Life.Currenttoday.com - 2 Cents

• My wife loves antiques and Victorian furniture, I like modern furniture.
• My wife loves atmosphere at a restaurant. I like to see what I’m eating. It’s all about the food.
• My wife loves the site-seeing on a trip. I want to get where I’m going.
• My wife loves to see homes and interior design programs on TV–like HGTV. I like the History channel, the Learning channel, Sci-fi, and action movies.
• My wife loves a party: being social. I like quiet evenings alone.
• My wife drives the hottest Pontiac-Trans Am 2000 WS6 package. I drive a 1992 ranger pick-up.
• My wife works in at a Christian University. I supervise a fabrication shop [factory].

Yes. We have all the makings of a wonderful relationship marking a marriage that should last a long, long time.

Not according to online dating services.

Why do you suppose all these online dating services try to match up people with the same likes and hobbies? Hasn’t it been said forever that “opposites attract?”

It is my experience that there are some foundational elements in a relationship that have to be as identical as possible. But the rest of it is the spice of life, and variation is essential in the rest of it for sparks to fly.

What are the foundational elements?

Things like religion, child rearing, and fundamental concepts of right and wrong and of life style. If these don’t match, then the wrong kind of sparks will fly–believe me.

In fact, I have a rule of thumb for young people in a serious relationship: Multiply anything that bugs you, or you think is quarky about your partner, about 20 times or more. If you could deal with it at that level, then it passes the test.

So, keep life interesting with someone that intrigues you. But keep life stable with someone that has the same concrete in their foundation.

Regards.

Share this link with others on the following sites:
               

I was reading through one of the love and relationship articles on my website, when I noticed one of the ads on the side.

I glanced at it with a little inner chuckle. It was advertising love and love potions–and they were guaranteed. I scrolled on down, double checking my article for spelling and appearance. As I scrolled back up, I confronted the same ad for love potions again with a fresh thought.

I was struck with the picture of an advertisement on the internet for love through a love potion. The ridiculousness of the thought turned into a hilarious thing to me in a moment.

Here we are with the technology to interact at a world wide level with people from all walks of life in an instant. Was it not a strange irony to find this extreme technology being used to advertise a love potion?

With just a very little thought, I can force this question into realms of human spiritualism, belief systems, and Harry Potter style uses of technology that seem the very heart of irony.

We have come so far, not to have come so far.

Or, perhaps, we want technology to enhance what makes us human rather than remove it.

Well, I don’t know about love potions, but I do know a few folks that find the love and relationship in their life with this technology. And, like anything, just as many use it for false love and relationships.

It seems we can’t create anything good that isn’t all at once as bad as it is good. But, it isn’t the creation. It is the user.

So, do love and be loved. Find a relationship and give to it. Use whatever you have as a good tool in good hands. Love through technology is as magical as all the love potions ever were. To many of us older folks, these levels of technology are rather magical in themselves.

Regards.

Share this link with others on the following sites:
               

Today marks one week since I watched my dad die.

I called mom again yesterday. We talked about how she was feeling and how the family back home was doing. She said she was going to clear out dad’s stuff. She just couldn’t bear it being around anymore. I told her she might want to give it a little time first. It would seem a shame to get rid of everything and then wish you had it back.

Then we chatted about her hobbies and things she could do now. I told her she should take the time to do things she had always wanted to do. I told her not to even give the slightest thought to expense. It didn’t matter to my brother or me if there was even one penny left. My brother and I both live just fine. She should take some time with a friend and travel the world–enjoy the things she always wanted to see and do.

I started naming places to visit and friends she could ask along for the trip. She had a reason not to consider each friend. She had a reason not to see each place. After a bit, when I had just about narrowed in on the perfect place, and the perfect friend, she started crying. She couldn’t speak for a moment. Then she sobbed over the phone.

She sobbed, “I don’t want to go anywhere anymore. I don’t want to do anything. We always went everywhere together. I can’t imagine going anywhere without him.”

Well, now I had done it. What I wanted to be a consoling call from her son had turned into a painful reminder of lost love.

All the wonderful stories of puppy love, of first love, of happy ever after had lived out between my mom and dad. They would have completed fifty wonderful years together within just a year and a half. Now, suddenly, it was all over. We were at the fairy tale’s end. We had discovered the ‘after’ that follows ‘happily ever after.’

This wasn’t a romance gone sour. This wasn’t a wanton dream of forbidden fruit that had faded from hope. This wasn’t an ideal dreamed and forever out of reach. This was the romance. This was the dream. This was the fruit fully enjoyed. And now that it was lost, this was the greatest kind of lost love. This was a thing to savor, now gone, now stolen. What was left was the deepest emptiness one could fathom. A hole in the soul.

Mom’s soul mate was gone.

This last week has brought some things home to me. I have looked at my daughter with a new look. I have considered priorities with a new born arrangement. I have genuinely examined my wife from this new vantage and found that I love her all the more.

Let me challenge you to make every effort to bask in the relationships you have, while you have them. You are living each moment for the last time. Taste it. Smell it. Relish it with all the desperation of the deepest breath drawn at the surface of the water from a dive to the furthest reaches your consciousness would allow.

Know the time. Know the riches of this moment’s passing. Heap up the pleasure of being and of being known. Love one another.

Regards.

Share this link with others on the following sites:
               

It’s funny how we have so many misconceptions throughout our lives. The older we get, the more we learn. The more we learn the more we know we don’t know.

I often joke about how someday I will have learned so much, I won’t know anything at all.

I also poke fun at my marriage in similar ways. It is a familiar question to ask someone you don’t see every day, “How are you doing?” Or, “How’s it going?” I commonly respond to this with something like: “Fine. Well. . . I think I’m doing fine. I haven’t talked to my wife yet today. Sometimes when I think I’m doing fine, she’ll let me know I’m mistaken.”

Little quips like this are fun to play with and usually harmless. Many of us tend to develop a number of such quips that we use to avoid a serious conversation. Usually because we are too lazy to really get to know someone, as if we needed another person in our lives to worry about.

So, we go about our lives with a set of superficial relationships with their respective superficial interactions. It’s not that we don’t care about people. It’s that we care TOO much, and don’t need another person’s problems tearing at our hearts. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. It’s probably closer to the truth that we are so selfish, we don’t want someone interfering with our life. Maybe it’s in between the two extremes. Let your own guilt trip tell you where you’re at.

Anyway, I’ve noticed how easy it is to develop a crust over our true selves. Sometimes it happens because we’ve been hurt. But, it can also happen because we have filled our time up with being busy. Between work, home responsibilities, TV time, computer time, and personal time, we don’t have time for relationships.

Now, this is tough enough when it comes to people outside our inner circle. The problem with many of us is that it is creeping in on our inner circle as well. Worse, it is becoming the definition of our generation. We don’t have time for others. We don’ have time for our family. And, we don’t have time for our spouse.

A while back, my wife’s and my friend married after many years of living single. A few weeks ago, she sent an email out to her entire address book with a change of email notice. That’s all fine, but she went on and on about how special her man was, how she changed her name, and wasn’t it so-o-o special how she changed her email to the absolutely perfect man’s name. She had changed her email to MRS.HisLastName@her.net and it was so scrumptious and sweet and—-my goodness, it was just stinking and reeking of sweetness over-full of giddy, puppy-like love. For crying out loud! Wasn’t she old enough to be past that!?

Shortly after, I realized how sad it was that any of us ‘get past that.’ I talk an awful lot about relationships. And, here was an example of what mine could be [it once was]. And, I was tromping it down in my mind as silly.

Well, we should all be so silly. I’m gonna open my wife’s car door all the time from now on. Even when we’re in my old beat up pick up truck, and it doesn’t seem as appropriate.

Anyway, you do it too. Do what it takes to keep your spouse feeling special. And, it wouldn’t hurt all of us to scrape away a little of the crust we have to reveal softer hearts toward others in our lives as well. We may find there’s a few folks out there that would make some really good friends.

Regards.

Share this link with others on the following sites: