Two weeks ago I had a long weekend off work (Columbus Day), and I had planned to spend Saturday night through Monday afternoon with Frisbee. Instead, I picked a stupid fight with him Saturday night and spent the entire evening sleeping in the living room (my choice). Then I left on Sunday afternoon and cried the whole way home.
This past Friday night I came home from work and within the first 20 minutes was in an argument with Now-hubby about my Halloween costume that ended with me not talking to him for a half hour.
I grew up in an environment where my parents yelled. Well, correction. My father yelled. A lot. My mother just sort of sat passively through all of it. Which is not to say that she was a victim, because she was probably just quiet because she was too drunk to properly verbalize a response.
When I was old enough to leave, I got as far away from all of it as I possibly could. That was my response to arguments - I left. It was a fairly good defense against fights between other people that were happening around me. The one time I did try to intervene and have an opinion about an argument between my parents I got physically hurt, so looking at it from the angle of self-preservation, disappearing completely was a lot easier.
The only downside to this defense strategy is it was difficult to rely on in my own relationships. Especially because the types of people I tended to get involved with were those who actually cared about me and wanted to help if I was hurting. Which, in and of itself I was very grateful for. It was something I was unfamiliar with, but I recognized it as a way healthier option than repeating my parent's relationship format.
For a very long time I had absolutely no idea how to appropriately handle my own anger within my relationships. I would have literal panic attacks. Scream, cry, and break things. I would go days without speaking to the other person. The pattern worked like this: I would get upset about something. Usually something small and inane. Something like a tiny thought that would go through my head about whether somebody really cared or not. I would get angry, and that anger would make me think I was becoming my father, which was terrifying. And then absolutely worst of all the other person would want to stick around and talk about things. Which how do you tell somebody you care about that even you can't properly explain the reason you're upset? I knew that wanting to understand and help the person you cared about was technically the "right"thing to do, but I had spent so much of my adolescence and early adulthood getting as far away from anger as I could that any other response was completely irrational.
It's taken a really long time to get to the point where I'm even able to slow my mind down and tell somebody, "I need time to myself to deal with this." Space helps me quiet both the initial anger and the incredibly unhelpful cycle within myself that's upset about being upset. I can recognize this, and being able to ask for it is a huge step, and means I can get over things a lot faster.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Comic Comic Comic!
I linked around this morning and found Try it, You'll Like It. You should check it out as well.
That's seriously all I have right now. Happy Friday, everybody!
That's seriously all I have right now. Happy Friday, everybody!
Monday, October 14, 2013
Three cheers
Congrats to Women's Health for having a very decent article about casual sex (friends with benefits, no-strings-attached, whatever the fuck you want to call it) in their November issue.
I was completely ready to hate this article because the deck mentioned "significant drawbacks" to these types of relationships. (Also, I'd like to give a shout-out to this site for helping me sound intelligent about the different parts of a magazine article in these past two entries.)
Then the article actually took me out of this mode:
And put me into this mode:
Here are some of the awesome things they mentioned:
Casual sex works "when you're in a good place with your job, social life, and personal life, and all that's missing is sex."
"To make the most out of casual sex, you need trust, reasonable expectations, and clear communication. You need to know that the experiences will stay between the two of you, and that you're in a safe zone."
Ah, communication. I love that it's brought up early and often in this article.
...also advises discussing your sexual history in the beginning.
This is not advising going into specifics or doing a numerical comparison with your partner. This is just advising being safe and doing one's best to not get STD's.
The men studied reported more positive and fewer negative reactions to sex-focused relationships than the women (though on the whole, the female view was more positive than negative).
HUGE. Fucking monumental. Normally when I see this statistic quoted, they leave the parenthetical statement out completely. It's usually made to sound that women have nothing but negative reactions to sex-focused relationships. The inclusion of the fact that women have positive views as well, but just not to the same percentage as men, is amazing.
...it's important to check in with yourself often to make sure it's working.
In addition to communication between the two people, it's awesome to see a focus on the lady self-reflecting and being honest with herself about whether this is what she's really looking for.
If you want more than sex, let him know. And if he doesn't feel the same, end it.
This is not to say that you can't ever reconnect with this person and have some sort of relationship that goes beyond just having sex with each other. (Yeah, even me, the hardest of hearts, holds out a tiny hope for utterly stupid romantic love sometimes.) This is about in that exact moment not trying to negotiate your way into a relationship that makes either of you unhappy. If you want more than sex, and he doesn't, you're going to compromise on one end of the spectrum that either you don't want or he doesn't want. And that's a shitty basis for a relationship. Get back together when you're both on the same page.
If you believe only sluts do this, you won't be happy.
This is a fantastic point included in a larger discussion on not judging yourself. I'd also like to point out that it's equally important to not judge other women who are in these types of relationships.
If you can have sex only when you've had two or more drinks in your system, it may mean you're not as comfortable with it as you might think.
Worth mentioning. Not only in the scheme of "sex-only" relationships, but in relationships in general.
It's important to be truthful about what you want from the romps.
Ah. Not only communication, but honest communication.
...the most important thing is your level of enjoyment - or obligation.
Again with the self-checks. I love it.
Whatever way you want to push your sexual boundaries - be direct.
With all the focus on communication and honesty, I'm willing to go there with this article. It advises letting your partner know that you want to push some limits, but also to be very clear and direct about the limits you do have. And if something you wanted to try turns out to be not your cup of tea, talk about that, too.
Finally, sex is what this matchup is all about, so you should feel free to have lots of it.
I was completely ready to hate this article because the deck mentioned "significant drawbacks" to these types of relationships. (Also, I'd like to give a shout-out to this site for helping me sound intelligent about the different parts of a magazine article in these past two entries.)
Then the article actually took me out of this mode:
And put me into this mode:
Here are some of the awesome things they mentioned:
Casual sex works "when you're in a good place with your job, social life, and personal life, and all that's missing is sex."
You can not be having sex but be otherwise completely happy with everything else in your life. Sex is not something around which anyone should base the entirety of their existence.
Ah, communication. I love that it's brought up early and often in this article.
...also advises discussing your sexual history in the beginning.
This is not advising going into specifics or doing a numerical comparison with your partner. This is just advising being safe and doing one's best to not get STD's.
The men studied reported more positive and fewer negative reactions to sex-focused relationships than the women (though on the whole, the female view was more positive than negative).
HUGE. Fucking monumental. Normally when I see this statistic quoted, they leave the parenthetical statement out completely. It's usually made to sound that women have nothing but negative reactions to sex-focused relationships. The inclusion of the fact that women have positive views as well, but just not to the same percentage as men, is amazing.
...it's important to check in with yourself often to make sure it's working.
In addition to communication between the two people, it's awesome to see a focus on the lady self-reflecting and being honest with herself about whether this is what she's really looking for.
If you want more than sex, let him know. And if he doesn't feel the same, end it.
This is not to say that you can't ever reconnect with this person and have some sort of relationship that goes beyond just having sex with each other. (Yeah, even me, the hardest of hearts, holds out a tiny hope for utterly stupid romantic love sometimes.) This is about in that exact moment not trying to negotiate your way into a relationship that makes either of you unhappy. If you want more than sex, and he doesn't, you're going to compromise on one end of the spectrum that either you don't want or he doesn't want. And that's a shitty basis for a relationship. Get back together when you're both on the same page.
If you believe only sluts do this, you won't be happy.
This is a fantastic point included in a larger discussion on not judging yourself. I'd also like to point out that it's equally important to not judge other women who are in these types of relationships.
If you can have sex only when you've had two or more drinks in your system, it may mean you're not as comfortable with it as you might think.
Worth mentioning. Not only in the scheme of "sex-only" relationships, but in relationships in general.
It's important to be truthful about what you want from the romps.
Ah. Not only communication, but honest communication.
...the most important thing is your level of enjoyment - or obligation.
Again with the self-checks. I love it.
Whatever way you want to push your sexual boundaries - be direct.
With all the focus on communication and honesty, I'm willing to go there with this article. It advises letting your partner know that you want to push some limits, but also to be very clear and direct about the limits you do have. And if something you wanted to try turns out to be not your cup of tea, talk about that, too.
Finally, sex is what this matchup is all about, so you should feel free to have lots of it.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
IQ points
The last time I was at the gynecologist I picked up a copy of Pregnancy & Newborn magazine. Mostly because there was a thing on the cover about whether motherhood makes you smarter, and also because the receptionist told me they were free copies.
Knowing my feelings about children already, I figured it would be interesting to get the viewpoint of people who genuinely want children.
Long and the short of the 2 page article? Having kids doesn't actually make you smarter, unless you use a person's ability to take care of children as an indicator of intelligence. Maybe it's just my rigid vernacular structure, but I was hoping for actual Wechsler or Stanford-Binet data where we compared the IQ scores of people before and after they have kids.
What the article is actually about?
...certain parts of a mom's brain actually grow during pregnancy and during the postpartum period, leaving us slightly larger in specific areas - including those that deal with maternal motivation (hypothalamus), reward and emotional processing (substantia nigra and amygdala), sensory integration (parietal lobe), and reasoning and judgement (prefrontal cortex).
The article goes on to say that you also create a lot more neurons and neural connections during pregnancy. I argue against this because your brain deals with any new experience by trying to connect established neural pathways or by creating new ones. Treating this like a unique and amazing occurrence that only happens when you're having a baby is bullshit.
Being a mother changed the brains of female rats enough that they were able to plan ahead to be sure that they had enough food and water to feed their pups.
Similarly to the last point, this has nothing to do with being "smart" and more to do with being a good parent. I'm not trying to specifically define "smart." If you get a 600 on your math SATs and a 100 on your verbal, you're still incredibly intelligent in math. Reverse, and you're incredibly intelligent with your verbal skills. The moral of the story is that having a baby does things to your brain that hopefully will make you a better parent. It doesn't increase your intelligence in any other areas.
It's as if our brains know that nourishing our children (and perhaps even getting in and out of the grocery store in record time) is more important than recalling the trivial information we tend to bank on.
The specific "trivial information" the article is referencing is knowing which Shakespeare play, "to be or not to be," comes from. It's as if knowing how to change a diaper (or, in the case of this article, shop for groceries in an efficient manner), completely obliterates the need to know general things about Shakespeare. If you know one, you literally have no fucking clue about the other. I'd also like to ask what the fuck we're "banking" our knowledge of Shakespeare on before we have children? Is it the final Jeopardy question?
Current evidence suggests that mother rats get an additional boost [of brainpower] after a second pregnancy.
This is in a sidebar, which means it's one of those quickly accessible factoids that people with not enough time/attention span to read the entire article (attention: new mothers!) will be able to quote. It's also a subtle incentive to have more children.
Knowing my feelings about children already, I figured it would be interesting to get the viewpoint of people who genuinely want children.
Long and the short of the 2 page article? Having kids doesn't actually make you smarter, unless you use a person's ability to take care of children as an indicator of intelligence. Maybe it's just my rigid vernacular structure, but I was hoping for actual Wechsler or Stanford-Binet data where we compared the IQ scores of people before and after they have kids.
What the article is actually about?
...certain parts of a mom's brain actually grow during pregnancy and during the postpartum period, leaving us slightly larger in specific areas - including those that deal with maternal motivation (hypothalamus), reward and emotional processing (substantia nigra and amygdala), sensory integration (parietal lobe), and reasoning and judgement (prefrontal cortex).
The article goes on to say that you also create a lot more neurons and neural connections during pregnancy. I argue against this because your brain deals with any new experience by trying to connect established neural pathways or by creating new ones. Treating this like a unique and amazing occurrence that only happens when you're having a baby is bullshit.
Being a mother changed the brains of female rats enough that they were able to plan ahead to be sure that they had enough food and water to feed their pups.
Similarly to the last point, this has nothing to do with being "smart" and more to do with being a good parent. I'm not trying to specifically define "smart." If you get a 600 on your math SATs and a 100 on your verbal, you're still incredibly intelligent in math. Reverse, and you're incredibly intelligent with your verbal skills. The moral of the story is that having a baby does things to your brain that hopefully will make you a better parent. It doesn't increase your intelligence in any other areas.
It's as if our brains know that nourishing our children (and perhaps even getting in and out of the grocery store in record time) is more important than recalling the trivial information we tend to bank on.
The specific "trivial information" the article is referencing is knowing which Shakespeare play, "to be or not to be," comes from. It's as if knowing how to change a diaper (or, in the case of this article, shop for groceries in an efficient manner), completely obliterates the need to know general things about Shakespeare. If you know one, you literally have no fucking clue about the other. I'd also like to ask what the fuck we're "banking" our knowledge of Shakespeare on before we have children? Is it the final Jeopardy question?
Current evidence suggests that mother rats get an additional boost [of brainpower] after a second pregnancy.
This is in a sidebar, which means it's one of those quickly accessible factoids that people with not enough time/attention span to read the entire article (attention: new mothers!) will be able to quote. It's also a subtle incentive to have more children.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Consensual
The totally awesome Tad Kimpton (of Khaos and Discord comics), linked to this totally awesome comic recently. It's all about consent and how to go about negotiating it with partner(s), what it means, and why it's sexy.
You should check it out.
You should check it out.
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