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Space
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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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He is driving me crazy (with his jealousy)
18 Apr 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
He is driving me crazy! He goes through my mail. He scrolls the computer to see the websites I visit. I run a daycare. He accuses me of doing stuff with every dad, grandpa, uncle. I have never cheated but I feel as though I am being treated worse than if had. My daughter is 3 and he is like a step dad and has been there all her life. I am afraid if I leave him she will never get to see him and if she does he will tell her dad to start problems. He even has his mom and dad look down at our house to be sure nobody is here. Please write something about what I can do. (Letter edited)
Jealousy is a virus and he is riddled with it. His jealousy has NOTHING to do with you or your behavior. Is this the kind of man you want showing your daughter what men are like? I would hope not! Behave as you would hope your daughter would behave were she to one day find herself in a similar situation. Focus on your behavior and not on his! Unless you get yourself free, things will only get worse.
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A love story
16 Apr 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Steve and Ann Reynolds, my neighbors, have been married for 25 years.
Some years ago, Steve and Ann were each aware that Ann deeply wanted to return to university to pursue a Masters Degree. Having four teenagers, careers, and a home, the prospects of one parent assuming a heavy schedule of university classes was not too daunting for Steve or Ann.
Steve told Ann he’d take care of the children’s complicated lives of school, sport and extra-curiccular activities. He agreed to run the home, cook, do the shopping and manage the mass of laundry generated by six people. Steve, apart from working, agreed facilitate all their domestic responsibilities so Ann could focus on her studies – for the next four years!
They did it! With remarkable cooperation from the children, Steve did all he said he’d do (no maid, no yard help) while Ann completed her degree achieving high honors.
It was a pleasure to sit near the family in a packed auditorium and watch a husband, three sons and a daughter, enthusiastically applaud a wife and mother as she walked across the stage at her graduation ceremony. Such enduring cooperation between equal adults, each doing what was best for all concerned, makes a fine demonstration of what being in love is all about.
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My son heard the dreaded words, “I need space.”
28 Feb 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“‘I need my space,’ (The Mercury. Friday February 24, 2006) were the few words said to my son upon returning overseas and on the day he was to propose to his girlfriend. He was home for Christmas and for three weeks she called him every day. Now he has been thrown into a state of collapse. Your article was so real for me, and, being a mom so far away I am writing to you to know what advice I should be give. I have gone from being sympathetic to having a hard line attitude. At the same time I don’t want to close our line of communication. He has given her a second chance, which lasted two weeks. He is slightly better but from being a positive bubbly chap to being a heartbroken negative person whom I don’t know.”
I’d suggest you leave it completely up to him. If your son had the courage and strength to find love (or what he thought to be love) in a far off place he probably has what it takes to survive this break up.
Engagements, or plans to marry, are easier to break than a marriage. It is better this couple gets the “space” it needs before a marriage than after it. It is a lot cheaper!
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I need my space…..
23 Feb 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“I need my space” are some of the toughest words a partner can hear. They ought to be used with great caution. The short utterance can emotionally disable a person and send them into a rapid emotional, even physical, decline.
Asking for space always raises questions:
Does that mean you want out?
Does that mean someone else has come along to occupy my space?
When did I begin to be in “your space” in a manner that was uncomfortable to you?
How long have you been “putting up” with me?
How long have you been planning this?
Why did not you tell me earlier?
Don’t you see this is very unfair since you have been thinking this a long time and have all you plans in place while I am taken by surprise?
We have been doing this, this way for a long time.
I thought you supported the way we operate?Telling someone with whom you have shared life that you need space might be met with utter confusion. When a partner “needs space” a sudden vacuum enters and one or both people no longer know exactly how to behave with each other anymore.
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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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