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Sex matters
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Betrayed while pregnant: Should I feel betrayed?
08 Jan 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Reader’s Question: In the early stages of my pregnancy, I found out that my husband was accepting phone calls and gifts from an ex-girlfriend. This hurt terribly. He agreed it was not right and, although he would not be nasty to her, he agreed to cut off all contact. By chance, now months later, I overheard my husband on the phone to his ex and have now found out he never severed the contact and still has not. Am I crazy to feel betrayed?
Rod Smith’s Response: You are not crazy: you have been doubly betrayed. I amazed how often men will protect a woman they are NOT married to, while being quite comfortable with hurting a wife! Your husband would have been wise to shoo off the ex the first time she reared her destructive, seductive head.
I’d suggest face-to-face help with a mediator capable of asking your husband difficult questions. Were I contracted to assist, I’d demand a meeting with the woman, your husband and you, all in the same room. Understandably, having just delivered a child, you might not feel quite up to this.
Then, come to think of it, your husband probably would not agree to such a meeting. Men who deal in deception seldom welcome open dialogue. Besides, it might get nasty long before it gets nice!
Thanks for reading YOU AND ME with Rod Smith
see also:
difficultrelationships.blogspot.com
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Should I ask him to have tests for STD before we have sex?
29 Dec 2005 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“Last month I met a man and things are heading towards sex. Should I ask him to have tests for sexually transmitted diseases before we are intimate?”
Yes. Since you find the idea of sex with strangers acceptable, such tests, for each of you, would be a good idea. I will not, given that you are adults, attempt to dissuade you from performing “intimate” acts outside of a context of a stable relationship, but you might consider getting to know this person, and perhaps even marrying him, before you take so sacred a step. (I have said “intimate” because you might be naked but there it is very unlikely there will be any authentic intimacy – intimacy takes YEARS).
Rod Smith, MSMFT
I challenge you to tell this person that you do not enter deep relationships with men until you have seen what they are like under pressure, seen how they treat their parents, children, street people, waiters, bank tellers, and helpless animals. Tell him you do not build relationships with men who are in debt, who do not give generously to the poor.
Love, commitment, honesty, integrity, the things people usually want from an intimate relationship, are impossible to achieve with someone you have just met and these qualities are unlikely to emerge in a relationship when sexual behavior occurs before the relationship is sufficiently developed.
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Found Porn in Son’s Room
18 Jul 2005 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
“I found graphic pornography in my fifteen-year-old son’s bedroom. My husband and I want to handle this in a positive way. We have never been open to talking to him about sex.”
Together, as husband and wife, tell your son that you have found pornography in his room. Gently, and with kindness, tell him that you cannot perpetually monitor what he reads and that his reading material is something he himself will have to control.
Discussing pornography, and teaching your son healthy attitudes about sex, have nothing in common. Pornography is about lust, conquest, depersonalizing of people, runaway imaginations. It has nothing to do with love. Tell him you do not endorse pornography because it focuses on body parts, not people. It separates people from their bodies and makes people into objects in the mind of the user. Healthy sexuality, at minimum, is about love, respect, mutuality and equality.
Teach your son (as a couple) using discussions, books and videos, everything you want him to know about healthy human sexuality. Get over your hurdles about having such discussions. I am often amazed that parents will go to enormous effort to plan their approach to parenting, and yet miss talking about matters of human sexuality altogether!
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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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