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Love
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Our blended family is working….
28 Jul 2009 by Rod Smith / No Comments
I regularly receive very encouraging mail from men and women who have worked hard, sometimes employing a thought or principle read in this column, to become as happy and productive as possible with their family. Here’s one I received today:
Take up your life
“I am part of a blended family and have been for 17 months. After doing a lot of reading (and with some help from Rod) about coping with issues in our family, we have settled into a wonderful life. I have realised now how very blessed my boyfriend and I are in that we have achieved something so amazing in a short space of time. We are not without our problems like most families but they are small, normal, and easily solved. We have thrown five children into the mix. They fight like cat and dog but also love each other dearly and refer to each other as brothers and sisters. They protect each other and stand by each other and sometimes do unite against my boyfriend and me. So, for those of you in blended families, they can work and bring so much love and joy to everyone in them.” -
My husband is steadily gaining weight…..
09 Jul 2009 by Rod Smith / 2 Comments
“My husband is steadily gaining weight. He is obese (30kg over-weight) and we’re in our thirties. I’ve tried changing to a healthy eating routine and he loses interest. I’ve bought trainers to encourage him to begin walking with me. I have told him directly he needs to lose weight and he does nothing. It angers me that I make the effort to stay in shape by eating healthily and exercising regularly for various reasons, one of which is so that he can be proud of me in public. I am turned off in the bedroom and avoid intimacy whenever. I’m bothered that I’m looking at other men because I do love my husband. How do I get him to realize that this is a serious issue for me without hurting his feelings?”
KATHRYN: Pushing him to lose weight is producing the opposite results. No amount of energy spent on your part will ever be enough. The weight is symptomatic of a deeper issue, perhaps feelings of inadequacy. Thoughts about other men points to intimacy problems in your marriage that have nothing to do with sex. Plan a date for the two of you and look beneath the layers of subcutaneous tissue where you will indeed find your husband again. Energy spent in this way will not be wasted and perhaps he will begin discovering who he is and see you again in the process.
ROD: 1. Get his weight off your shoulders by telling him your complete truth. Your emotional health is more important than his feelings. Incredibly, he is free to dig his grave with his teeth or to find appropriate help.
2. Never have sex you don’t want.
3. Realize that while you perceive yourself as responsible for his health you will ruin your own. While it’s your issue it will never be his. The best help you can be is by NOT helping.
4. Get out of his sinking boat by taking your hands off his diet, exercise, and image. Remember the more your work the more he won’t. Sorry, this is not because your husband is in some manner peculiar, it is the nature of dependency.JEAN: If you are frustrated that your husbandhas gained weight since your marriage, there must be frustration on his part too. Advice we listen to; but it’s pain we obey. Your husband will need to realize himself that he doesn’t want to be overweight because recovery for him will be hard work. Addiction in a relationship can subtly draw in the partner who tries to ‘fix’ the other. When he or she can’t, he or she can become controlling, angry, and resentful. Find ways to encourage your husband but look after your own needs. Seek help about wanting someone else.
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(Mis)beliefs about love…
03 Jul 2009 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Easy-to-make fundamental (primordial) errors of belief humans often make in relationships can unsettle (challenge) the strongest of commitments. These “emotional fault-lines” can require intensive understanding on behalf of the one so inflicted, and, when not embraced and accepted by others (I do not mean appeased) these troubled foundations can result in consequential ramifications in day-to-day loving, living, and parenting:
You can love and NOT worry...
1. Attention equals love and the amount of attention reflects the amount of love. To mistake attention with love and the lack of attention with the lack of love. “If you love me then I will be the focus of much (hopefully all) of your attention,” and,”If you give your attention to someone else it means you love them and not me or you love them more than you love me.”
2. Worry (anxiety) equals love. To think (or feel) that the presence of anxiety or worry or concern is a sign of love and commitment. “If I love you then I must worry about you,” or “If you love me then how can you be so seemingly worry-free about me?” or “When you love someone you think about that person and worry about what they are doing all day, or you don’t love them.”
3. Togetherness, unity, and being “on the same page” are signs of love and commitment. “How can we possibly love each other if we don’t think and feel and see things in as much the same way as possible? There, look at Jack and Jill across the street, they are so in love she even thinks for him, they dress the same, and he calls her 15 times a day at work to let her know he’s concerned about her safety. Now that – that is love.” -
You said there’s no such thing as “love at first sight”
14 Jun 2009 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“I appreciate your insights and agree with you 99.9% of the time and the other 0.1% of the time I could be wrong. The only time I have found myself to be at variance was a recent article. There was a thought that caught my attention namely ‘Love at first sight does not exist.’ This is a reality for some people. I had love at first sight with a girl (aged 15) when I was just 17 years old. Never loved a person that much from minute-one, till when it all split up after six months. For 20 years thereafter I wished everyday (all day) that it would somehow magically come together again as it had done on that first evening we laid eyes on each other. There is an important clarification needed here! Love at first sight is not something that really happens to people in their late 20′s or 30′s or 40′s and so on. It is something that can only really happen before one becomes jaundiced and suspicious. It is most likely only going to happen with your first love. And ideally, for it to happen, the heart of a person must be soft and easy and not yet battered and bruised.” (Letter edited for length)
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Prevailing love
04 Jun 2009 by Rod Smith / 2 Comments
Love prevails. I am not referring to the kind of love associated with romance, although such love is of course vastly important. I am referring to a love that is beyond romantic attraction, love that is usually beyond humans unless they know, first-hand, something about suffering, something about loss, hurt, about loneliness and abandonment.
Take up your life....
The love that prevails is sometimes born in people who know how painful life can be. I say sometimes, because tough events can also produce bitterness, not love, in others. Prevailing love is not about good feelings, about an emotional high, nor is it about being known or rewarded for good deeds.
The kind of love is born or developed in the wake of suffering prevails because it has learned that there is goodness in others, that there is hope in the world, that there is reward in believing in the goodness of others.
Love people today. Do something counter-cultural to the spirit of self-seeking in your office, at the hospital where you work, or at the school where you teach. Offer a open hand of love and generosity to a struggling person. Turn your own reservoir of pain and suffering into an act of love.
Love prevails, and it wants to prevail in you.
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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