Category: Relationships

What Can All Couples Learn From Same-Sex Marriages?

by

2008-06-11

5:49 pm

1 Comment on What Can All Couples Learn From Same-Sex Marriages?

News, Relationships

, , , , ,

From
Gay Unions Shed Light on Gen­der in Mar­riage

A grow­ing body of evi­dence shows that same-sex cou­ples have a great deal to teach every­one else about mar­riage and rela­tion­ships. Most stud­ies show sur­pris­ing­ly few dif­fer­ences between com­mit­ted gay cou­ples and com­mit­ted straight cou­ples, but the dif­fer­ences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of con­flicts that can endan­ger het­ero­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships.

The find­ings offer hope that some of the most vex­ing prob­lems are not nec­es­sar­i­ly entrenched in deep-root­ed bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences between men and women. And that, in turn, offers hope that the prob­lems can be solved.

One of the things the arti­cle points out is some­thing I’ve def­i­nite­ly noticed, that how peo­ple han­dle resolve con­flicts is far more impor­tant than how often they expe­ri­ence con­flict.

One well-known study used math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ing to deci­pher the inter­ac­tions between com­mit­ted gay cou­ples. The results, pub­lished in two 2003 arti­cles in The Jour­nal of Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, showed that when same-sex cou­ples argued, they tend­ed to fight more fair­ly than het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples, mak­ing few­er ver­bal attacks and more of an effort to defuse the con­fronta­tion.

Con­trol­ling and hos­tile emo­tion­al tac­tics, like bel­liger­ence and dom­i­neer­ing, were less com­mon among gay cou­ples.

SBQ: Sick of a WIP?

by

2008-05-29

10:14 pm

1 Comment on SBQ: Sick of a WIP?

Relationships, SBQ

The Stitch­ing Blog­ger’s Ques­tion of the Week is:
Do you ever get to a point work­ing on a project that you’ve had for so
long, you start to won­der what pos­sessed you to start it in the first
place?

Of course! It has always hap­pened with pat­terns I chose to do for some­one else, though, rather than those I chose because I was inter­est­ed in them. There are a few WIPs that have out­lived the rela­tion­ships that inspired them, and they may nev­er be fin­ished. That’s a bit embar­rass­ing, but in at least one case I would­n’t have ever start­ed the piece if I’d real­ly known what an unsta­ble, vicious being the intend­ed recip­i­ent was.

Date Night–Baby!

by

2008-05-17

11:58 pm

1 Comment on Date Night–Baby!

Fun, Relationships, RPGs

, ,

We had Chi­nese food togeth­er tonight, and played for a while. There was some ick, but I sus­pect­ed that it was com­ing. The hap­py part is that my char­ac­ter’s old­est son (fos­ter son, real­ly) and his wife’s baby was born. First grand­ba­by! There have been many babies born in the last “year” of the game, and there are two more preg­nan­cies in progress (not my char­ac­ter, peo­ple close to her). In fact, Sam has a “babies” sec­tion on the wiki, just for track­ing their names and oth­er infor­ma­tion.

Cud­dling an actu­al baby would be even bet­ter, but a healthy in-game baby was pret­ty sweet, too.

Sam said we had to stop after that, because there was no way he could top baby Desmond 😉

Adult Gaming

by

2008-05-11

9:18 pm

3 Comments on Adult Gaming

Relationships, RPGs, Sex

, , , , , , , ,

Sam and I just lis­tened to “Female Char­ac­ters,” episode 42 of the Game Mas­ter Show. The top­ic came up because Erin, one of the hosts, real­ized that she was will­ing to put female char­ac­ters through some expe­ri­ences that she would­n’t apply to males. There was a fair amount of talk about the Hero­ine’s Jour­ney and how it dif­fers from the Hero’s Jour­ney and some dis­cus­sion of men play­ing female char­ac­ters.

It was a real­ly good episode, and while it is long I encour­age you to give it a lis­ten.

(This is going to be about adult top­ics, so if that’s going to both­er you, don’t fol­low the cut link!)

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Adult Gam­ing” →

TotD: Written On the Body

by

2008-05-08

11:56 pm

1 Comment on TotD: Written On the Body

Reading, Relationships, Thought of the Day

, , , , , ,

I’d nev­er heard of Writ­ten on the Body by Jeanette Win­ter­son (or of the author, at all) until I was brows­ing through some of the quo­ta­tions at Gaia1 a while back. This bit is too long for my quo­ta­tions file, but I love it too much to just delete it.

Written On the Body“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trou­ble. To lose some­one you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it’ is the per­son you loved. The pain stops, there are new peo­ple, but the gap nev­er clos­es. How could it’s The par­tic­u­lar­ness of some­one who mat­tered enough to grieve over is not made ano­dyne by death. This hole in my heart is the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to? I’ve thought a lot about death recent­ly, the final­i­ty of it, the argu­ment end­ing in mid-air. One of us had­n’t fin­ished, why did the oth­er one go? And why with­out warn­ing? Even death after long ill­ness is with­out warn­ing. The moment you had pre­pared for so care­ful­ly took you by storm. The troops broke through the win­dow and snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednes­day last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you’re not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baf­fled log­ic of a child. If yes­ter­day why not today? And where are you? Frag­ile crea­tures of a small blue plan­et, sur­round­ed by light years of silent space. Do the dead find peace beyond the rat­tle of the world? What peace is there for us whose best love can­not return them even for a day? I raise my head to the door and think I will see you in the frame. I know it is your voice in the cor­ri­dor but when I run out­side the cor­ri­dor is emp­ty. There is noth­ing I can do that will make any dif­fer­ence. The last word is yours. The flut­ter­ing in the stom­ach goes away and the dull wak­ing pain. Some­times I think of you and I feel gid­dy. Mem­o­ry makes me light­head­ed, drunk on cham­pagne. All the things we did. And if any­one had said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That sur­pris­es me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shaft of recog­ni­tion. It was worth it. Love is worth it.

After read­ing about the book, I was sur­prised to find that it isn’t about the obvi­ous sort of loss. The nov­el is described as an erot­ic homage to a lover’s body, but one of the intrigu­ing aspect is that the author nev­er gives the nar­ra­tor a gen­der. I’m going to try to find it to give it a read.

1 Yes, I’m Tech­noMom there, like most places.

Sam and Saturday

by

2008-05-03

11:55 pm

3 Comments on Sam and Saturday

Family, Fun, Home, Love, Parenting, Relationships

, , ,

Yes, it was anoth­er date night. Yay! (They are the high­lights of my week, with good rea­son.) The girl went out on a date, so we had the house to our­selves.

It still feels odd, at times, not to have any kids around, and not to even be wor­ried about pick­ing them up. We like the young man she’s dat­ing, so we feel fair­ly good about her being out with him, and don’t get very ner­vous. Still, there’s a cer­tain lev­el of aware­ness that nev­er seems to go away when you can’t per­son­al­ly ver­i­fy your child’s imme­di­ate well­be­ing.

In any case, it was a love­ly evening. I do love my Sam, and he nev­er does stop spoil­ing me.

Hump Day For You, Date Night For Us

by

2008-04-02

11:33 pm

1 Comment on Hump Day For You, Date Night For Us

Love, Relationships

, , ,

It’s amaz­ing how much a mid-week date can cheer you up! I do rec­om­mend reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled dates to any­one who has a sig­nif­i­cant oth­er or oth­ers. Espe­cial­ly if you have kids!

The girl went out, as usu­al. She sur­prised us by com­ing home ear­ly. Not a prob­lem, just unex­pect­ed. She’s got­ten into the habit of knock­ing on the front door and wait­ing for a response before she walks in, to avoid see­ing any­thing she might not want to see 😉 Smart girl!

Friday Links

by

2008-03-28

11:05 pm

1 Comment on Friday Links

Civil Rights, Links, News, Relationships

, , , ,

It was a nice, bor­ing day, which means I don’t have much to talk about. Hap­pi­ly, oth­er peo­ple do.

Open Rela­tion­ships: What the World Already Has is a very good post over at Huff­in­g­ton by Jen­ny Block. I hope to read more from her. I def­i­nite­ly intend to get a copy of her book, Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Mar­riage when it comes out in June.

I can’t say that I was shocked to hear that the TSA forced a woman to remove her nip­ple pierc­ings with pli­ers before allow­ing her to board a flight, but I am dis­gust­ed. I’m glad that I don’t have to trav­el much,1 but I def­i­nite­ly think that the next time we do trav­el we’ll give Amtrak seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion over fly­ing.

Why is it that 29 total strangers have start­ed “fol­low­ing” me on Twit­ter, when I haven’t even logged in since the 21st?

1 Not that I would­n’t like to trav­el more for plea­sure, I just would­n’t want to do it on some­one else’s sched­ule

Date Night Happiness

by

2008-03-27

7:18 pm

11 Comments on Date Night Happiness

Family, Relationships, RPGs

, , , , ,

My sweet­ie had to run a bunch of errands before he got home last night, which short­ened our date a bit. Gro­ceries were need­ful, though. We had some deli­cious deli-style sand­wich­es after he got home, so there was­n’t a kitchen mess to deal with, too.

I think we watched an episode of West Wing while eat­ing. We’re on the fifth sea­son, after Aaron Sorkin left the show, and it just does­n’t com­pare to the pre­vi­ous sea­sons at all. I haven’t even both­ered to watch all of them, although Sam has. He catch­es me up on any impor­tant plot details I’ve missed between episodes.

The girl went out for her reg­u­lar Wednes­day night fun, which was also nice. It’s eas­i­er to have “date night” at home when we know she’s also hav­ing fun.

Much of our game was tak­en up with polit­i­cal stuff, and a nice sur­prise of 32 new pro­to-demons that my char­ac­ter’s min­ions were able to shape into full demons of need­ful types. She has many min­ions, which is mar­velous. Oh, have I men­tioned that she’s the Demon Queen now? Inter­est­ing side­line for a high priest­ess of a good deity.

I would real­ly, real­ly hate to have to do a char­ac­ter sheet for Seau­claire any more. She’d be so mul­ti-classed that it makes my head hurt just to think about it. It’s nice not to deal with such things any more.