of A Charlie Brown Christmas, since … since now I know I am Charlie Brown), and we found them selling DVD’s for prices so low it definitely changed our evening. We brought these for $14.99 each: season 1 of Ugly Betty, seasons 3, 4 and 5 of 24; seasons 2 and 3 of West Wing, and seasons 6, 7 and 8 of Seinfeld. For $7 each I also bought Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory, Knocked Up, and Little Miss Sunshine (the last two of which are pretty much my favorite movies ever, ever, ever).

Can you believe it? Ugly Betty for $15!!

Man, I love this country.

Call me mediocre. Hrrumph. When I’ve got all this TV to watch?? I don’t think so!

Okay, I’ll stop boring you now.

Oh, wait! Check out this email Rich Lederer and I got last week about our book Comma Sense:

Dear Sirs,

Again, please allow me to express my gratitude and thanks for a great book and an essential piece to my repertoire. I wish you the best and have an especially great Thanksgiving.  Mr. Basim [?] and I appreciate the answer to our punctuation problem, and look forward to learning more from Comma Sense as we read it again and refer to it often.  Just on a side note; we have shared it with several friends, and it has become a staple and common piece of reference for us here in Baghdad.  Best wishes.

Sincerely, 
Thomas Dillingham (TJ)
Operations Coordinator
KBR, Inc.
Iraq

So there it is. I’ve co-written a book that’s helping to ensure that our people in Iraq are never confused about the proper American use of punctuation marks. Sweet!

Okay, now I’ll stop boring you. For now.


HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

In Uncategorized on November 22, 2007 at 6:41 am

Ahhh … Turkey Day. I’ll be having salami, but still. It’s good to have a day dedicated to being thankful. I …

Whoa! Cat (wife) just awokened. I hear her in our bedroom, awakenizing. (It’s 6:30 a.m.)

So, cool. She has the next ELEVEN DAYS OFF!! WHOO-FREAKIN’-WHOOO!!

And now I’m outta here, cuz … awakeninzed wife.

Quicky, though, here are the things I’m thankful for that are popping into my head as I type them:

The power and majesty of a God that galvanizes and supports all life.

These socks I’m wearing. Quite thick.

Coffee.

Music. (Cat, up and at ‘em, just turned on one of our old GRP Jazz Christmas albums).

Indoor plumbing. (It’s cold.)

That my writing allows me not to have to get a real job.

That I’m healthy.

That (even better) Cat’s healthy.

That I’m not in jail. You cannot beat not being in jail.

That this is the 30th Holiday Season that Cat and I have been together. THIRTY!!

What is the deal with time, anyway?

I’m very thankful that I have this way of communicating with people that, even though I don’t actually know them know them, I nonetheless feel fully with me, every day.

Love to you all today!

Surprise (Or Not)! Men Are Spoiled!

In Family, relationships on November 21, 2007 at 7:46 am

Lately I’ve had reason to understand (via Six Tests to Determine If He’s Mr. Right and To Single Women: Men. Don’t. Change) that women find men as mysterious as I know men find women. That this is true comes as a bit of surprise to me. I always thought that trying to figure out a man was like trying to figure out a banana. (Wait. Yellow; delicious for awhile; ultimately becomes something slimy that causes people to trip and fall. So, that metaphor won’t do. No, it won’t. It won’t! Stop it!)

So. Men. Let’s think about them/us.

Okay, so here’s one thing about men that I think women sometimes fail to understand: Men are really, really spoiled.

Hey, it’s not like we like being spoiled. It’s actually quite awful, because so often it amounts to the truth that we’re almost congenitally incapable of being satisfied. We always want more, different, bigger, better. What is is never enough for us. You try having your cake and eating it all the time. It’s exhausting.

There are four Humongous Reasons that we manly types tend to be more spoiled than … okay, fine: last month’s bananas: The world, hormones, parents, and women generally. Let’s look real quick at why/how each of those four conspires to make every man in the world feel that, when push comes to shove, he is the center of the known universe.

The World  As you may be aware, humans are the dominant species on our planet. (Yes, dolphins are swimming Einsteins and make perfectly adequate TV stars. But only humans can make pizza and operate blimps. So we win.) Males are the bigger and stronger of the two basic models in which humans come. Which means male humans live at the very tippy-tippy top of the food chain. We’re Number One! And we feel that being number one entitles us to … well, have whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want. It’s not a pretty thing — and it’s unlikely that for any given guy it’s even a conscious thing. But it’s there. Being a guy means inheriting the emotional legacy that comes with knowing that since time immemorial Your Specific Kind, through sheer physical prowess, has utterly dominated the only world humans have ever known. That means something to a guy. It means that, just by virtue of being a guy, he’s more entitled than the King of England. (Hey, hey! No queen jokes!)

Hormones  Scientists have long been aware of the fact that the introduction of testosterone into the bloodstream invariably transforms perfectly normal people into people who enjoy World Wide Wrestling and smashing cans on their foreheads. Sadly, scientists don’t know what to do about the effects of testosterone – and, being mostly men, don’t much care. We enjoy producing testosterone, is why. Testosterone is fun; it’ s fun having hair on your back and just knowingyou could have been a pro athlete. Testosterone is what allows a man to do important things, like stare at a car engine with a bunch of other men and pretend he knows a carburetor from a blender. Without testosterone, a man grunting appreciatively at a car engine would have to break right down and ask for a hug. What fun is that? (Besides, hugging wrinkles your clothes.) The ugly side of testosterone, though, is that it makes you physically and emotionally aggressive. And the whole point of being aggressive is that you want something — and you want whatever you want now. No matter how we manage to mitigate it through Proper Socialization Skills and Not Wanting To Get Arrested, at a basic, hormonallevel men are driven to want, want, and want some more. And being driven by your wants is the very definition of spoiled. Now send me money so I can buy stuff.

Parents  I would be the last person on earth to suggest this, but I’ve heard it’s just possible that, in some very select instances, some mothers tend to spoil their sons (if for no other reason than that they love them and want them to have everything they want), and that some fathers also spoil their sons, because (being men) it’s difficult for them notto see their sons primarily as Mini-Thems. But those could just be rumors. I could do the research to find out for sure, but I don’t want to because I’m hungry and want someone to feed me now. And besides, my thinking something is true is just the same as it being true. So there.

Women Women do tend to spoil their men. Women by nature nurture; men by nature enjoy being nurtured (while, of course, pretending we don’t). Women are passive and receptive; men are Action Oriented and …. givers. The bottom line? A lot of women, for a lot of reasons, spoil their men. And all men know it. And they like it. And they want it to happen to them, too. Most can’t imagine why it wouldn’t.

Anyway, of course these are all gross (and even offensive, I know) simplifications of necessarily complex innerpersonal dynamics.

Still. It’s been my humble experience that some or even a lot of women just do not get men. And one of the things they don’t get about men is that men are deeply spoiled. Or, rather, women get that men are spoiled (it’s not like we ever try to hide it or anything, is it?) — they just don’t get why men are spoiled.

So that’s why: Our relationship to the world, our parents, and women generally — that, plus Hormones Gone Wild – tend to make we men feel, in our very bones, like … like there’s a reason that both we and the King of the Beasts have truly outstanding hair, and enjoy having meals brought to them by women.

No, but you know what I mean. This is, still, a man’s world. And men know it. And it makes them feel that it should be a man’s world.

And that sense of entitlement can be the cause of a whooooooole lot of trouble. As you know. As we all know, whether we admit it or not.

Next time: What a woman can do about the fact that her man is spoiled.


Erin: You Are Not Responsible For Your Husband’s Suicide

In Family, Uncategorized on November 19, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Awhile back I posted a piece here called, “An Honest Question: Atheists, How Do You Process Your Guilt?” In response to that piece I received this morning the following heartbreaking letter from a woman named Erin:

“What happens when you do something that you can’t get forgiveness for?

“My husband committed suicide three years, four months, and 14 days ago. He needed me, and I wasn’t there. I was too wounded, I was masking it, I pushed him away and he couldn’t hold on. I left him at the precise moment he needed me the most.

“He is gone, forever gone. I’ll never see him, we’ll never speak, I can never say I’m sorry. He can never forgive me. I will live with it forever.

“I asked God to forgive me, so I guess he did, right? Great. Honestly. But in this lifetime, I don’t imagine I’ll ever feel any better for knowing that. I can’t go back and change things. I did not do everything I could have done. I am guilty, trust me on this one. I can’t forgive myself. That’s what guilt is right? So, really there is no way to process it.”

Here’s my answer to you, Erin:

Listen to me. Your husband’s suicide was not your fault. Trust me on this one. Any counselor–and you have got to get counseling for this–will tell you that your husband’s suicide was absolutely, 100% not your fault. That you feel guilty about that tragic event is as natural as snow being white. That’s the deal with suicides: they always leave behind at least one person who suffers profound, often life-long guilt over their certainty that they could have done something to prevent that suicide from happening. And they’re invariably wrong about that; there’s never anything they or anyone else could have done to stop what happened.

The real reason anyone ever commits  suicide–the only reason anyone ever commits suicide–has nothing to do with events or circumstances that happen outside that person. Trillions of people every day get depressed and emotionally desperate, but don’t kill themselves. The only people who ever commit suicide are people infected with the profoundly serious condition of being suicidal. You husband was suicidal. It’s who he was; he had that terrible illness in him.

You absolutely must understand that you could no sooner have stopped your husband from acting the way his sickness made him act than you can control the weather. It’s possible that in any given circumstance you could interfere and stop a suicidal person from taking their own life, but that’s just a postponement, not a solution. Someone who is stopped from a serious suicide attempt will try to kill themselves again, because that’s what suicidal people do. That’s the very mark of a suicidal. Unless they get intense professional help (and often even then), suicidal people always try to kill themselves again. And nothing anyone can do can stop someone who is determined, in the driving, irresistible way suicidals are, from doing whatever to themselves they’re ultimately moved to.

Listen to this, Erin: You’re no more responsible for the fact that your husband committed suicide than you would have been if he had been born blind or with one arm. He was infected with a condition that it was entirely beyond your powers to cure him of. You’ve got to let go of your guilt, because it’s not based on anything real. You’re suffering for no reason at all. Maybe you could have been nicer. Maybe you could have been more responsive. Maybe you could have been less self-involved. And none of that would have mattered. He still would have killed himself. The only person who could have stopped him from doing that was him, by seeking the kind of psychological counseling that you must now not fail to seek for yourself. Do it. Learn to let go of this burden which was never yours to carry in the first place.

One more thing, if I may. This terrible event in your life created for you a pain that is not of this world. Once you’re suffering as you are, Erin, you’ve moved into God’s territory. You just don’t “ask” God to forgive you, and then sort of move on. Stay with God on this. God has a lot to tell you now, and you have to carefully and attentively listen to it all. And it may take some time for God to tell you everything he wants you to know. Absolutely get the kind of counseling referenced above, which is indispensable to your healing. But at the same time (and as corny as this tends to sound to people who haven’t yet had the kinds of life experiences that strip this of corniness), put yourself as fully as possible in God’s hands. Open your heart to his healing through the power and direction of the Holy Spirit within you. That really is God inside of you, talking to you, whispering to you the truths your mind, soul, and body need to hear. Avail yourself of the one who did allow his own life to be taken in order to not only heal you, but to keep you healed, forever.


The Wondrous Mystery of Dreams

In Uncategorized on November 17, 2007 at 1:46 pm

A while back I wrote this, which pretty much no one read. Then, this morning, a woman from Kenya wrote me to say:

“Hi. I had a dream last night that a pastor Lunalo came to preach in Kenya. He preached on a message and the whole street was paying attention to him. Unfortunately, I woke up in a start and forgot the message. I just decided to check out the website, and trust me, this is a miracle that he actually exists. I will be praying very hard for him and hope both Rick and Lunalo’s dreams come to pass. God bless you both eternally.”

My wife just woke up from a nap; I’m outta  here. But can you believe this?


Ecclesia Reformatat Semper Reformanda

In Christianity, God on November 16, 2007 at 6:46 am

So yesterday I was reading about the history of Protestantism in my 1974 edition of the ever-awesome Encyclopedia Britannica (that I bought in a thrift store about 10 years ago for $20 because God loves me). And under a section called ”The ongoing reformation of the church,” I read this:

“In few respects [did Protestantism differ from Catholicism] more than in its establishment of the principle of an ongoing reformation. While most of the Reformers, once established, tended practically to resist extensions of reformation that would jeopardize their status and definition, almost all Protestants, at least nominally, assented to the idea that “ecclesia reformatat semper reformanda”–i.e., that the church was always reformed and always in need of further reformation. The Protestant movement, then, was conceived as an unfinished product, constantly to be judged by a reading of the Bible, its polity continually subject to debate, its policy open to ongoing appraisal and change.”

We’re in the midst of a time where Protestantism is contending with issues that are proving as divisive to it as anything in its history. So I find it comforting to learn that we’re supposed to change, that we’re supposed to rethink, reassess, reconsider. We should be encouraged that the founders of our system of theology conceived of that system as an “unfinished product,” and that they believed the church was “always in need of further reformation.” I definitely think it’s something we should bear in mind as we all try to figure out where we stand relative to the issues in our church that are every day causing us such turmoil.  


Speaking of Chinese Food, I Just Made Some

In Uncategorized on November 14, 2007 at 5:35 pm

I have food issues (he typed, whilst chowing on a huge slab of bread made with figs and anise). My issue is that I like to eat, and yet am not huge on cooking. I do all the cooking in our house, because I stay home and write while my wife Cat leaves the house every day to go out and have an Actual Life. So I do all our cooking. Cat, thank God, is not a picky eater. Neither am I. I’m happy to eat pretty much anything that comes out of a box.

Tonight though, I made Chinese food. I think. Or something. Anyway, here, in order, is what I did to arrive at what my wife and I will be eating in about an hour:

Went shopping. Bought veggies. Didn’t buy enough to make dinner for tomorrow night, because apparently I’m congenitally incapable of buying food for more than one meal at a time. I have no idea how to change this.

Came home. Busted out large pot, cutting board, big knife, small knife, and knife sharpener. Sharpened knives. Felt very Samurai Chef as I did. Wiped blade of knife (and thus carbon dust) on my pants when I was done sharpening each knife, cuz it makes me feel cool to do that.

Into bottom of pot poured extremely generous amounts of olive oil and sesame oil (mmmmm….sesame oil….) — and then threw in a slice of butter just to be safe, because I hate things to go dry when I’m trying to fry/saute them. Turned on gas low-medium to start heating up oil(s).

Cut up onion (using my Awesome Onion Cutting Technique, which I learned a zillion years ago in one of the best cookbooks ever, Tasajara Cooking). Put onion in heated oil.

Cut up red bell pepper. Added to onion.

Sliced up celery. Added to onion and bell pepper. Let simmer/fry a bit.

Chopped up garlic cloves. (I’m more of a chopper than a crusher of garlic, for some reason. I hate the waste of crushing, which is so stupid.) Put results on little plate.

Took chunk of raw ginger; used sharp little knife to shave off woody outer part; chopped ginger until I had about the same amount as I had of chopped garlic; put on little plate next to chopped ginger.

Now I had a little saucer plate with a small mountain of chopped ginger on one side of it, and equal size mound of chopped garlic on its other. For some reason this makes me very happy. I feel like Spice King.

Dump garlic and ginger into pot.

Take bunch of asparagus. One by one, bend each stalk in half until it breaks naturally. Throw the bottom half away. Wash top halves. Cut in fancy diagonal slice for no reason other than that I think it might impress wife. Throw in pot.

Wash carrot. Slice into pieces so thin you can practically see through them, which takes forever. But they’re as much for color as anything else, and I need them to cook through. Put in pot.

Wash, chop bok choy; throw in pot. Enjoy, because bok choy seems like love child of spinach and celery.

So now I have stuff in the pot that I really want to cook together, and get all juicy and soft and yummy. So I add a little water to the pot — just enough to allow the veggies to cook and release their own veggie juices — crank up the heat, get it boiling, reduce to low, and then cover. The key is to keep it wet without turning it into soup, cuz we’re going to have this over rice. (I use a rice maker, always. I’m insane for rice makers. They work so well that … well, that even I can use them to make Actual Rice. I generally use brown Basmati rice from Trader Joe’s.)

Drain, wash, cut up tofu. Be slightly dismayed the degree to which the company that made the tofu wasn’t kidding when it labeled it “Firm Style.”  It’s like a brick. So I cut into very small pieces, and add to the Chinese Rice Topping Sauteed Stuff That’s Wet But Not Soup that I’m making.

Add salt, more soy sauce and more sesame oil, since I know that if I don’t I’ll end up having to eat something that tastes like vegetables and soy bean curd.

Clean kitchen. Write this blog. Wonder what in the world has moved me to write about what I made for dinner tonight. Fear it means the end of all my good ideas of things to write about. Wonder what I’ll do for a living when I can’t write anymore. Know it won’t be cooking.


My Terrible Fortune

In Humor on November 13, 2007 at 5:03 am

Last night my wife Cat and I went out to a Chinese restaurant. So guess what my fortune cookie said?

“You will experience small success, especially in romance.”

Which leaves me with two questions: 1. Does anyone out there know if “small” is Chinese for “great”? And 2: Am I the only person in the world who’s ever gotten a negative fortune cookie fortune? I’ve gotten a really weird fortune cookie fortune before (which you can read about here), but I’ve never gotten one like this, where it’s basically telling me that I’m a loser — especially in romance. Has anyone else ever gotten, like, a Fortune Cookie of Doom?

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Six Tests To Determine If He’s Mr. Right

In Family, Marriage, relationships on November 12, 2007 at 9:41 am

By way of comments to my last post, To Single Women: Men Don’t Change, I heard from a considerable number of women who basically got burned in relationships by guys who turned out to be less Prince Charming than … Burpy, the Village Dolt.

So that got me thinking about what women might be able to do in order to discover what their potential life-mate is really made of, who the man behind the Dating Curtain really is. So then I thought of these six tests a woman can use to discover whether or not the man you’re dating is Mr. Right, or … Mr. Lite. (No! Mr. Blight! No—Mr. Mite! Mr. Plight! No, no: Mr. Trite!! Okay, moving on. Sorry. I have some sort of … rhyming dysfunction.)

The Mr. Right Test #1: Get into real knock-down, drag-out fight with him
You can tell just about everything you need to know about a person by the way they fight. You simply do not know someone until you’ve had a fight with them. My wife and I have saying: A relationship is only as good as its first fight. People go crazy when they fight; what you want to know about your man is how crazy does he go, and how fast—and how much time he spends in Crazyland once he’s gone there. If in the heat of a real argument your man does a pretty good job of sticking to the point, or tends to ratchet the hostility down, or if he actually listens to the things you’re saying, then that’s a beautiful sign. But if he goes vicious, or starts attacking you personally by going after weaknesses that in love you’ve shared with him before, or (God forbid) gets in any way physical, that, too is a sign. A “Wrong Way” sign.

The Mr. Right Test #2: Go on a cross-country drive with him
People are pretty good at keeping their stuff together for predetermined lengths of time. But you spend two weeks with someone in a car, and it’s like dragging Dracula outside at high noon: Who they really are becomes very clear. On a long road trip, there’s nowhere for a man to hide. Sooner or later his smooth and yummy outer layer will wear off, and his inner chewy nuttiness will be revealed. Plus, a lot of unexpected stuff happens on a road trip: You get lost, a tire blows, the campsite doesn’t hold your reservation, etc. Anyone does well when things are going well; a road trip is sure to show you how your man reacts when things go like they always go in life, which is contrary to plans.

The Mr. Right Test #3: Have him care for you when you’re really sick
One (emphasize: one) of the reasons men love women so much is because women are just so darn pretty. Well, get ugly around your man for a change, and see how that works for you. Get biologically ugly: sneeze a lot, and wipe your nose on your sleeve—no, on his!—and cough like you’re trying to turn yourself inside out, and keep your hair all matted-up and funky, and just … exude Maximum Grossness. (Well, maybe not maximum grossness. No need to get arrested or anything.) How does he behave while you’re practically croaking on your couch? Is he patient, sympathetic, loving, attentive? Or does he (eventually) act like you being sick is really a drag that he wishes you’d stop? The former, of course, is great; the latter could make for one ceremony-wrecking flashback when the officiate at your wedding says the part about “in sickness and in health.” Knowing Our Kind, it’s safe to guess that your man has already shown you how ready he is to at a moment’s notice play the role of your father. That’s cool—or whatever. But what you also need to know from him is how willing he is to step up, when you need it, and assume the role of loving mother.

The Mr. Right Test #4: Watch him around other women
For many reasons we won’t here delve into (socialization, hormones, insecurity, nature, the desire to confirm that they’re as irresistable as they think they are), men flirt. Cool enough; that’s probably how you were attracted to your man in the first place. But once you and he have committed to being together exclusively, the only message your man ever needs to be sending any other woman is ”I’m Sure You’re Very Cute, But Not to Me.” Next time the two of you attend a party, separate from him, and then watch him while he’s in Solo Socializing mode. If you see him consistently not flirting with batting-eyed beauties, fantastic. If you do see him turning on his Mr. Spectacular show, don’t panic. At some point after the party, though, do talk to him—and for real. Tell him how his flirting with other girls hurts your feelings, and—worse, maybe—how it does makes you look like a fool. If he sees and understands the truth of that, and so agrees to never flirt again, that’s great: relationships are about honing and smoothing. But if, knowing how flirting does and must make you feel, he continues to flirt with other women, then he’s being very clear about not only who he is, but about whom he expects you to be.

The Mr. Right Test #5: Watch how he treats service personnel
Waiters, busboys, doormen, janitors, maids, parking attendants, delivery people, store clerks … a man’s character is revealed by how he treats such people in his life. If towards service personnel or those beneath him professionally your man is brusque, dismissive, or in even the slightest way condescending, then as sure as sharks bite he’s going to start treating you that way, too. It’s just not possible for a man who doesn’t treat everyone with respect to respect you. It’s a symptom of a problem he has that you’re not going to be able to fix. Get out right away, or go down trying.

The Mr. Right Test #6: Watch how he loses
Everyone wins well: in victory, everyone is gracious, magnanimous, humble, sweet, etc. How a guy loses, however, tells you who he is. Be with your man sometime when he loses a game of some sort that he wanted or expected to win. (Bonus points if you’re the one who beats him.) Watch very carefully how he responds to defeat. A real winner knows it’s about remaining a winner, no matter the score.

 

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To Single Women: Men. Don’t. Change.

In Family, Marriage, relationships on November 7, 2007 at 7:56 am

If you’re a single woman, can you think of anyone from whom you’d be better off taking relationship advice than a middle-aged man you don’t know from Adam?

You can’t? Me neither! Great!

So here’s what I’m thinking: Being a guy means I know guys. And there’s one critically true thing about guys that all women learn sooner or later–and that you should definitely learn sooner, which is where I come in. And that truth is that men don’t change. You cannot change a man.

Anything that you say or do in hopes of changing a man is positively destined to fail.

If you’re thinking about marrying a man, realize now that he is who he’s going to be. If there are things about your potential life-mate that you don’t like — little habits, personality quirks, major behavior tendancies — you need to ask yourself whether or not you can live with those things. If the answer’s no, then move on to Bachelor Number Three, because Bachelor Number One isn’t your guy.

You need to find a man you love exactly as he is.

Which can seem tricky, because who is perfect?

But here’s the thing about that. Relative to whatever it is about any given guy that you think is a problem, ask yourself this question: Is that thing a matter of values, or taste? If he’s behaving in a way that runs contrary to your values, then that’s a serious issue. But if it’s only a matter of taste–of preference, of just, when it comes right down to it, of him doing things differently than you do – then that’s a whole other deal. That’s something you need to think about in a different way than you do things he’s doing or saying that are incompatible with your core life values.

A value difference? That could be a deal breaker. A style difference? That probably shouldn’t be.

For instance, let’s say you love a guy, but don’t like the fact that he rides a motorcycle. Is his riding a motorcycle a value issue? If not (and it doesn’t seem to be: knowing a man rides a motorcycle tells you nothing about his character), then you need to decide whether or not you’re okay with him riding a motorcycle. Because you’re in love with a man who does ride a motorcycle. That’s who he is. There isn’t a different man inside of the man you love who doesn’t ride a motorcycle, a man that you can somehow get to replace the man you know.

Your man rides a motorcycle. And though it sounds harsh to say, insofar as his riding a motorcycle is a problem, it’s your problem, not his. There’s simply nothing you can do to change the fact that he rides a motorcycle. You need to either be okay with his riding a motorcycle, or you have to say it’s too much, and be ready to leave him over it.

The choice you can’t make, though — or can, of course, but really, really shouldn’t make – is try to change what is your problem into his problem by complaining about it, or trying to make him feel guilty about it, or (even) crying about it. Sure, at the time you do those things a guy may respond to the emotionality of the moment by saying (and perhaps even believing) that he will change — but he won’t. Because once the drama has cleared, something inside of him (which he may not even consciously register) is going to reassert itself, and begin telling him that you don’t actually have a right to tell him who and how he should be. And that’s going to put him right back on the path he was on when you first met him, the one he’s been on all his life.

What so often happens, of course, is that after you’ve made a Big Point of trying to change your man, he’ll come to think: “Hmm. [Your name here] doesn’t like me riding a motorcycle. But I’ve always ridden a motorcycle; I love riding a motorcycle. I have no choice but to keep the fact that I ride a motorcycle away from [you]. That way she’ll be happy, and I’ll get to keep being myself. I certainly don’t like deceiving her, but what choice has she left me? I love her, and want her to be happy. She’s made it clear that the only way she’s going to be happy is to believe that I don’t ride a motorcycle. So I can’t let her know I do. It’s not so much that I’ll be lying to her; I just won’t be telling her something she’s told me she’d rather not know anyway. Cool. That works. Are we out of ham?”

And there you’ll be, stuck in that nasty little loop so many couples do get stuck in, where the woman’s either constantly nagging at her man to stop doing something he keeps doing anyway, or is sometimes being deeply upset at discovering that her man’s been lying to her about something he’s been doing all along that he’s not “supposed” to be doing at all. You know how that resentment-acting out cycle goes. Everyone does; we’ve all seen or lived it. It’s awful.

Avoid it now by realizing that when it comes to a relationship partner, what you see is what you get. If you love your man, then love all of your man, or be clear on the fact that you’re signing up for more trouble than you can possibly want. Men aren’t homes women (or anyone else) can redecorate to suite their taste. They come as is.

If you try to change your man you will, in effect, become his mother. That’s a role you do not want to substitute for “wife.” And if you believe anything in this world, believe that if you turn into your man’s mother, he will turn into your son. Tell him he needs to eat more vegetables, and as sure as the day is long, he’ll start sneaking pizza.

Life’s too short. You want a man, not a boy. Successful relationships are built on respect, not the kind of co-dependant, mutually dyfunctional craziness that necessarily grows and develops whenever one person in a relationship is convinced that they always know what’s best for the other person in that relationship. Women shouldn’t act like that toward their men; men shouldn’t act like that toward their women.

If you think you’re in love with someone, you’re not. When you’re in love with someone, you know it. And one of the ways you know you’re in love with someone is that nothing that person does or says ever really bothers you at all.

(By the way: I’m not saying men can’t change; of course they can. I’m saying that you can’t make your man change — or predict when he’ll change, or how, or why. People only change from the inside out, never from the outside in.)

Remember: Love means never having to say they’re sorry.

(For related blogs o’ mine, see Six Tests To Determine If He’s Mr. Right, and Top 10 Tips For Becoming A Better Husband. and What’s In a Word: The Truth Behind Men’s Single Ads. But, really, Pick-Up Lines of Famous Men in History is just stupid. Funny, but stupid. So ignore that one.)

 

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