Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Frighteningly Validating


I'm not sure how I found it, but there is a series of Web sites where one can anonymously post "confessions" about things. There's one for moms (http://www.truemomconfessions.com/), one for dads (http://www.truedadconfessions.com/), one for people who toil in an office environment (http://www.trueofficeconfessions.com/) and for whatever reason, there's one for tree huggers (http://www.truegreenconfessions.com/).

Now before you jump over and check them out, let me warn you: THEY ARE ADDICTIVE.

One might immediately read about these sites and think to oneself, "Well, that's nothing but a way for mental voyeurs to get off," but in reality, the idea is genius, and of course as a reader, it's interesting to see if other people are thinking the same things you are thinking.

But there is a dark side to confessing one's secrets...sometimes your worst fear is realized--that you are alone in your situation. Sometimes when you post, such as the guy who wrote, "Dear Daughter, I'm sorry I ever hurt you," other people are either too ashamed to publicly empathize (by clicking the "me too" button) or they want to distance themselves from such an obvious confession that they pretend not to see it at all.

Overall, the dad's confessions are pretty obvious--not enough
sex, tired of paying child support, I want to have non-missionary style sex, etc.--so for me, the mom's confessions are the real cream of the crop.

Primarily, you have
SAHM (stay-at-home-moms) complaining about how much their kids drive them nuts or how much they hate their husbands. Some days the vitriole is really almost too much. I don't know how far reaching this site is (I have seen posts with decidedly British language used), but a college student looking for thesis fodder would be in hog's heaven as you get women from all walks of life socially, physically and mentally. Among the daily confessions, one can find women with eating disorders and (lots of) women having affairs. There are also lots of women who have had it up to here with being home all the time and years of jealousy and anger towards their families has built to extreme levels.

But while most of the confessions would tend to leave this writer saying something like, "Put down the prozac or bottle of wine; get off your ass and get a job," every now and then a true gem of honesty comes out...

"I miss the passion in my marriage."

In such a simple, yet touching confession, so much is expressed. It is these confessions that I admit may have changed my life. We are all guilty of "the rut." You know what the rut is right? It's doing the same thing over and over and over until it's ingrained in your day-to-day to the point that you don't see anything else. You don't see that while you're very helpful around the house, maybe you could hug your family more. You don't see that even though your job sucks the life from you every day, your spouse is going through the same thing and needs someone to talk to about it. And perhaps...just perhaps you see that maybe you should spend a little more quality time with someone in your family even if it means not going to bed at a decent hour.

For these things I would like to thank all of the miserable women who have posted on TrueConfessions.com. Whether their husbands ever read their fantasies, dreams and desires; this one did and I am eternally grateful.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Blue / Pink / Indifferent?


It's amazing how quickly one can accept a situation and begin making plans for it, even if that situation goes against everything you've been planning up till that point in life.
My wife got up this morning and announced that she was terribly nauseous. Now, we've been pretty careful with the "relations" since our last son was born, but there might have been a time or two that our teenage years crept up on us and we excused off the hassle and just went with the moment.
With a "Do you think the drugstore is open yet?" she was out the door on a mission to get a pregnancy test. When she came home, she went straight upstairs and faster than I thought the test could return results, she comes back downstairs and says, "We're not pregnant."
Now, I know a lot of people think babies are Gods little gift and so on and so forth, but gift or no, I am not prepared for another baby. I was feeling pretty confident she might be pregnant though based both on today's little episode and a week or two of her feeling a tad on the puny side. In my head, even as I was lamenting, "Oh my LORD what're we gonna do?" I was also planning out how long it would take me to finish off a couple of rooms in my basement so we could still have a guest room if we had to turn our current upstairs guest room into a nursery.
Thank goodness no such plans will be necessary.
Apparently, she only has a tummy bug as she has slept literally all day and thus far neither myself nor the boys have any symptoms (which is suspect considering everyone I know who's had this, has also passed it to their entire household in a matter of hours). I've been careful to keep the boys generally away from her all day so if we're lucky, it'll stop with her. Of course, with the exception of my recent fishing trip, I just don't throw up. Stomach bugs don't affect me for some reason, so I'm not a good gauge of a bug's possibilities.
At any rate, today's over and now I can relax for a bit before my week begins.
And I can guaran-darn-tee that the next time the moment feels right, I'll be puttin' on my hat.