Go live with a car battery…

I love you...I love you not.

My husband is moody. This bothers me a great deal; especially because his darker moods are the ones that often accompany him home after a hard day of pleasantries and professionalism. But I’ve realized something huge about this. You see, my husband was raised in a loving, nurturing environment. His parents loved him unconditionally. But this, I’ve come to realize, is the crux of the problem.

You see, unconditional love is a crock of shit, and I want to officially declare: it doesn’t work. In fact, it accomplishes the exact opposite of what it promises to deliver. Which poses a substantial problem for those of us raising little ones today.

Think about this: my son is loved unconditionally by me and his father. We love him when he’s kind. We love him when he’s cruel. We love every inch of him, even when he’s at his worst. If he grows up believing that he is, and always will be, 100% lovable, how, I ask you, is he going to treat the people who are unlucky enough to end up living with him?

Unconditional love is the culprit of all rotten behavior. Do you think your husband would yell at you for spending too much money if he thought you might just pack a bag and exit the premises the next time his voice raised to a certain decibel? Would he really forget to bring you flowers on Valentine’s day if the possibility existed that he’d be spending all future cherub-related holidays on his own, taking care of the kids, or nursing a Stella all by his lonesome self on a bar stool in a smokey gin joint? Of course not.

But instead we parents lavish our children with so much unconditional love it’s like a recipe for future marital disaster. We’re practically asking our kids to treat the people they love with disdain. The message is crystal. No matter how thoughtless, insensitive, moody or just plain mean you are, those closest to you will love you unconditionally so don’t bother putting any effort at all into those relationships.

Sure people get divorced. But most marrieds don’t walk around thinking that each day may be the last day of blissful couplehood. However, if they did, they might end up treating each other a whole lot better. Husbands might choose not to expend an audible sigh coupled with that ever annoying eye roll when asked to take out the garbage, for instance. Wives might decide that continued nagging over the unseparated whites and colors might not be worth spending eternity with a naked ring finger and sole custody of three hormonal teenagers.

The truth is, we need to impart a bit of fear and insecurity into the hearts of our children. “No, Johnny, mommy might not love you if you don’t eat all your vegetables.” Keep them on their toes. Reward good behavior with overflowing amounts of love, warmth and admiration. But we must stop reinforcing their vicious tantrums, irrational melt-downs and mean-spirited remarks with the promise to love them, warts and all, for all eternity.

Only by refusing to love without question will we raise children who can be civil to their spouses, gentle with their own children and careful with all the people in their lives. So I urge you to stop loving your kids absolutely. Instead, teach them to treat those around them with kindness, honor and respect by instilling a sense of insecurity and fearfulness. If they are not loving, you may not stick around. That’s the message you want to impart. It may sound cruel, but it’s really the best way to prepare them for a happy, fulfilling life with a partner. Just like the wise and thoughtful Erma Bombeck once said, “Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.”

12 Comments

Honesty is…usually the best policy

Telling your kids the truth is essential. O.K., not including conversations about recreational drug usage, alcohol, premarital sex or cigarettes.

My two closest friends happen to be married to men whose names rhyme. It’s a weird coincidence that I didn’t really even notice until this morning in the car, when my 10-year-old son Levi, for no apparent reason, said, “It’s too bad you aren’t still married to Uncle Larry, mom. Because then there’d be Cathy and Barry, Helen and Jerry, and Debra and Larry. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

Besides the shocking randomness of this observation, I was struck with the realization that my 6-year-old son, also in the car, had never been told that his mother had in fact been married prior to wedding his father and that this might come as a rather profound shock to him. I paused for a moment to regroup.

“Thank you for sharing that,” I said with a forced sort of politeness. Then I addressed my youngest and as simply and directly as possible said, “Eli, did you know that when mommy lived in Chicago, many many years ago, mommy was actually married to Uncle Larry?” I suddenly understood why calling my ex “uncle” was probably as bad an idea as my current hubbie had argued.

Dead silence.

“Do you remember Uncle Larry, honey?” I pushed onward.

“No,” he said, “Not really.”

Not sure how to proceed, I prayed for a sign from the parenting gods. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him. But he clearly heard what his brother had said. They say kids know everything, especially the stuff you avoid telling them. I had no choice. I had to say something. Of course I didn’t tell the older one until he was at least 8, and I only gave up the info when a gal pal innocently inquired about my first husband during an outing with our kids at Starbucks.

“Is Uncle Larry the chef guy, mommy?” my littlest inquired.

“Yes sweetie, he is. So you remember him?”

“Kind of, I guess.”

More silence.

“You were married to him?”

“Just for a short time. When I was very, very young.”

“Do I have any brothers or sisters?”

“No, honey. Just your big brother, Levi.”

“Has Uncle Larry ever been on ‘Chopped?’ ”

“I don’t think so, love.”

“If he was, do you think he would win?”

“Hmmm…that’s a good question. I’m not sure. He’s a really great chef though. He might.”

“Mom, will you ever marry anybody else?”

“No, sweetheart. I’m done marrying people. Daddy’s the one I was looking for and now that I found him, I’m never going to marry anyone else.”

“Okay. Mom, can we stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for a cinnamon raisin twist on the way to school?”

I chuckled. “Yes, sweetie, we can.”

And with that our conversation came to a close. Was I right to share the info at this still tender young age? I’m not certain. But once the cat was out of the proverbial bag, I felt like I had no choice in the matter.

The good news is, there are no more secrets to burden my motherly soul. I don’t have any LSD-laced skeletons in my closet or arrest records I need to expunge. I am pretty much what I appear to be. I think that’s good for kids. It can’t be easy to learn that your cherished mother was once a toothless carnie or a handsomely paid exotic dancer. Luckily, I only had to tarnish my maternal image with a failed first marriage. In the scheme of things, that’s not so terrible.

But how do you explain to your kids the mistakes and failures of your past? Do you sugar-coat them? Exaggerate them to scare your kids into submission? Brush them off as merely the foolishness of youth? It’s hard to know what’s right.

Personally, I believe that telling your kids the truth is essential. Okay, not including conversations about recreational drug usage, alcohol, premarital sex or cigarettes. But as far as almost everything else goes, honesty is…usually the best policy.

174 Comments

Breaking up is hard to undo

Breaking up is hard to do

Have you ever had a friendship just kind of fizzle? It’s like you suddenly realize that someone you cared about isn’t a part of your life anymore. It’s a crummy feeling, especially if you’re not sure why it happened. How does one deal with this type of situation?

Well, there are several options. If you’re a normal person, you wonder about it, lament the loss for a total of 32 seconds, then move on to the daily tasks at hand. I, on the other hand, think about things like this rather obsessively. I try to imagine what I could have said or done to drive this person away, what casual faux pas one of my children might have committed at the last remembered family get together, or on what commemorative event I must surely have forgotten to send a card. (Believe me, it’s exhausting being me.)

Maybe you’ve even imagined approaching the person you lost and saying something like, “Hey, WTF? What the hell happened?” Here again I will draw the distinction between a normal person’s response and my own. The normal person might briefly imagine this type of curious interchange at some kind of random reunion at Costco. Then, realizing she has genuinely more pressing issues to which she must attend, our normal person lets go of the fantasy scenario, accepts that people move on in life, and goes back to folding laundry. I, however, will actually go to great lengths to seek out the estranged person, sometimes years after our final meeting, and will, in fact, inquire as to the reason for our alienation.

This, I assure you, is a bad idea. I now know that from my most recent foray into the land of hopeless friendship salvaging. You see, my husband and I ran into a couple from our past recently at one of our fave sushi places. The husband was cordial and warm. His wife, on the other hand, could have frozen a skin-scalding hot tub with one glance of her icy stare.

Even my husband was taken aback by the shiver. “Why do you suppose she acted like that?” I wondered out loud. “I don’t know,” he replied, “Maybe this time you really did do something to offend her.” Of course I pined over this for the next 48 hours and then finally decided to pen a good, old fashioned, snail mail note that I sent off the following day. The note basically said that I was sad that our friendship had faded and that I’d always wondered what had happened and that I was sincerely regretful if I had offended her in some way.

Now I know you’re not supposed to want a particular outcome when you write a letter like that. But somewhere, deep in my mind, I guess I hoped such a note might rekindle our friendship. I waited weeks for a response. What finally came was a stunner.

Her letter was curt and pointed. “How interesting it is that people remember things so differently,” she started. She then went on to recount an episode where the toilet in their guest casita had overflown and they’d had to cancel dinner plans with us. According to her, I’d been irritated by their last minute cancelation and hadn’t called the following day to make sure all was well. To her, that breach meant the end of the relationship.
I do actually remember the event. She was always a bit unreliable and had cancelled plans with us on several earlier occasions. When this happened, I recall thinking that an overflowing toilet was a lot like the old “I have to wash my hair” excuse our mothers used to use to get out of an unwanted date in the olden days. Maybe I was wrong, but since at least one of our toilets overflows on a daily basis, her catastrophe seemed barely trivial to me. And in truth, I didn’t react as if she’d been hit with a devastating deluge.

But I never in a million years would have thought that my failure to acknowledge her sewage inundation would have caused the total demise of our friendship. The letter ended abruptly noting that she and her husband had moved on and she certainly hoped that we would do the same. There was no mention of rekindling our friendship, no faint hint of sorrow at the loss of our relationship, not even a feigned pretense of gratitude for the bold honesty of my letter.

It was a little weird I have to admit. I mean, to end the friendship over a torrential toilet? And then to take the time to write back and say that because of this heinous insult, she and her mate had no intention of ever reconnecting with us in the future. I was kind of shocked. While she did concede that they would be publicly cordial if ever our paths were to cross, her dismissal felt more like that of an orthodox jewish parent’s whose only daughter had decided to marry an Episcopalian.

I’m trying not to obsess over this. Obviously they weren’t as good of friends as I thought. But is there something to be learned from this mishap? Perhaps I was mistaken in judging my friend’s misfortune. What seems superficial to one person might be cataclysmic to another. After all, as my father, the king of the overused cliche, used to say, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

I’ll leave you to figure that one out.

3 Comments

A real life email to my husband during tense economic times

how modern women communicate with their men

A real life e-mail to my husband during tense economic times

Dear Mark,
While thinking about our financial difficulties this morning, I came up with a brilliant money making strategy. However, after much research, I’m sorry to report that there is not one single reality TV show I can apply to be on to increase our earnings. The only thing that even comes close is one for you. “Husbands!!! Is your wife driving you nuts?” Want to try to get on the Marriage Ref, Seinfelds new show?

I’ve checked out everything from “Does your spouse wear a snuggie?” (What the hell’s a snuggie?) to “Have you recently come back from the dead?” There’s nothing for me. Seriously. It’s a real bummer. I’m not really a shopaholic. (Although I know you might argue that point). I’m not addicted to prescription pain meds. I’m not even recently divorced. I almost qualified for The Apprentice. But of course I missed the deadline by three months.

One show advertises “Feel you’re in over your head as a parent?” That one really speaks to me. But you have to live in Los Angeles County. You haven’t cheated on me recently, have you? There’s a new National talk show looking for spouses who’ve been cheated upon who have strong convictions on the subject. (I’d kind of guess that would be all of them, wouldn’t you?)

Would you characterize yourself as controlling? There’s an ad for women with husbands who try to control their every move.

Do you often muse to yourself that I’m just not the woman you married? There’s a show for you on that issue.

We don’t have a blended family. No inter-racial components. No step-kids. Shit. We’re the most uninteresting family in the universe.

There’s even a show for Moms addicted to energy drinks. Figures I gave up my Red Bull a few years ago.

Wait, here’s one. You are pretty hot. They’re looking for men as bold and good looking as the guys from Jersey Shore, that MTV show. You’re kind of old though. Too bad. How about this? “Spoiled Wives.” Do you think I’m a spoiled brat in need of constant manicures, pedicures and facials? Ok, don’t answer that. I’m not applying for that one. Too bad I’m so artistic. There’s a show for Interior decorators who are really interior desecrators. There’s even a show for women who own pawn shops.

I’m not a young veteran, don’t want to confront someone about their slutty facebook pictures, I’m not even interested in confronting your mistress. I’m certainly not the real life 40 year old virgin. And as far as I know you don’t have a compulsion to cover the furniture in plastic wrap. Do you by any chance still suck your thumb?

I’m not sure what “Cakemania” is, but if you’re obsessed with it or hooked on performance enhancing drugs, I have a shot at a couple of shows. I doubt I’m smarter than a 5th grader. And I’m too darn old to try out for the “real” weather girl for a new iPhone App.

Guess I’ll just go back to clipping coupons.

Frugally yours,
debra

3 Comments

What’s in a name? Everything!

Serious question: Is it okay to call your spouse “mom” or “dad” or any derivation thereof? I’m not judging. It just seems weird to me. I admit that sometimes I refer to myself as “mommy.” Like when I say to my kids, “Mommy is tired right now and needs a few more sips of her Grey Goose Martini. I’ll join you in a few minutes…” And there are plenty of times when I say things like, “Why don’t you go and ask Daddy to help you open that ridiculously packaged toy that even a safe-cracker would have trouble unhinging.”

But I consciously try very hard not to call my husband “daddy.” That just seems so…so…Oedipal or Electra or whatever you call it. But I’ve noticed that lots of parents do that. So I’m wondering, is it just me or is this a little demented? I mean, are there statistics on couples who call each other parental names? Do they end up divorced more frequently? Or more likely, do they find themselves in safe but frigid marriages that are more based on codependency than mutual respect and attraction?

Every once in a while my husband will slip and call me “mom.” Boy does my ire-o-meter go off. “First of all, I am not your mother,” I immediately bite back, “I don’t want that job and frankly you couldn’t pay me enough to take on that responsibility.” (Note to readers, my hubbie’s mom is a lovely woman whom I happen to adore. Still, I don’t really know how she managed to allow my husband to grow into adulthood without turning to drugs, alcohol or cutting out his tongue.)

But the bigger question is, “Doesn’t calling your wife ‘mommy’ somehow destroy the passion in your physical relationship?” I mean the connotations are just…just…icky. I can’t be the only person who notes this and is bothered by it. Can I?

Please, tell me the truth. If you call your husband “daddy,” are you secretly wishing he’d pull you into his strong arms and tickle you till you puked as opposed to enfolding you into a romantic embrace that leads to a different kind of ecstasy? Is the whole “mommy” thing proof that you no longer see your wife as the lustful, erotic goddess she once was, and have now relegated her to the lowly position of chief cook, laundress and child-care provider?

I am troubled by this. Set me straight.

4 Comments

Give me back my Kindle!

I’m okay sharing my bank account, my bed, my body, my children, my soul etc… But don’t ask me to share my Kindle! Look, there are some things that are just not shareable, and my KIndle is one of them.

Okay, so it’s not really MY Kindle. If you want to be technical about it, it’s his. I bought it for him for his birthday last year. It is probably the only gift I’ve ever given him that he actually enjoys. He used it all summer during our travels and he used to use it each morning on the ellipticle. But he got busy at work, ceased exercising altogether and left it to atrophy on his bedside table.

I tried to leave it alone.I knew it wasn’t mine. And honestly, I didn’t think I would become so attached so quickly. But after three trips to various Barnes & Nobles, searching for my latest book club book, I decided it was absurd to waste my time looking for a hardcover version of some $25 book that I was literally going to read and then throw away. So in a weak moment, I ordered a book from the Kindle store and started reading.

Then I was hooked. I started using it every night before bedtime. After a few nights, I started taking it with me during the day for down-times during my carpool regime. I started to wonder how I had ever lived without it (kind of like garage door openers or television remote controls.) I began reading voraciously. One night it finally ran out of juice and I could barely cope. Luckily I found a way to stretch the cord to my bed so I could manage my now ritualistic nighttime reading.

And then it happened. I climbed into bed a about a week ago, turned on my bedside lamp and reached for my new addiction. It was gone. My husband was innocently snoozing beside me. I leapt out of bed and began racing through the house in search of my drug of choice. Finally I found it lodged between two cushions on the couch. I gently cradled it in my arms and safely returned to bed with it. But when I “slid and released the power switch to wake” my coveted mechanism, I was met not with Dinesh D’Souza’s Life After Death: The Evidence but instead found myself smack dab in the center of Norman Podhoretz’s Why are Jews Liberals? It was an afront to my psyche. The last thing I need to be reading before bedtime is some of my husband’s right-wing political propaganda.

I was able to find my spot back in my D’Souza book and his well researched data and philosophical musings helped to ease my mind and allowed me to drift off to sleep peacefully. But this was more than a one night mishap. Every night for a week I’ve gone through a similar trauma. One night I landed mysteriously in Stock Market Wizards by Jack Schwager. Another night proved particularly upsetting when I found myself trapped in the mystical Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life by Rav Michael Laitman. But perhaps most disturbing was my accidental forray into Stevens Levitt and Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.

I ask you, objectively, are these the kinds of books one should be reading as one relinquishes consciousness and ventures into another dimension? Certainly not! And more importantly, should I be forced consistently to rampage through the house in a frantic effort to locate this pint-size electronic device?

So I have decided to allow my husband the use of his Kindle under the following circumstances:

1) He must accept the fact that it is now my piece of equipment and while he may use it from time to time, he must remember to always keep it charged and replace it from whence it came.

2) I officially have the right of first refusal regarding Kindle usage.

3) Should a Kindle conflict arrise, I alone will assess the situation and render a fair and just judgement as to who is entitled to Kindle usage at that time.

4) He will be responsible for any maintanence/repairs needed on said Kindle.

5) Finally, should we fill up all available Kindle space we will jointly determine which books to delete. (With me obviously having the final say should we come to a standstill.)

Well, I feel much better. It’s wonderful when two people can learn to live harmoniously together. All it takes is a little effort and communication.