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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
I am a young man who's got the beautiful sons, got the beautiful wife, got the good job, got the friends, got milk, but not got God. Wife got God big time, and understandably wants us to attend church every Sunday morning as a family unit. I go along to get along, and she appreciates this. But ...
I cherish my limited time during the weekends to relax and read and play. I resent that I must wake up early, get dressed as if going to work and spend three hours in church rather than doing things I enjoy. I've spoken about this to my wife, who is unyielding on the topic -- "We must attend church together." Am I being selfish or should I push my interests?
Not an Atheist but Not Religious Either
Dear Not,
Oh, just go to church. Why not? It's important to your wife, and doing it shows respect to her, and being in church as a family gives her respect among her churchgoing friends.
Make space for yourself somewhere else. Tell your boss you'll be at work at noon on Wednesdays from now on. Or maybe you have a favorite hobby that your wife finds boring, such as winter camping. Propose a family camping trip to Manitoba in February as an experience to draw you all closer together.
Dear Mr. Blue,
My husband and I have weathered so many storms in our four years -- his relapse into alcoholism and an unfortunate prescription to a libido-killing, personality-altering drug; my subsequent feelings of rejection and a brief, self-destructive dalliance; impossible differences between me and his highly dysfunctional family -- but we still love each other thoroughly and want to focus on what comes next in our life together.
The problem is that we've lost the ability to be intimate. Sex is difficult, nearly impossible, for me -- for reasons I don't understand, I freeze into an emotional paralysis when confronted with an intimate sitution. I don't know how to let go of myself anymore, and he doesn't seem to either. We used to have an amazingly satisfying sexual relationship, and I grieve for what we lost. At 28 I'm too young to have lost the sensual side of my personality.
The love is there, but not that spark that unhinges all these inhibitions. How can we find each other again?
Longing
Dear Longing,
Your sexual feelings for him are tucked into your brain, where all the emotional memories are stored, and they have been derailed by betrayal and wrongdoing and dread. But start over, as if you barely know each other (this may be true), and court each other, and these memories will return. Let the bad associations fade, and help to right yourselves by practicing appreciation, kindness, generosity and physical intimacy of the simple variety, caressing, whispering, snuggling. Be gentle and affectionate with each other, and desire will return, and when it does, you'll know it.
Dear Mr. Blue,
I'm a 23-year-old guy and I've fallen for a wonderful woman (she's 22) whom I've known for a couple of years. We've been nothing but the best of friends, and lately I find myself more and more in love with her, but we are nothing alike: She likes music that I would never listen to, movies I would never see, food that I would never eat, etc. It's silly of me to think things wouldn't work out because of our differences, but how off-base am I about this? About the only thing we have in common is our desire to live in Tokyo. (We're both foreigners there.) Should I pack up my love for this wonderful woman or is there some way to be more accepting of her tastes?
Troubled in Tokyo
Dear Troubled,
People fall in love with unlike people, opera fans with jazz hounds, carnivores with lotus eaters, and it makes for good comedy, which is hardly inimical to love. A little friction is good for keeping up one's interest. And, given time, she will gradually educate you to accept her tastes and even share some of them.
