Free Relationship Advice for YOU!

When I was beginning my first relationship with a man, I learned pretty quickly how clueless I was about relationships.  So I took to polling my friends for their best piece of relationship advice.  After my relationship ended, I thought, "What am I doing to do with all this great advice?  Recycle it?  Give it to Goodwill?  Store it in the basement?"

It's still in pretty good condition, so I didn't want to throw it away.  I decided the best option was to do an online giveaway:  Free advice for YOU, given by my friends and family, and paraphrased by me.

On fighting:

• "Try to have at least one big fight before you get engaged."
• "My tendency when we fight is to draw away, even stand at the other side of the room while I make my point.  So I try to hold my husband's hand when we're fighting.  It's hard to be too angry while you're holding hands."
• "When we have a disagreement, it's easy for me to get angry or defensive.  Instead, I try to look at what insecurity or hurt might be driving my husband's behavior.  Then I try to encourage him in that."

On compatibility:

• "You want to be going in approximately the same direction at approximately the same rate."

On discernment:

• Almost everyone encouraged me to pray and seek counsel about my relationship and its future.  One person said, "We know from Solomon that if we ask for wisdom, God won't hold back!"

On expectations:

• "In order to be valid, expectations have to be reasonable, verbalized, and agreed-upon."
• "Once I realized that my happiness in my marriage was largely dependent on my commitment to seek happiness in my marriage, it took some of the pressure off whether I was making the right decision.  Although I still very much believe that my husband is the man God had for me, when I'm discontent I know it may be because of my own attitude and actions rather than because I married the wrong person."

On communication:

• The majority (OK, all) of my advice-givers agreed that communication is a good thing. 

I'm probably missing a couple pieces of advice, because already I can't remember all of the wonderful things people told me (which is one reason I'm writing them down now).   I find myself thinking about some of these principles in other aspects of life; for example, the advice about expectations needing to be agreed upon was new to me, and so helpful!

I hope you find something here you like.  If not, just put it out at your next garage sale and send me the profits. :)

What's your best piece of relationship advice?

[From the Archives] First Kill

Watch out:  In this post I confess murder.

Today I spent a lovely afternoon at the pool with a friend, and she was chatting about the rabbits that have invaded her yard and her attempts to avoid committing bunny-cide with her lawn mower.  It reminded me of this:

Years ago I took a creative non-fiction writing class.  One of our assignments was to write on the topic "First Kill."  

Here was mine.

First Kill

            When I was little, there was a tree in my neighbor’s back yard.  Right by the trunk, there was a nest of bunnies.  The four mouse-size bodies were cozily nestled together in the cool darkness of their underground home.

            I can’t remember how I discovered this buried treasure, but once I did, I was in love.  Have you ever cupped a tiny, wild rabbit in your hands?  The soft baby nails of his feet scratch your palm.  His heart beats fast against your hand.  His shaking subsides as his fear dies.  Run a finger along his fur – it’s so soft you wouldn’t know you were touching anything if you couldn’t feel the ridges of his little ribs as he breathes inoutinout in out in out in   out   in     out… and finally he’s calm and content.

            I would traipse over several times a day to open the gate of the neighbor’s fence and peer into the nest under their tree.  The mother rabbit never seemed to be around.  Our neighbor had trapped a young rabbit that week and set it free in the countryside.  He assured me that it was too young to be the mother, but I was unconvinced.  (I still am.)  In any case, Mama Rabbit’s absence gave me free rein to befriend her children, and I had no qualms about touching them and holding them and generally ignoring all the good advice that children are given about not messing with wild animals and keeping your hands off their babies.

            That day, I took strips of paper towel and Kleenex and shredded them finely.  I put them in a coffee can, carefully lining the bottom with inches of fluff.   I tested the bed with my finger.  It was as soft as a cloud of cotton candy.

            Off I went, through the gate and to the tree.  I peeked inside the nest to see the four brown-gray bunnies cuddled inside their small home.  I reached in and took one.  Carefully I cupped him as I walked back to my garage where his new bunny-bed awaited him.  Gingerly I laid him in the can.  Breathlessly I watched over him until I saw that he was quiet, maybe even asleep.

            Later, I decided it was time to get him back to his brothers and sisters.  He struggled as I grasped his body to take him out of the coffee can.  His baby nails scratched at the air and his tiny back arched and he wriggled around and somehow… he fell.

            NO.  His body seemed even smaller lying on the concrete driveway.  I panicked and scooped him up, running him back to his nest in a desperate hope that he was still alive.  Certainly he wasn’t moving, but I convinced myself he was still breathing.  I barely even looked as I placed him back with his family and ran away.

            The next day, I gathered up my courage to visit the nest one more time.  I looked in.  He was still there, his brown-gray body nestled against the three other bunnies in the hole.  His black, bead-like eyes were open.  A fly landed on his eye and stalked across his face. 

[From the Archives] Martha at the Coffee Shop

This article has been collecting dust on my hard-drive since fall 2011, when I undertook to write out a few short stories from my days in China.  I had just moved to a new city and was out for a meal with an American co-worker and one of her American friends, a businessman's wife who lived across town.  (Names have been changed.)

I had forgotten about this lunch, but when I found the story last week I was reminded of a quote that's been on my mind lately:  

"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There's no use thinking in terms of "good people" and "bad people."  The Bible teaches, quite truly, that we are all sinful but yet all made in God's image.  And we can all be redeemed through Christ. 

Here's the story:

Martha at the Coffee Shop

Martha talked loudly and deliberately, punctuating her conversation with laughs and frequently turning to place an emphasizing hand on Linda’s shoulder.  She talked about her cleaning help, her full-time Chinese-English interpreter, and her private driver.

She talked; we listened.  Other conversationalists were not needed; just a reasonably alert audience.  She was an unfiltered, un-inquisitive one-woman show.

Early in the conversation, Martha said three words that instantly soured my opinion of her.  Those words came in an account she gave about traveling from China to pick up some papers her husband had left behind at their California home.  Because their company wasn’t paying for the flight, she was stuck in coach (“in the back of the bus,” as she called it.)  She asserted that she was the only non-Chinese back there, and that she was nearly sickened by the surrounding belches, nose-picking, and bad breath. 

An aside:  I have made the same transpacific coach-class journey eight times.  There were Chinese people, and there were non-Chinese.  Each time I found a group of friendly and accommodating people.  I was not sickened, nor nearly sickened.

Back to Martha's story.  There she was, stuck in coach for the duration of the twelve hour flight back to America.  Worse, she was flying United Airlines.  Ah, what tragedy.  She knew we’d agree that American airlines are nothing like Asian airlines, where those “cute little Asian girls wait on you hand and foot.”  No, Western airlines are filled with ugly flight attendants.  The women are old and fat, and the men are gay.  “Fags and hags, you know!”  Hahaha!  And then it was off to another story.

We stayed at the coffee shop for another hour, eating expensively mediocre Western food, Martha’s treat.  At intervals, those carelessly spoken words, “fags and hags,” would jump to my mind, and I judged Martha.

Then I learned more about her.  She and her husband had lavishly hosted friends and colleagues for Thanksgiving and Christmas last year.  They were generous supporters of a Christian missionary friend in Romania.  At one point, Martha regaled us with tales of her daughter eating doggie biscuits as a young child.

“Makes me think twice about your parenting skills,” joked Linda. 

“Oh, I was a horrible parent!  Well, of course, my parents were horrible to me.  I had a horrible, horrible, childhood.“ (All this was said in the same joking, expansive style as the rest of our conversation.) 

Martha laughingly told us she had no idea how her daughter could be such a good mother when she herself had been such a bad mother.  “I was awful!  Well, until I got saved, and after that I was all right.”  And then it was off to another story.

Fags and hags.  Colonial snobbery.  Extravagant generosity.  A redeemed motherhood.

People are not caricatures.  Martha is not the good guy or the bad guy of the afternoon.  She’s Martha, and God loves her, and God loves the people she looks down on, and God loves me as I look down on her.  And may God save me from stuffing people into categories on the basis of three words and a lunch at an overpriced Chinese coffee shop.

[In the Style of Jason Mraz] At the Baby Shower

I wrote this poem about a baby shower I recently attended, in which only I and two other women had no babies, either in or out of our bellies.  As an aside, I should tell you that I love babies and I like baby talk.  I am in no way bothered by birthing stories.  But "I am in no way bothered by birthing stories" does not make for very funny poetry.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

• DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE MALE.
• DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED.
• DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ SLANG ABOUT THE NETHER REGIONS.  (Sorry, Mom :) )
• DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DO NOT PROMISE TO SING IT IN YOUR HEAD TO THE TUNE OF JASON MRAZ'S "I"M YOURS."

OK, I think we're covered here.  Let's go.


Well, I went to a shower for a baby that's a'comin;
The ladies were all snackin and the conversation hummin.
But I fell right through the cracks
Til my girls got my back!

We got no babies on our boobies and no icepacks in our privates,
No lanolin, no diapers, and no cause to get excited
At gripe water, or the sneeze
That lets out all your pees!

Oh and please, please hesitate
Some more (lots more!).
This stuff can wait.
I'm sure!

There's no need to contemplate
Your nipples' size,
Your hoohah's fate;
No more!

So I'm sittin at the table with the ladies with no babies
We're just chattin bout our travels (the good places and the shadies)
When we hear some nursing news:
Baby got engulfed in her boobs!

The moms get louder with their stories and they're sounding pretty gory
We hear things we never asked to know about their under-storeys
So we up our volume too:
"I went to Zealand, New!"

We talk louder but it's useless cuz the baby talk is flying
I mention Machu Picchu but "MY VAJAJAY WAS CRYIN!"
Splits the air (Like it was split.
Cuz the baby tore it!)

Please don't scootch a little closer, dears.
I will plug all my ears.

Oh and please, please hesitate
Some more (lots more!).
This stuff can wait.
I'm sure!



Hehehe. :)  Congrats to all my pregnant friends.