Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Some among my extended family have hit a “rough patch”; it matters not who, because it would be indecent to refer to specific individuals even with the names withheld. And every single thing I notice about them now, pertains to other handfuls of other couples I’ve met and known across generations.
I found the words I scribbled down late tonight, to be sufficiently generic not to betray the confidence of anyone. And they describe something in our ultra-sophisticated society that has caused me countless years of frustration —
What the hell am I missing here? Everything below applies to couples that have gone in for all kinds of counseling. Spiritual, dollars-fer-minutes, kownsulers-R-us, some combination of those. The flavoring of the counseling doesn’t seem to matter. The results always seems to shake out the same way.
Again, the prevailing viewpoint has found my opinions and observations to be deplorable, and the prevailing viewpoint won’t say why. It only instructs me to shape up.
They keep telling me counseling “does wonders.” They keep implying in a bullying way, without coming out & actually saying it, that when one spouse suggests “we go to counseling” and the other spouse says “no,” that the second spouse has committed some kind of awful sin; a violation of vows that were in fact never taken; an injustice, even.
As seems to always be the case, I enter into conflict with the prevailing viewpoint simply by remembering what I have learned from my own senses and long-term memory.
I see that couples who go into counseling, with impressive consistency across the decades, graduate rather breezily and casually into the toxic chapter of matrimony that might be called “The Time of the List.” You know. Where, when one spouse has a list of liabilities, shortcomings, faults, call ’em what you will — any occasion is appropriate for the other spouse to recite it. To whomever. Anytime. At least, that’s the way couples behave when they go into counseling. And I find it even more disturbing that, if the list is some thirty items in length, the counseled spouse seems to have some unbearably tall explaining to do to some invisible authoritarian figure if s/he has presence of mind to recite only 29.
My senses and memory also tell me that no couple ever bounces back from The Time of The List. It’s terminal. If the marriage does survive, it’s a shell of what it once was. But it seldom does.
I’ve never been to counseling myself. But the desperation these counseled couples seem to feel as they spin the wheels in their minds, struggling to add yet another item to The List — oh dear oh dear, I very well may have missed something, think harder! — is palpable. It doesn’t look to me at all like the kind of effort that goes into prolonging a marriage, or making it more mutually nurturing or beneficial. I have to ask, what are these counselors telling these counseled couples?
Update: Actually, it occurs to me that I’m not the first to have noticed this about counseling. Not by far. I remember in this comedy — it’s considered a far-from-serious effort, unworthy of praise, but I’ve always admired it and I shelled out a premium price for it even though you can only get it on VHS — they addressed all these observations, and more, head-on in a scene involving Richard Benjamin’s character and his wife.
Other than the foregoing, I haven’t noticed much. Except that there will never be another Natalie Wood.
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Let’s be honest: the call for counseling always comes from the female. Who is, after all, the one looking for outside validation and another team member to bully the husband/boyfriend into submission.
Yes, I’ve been forced to go to counseling, to say the same stuff in front of a therapist that I’d said a million or so times in front of the girl, who barely paid attention, until someone was charging a hundred bucks an hour. Then she’d perk right up.
What an utter waste of time and money (but never mine on the latter. I’m tricky that way.) Luckily, it’s easy to get a therapist of either gender on your side. And once you do, the girl will not want to go anymore. Simply state your position non-intensely, like you’re just thinking of it in a meandering fashion, and follow it with a nod to the question or statment you know they will make in response–what have you done about it, etc. Example (not from my life, purely hypothetical):
You: Yeah, so I’d kinda like to have sex more often. And well, I’m really a big fan of oral sex. But she doesn’t seem to be into it. I’ve asked her if there’s anything I can do or say that will make it better, but I don’t know, it just ain’t happening.
The aforementioned works because you’re playing dumb on purpose, which gives the therapist a gap to step into, one you can handle. You know full well that nothing you say will make oral sex more comfortable for the girl if she doesn’t like it, but that’s not the point. The point is to appear to be naive and less “with it” than the therapist or the girl, while simultaneously saying that you’ve enacted a strategy and failed to fix the problem yourself.
With the right attitude and projected persona, the therapist will then turn to the girl for the answer to the quandary, since you obviously are too simple to create a problem on purpose. Your girl will get all intense about answering for her part in the controversy, because you’ve hammered it out with her a bunch already and she is probably smarting from stuff you said in the past. Add to that the fact that she was hoping to go to therapy so that someone else would tell you that she doesn’t have to blow you, and her frustration will visibly grow.
So there you are, cool as a cucumber, there she is, crying and yelling, and making the room uncomfortable. And the therapist sides with you, tells her that she should identify what is discomforting about oral sex and develop a way to get around it so your relationship can move forward–basically, the same stuff you’ve been telling her already. Those sessions will end immediately.
- sanskara | 02/05/2008 @ 20:38Forgot to say that I call this technique “dumb and thoughtful.” Works great.
- sanskara | 02/05/2008 @ 20:43