A Pet Peeve..

Allow me a moment to fan the embers of a potential discussion and ruffle a few feathers as I do my bit and stand on my soapbox.

Call it stroking my feminist fires, but one of the things I really hate hearing is the statement; "I trust my husband/boyfriend, I just don't trust girl/the other party". I have two reasons: 1) I believe women have a hard enough time in this world to try to compete in a patriarchal society, succeed in their careers against men, succeed in their personal lives and live up to society's stamp of approval without having to have other women be an obstacle to that success.

I mean, obviously the speaker of the statement would have to be a woman, and basically what she's saying is, I can't trust other women around my man because they're the "evil one" in any solid, committed relationship. COME ON!!!

I love my girl friends, the few and the close ones that I have. I love the sisterhood I share with them and with a few others from a community I used to belong to. I love the openness and the unselfish love and concern we have for each other. Maybe that's why I loved Sex in the City, not so much for their intriguing topics, but for the companionship and loyalty they exhibited with each other - throughout their lives regardless of what they did or chose not to do.

To have anyone say that the reason their great relationship fell is because a girl got in between them, has put blame on one person and it was with a "sister". It takes two to tango, it takes two to cheat.

The second reason: YOU DO NOT TRUST YOUR PARTNER!!! Short of saying, I can only trust him with a nun, you don't trust him. Because if you do, no Delilah, no Bethsheba or Cleopatra would be able to get him...because he would have told you about her, he would have introduced you to her AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, he would have told her about you and how important you are and how she will never have him because he had you.

Oh, I've heard it all - there are women out there who would go after a man even if they knew he had a wife, a girlfriend, a person he is courting (he's not married yet). Well, there are men out there who's sole goal in life is to only be with the unattainable and women who are already committed, does that mean the woman is not to blame if and when she cheats? Sorry, that logic is twisted.

My point? Easy, don't blame one, blame both. If a man or a woman cheats with their partner, it is not ONLY the other person's fault (for going out with a married person) it is also the fault of the weak and spineless married man or woman. Unless they cry rape, they have all the faculties, all the will and the maturity to either say no, stay away OR make a way to avoid such situations.

PLEASE, do not say that it is a woman's fault that your boyfriend/husband cheated on
you. Your weak, spineless, sorry excuse for a man cheated on you with another woman. The other woman is definitely not absolved nor should she be spared from any of your anger and spite - she deserves it! But please, let's not demonize the woman and make your man a saint in this.

Oh, and while in the topic, some men have made the phrase, "I'm weak." as a means to excuse infidelities, whether real or imagined. And some of us may have decided, well, they're men - that's really their weak spot. No....no, no!!! A thousand times no! They're human - they're not animals, their penises do not dictate what they should do OR ELSE they would be peeing around their offices to signify their territory, heck they would pee on YOU to show people you're their territory.

It's an excuse! Please see it for what it is. An excuse they give so that if you do catch them in an infidelity, they can easily say, "well, remember I told you about that?" Unless they're psychologically ill - meaning, they have been medically branded as a sexual psychopath and a rabid liar and psychologically incapable of being faithful, they are ABLE to control themselves and their libido!

Men count on our ability to understand them, our need to mother them, our desire to have them stay with us, that they are able to use this excuse. IF they respect you and love you truly and honestly, and want you to be their wife and partner for life, they will not disrespect you and devalue your relationship by having random sex. And if they do, we should have enough self-love, self-respect and self-esteem to realize, we're worth more than that.

Why am I able to say this? It would be hypocritical of me to say all this without saying that I used to think this way. Heck, my history practically supported this theory. Until I met a man who loved me and respected me completely. He made me realize that men can be faithful, men can be relied on and trusted AND most importantly, that they CAN control themselves. He still recognizes beauty on the street and admires them, he can still find other women interesting, but he only wants to be and desires to be with his wife. Heaven love him, because I do.

A normal day

I was at work today and just realized that I couldn't focus on anything. I was working on auto-pilot, luckily I wasn't working on anyone's portfolios or rebalancing accounts. The previous evening I was working on something for the business and realized that I had been staring at the same page for about 20 minutes. I also found myself very short and impatient with my kids and finding that I was desperately trying to avoid being overcome as they chattered, screeched, sang out loud in the car, in the house, by the bed...and Brian and I are just tired, we didn't speak a word before we went to sleep.

Not a good day all in all, but a normal one in a normal family, there are good days and there are days like today...

Integration

The noise isn't as deafening as I thought it would be
The world not collapsing upon itself
The sky isn't falling and all is in surreal normalcy
I am fine, my feet is steady
I am still standing

The journey that I thought led to separate roads
Come together as if by magic

The pieces fit in it's own puzzle place, their forms adjust to each angle
I watch and see mesmerized the transition of my perception
The ideas I had about things, I find are without reason
Stubborn beliefs I held for so long crumble and fade
Things are not as I expected and yet…even this is fine

I see the path a little more clearly
Nothing is truly black or white, not even gray
Some things are just what they are

It is an act I do in sheer amazement
That I walk towards the person I felt I could never be
The right and wrongs fall on its wayside, as they are unimportant
The person that I have made myself to be has met who she truly is
The meeting is strangely simple and painless

The journey was unexpected but welcome
And it goes on…

A look at our marriage - thoughts from afar

A few thoughts I had written while I was away on vacation, and didn't want and couldn't be in front of the computer without working...

Spending time on work, business and family like it's going out of style - filled with so many needs, wants, responsibilities, obligations...sometimes I lose sight of the spirit behind all that work.

The security of our future that we try to work for, just doesn't equal to moments of bliss when I lay in bed with Ian and have our cuddle attacks. Or times when Moira and I have our talks on her dolls, toys and imaginative dreams as I either brushed her hair, or sat down in bed with her.

We work hard and strive to provide for our children, to be able to give them what we never had as children, provide for them the opportunities that may not have been afforded us, or we weren't remotely interested in. A fear I have is a dream of my child not being fulfilled because of something I was unable to do...our lives after children stop being our own, even as we strive to find ourselves in this new place in marriage.

Brian and I work at finding time for each other. We are blessed because we have found jobs that we love, keep us challenged and interested and strangely enough we are passionate about. Many times we both have said that had we not have children, we would be 2 workaholics that collapse on each other every other night as we work hard and probably party hard as well. I think our kids give direction to our work-craziness, and probably force us to take vacations, breaks and weekends. =)

It is a delicate balance between our obsessive compulsive nature to attain some sort of perfection at our jobs and the practicality of actually being able to do that and live some sort of quality life with the family. It took some time but I am much better at that - I used to think that I would be able to give the 100% that work, and family demands. I used to think that I can do everything I needed to do at work, go home and be the best mother and wife that I can be. Then, when that didn't work, I thought maybe if I gave about 80% to each side I could be happy still. But it wasn't happening and for awhile I felt like a huge failure...if I couldn't make it work, maybe this wasn't what I was supposed to be doing.

It was a couple of years of going through and in the end of that long, trying journey - the face of my kids, the embrace of my husband was made more special. I learned something very important in our marriage; this is our marriage, not made up of anyone else's ideals, values and visions...but ours. We created our marriage the way we wanted it to be and now we don't live up to anyone else's ideas of how a marriage should be, but our own.

It's certainly not the traditional kind of marriage, at least not the kind like our parents had. We have separate vacations sometimes, we share equally on our responsibilities at home, we raise our kids the best that we can, maybe not in the neatest and sanitized of homes - but definitely they are raised loved and cherished. I certainly can't speak on how well our way will be but I know that we are the best that we can be and we love each other completely, faults and bruises and all.