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Sex matters
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Ten signs that all is not well with your primary relationship..
15 May 2006 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
- He/she has excessive unaccounted for mileage on the car and chunks of time and money for which he/she will not account.
- He/she hides bills for credit cards, cell phones and bank statements.
- He/she uses lower or different tones on his/her phone when you are around.
- He/she is present in body alone because his/her head seems to prefer living or being elsewhere.
- You are checking the mileage on the car, clockwatching to know where your he/she is, and counting his/her money to know where every cent goes.
- You are rummaging through bills for credit cards, cell phones and bank statements in an effort to retrace his/her steps.
- You are trying to listen to every conversation he/she has with anyone.
- You are present in body alone because you spend your waking moments trying to get into his/her head to see what he/she is thinking, feeling, planning, and wishing.
- Details for business trips (who, when, why) are obscure or hard to pin down.
- Compliments feel like efforts to manipulate; apologies feel like warnings; looking in each other’s eyes feels very unsettling.
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What can I do to make be someone who doesn’t seem to notice me become attracted to me?
07 May 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
You might become more seductive, pretend you are wealthier or more educated than you are, change you hair, nose, breasts, accent, interests and lose weight – but none of it will work in helpful ways. Trying to be something you are not, is most unattractive, and nothing you re-create of yourself will be real, convincing, enduring, or – ironically – attractive.
The energy you spend will exhaust you and distort the natural beauty afforded all people. Who you are cannot be successfully hidden for long and hiding behind some fabrication is deceitful and unkind.
If it were possible to do something to make a person become attracted to you, your efforts would have to be more than doubled to maintain that person’s interests.
If you want to increase the possibility of being noticed by healthy people (the unhealthy, who are worth avoiding, are willingly fooled by pretense) master appropriate social skills, personal hygiene; dress well, work hard, be honest, read widely; avoid gossiping and gossips; pursue your faith, loves, skills and interests. Apart from these things, do nothing. Remember: if you think of yourself as bait you might just get eaten!
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Costly dating errors
06 May 2006 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
When you first meet someone and decide to have a first date don’t:
1. Get too close too quickly.
2. Get physical.
3. Give or lend money.
4. Tell everything.
5. Allow the person to move in with you.
6. Let them use your credit cards.
7. Let them use your car.
8. Let them sign or use your name on anything.
9. Let them use your address.
10. Let them baby-sit your children.
11. Modify your values or your morals to impress him/her.
12. Go against the advice of people who have loved you for a long time.There is no love at first sight! Exercise cautious wisdom in all new relationships. While thinking readers might find this list absurdly unnecessary, I have had bright, thinking clients who have done one (or a few) of these things on a first date. Their errors have been very costly to some clients.
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Triggers – hit hardest in intimate relationships
17 Apr 2006 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
Have you had feelings come over, even overwhelm you, that you recognize from childhood? Has background music, the whiff of a particular perfume, seemed to emotionally cripple you? Unresolved childhood traumas will almost certainly visit victims as they get older.
Sadly, it is in intimacy that negative associations of childhood most strongly stir. It is in the beauty of loving relationships that the memory of an inappropriate or abusive moment tugs eerily from a distance. A forced closeness years ago now hinders you when you long for adult intimacy. It is in love that the traumas of childhood raise ugly heads. So intricate is our human makeup that intimate connections stir positive and also negative memories. It’s negative triggers that are indiscriminate, often unyielding, forming debilitating links to the hidden pain of our lives.
Tensions with a spouse might have nothing to do with the spouse but with what’s unresolved from our adolescents. We fight yesterday’s battles today, with the “wrong” person. The conflict is an attempt to settle childhood scores. There’s benefit to discovering relationship struggles often have their origins a generation from where we might seek resolution. Examination, prayerful consideration of our bundle of triggers can defuse them and peace might be found.
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Sex education, puberty, and your children:
11 Apr 2006 by Rod Smith / 5 Comments
1. Be the first to talk to your child about sex. Do not leave this facet of your child’s life in the hands of the school, Hollywood, television, church, or other children. Your avoidance of this topic, when it is so prevalent in the culture, sends your child a confusing message.
2. Rather than wait for some “big talk,” have many “small talks” about all manner of human matters. This will make a “big talk” unnecessary.
3. Don’t assume your child is a “blank slate” when it comes to matters of sex and relationships. Try to access what he or she already knows by allowing the conversation to take on a life of its own. Adults who “steer” conversations usually end up where the adult desires rather than where the child wants or needs to be.
4. Don’t trick or trap children into conversations. Parents trick or trap children and then wonder why children cease trusting parents.
5. Parents ought not to rely on “Spot had puppies” or “we visited a farm” to avoid warm and pointed talk about sex with their child. Animals have nothing to teach humans about human sexuality.
6. Parents who are guilt-ridden about sex and sexuality ought to work through their own hang-ups if they want their children to be less complicated than themselves. Married adults who cannot engage in meaningful conversations about sex are unlikely to be capable of helpful conversations about sex with their children. Talk with each other about this beautiful human gift without embarrassment, without trivializing its importance, or regarding it as taboo.
7. While it is often believed men should talk with sons and women with daughters about puberty and sexuality, both parents can do equally well in talking with both boys and girls.
8. Physical changes accompanying puberty ought not surprise children. Ideally many positive conversations will predate these changes for your child and therefore will be changes he or she knowledgeably expects and welcomes.
9. While physical changes might be “old hat” to other family members, the changes are likely to usher in a heightened sensitivity for the child. This journey ought not become a source of humor, teasing or belittling. Don’t announce Johnny’s “broken” voice or the hair on his upper lip. If you want a child to be willing to speak with you about important, private matters, respect the child long before such conversations become necessary.
10. Don’t be surprised when your carefree preadolescent, who has hardly closed a door in his life, wakes up one day and becomes Mr. Private, double locking doors everywhere he goes! The innocent child, who once gave no thought to running naked from the shower to his room, will probably stop this completely. He or she may also want you and other family members out of the room when he or she is dressing. Respect this without drawing attention to it.
11. Respect closed doors. The child who says he or she would rather not talk about matters of human sexuality ought to receive a secret gift of an age-appropriate book on the topic. Wrap it. Leave it for your child to find.
12. Your child’s transition into adulthood, along the often-troubled road of adolescents, ought to be as guilt-free as possible. Almost all teenagers engage in regular, lone, sexual self-gratification. The heavy layers of guilt so frequently associated with such activity are, in my opinion, more damaging than the act could ever be. As a parent, do your part in alleviating potential for guilt.
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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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