I am a 41-year-old single mom (never been married) and I met a 45-year-old single dad (also never been married) man 10 months ago. We had our own homes, shared time together everyday and shared our bed. He suddenly stopped communicating with me one month ago and it appears that I have been DUMPED! He fooled me into thinking we were moving towards a long-term relationship but he had major difficulties talking whenever problems arose. I loved him, accepted him for who he is (I’m an extrovert and he’s an introvert) but everything ended abruptly. He even started accusing me of being with other men which is not true. Do you think he got scared of commitment, or he just freaked out trying to keep up with me?
Dumped and Confused
Dear Dumped,
Ah, the old silent dump. A classic. And he even threw in a “making stuff up about you so he could make it seem like it was your fault” manoeuvre. Nice. Hey, you said the guy had trouble talking about things when problems arose. Apparently, a really big problem arose and he had so much trouble talking about it, that he didn’t even try and simply vamoosed. I don’t know if the guy got scared of commitment or just freaked out trying to keep up with you. And you may never know either. But if these explanations offer some comfort, go with them. Sudden break ups are brutal and you are entitled to do whatever you need to get through it, especially through the crunchy bits at the beginning. But, eventually, you’ll stop trying to come up with explanations or excuses and you’ll stop replaying every moment of the relationship in your head trying to figure out what went wrong and if you could have done anything differently to make him stay and you’ll just realize that some relationships are simply not meant to be and there’s not always an explanation or a reason. It sucks but it’s just the way it is. The important thing is to not let it stop you from getting back on the horse in future. Hopefully next time, you’ll find a better horse.
Dear Josey,
I’ve 32 and I’ve just started seeing this guy I really like. We get along really well and there’s a connection I think we both feel. Here’s the rub. I definitely want kids, and I’m not getting any younger so I don’t want to waste my time with a guy who doesn’t want kids. On the other hand, I really like this guy and I don’t want to scare him off by bringing up the whole kid thing. How should I handle this?
Having Trouble Raising Kids
Dear Having,
Given the fact that Salma Hayek just had a kid at age 41 and Holly Hunter had twins at 47, you’re not exactly an old maid dear. But, I understand that not all of us want to be kickin’ a soccer ball around the backyard with your kids using your walker. I also understand that you don’t want to scare the guy off by making him feel like he’s most useful a potential sperm donor. He may well want kids one day, but bringing this up too soon might make him feel pressured, as things are not far enough along with you two for him to know if he wants them with you (and you with him for that matter). And while you may bring it up only to feel him out on the issue, guys can sometimes misinterpret this as pressure to move things along more quickly than they’re ready. So, I’d opt for door number three. See if you can’t bring up the topic without asking him about it directly. Next time you’re sitting in the park or walking along and spot a family with young kids, make a comment about how cute the kids are or something equally innocuous. Then maybe mention that you love kids and hope to have your own some day. See how he responds. If he says he likes the little rugrats and wants some of his own one day too, you’re good to go. If he’s silent, you can push it a little and ask him if he likes kids and if he hopes to have any of his own one day. He’ll probably suspect you’re feeling him out on the topic but it’s less threatening than asking him point black over dinner: “So dude, you keen on the whole baby thing. Cause I want me a brood and if you’re not into having kids, we might as well get the cheque now.” See the difference?
“You only had sex with me two times this week and, as per our agreement, you promised me three times a week. So I get to control the remote control for the next week.”
Dr. Ava Cadell, a self-declared Loveologist (Cadell is a certified Sexologist but came up with the term when mainstream American TV talk shows were uncomfortable with the “s” word) is the genius behind the Mutual Love Agreement (MLA), a signed document that outlines each partner’s boundaries and expectations for the relationship, citing everything from “deal breakers” and sexual needs to relationship goals and social calendars.
When I first came across the MLA, it seemed rather ludicrous, even gimmicky. The sample contract I saw included clauses that had partners agreeing to things like “full honesty” and “never shouting.” I thought, hell, what relationship doesn’t include a little innocent lying and a snippy response once in a while. But, talking to Cadell, I began to see its brilliance. The whole point of the contract is that, unlike vague marital promises to honour, cherish and blah, blah, blah, the MLA gives you the opportunity to really spell things out and negotiate the details…together.
The first section is the full disclosure section where you reveal any skeletons — financial secrets, health problems the other person should know about, freaky sexual preferences. After that, it’s up to you. If your sweetie has a short fuse, you might request a clause saying that he can’t resort to calling you names. That doesn’t mean he’ll never lose his temper again, but if he does, you’ve negotiated a punishment for this behaviour, like popping $20 into a jar, money you agree will go towards a trip together at the end of the year. Hopefully, you won’t get to travel far.
“By writing it down, you both agree to certain intentions, rules by which to run your relationship,” explains Cadell. “I have partners come up with deal breakers and rate them 1-10. That way there can be no misunderstanding about how important anything is to either party at any point in the relationship, be it parenting choices or how important boys’ night out is to you. And the contract can be renegotiated at any time as long as both parties agree.”
Of course, one of the dangers of a contract is that either partner might be tempted to constantly use it against the other person waving it in their face any time they didn’t comply: “You signed a contract saying you’d have sex with me three times a week so you have to be in the mood…”
“That’s what forces you to really think about what you agree to,” Cadell acknowledges. Since she introduced the MLA over a year ago, over 100 couples have given her positive feedback and about 20 couples tore it up. They were usually the ones who agreed to things they really didn’t mean and weren’t willing to be accountable for.
If it all sounds more business than romance, Cadell again agrees. “I look at love as a business,” she explains. “In business, you invest time and effort; in love, you need to invest time and effort or it will fall apart. In business, you need to plan and collaborate. Same with love. In business, you have to negotiate because you can’t read other’s minds. It may be done with more tenderness in love but you still need to negotiate to make it a success.”
MLAs only work, says Cadell, if both parties are willing to come to the table. “Otherwise it won’t work,” she says. But when it does, it really opens the communication in a relationship, she adds. “You learn each other’s boundaries and what the deal breakers are.”
She tells the story of an older guy who married a beautiful woman but complained that it has been two year since she’d given him oral sex, something he had enjoyed immensely before they married. “I told him it was his own fault for not telling her up front how important oral sex was to him,” explains Cadell. “We all have our issues and we all have things that take priority. Talking about them intimately should be as easy as choosing from a menu.”
Unfortunately, we’re not taught how to love, how to communicate intimately or how to deal with emotions like jealousy or power struggles. So we go in blindly and then act surprised and blindsided when our partner disappoints us even though we’ve never discussed our boundaries, expectations and deal breakers. Cadell feels this stuff should be taught in school.
Which is why she started a Loveology University (loveologyuniversity.com) where you can take 30 different courses in all aspects of love. You even get a digital trophy and a certificate in love upon passing.
Of course, it helps if you have a list. Luckily Ellen Green does. In fact, the list of all the sweet things her husband Marshall said and did throughout their 20 years of marriage is 110 pages long. And she writes small.
Greene includes some of her favourite items from the list, along with recollections from she and her husband’s years together in her book Remember the Sweet Things: One List, Two Lives, and Twenty Years of Marriage.
The sweet humour:
“after I’d chewed him out for shrinking some of my cotton shirts in the laundry, standing at the washing machine, pretending to read a label: ‘This one says, ‘Rub with fine sand, then pound on a rock.’”
The banal, but sweet rituals:
“giving each other a high five whenever we cross a state line.”
Snippets of sweet dialogue:
Ellen: “Could you please get me a beer?” (as he settles into the sofa to watch a movie, after making dinner and cleaning up)
Marsh: “Now wasn’t it you that I asked only a few seconds ago, ‘Do you want anything else?’ To which you said no and gave me a beatific smile.” (as he smiled and got up to the to the refrigerator)
Ellen: “I never smile beatifically.”
And the, well, just plain sweet
“saying “I missed you at dinner” because he was seated far down the table and we couldn’t talk to each other.”
Okay, so Marshall was a bit of an overachiever in the nice guy department — not every guy’s going to send flowers and a thank-you note to your office the day after you make him a nice dinner — but most of us could do well to take more of notice of the sweet and simple nice things our partner does.
Though to be fair to the rest of us schmoes who take our partners for granted and focus on everything they don’t do for us, Greene didn’t set out with entirely altruistic motives when she started her list.
When she met Marshall, she was smitten. But, after a life of “bad relationships that I let go on too long” Green was determined not to let her smittenness blind her and decided to track all the bad things he did so she would cut her losses sooner. After four months and not a single list entry she started to believe that Marshall might not be such a bad guy after all. And, given she had 5 or 6 new pages to add to her “Sweet Things List” every year when she gave it to him in a Valentine’s Day card, it would seem she was right.
And while having his sweetness so duly appreciated and documented no doubt only encouraged more sweetness, taking note of Marshall’s sweetness also encouraged Ellen to take more notice of it.
“I felt like I had a quota to fill,” Greene tells me. “He got so much pleasure from the list, I didn’t want to disappoint him. It’s like I trained myself to notice when I was smiling, when I said thank you and what it was for. It forced me to live in the moment and not take anything for granted.”
Of course, Marshall, being such a sweetie, felt guilty that he wasn’t making a similar list to give to his wife. I told him, “Get your own shtick, this is mine, you’re providing the material.”
It’s easy in long-term relationships to focus on the negative, to get complacent and forget to show our partner gratitude for the day-to-day stuff. Like your husband making garlic soup or always offering you the last cracker and dipping it for you. “If you’re waiting for grand gestures and big comic moments, you’re going to be disappointed,” says Greene. “It’s the ho-hum everyday stuff that makes a life.
“And who doesn’t like to be appreciated, to be made to feel special,” she continues. “My experience with jotting down small, everyday things is that the cumulative effect is very, very big. It gave Marsh so much pleasure. He’d revisit the list throughout the year, when I wasn’t looking.”
And, when Marshall was succumbing to Parkinson’s disease a couple years ago, they both revisited the list, rereading a couple pages a day until he died. If there were no other reason to make her list, Greene says, this wonderful last memory of her time with him would have been reason enough.
I’ve been in a relationship with a really nice guy for about nine months now. The only thing we’ve ever argued about is that, even though it’s been over a year since he broke up with his last girlfriend — whom he dated for two years — he still has various artifacts from their relationship scattered around his cluttered room — things I know he’s only kept because they’re from her. I know he’d never cheat on me, but it’s kind of unnerving to look up while getting it on and see his ex girlfriend’s hair clip lying around. He says the relationship has faded into the background in his mind so these things mean nothing but he knows they bother me so why doesn’t he make more of an effort to get rid of them? I wonder if I’m making too big a deal out of this. Or maybe I’m jealous because I don’t have many mementoes from past relationships, none of which have lasted as long as this one. What should I do?
Tired of Facing His Past
Dear Tired,
I hardly think your problem is that you don’t have more hair clips from your past relationships, though you may well feel threatened by the fact that this is your longest relationship, while his with this woman lasted two years. You’ve only got nine months on her two years and her stuff may be a constant reminder of that. But regardless of why it bothers you, it bothers you and you’re right, even if he claims it means nothing (or especially if it means nothing) , he should be respectful of this and ditch her stuff. Or at least put it somewhere that you won’t see it while you’re getting it on. It’s fine to keep a few token items as reminders of past relationships. I’ve never believed in erasing one’s past. It’s what makes us who we are in the present. But generally these things have some significance. Unless they shared elaborate hair doing rituals, a hairclip isn’t exactly keepsake material.
Ask him why he keeps this crap around. If he says it doesn’t mean anything, ask him to clear it out, or at least clear it out of your sight. If he’s simply a packrat who can’t clear his clutter, tell him you’ll be happy to help. If he still can’t do it, methinks the relationship hasn’t faded as far into the background as he says it is.
Dear Josey,
My ex and I have finally gotten to the point where we can be friends (about five months after we split). I’d like to invite him to a get-together I’m hosting, but I also want my new guy to come. They know about each other but haven’t yet met. What’s the etiquette here?
Party Puzzled
Dear Party,
You could always set up a boxing ring in the middle of your living room floor and have them duke it out in front of all your guests.
It really all depends how they both feel about each other. Does your new guy think it’s OK that you’re friends with your ex? Is your ex comfortable with the fact that you’re dating someone new?
If the answer is no to either of these questions, you might want to think twice about having them in a room full of all your friends where alcohol is being served. Even if they are comfortable with the idea of each other, it’s still a good idea to give each of them a heads up.
Let your new guy know you’d like to invite your ex. He’ll appreciate you coming to him first rather than being taken by surprise. On the other hand, he might wonder why you feel the need to tell him if you no longer have feelings for your ex. In which case, tell him to stop being such an immature idiot.
As for your ex, tell him you’d really love him to be at your party but that you would understand if he is uncomfortable in the same room as your new guy. That way, he’s free to make his own informed choice.
If they both decide to come, be sure and introduce them during the party. If you know they have something in common, let them know this. It will give them something to talk about. During the party, be respectful of both their feelings. Don’t start making out with your new guy in front of your ex and don’t spend hours reminiscing with your ex in front of your new guy.
You also might want to let your other guests in on the situation, especially those who know both your ex and your new guy. If they have a relationship with your ex, they might feel like they are betraying his friendship by being friendly with your new guy. And vice versa.
