| Posted: 05 May 2011 05:07 AM PDT Nurturing new relationships takes time and effort. Let’s look at two uncomfortable issues that can come up: arguments and sexual interest. Perhaps you’re home with Mr. Right and you have your first argument. Nothing too serious, but it’s hard not to feel unsettled. What’s going on here? A piece of advice many couples have found works for them is: never go to bed angry. Stay with the argument until it gets resolved instead. Conflict can make you anxious when a relationship is new, but don’t shy away from speaking your mind. Relationships where one or both partners avoid showing their true feelings in disputes with one another are relationships that aren’t going to last. See if you can let your partner express what he’s feeling upset about without getting defensive. Acknowledge that you’ve heard what he’s saying; if you think he’s right, say so. If you think he’s off base, let him know. Understand that relationships require compromise. The optimal outcome isn’t likely to be your partner unconditionally surrendering because you’ve out-argued him; the best outcome is going to be something that leaves each of you feeling well-heard and respected, and the issue in question moved toward resolution. Don’t take everything personally, even if it’s tempting to do so. Some conflicts are just differences that need to be worked out in the interest of harmony. Maybe the biggest mistake partners make is believing “I know what he is thinking.” You don’t – at least not until you ask him. You think his lack of interest in sex last night meant he’s getting bored; maybe it just means he’s tired. Don’t make assumptions. Ask your partner what he’s thinking or feeling. In fact, taking a few minutes regularly each week to check in is great practice that can deepen relationships. Even ten minutes apiece to ask one another, “How are you this week?” can lead to better mutual understanding, greater closeness and more opportunity for intimacy. Another difficult issue for couples moving beyond the newlywed stage is sexual interest. When you are dating, sex with your new boyfriend feels pretty special. After a while you will get to know every hair and freckle on your partner’s body, and the novelty of sex will wear off. Life’s other demands can crowd out lovemaking. Most of us aren’t all that eager for sex after working long hours and knowing we’ve got another exhausting day ahead of us tomorrow. Throw in household chores and a hundred other distractions and sex can get pretty stale before you know it. It may feel unromantic to schedule date night together, but doing penciling it in your Daytimers is a lot more romantic than watching another week go by without making enough time for one another. Some couples create routines or rituals that work for them: Friday nights are strictly for the two of them, no intrusions permitted, or Tuesday evenings are the night to cook a special dinner together rather than rely on the usual quick meal after work. Keeping sex passionate requires paying attention. When you are first together, the sex may be so hot it’s hard to believe things will every cool down – but they probably will. The frequency of lovemaking often slows down after a few months, but the satisfaction both partners receive from sex can increase as they learn more about how to turn one another on. Take time to start your relationship off on the right foot and you’ll like the results. John R. Ballew, M.S.an author and contributor to GAYTWOGETHER, is a licensed professional counselor in private practice in Atlanta. He specializes in issues related to coming out, sexuality, relationships and spirituality. If you have any questions or comments you can submit them directly to GAYTWOGETHER or John R. Ballew, M.S. - www.bodymindsoul.org ~~~ thanks, MICHAEL @gaytwogether.com |
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Finding Your Rhythm. . .. Part One
Posted: 04 May 2011 05:05 AM PDT
Relationships require care and encouragement and it helps to get things started on the right foot. Perhaps your first thought is, “so when do we start living together?” Whoa – slow down.
Most of us know guys who went home from the bar together the night they first met, and one of them basically never went home. Other couples have been together for years, but find it more agreeable to keep separate households.
Take time to find out what the right rhythm is for each of you. If your tendency in the past has been to make a commitment like moving in with someone after only a few weeks only to find that the relationship never should have happened, make a commitment to yourself that this time you are going to wait at least six months before combining your CD collections.
What’s the rush? Part of dating is trying to make a positive impression – being thoughtful, considerate, romantic. Those are good things in a relationship, too, but face it – if he hangs around, your lover is going to see you at times other than when you are on top of your game.
Allowing your partner to see you at times when you aren’t your best – when things haven’t gone well at work or you’ve had a painful conflict with your crazy family – isn’t stuff you would usually recommend for a first date. But being yourself in good times and bad is the way he’ll get to know you and the way the bonds of intimacy will deepen between you.
If you let your partner see you warts and all, he’ll probably show you his less-attractive stuff as well. It can be a little startling seeing Mr. Right’s flaws.
Don’t think you can change your partner. The start of a relationship offers a great opportunity to learn all about his eccentricities: the way he mispronounces that particular word of his, or his curious need to keep his checkbook in perfect balance. See if you can practice just noticing rather than criticizing.
Who is this peculiar creature that now shares your life? Promise yourself you won’t nit-pick these little things. Learn to relax and laugh at yourself and your reactions to these little things. Criticism and nagging aren’t going to get you off on the right foot.
Some men handle intimacy easier than others. Intimacy requires us to let down our guard and become more open and vulnerable. The trouble is, most men have learned from an early age that making yourself letting down your defenses is a stupid thing to do because you’re likely to get hurt. This makes closeness a real challenge for guys, even if it’s what we most want. You really care about what this guy thinks of you, and the temptation is to try to look good rather than be genuine.
One of the secrets of relationships is that if the relationship is a healthy one, we actually become safer in it by lowering our defenses. Our partner responds to our openness with more openness of his own, or we learn that the blemish that we worried would cause him to run away turns out to be no big deal. John R. Ballew, M.S.an author and contributor to GAYTWOGETHER, is a licensed professional counselor in private practice in Atlanta. He specializes in issues related to coming out, sexuality, relationships and spirituality. If you have any questions or comments you can submit them directly to GAYTWOGETHERor John R. Ballew, M.S. - www.bodymindsoul.org.
~~~~thank you, Michael. . .gaytwogether.com
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
WW II vet speaks for equality
Justin,
This is a pretty straight-forward defense of marriage equality by a Maine WW II vet who is also the father of a gay son.
Richard
Watch Out for this VIRUS
READ IMMEDIATELY
Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoft and Norton Please send it to everybody you know who has Access to the Internet. You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail titled “Here you have it” If you open the file, a message will appear on your screen saying: 'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful....'
Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person who sent it to you will gain access to your Name, e-mail and password. This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software's are not capable of destroying it.
The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself 'life owner'.
PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY!
THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES. http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/hereyouhave.asp
Bin Laden is dead . . . .
hmmmm. . . .
G'day JustinO,
I did a bit of Googling today and came up with this:
There have been many media reports since 2001 that Osama bin Laden is "probably" dead, that he suffered an untreated lung complication or kidney disease and/or diabetes, and that he died sometime in December 2001.
Various tapes released by Al-Qaeda in the name of bin Laden are voice only. According to a media report, the last video of bin Laden was released December 27, 2001. The video was dismissed by the Bush administration as sick propaganda possibly designed to mask the fact the al-Qa'eda leader was already dead. "He could have made the video and then ordered that it be released in the event of his death," said one White House aide.
Well, if bin Laden was already dead, then who was the dude shot by American special forces in a Pakistani compound the other day, and then whisked away to be buried at sea?
There are those who question the legality of the American covert operation on foreign soil without Pakistani permission, and the shooting of an unarmed man before disposing of his body at sea rather than capturing him alive and bringing him to justice in a court of law.
Now there's something to think about.
Gary
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
A Tipping Point for Gay Marriage ?
New York Times May 1, 2011 The Week in Review
A Tipping Point for Gay Marriage?
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON — It’s not every day that a leading law firm fires a client for holding a position so extreme that it may be said to be unworthy of a defense. And it is rarer yet — unheard of, really — when that client is the House of Representatives and the position in question is a federal law.
Yet that is just what King & Spalding, a venerable Atlanta firm, did last week. Under pressure from gay rights groups and apparently fearful of criticism from the law students it recruits and the corporate clients it serves, the firm said it would not defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act against a challenge that it violates the Constitution.
The episode has so far mostly been discussed as a matter of legal ethics, and the firm has had a rough ride. But there is something larger going on, too.
For many gay rights advocates, the decision amounts to a turning point in the debate — the moment at which opposition to same-sex marriage came to look like bigotry, similar to racial discrimination and the subordination of women.
To opponents of same-sex marriage, the firm’s decision is the latest evidence that elite opinion generally and the legal culture in particular is racing ahead of popular opinion and shutting down a worthwhile debate.
“There is a big gap between elites and everyone else” over same-sex marriage, said Maggie Gallagher, the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, which supports traditional marriage. The polls and political science literature support her: What may be orthodoxy in faculty lounges remains an open question among the public at large.
Another critic of same-sex marriage said King & Spalding’s decision illustrated just how wide the divide between elite and mass opinion on same-sex marriage has become. “There is no doubting that the default position of the American academy is to dismantle the institution of marriage and remake it on a new basis,” Matthew J. Franck of the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative research group, wrote in a blog post on Friday. “The deadly combination of unchallenged liberal presumptions and casual intimidation of dissenters is probably at its worst in the most prestigious universities, which set the tone for the rest of the country, on this issue as on many others.”
Ms. Gallagher sounded bitter and besieged as she described how the nature if not the substance of the debate had shifted. “Either you’re with them or you’re a hater,” she said of gay rights advocates. “They’re trying to exclude you from the public square.”
Evan Wolfson, the president of Freedom to Marry, said he welcomed a conversation, but the arguments against same-sex marriage were so empty that they were not worthy of respect. “If you know that the only arguments that can be made for a position are discriminatory and harmful to real people,” he said, “you should think about whether you should make them.”
This latest skirmish in the culture war over marriage was prompted by the Obama administration’s decision in February that it would no longer defend in court the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to gay and lesbian couples married in states that recognize such unions. That decision was itself unusual and thus telling.
But it was only one indication of how quickly the battle lines are moving. In 2008, a federal judge in New York ruled that it was defamatory to call a straight man gay. Ten months later, a different judge of the same court, relying on what he called “a veritable sea change in social attitudes about homosexuality,” said there was no longer “a widespread view of gays and lesbians as contemptible and disgraceful.”
The second judge, Denny Chin, drew a comparison. In 1926, he said, New York’s highest court ruled that it was libelous to call a white man “colored” or “Negro.” Such rulings were common in much of the nation in the first half of the last century; they are unimaginable today in any state. The range of views that may be expressed in respectable circles can be a bellwether in judging what society is ready for, said David A. Bositis, an analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies who has studied the politics of race.
“Part of the evolution of equality obviously includes moving from where statements are viewed as normal and accepted to being socially undesirable,” he said. “When some turning points in these struggles are reached, it becomes more and more unsavory to behave in some ways and take certain positions. In polite society, it’s no longer considered acceptable to make overtly racist statements.
“But in the case of gay rights,” he added, “those turning points still have a ways to go. I certainly can see that day coming. Compared with the civil rights movement for African-Americans, the movement for gay rights has proceeded with a remarkable degree of speed.”
Nathaniel Persily, who teaches law and political science at Columbia, says that today, a person’s education level is powerfully predictive of views about same-sex marriage. “Sometimes the norm of equality penetrates the elite levels first,” he said. In fact, the change of attitudes has moved farthest in the legal community, which has long embraced gay rights with a particular fervor, a point Justice Antonin Scalia complained about in a 2003 dissent that in a way predicted King & Spalding’s decision.
The “law-professional culture,” Justice Scalia wrote, “has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”
The decision Justice Scalia was dissenting from, Lawrence v. Texas, struck down a Texas law that had made gay sex a crime.
For the gay rights movement, that decision was a watershed akin to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision barring racial segregation in public schools, said William N. Eskridge Jr., a professor at Yale Law School and the author of several books on gay rights.
“We’re in the post-Brown era,” he said, “which for me is post-Lawrence. After Lawrence, there has been a social revolution in America.”
The analogy may be instructive in terms of timing. Thirteen years passed between the Brown decision and Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court decision striking down bans on interracial marriage.
“A large majority of supporters of racial integration and even nondiscrimination in the workplace did not believe that interracial marriage was tolerable,” Professor Eskridge said. “In race, the marriage issue was the very last form of discrimination struck down.”
If the comparisons are apt and the same judicial timetable holds, that means bans on same-sex marriage will fall around 2016.
Yet that is just what King & Spalding, a venerable Atlanta firm, did last week. Under pressure from gay rights groups and apparently fearful of criticism from the law students it recruits and the corporate clients it serves, the firm said it would not defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act against a challenge that it violates the Constitution.
The episode has so far mostly been discussed as a matter of legal ethics, and the firm has had a rough ride. But there is something larger going on, too.
For many gay rights advocates, the decision amounts to a turning point in the debate — the moment at which opposition to same-sex marriage came to look like bigotry, similar to racial discrimination and the subordination of women.
To opponents of same-sex marriage, the firm’s decision is the latest evidence that elite opinion generally and the legal culture in particular is racing ahead of popular opinion and shutting down a worthwhile debate.
“There is a big gap between elites and everyone else” over same-sex marriage, said Maggie Gallagher, the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, which supports traditional marriage. The polls and political science literature support her: What may be orthodoxy in faculty lounges remains an open question among the public at large.
Another critic of same-sex marriage said King & Spalding’s decision illustrated just how wide the divide between elite and mass opinion on same-sex marriage has become. “There is no doubting that the default position of the American academy is to dismantle the institution of marriage and remake it on a new basis,” Matthew J. Franck of the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative research group, wrote in a blog post on Friday. “The deadly combination of unchallenged liberal presumptions and casual intimidation of dissenters is probably at its worst in the most prestigious universities, which set the tone for the rest of the country, on this issue as on many others.”
Ms. Gallagher sounded bitter and besieged as she described how the nature if not the substance of the debate had shifted. “Either you’re with them or you’re a hater,” she said of gay rights advocates. “They’re trying to exclude you from the public square.”
Evan Wolfson, the president of Freedom to Marry, said he welcomed a conversation, but the arguments against same-sex marriage were so empty that they were not worthy of respect. “If you know that the only arguments that can be made for a position are discriminatory and harmful to real people,” he said, “you should think about whether you should make them.”
This latest skirmish in the culture war over marriage was prompted by the Obama administration’s decision in February that it would no longer defend in court the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to gay and lesbian couples married in states that recognize such unions. That decision was itself unusual and thus telling.
But it was only one indication of how quickly the battle lines are moving. In 2008, a federal judge in New York ruled that it was defamatory to call a straight man gay. Ten months later, a different judge of the same court, relying on what he called “a veritable sea change in social attitudes about homosexuality,” said there was no longer “a widespread view of gays and lesbians as contemptible and disgraceful.”
The second judge, Denny Chin, drew a comparison. In 1926, he said, New York’s highest court ruled that it was libelous to call a white man “colored” or “Negro.” Such rulings were common in much of the nation in the first half of the last century; they are unimaginable today in any state. The range of views that may be expressed in respectable circles can be a bellwether in judging what society is ready for, said David A. Bositis, an analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies who has studied the politics of race.
“Part of the evolution of equality obviously includes moving from where statements are viewed as normal and accepted to being socially undesirable,” he said. “When some turning points in these struggles are reached, it becomes more and more unsavory to behave in some ways and take certain positions. In polite society, it’s no longer considered acceptable to make overtly racist statements.
“But in the case of gay rights,” he added, “those turning points still have a ways to go. I certainly can see that day coming. Compared with the civil rights movement for African-Americans, the movement for gay rights has proceeded with a remarkable degree of speed.”
Nathaniel Persily, who teaches law and political science at Columbia, says that today, a person’s education level is powerfully predictive of views about same-sex marriage. “Sometimes the norm of equality penetrates the elite levels first,” he said. In fact, the change of attitudes has moved farthest in the legal community, which has long embraced gay rights with a particular fervor, a point Justice Antonin Scalia complained about in a 2003 dissent that in a way predicted King & Spalding’s decision.
The “law-professional culture,” Justice Scalia wrote, “has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”
The decision Justice Scalia was dissenting from, Lawrence v. Texas, struck down a Texas law that had made gay sex a crime.
For the gay rights movement, that decision was a watershed akin to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision barring racial segregation in public schools, said William N. Eskridge Jr., a professor at Yale Law School and the author of several books on gay rights.
“We’re in the post-Brown era,” he said, “which for me is post-Lawrence. After Lawrence, there has been a social revolution in America.”
The analogy may be instructive in terms of timing. Thirteen years passed between the Brown decision and Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court decision striking down bans on interracial marriage.
“A large majority of supporters of racial integration and even nondiscrimination in the workplace did not believe that interracial marriage was tolerable,” Professor Eskridge said. “In race, the marriage issue was the very last form of discrimination struck down.”
If the comparisons are apt and the same judicial timetable holds, that means bans on same-sex marriage will fall around 2016.
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