Is Heterosexuality AnUnsolvable Relationship Problem?

I received to following piece by e-mail today. It was intended to be funny and it is until you think about it for more than about 10 seconds.



Diary for Two


HER DIARY:

Tonight: I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a bar to have a drink.

I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it.

Conversation was not flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he did not say much.

I asked him what was wrong; he said, "Nothing."

I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said he was not upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it.

On the way home, told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly, and kept driving. I cannot explain his behavior. I do not know why he did not say, "I love you, too."

When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV He continued to seem distant and absent.

Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About 15 minutes later, he came to bed. To my surprise, he responded to my caress, and we made love.

However, I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep - I cried. I do not know what to do.

I am almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.

HIS DIARY:

Missed a big deer today, but at least I got laid.

Erectile Dysfunction, ED and Relationships

Getting beyond platitudes and generally good, but relatively unusable, advice about how to cope with erectile dysfunction in an ongoing relationship is difficult. If I hear myself or someone else say something about communication being vital, I may just throw up.


Of course, if your aren't in an ongoing relationship but would like to be and you can't get it up, you're really out there on your own. At least you don't have to hear about how important good communication is or get helpful advice from a partner.


Not that that isn't true that good communication is vital. It is, but that knowledge and $2 will get you a cup of coffee that tastes like they forgot to clean the coffee maker, which is probably true too.


Communication is basically just a pipe. You can run good things through it. You can run bad things through it. Things that help. Things that hurt.


They say that you can't use a map to get where you want to go until you know where you are. You can't use communication to get where you want to go until you know where you are too. And if you aren't really sure where it is you want to go in more than broad terms, the trip can get really interesting, . . . or overwhelming.


Maybe coming at it in a non-threatening, low pressure way. How about word association? Or maybe description of inkblots? Maybe a set of cards with cartoon situations on them where each person talks about what's going on, like in the old Stanford Binet IQ test, "put these cards in order." Just some ideas to do something different.


Can a female partner really understand just how incredibly confusing and upsetting erectile dysfunction is? I suppose so. I hope so. Depends on how committed and patient and curious she as she talks and listens.


On the other hand, I can't help but feel that if you haven't had one of these live things with a mind of its own in your pants for forty, fifty, sixty years, it seems unlikely that you'll be able to really understand the effects of it suddenly just lying there. (I know, I know, that kind of statement goes both ways. And that's true, but the subject is ED here.)


Guys have been getting erections since they were in the womb. Everyone manages that in different ways and it is not without its ambivalences, but when it goes it is a major loss.


I think one factor is that guys often are told that they need to communicate better with their partners, but don't really get into it.


As long as we have a hard part of us that is looking for something to be pushed into, communication may stay marginal from our point of view. But, lose that and now the only way anything is going to happen is with good communication, give and take, using a more feminine approach if you will, and we're in a whole new ball game. Very likely a ballgame that we never would have chosen, don't know how to play, and one that we're very tempted to sit out.


So, what to do? How to learn a new game that we don't even want to admit we have to play?


Or, do I have this all wrong? Really. What do you think?

Power in Relationships

How we allocate the power in our relationships is one of the central factors in how well those relationships work.

The power to decide what we'll do, how we'll do it, and who will do it, can be parcelled out in an almost infinite number of ways, but couples who get along and prosper generally feel good about how they do it.

Now, this is not to say that any particular mix works best. No, totally egalitarian/shared relationships, traditional male head of family, or any other particular style does not win out. What does is having they participants comfortable with the way they do it.

So, especially in this time of so many changes with retirements, grandchildren, etc, we need to reconsider this from time to time.

When you decide it's time to do this a structured approach can keep you focus on the issues and off the people. The best one I have come across can be found HERE.

Beware of Communication in Relationships

Conventional wisdom would have us think that good communication is what it takes to have good relationships. That's partly right, but it depends.

What it depends on is what we communicate. If we are effective at letting our partners know that we appreciate them, support them, feel good when we are around them, then that builds the relationship.

Actually, couples who are having problems are often very good at communicating how bad they feel to each other.

Communication, then, isn't usually the problem, it's what we choose to communicate that either builds or tears down to feelings of closeness and safety necessary for a good relationship.

Unlike many lifestyle changes, keeping what we communicate to our partners positive and supportive changes things right away. As seniors it seems like we're deluged with things we should be doing, the results of which we may not feel for weeks or months or perhaps never. It's nice to find one that kicks in right away.