I'm waiting for all the marital strife stories here. Very disappointed. C'mon people!
I thought this would generate some juicy stories, too.
It's really highly dependent on circumstances as to whether or not marital strife will happen in such a way as to generate juicy stories.
I dreamed last night that a friend told me she was leaving her husband,
I had a dream last night that we found this magical shampoo bottle where you dialed in on the front of the bottle (by pushing and lighting up the appropriate icon) exactly what miracle you wanted the shampoo to do- make your hair grow back in where it had thinned, color your hair, etc. It was the awesomest hair product ever.
Ooooh, is this the share-your-dreams thread? No, it isn't. (Ice buuuuurn.)
Wondering what percentage of the thread's posters will be presidential. Somebody else go first--I have a meeting.
Marital strife stories are always interesting to me.
Ooooh, is this the share-your-dreams thread? No, it isn't. (Ice buuuuurn.)
I think SP's post is an allegory, like the baby animals for institutions of higher learning.
On the luck side, it seems like my family faces serious challenges in the first year of marriage.
My brother got married, left the navy, and moved to a new state that he enjoyed... but after six months he was laid off and barely made it back into the navy before a year had run out.
My wife's boss became aggressive within months of our marriage, riding her and manipulating the process until she quit. The following week I was laid off.
My nephew and his new wife found out two days after their marriage that their 9 month old had brain cancer.
So, yeah... if you want to see what you're made of, marry into my family. (Fortunately, my brother and I and our wives made it through our first year challenges. My Nephew's just married in May... it's been a rough first month.)
In my limited experience (sample of one), marital strife is uniformly banal and uninteresting.
Omg, your poor nephew and nephew's wife.
I remember in the movie Dave the title character's explanation for the failure of his first marriage: "It didn't take." I like that.
My own first marriage was doomed from the start for reasons that are only obvious in retrospect. The failure of the marriage wasn't a result happenstance or luck -- but the existence of that marriage was entirely the result of circumstances and personality traits that seem pretty random.
7: Your proper role in this thread is as a supplier, not a consumer. And don't give us any of that high-falutin confidentiality talk.
10: Haven't we had interesting threads here in the past? Also I think there should be a rule about no pooping in the punchbowl within the first twenty comments.
Calling on Smearcase to weigh in on whether the phrase in 14 is worse than easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy (which I do hate and the girls have picked up from their teachers, though I've gotten fond of "scribble-scrabble" for bad handwriting.)
10 Isn't the quote about happy ones?
Anyway, I prefer to think it's that I'm really bad at relationships and not just bad luck, I think.
Calling on Smearcase to weigh in on whether the phrase in 14 is worse than easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy
Ha, I was just assuming that Smearcase had mentally dinged me for saying "pooped in the punchbowl".
I'm trying to decide when leaving a marriage is the right decision, when nothing's really gone "wrong." We've just grown apart. I wouldn't be sad if she were gone, but ending the marriage seems so... inconvenient. I think she feels pretty much the same way, although I'm not sure of that. Of course, there are kids to think about. And it seems like it would be hard to explain to anyone why you're divorcing, if nothing has gone wrong--it's not even really fair to say we have "irreconcilable differences." No, we mostly just have indifference. Sometime I wish one of us would go ahead and have an affair, just so there would be some sort of concrete something to latch onto.
I prefer to not have "poop" and "Smearcase" in the same sentence.
You may think that a shiny new spouse is like a hair product which you can dial up whatever you want whenever you want, but in reality all the advertising about being bouncy and shiny is just marketing.
20: ...since it destroyed my first marriage.
My marriage has improved in the last two years, from terrible to nearly neutral. Mary Todd has become less abusive, and is now probably an OK person to an objective observer. Too late for me though, I still want out, but will probably wait until college begins.
Probably the best way to make the thread interesting would be to dish about infidelity. I don't want to myself, beyond saying that I don't feel guilt.
Or maybe to provide enough context to make the strife interesting in a Modern Love kind of way-- but I basically only discuss my problems with two friends, because laying out what's wrong with your partner is usually a cruddy thing to do.
22 suggests for the first time that "Smearcase" is a word that refers to something other than an online commenter.
22: When we know about animal tail butt plugs better, we do better.
Marriage is a walk on the slippery rocks. Dismissed charges are the smile on a dog.
24 just led me to the knowledge that smearcase means cottage cheese. WHO KNEW!?
19: Actually, I'd expect most people to be pretty understanding of "the fire had gone out, and daily life was borderline unpleasant", or something to that effect. OTOH, the kids and relatives probably wouldn't accept that.
Or maybe you'd find out that everyone else thinks the marriage is a dry, loveless husk, and has been waiting for the two of you to escape it.
Smearcase's sensibilities are going to be so battered by this thread. Right in the easy-peasy poop tummy.
23.1 is why you should never get married before going to college.
26: I was just wondering what ever happened about that. But wondering when I wasn't online, so...
COLLEGE IS WHERE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO FIND YOUR HUSBAND, OF COURSE.
I think it would be fair to say that my mother's new marriage will need a few lucky (or at least very surprising) breaks to stand the test of time.
would be to dish about infidelity.
As I've mentioned before, I was serially infidel...ous? with BOGF, but have otherwise never been tempted in the least*. Monogamy suits me.
*only the very slightest exaggeration. 2 fleeting temptations in 18+ years of non-BOGF monogamy
34: Ooh, I'd been wondering about that but not wanting to harass you online. Yikes.
As I've mentioned before, I was serially infidel...ous? with BOGF, but have otherwise never been tempted in the least*. Monogamy suits me.
This is me too, except for the 18 years part because I'm not OLD yet. Except this is why the linked post is interesting - I've never been tested, exactly, either.
It's been...let's see...15 years since I've cheated on a boyfriend. Totally different.
Naturally, I am cynical. But I am amused when I hear people under 35 speak about how certain they are that their marriage of 5 years (or less) will last.
Wait wait wait! Did your mother marry the guide?!? Did the guide make it to the goat roast? What did the embassy say? Where are they now?
15 years since I've cheated on a boyfriend
Okay Princess Loophole, but how many years have you had a husband rather than a boyfriend?
I've never been tested, exactly, either
That burning sensation could be *anything*.
She's never cheated on the boyfriends she's had while married.
Okay Princess Loophole
Don't be mad that I plugged my loophole and haven't had your first marriage problems.
I plugged my loophole
With cottage cheese, presumably.
19: Sometime I wish one of us would go ahead and have an affair
I haven't read the OP's linked post, but as someone in a sort of partnership arrangement, it strikes me that the partnership aspect is the most important. Mutual support and all that. I cannot speak to marriage or children, but certainly the relative freedom involved in partnership -- which really means friendship and, again, mutual support no matter what -- can be a workable form of relationship.
I don't say I recommend this in every circumstance. It really depends on how broad your own support network (beyond your partner) is. And, of course, if you are very sad, very sad indeed, at the loss of passion, and feel you can't live with that, move on. Probably the younger you are, the more likely you are to find the lack of passion intolerable.
When I was a teenager I had a recurring nightmare of being married to a particular, ordinary girl in my hs. I served on a church committee with her mother, so I was aware of her, but had no particular animus against her.
But it's plain to me that the marriage of incompatibles was something I dreaded, and felt was a danger to be avoided. Family and friends probably modeled it, so that it wasn't merely imaginary, but I'd say it was my special fear.
I broke up with lovers twice, once by just moving away, without being able to say why, but knowing that this was behind it.
With my wife, I've never had a trace of this feeling. We've had disagreements and disappointments, but have never wanted out, or felt trapped.
19: This is my situation and the consensus here seems to be that I should end it. I've stayed because it's hard to make what feels like a very selfish decision in the absence of a very obvious problem. That is, a more obvious problem than the soul-crushing loneliness of being in a marriage with someone you lack any connection to whatsoever.
The link in the OP is a short and easy read, FWIW.
I plugged my loophole
With cottage cheese, presumably.
Actually with folic acid supplements.
This is my situation and the consensus here seems to be that I should end it.
Well, my opinion was at least that it's unfixable. Whether that means affairs or ending it or suffering or what is a slightly different question.
||
See, I'm feeling thirsty right now! But not headachey or anything. My mouth feels a bit dry and water seems appealing. I'm so one with my body and the universe.
|>
52: heard and understood. I read the linked post - sorry about that.
The first couple of paragraphs are entirely smart and understandable. I've broken up with someone I otherwise would have married because, as I figured out, love is actually not enough.
55 made me remember that I hadn't had any water in a while, but I forgot to go get some. Now I have a little bit of a headache.
UPDATE: wait, I did get water! 32oz, down the hatch.
Maybe I should just post a PSA whenever I feel thirsty until you all get the hang of this dry-mouth thing.
From what I can tell, every couple with two small children spends at least several months wanting to murder each other. If you don't know that, you might think things are falling apart.
On temptation: in NM, we often had med students stay with us, somehow pretty much all of them cute, two very flirtatious (touching my chest in greeting when I opened the door / I'll just work out in the living room in short shorts and a sports bra when your wife is at work / oh, I forgot three pairs of thong underwear in your dryer, can I come pick them up later?) and I was certainly tempted in the sense that they were really attractive and it would have been a lot of fun in the moment. But beyond the sufficient reason that one shouldn't cheat on one's spouse, I was a good fifteen years older than they were, and my infant son would have been asleep in the next room. Too much skeez for almost anyone, I'd think.
It was interesting to laugh about these things with my wife and some of our friends there. I'd say "Yes, more med students, please!" and my wife would roll her eyes, but one (woman) friend really disliked the med students, and another (woman friend) said, quite seriously, "How are you still married?" As it was, my wife wrote them both nice letters of recommendation, and one of them just sent us a picture from her engagement and will probably invite us to her wedding.
But beyond the sufficient reason that one shouldn't cheat on one's spouse, I was a good fifteen years older than them, and my infant son would have been asleep in the next room. Too much skeez for almost anyone, I'd think.
I bet if you were in RR's or HRC's marriage, the skeez wouldn't have been insurmountable. A dead marriage is just a fundamentally different thing than a basically satisfying one.
one of them just sent us a picture from her bachelorette party
Let's all post how much skeez we can surmount.
Just to be a contrarian: My marriage did quite well when we had small children. It wasn't until all of the daily tumult that comes with young children and babies had settled down that I looked at him and thought, "oh shit." I used to not understand how people could have three or four children only to get divorced when their youngest entered school. How do you end up with that many children with someone you don't like very much? It's because the daily life of small children is demanding enough that you don't have time to stop and think too much about your relationship.
And I've never cheated on my husband or anyone else I've been in a relationship with. For the first ten years of my marriage I was never tempted to cheat. Then, one day, I was. There are certainly serial cheaters but for most people cheating is the result of the circumstances of the relationship not some defect in their character.
A dead marriage is just a fundamentally different thing than a basically satisfying one.
Yeah, sure. But having a fling with some young hottie doesn't really solve the problem, and just makes you a skeez. But life is complicated, so I can imagine circumstances where it would seem like the right call. Not that I would approve.
62: I'll surmount anything that moves!
Do you have a stamp or something for when you do approve?
My guess is that there are dying marriages and dead marriages. In dying marriages, people could still make better decisions and repair things. The problem is that people have very slow reaction times, are hugely avoidant, and don't act on their suspicion that the marriage is slipping until it's actually dead. The classic situation being that you go to marriage counseling once the marriage is DOA.
Cheating in a dying marriage is a way of managing stress, avoiding intimacy, getting a brief reprieve, etc, and is probably a bad decision if the person would prefer to repair their marriage. Cheating in a dead marriage...eh, who cares.
Well, I do, but we've had this thread to not much profit long ago.
Yeah, Nancy recently said (completely unprompted) that she doesn't really care if I have sex with other people. I assume that was intended mostly as an announcement that she's actively contemplating doing so herself. But she wouldn't confirm that.
I just saw online that my ex-wife has a short story in a book about failure, and I'm wondering if I'm in it. Stupid "Look Inside" feature is not helping me out.
To be clear, the Reagans in 6 and 19 are different people. I'm the Reagan who posted a while back about maybe moving out.
I told Jane Wyman about thinking of moving out and she lost her shit. She categorically does not want to give up on the marriage. Just wants me to fix everything wrong about myself. And she wants me to do so through the lens of alcohol treatment, which I fundamentally don't think is the core problem. Yes, I was abusing alcohol, but was doing it to self-medicate for depression, which is the real issue to me--therapy and med management seem to be the path to me.
(I'm taking a year off from drinking and will reevaluate at that point. It wouldn't be the end of the world to give up booze, but man do I like it.)
In the meantime, I'm fantasizing about moving out, just getting a little place where I can work on my own shit. The kids thing and the money thing make this little better than a fantasy, though, unless I'm ready to just pull the trigger on divorce.
And I've been lurking on OKC, fantasizing about a fresh start, maybe with someone who shares common interests. Living in a ruralish area, though, the pickings are slim. When I look at my old metro area, the number of matches skyrockets.
One old saw I've heard is that men don't marry until they're ready, and then they marry the first person who comes along. Not sure if it's true in general, but I think it may be true for Jane and me. So luck (or more accurately, chance) combined with a personality stage.
I've had a general polcy of not going presidential about relationship stuff, but I get a lot to think about from the people who do. I start solo therapy this week to not be so much like Jane in 76.2, and yet I'm not totally optimistic about the outcome of a plan to want less out of life and be okay with that. I can probably pull it off, but I don't know for sure. I no longer have any plans to leave, but also not much certainty about what a good future could look like.
Martial luck is the best luck of all.
God, I go round and round about this. He hasn't done anything horrible, but for vArious reasons my husband is a broken person who seems like a great guy on the outside (if a bit type a) but who treats his family (his nuclear family and now ours) with distrust and negativity. Basically, he's a passive/Aggressive control freak with anger issues. I thought our marriage and family would be fine because I am NOT his mother, but he seems to be intent on repeating the same failed cycle of behavior.
It's hard to decide to leave because our youngest daughter is special needs and I know that if I were single parenting it during the week, my mothering would take a real dive because I would be so overworked and stressed out. By 8:00 at night I'd be yelling and screaming. Also, I'm just a huge coward; I've never broken up with anyone. It's not terrible; it's mostly neutral with spots of despair 2-3 times a month
Ooof, that sounds rough. How old is the youngest?
Dolly, could you look into whether there might be in-home services available for the little one, whether or not you decide to go it alone? I find it's annoying to have people in the home, but it does at least give you a few minutes to breathe or cook or use the bathroom without interruption. Sorry you're juggling so much.
I missed this whole thread due to a six hour training about all the different things people sue social workers for. Hm, the phrase I will not retype is not quite worse than easy peasy etc but I would feel less uncomfortable saying the latter out loud.
24 just led me to the knowledge that smearcase means cottage cheese. WHO KNEW!?
Cream cheese, I thought, as in schmear.
Wait, please tell me this whole time you did not think Smearcase was some kind of scatological thing.
Comment 29 is a dark moment for me and former twinsy Heebie.
NOBODY ELSE IS COMMENTING I OWN THE BLOG.
It was a brief, glorious reign.
It's a good thing I don't have anything to go presidential about because everyone would either know it was me or think it was teo.
Heh. It is indeed that time of night.
It's the Smearcase and teo shooooow!
If only we had something to talk about.
It's not a very popular show. Maybe we should have set it in a prison.
Straw poll! Supposing you found yourself starring in a piece of a fiction about failure by your ex, would you want the fiction to to be badly written, or would that actually compound the insult?
93 made me laugh. But I'm also watching tv.
Mickey Rooney in prison: "Hey kids! Let's do a show!"
94: Figure either way I'll be embarrassed for being a failure, at least if the writing's good I can be like, "yeah I hit that"
at least if the writing's good I can be like, "yeah I hit that"
"But not well enough, apparently."
It's the Smearcase and teo shooooow!
(unison) teo and Smearcase in the MOOORNING!
(and, credits)
That really depends on time zones and so forth. Generally for us it's late at night when we do this. On the other hand, for me this time of year it never really gets dark, so "morning" and "night" are ambiguous concepts anyway.
I shot JFK.
Now you'll have to spend the rest of your lives wondering if it was teo or Smearcase who did it.
101: "Community" hasn't reached the Frozen Chosen yet?
103: I'm sure it's reached the hipper ones, but not me. I don't even own a TV™. (I do still recognize old Simpsons quotes because of course I do.)
102: I don't think either of us was even born then. I certainly wasn't.
Wait, please tell me this whole time you did not think Smearcase was some kind of scatological thing.
No, we all thought you were the Son of Suzy Creamcheese.
Who would resort to the excuse of "I was too young to shoot the President"? A guilty man, that's who.
But having a fling with some young hottie doesn't really solve the problem, and just makes you a skeez.
How about having a fling with a normal looking and sympathetically intelligent person within 10-15% of your own age either way?
107: Deflecting blame onto others is also suspicious behavior in this context...
108: We're talking about medical students here. That's a highly unsympathetic kind of intelligence at best.
110. I'm sorry for your experience with medical students. I have found them to vary between the loathsome and the delightful, like any other students, but with a preponderance of delightful.
Go on youtube and play lots of Frank Zappa. Doesn't get any more entertaining.
Let's all post the reasons why we think different commenters would have shot JFK!
(draws card)
"Say why you think the player on your left would have shot JFK. If they actually did shoot JFK, advance two spaces."
Ajay would have done it to entertain heebie and is definitely just deflecting blame by being too young and raising the topic himself.
In a certain sense, didn't we all shoot JFK?
Who killed the Kennedies? Well after all, it was you and me!
Not me. But I did give FDR polio.
Stupid autocorrect. Genital warts, not polio.
I am lying in bed next to my partner mastering the fine art of crying without making any sound because there's really no point in talking about it. For my partner, there's really nothing here, but it's important to be in A Relationship. Me, I'm crazy in love with my partner, but being in A Relationship with someone who clearly doesn't feel that way about me is soul crushing.
Jonas Salk had the same confusion.
121. That's brutal. Sorry, but you have to get out. It'll be more bearable from a distance. Really.
Grover, that's really rough. I'm sorry you're in that position.
111: I find premeds generally pretty loathsome, but the small fraction who were admitted seem really lovely. It makes the ridiculous application process here almost seem like it works properly.
How about having a fling with a normal looking and sympathetically intelligent person within 10-15% of your own age either way?
A friend just did this. Unsurprisingly, it didn't go well.
With one iteration and no replication, that's not science.
My ex had an affair as a way of shitting the bed. Much other bad shit happened too. She was emotionally and psychologically abusive and undercut me professionally at every opportunity. Lots of gaslighting. We had been very close and were in the same field. It's a wonder I didn't kill myself back then because I certainly thought about it a lot. Things are much better now but the past weighs heavily when I even think about initiating new romantic relationships. She's long gone and no longer haunts me in my day to day but I can't construct a narrative of my past for myself that doesn't have her all over it. And that makes it very difficult to engage with a new partner romantically as my own person.
129 resonates. My ex had an affair as a way of putting the final nail in the coffin of a necrotic and dysfunctional relationship. I think she feels guilty about it, but really what she should feel bad about is all the other stuff that lead to that point. The affair is completely understandable. The other shit not so much.
Sorry Grover.
I'm sure this doesn't apply to you, but my spouse is a terrible mind-reader. Projections about what I am thinking or feeling, or what motivates particular conduct are nearly always wrong, often 180 degrees off. Of course I only find out what was thought when anger has resulted -- but over time, my most frequent reaction in spats has been is that really why you think I did that? you don't understand me at all.
127: A friend just did this and it's completely reinvigorated his marriage, which had grown stale and boring. She has no idea what happened, just suddenly her husband is all loving and full of concern for her wellbeing.
Your wife don't understand you, but I do.
132: I've seen this. It works well until the woman he had an affair with kills the bunnies.
If this guy has a wife, I wonder if she's happy or sad.
Last night I had a dream that was on topic for this thread about how my wife and I were fighting about going out to dinner in NYC and finding a parking spot.
Projections about what I am thinking or feeling
Oh man, this drives me up a rope. I am both specific and literal when I speak. You will never need to examine the unspoken implications of what I say, because I would just freaking say it.
However, I have never had a single serious relationship with a woman who believes me on this.
I just got really annoyed with Lee because she uses "wrench" and "pliers" interchangeably (also doesn't know or care about the difference between nails and screws to the point where she hammers in screws, which makes me lose my mind) but I got the bathtub fixed anyway and so now I'm happy again. On the one hand, this adds plenty of evidence to the theory that I need to chill out and be more accepting, but on the other hand COME ON!
Hammering a screw is totally unacceptable. Unacceptable.
My experience has been that some guys, e.g. The ones I tend to date,/marry "just freaking say it" without any apparent comprehension of what the words they just freaking said actually mean. "What? All I said is that you neglect your child. I NEVER called you a bad mother! "
I just got really annoyed with Lee because she uses "wrench" and "pliers" interchangeably
Ha! I get annoyed because Roberta uses "windows" and "blinds" interchangeably. ("Could you close that window?" "The window isn't open." "Close the blinds, asshole.") I can't explain why this bothers me so.
Not to diminish the sadness of 121 but I almost had to do the crying silently trick because sometimes I have dreams that seem ubearably sad while I'm dreaming them and for a minute after I wake up and I just had one of those. Now I can't remember what was so sad. I think maybe the entire town burst into song as we were leaving. Sometimes the very sad dreams seem silly once I'm fully awake.
I seen lots of couples recover from affairs. Usually those are the marriages that had gotten stale or neglectful. One of them has an affair and realizes that their current spouse isn't so bad. Or the current spouse starts stepping up and working more on the marriage.
But, the real message is that it takes both people willing to work.
So I kind of hate the people who shame friends going through a divorce with "you both need to work harder!" Sure, sometimes you need a friend to call you out some. But, sometimes, that friend is an ass who doesn't recognize that one person working hard does nothing.
"What is the sound of one member of a relationship working?"
"Will's phone ringing."
I almost had to do the crying silently trick because:
uses "wrench" and "pliers" interchangeably (also doesn't know or care about the difference between nails and screws to the point where she hammers in screws, which makes me lose my mind)
uses "windows" and "blinds" interchangeably
nooooooo
Hammering a screw is totally unacceptable.
Agreed. Screwing a hammer is also deprecated.
138: Wow, and I thought I was bad with tools!
Or are you really talking about sex?
What about trying to use a screwdriver on nails? I can imagine that's really frustrating. Although if you bang it with the handle it might work ok.
Oh hey, this isn't marital, but y'all might find it interesting/amusing.
A couple years after my mom's accident*, my dad started dating a woman, R. No idea what the physical component was, but they hung out in the city. A year or two later, after R had sort of blown him off (I think she wanted a more casual thing than he did), he started dating this other woman, G, who became his de facto partner. She's OK, and was willing to put up with being sort of secondary to my mom which is to her credit, but nobody really thinks she's all that great. They've always maintained separate houses and such, but they've been together nearly 20 years now.
Anyhow, G is in her mid to late 70s, and doesn't like going out as much, and fusses with her pets, and so my dad has been seeing R again. I still don't know exactly how that works - and G doesn't know about it, and would presumably not be happy, but who knows - but it's mostly about having someone to hang out with at clubs.
And then last week he tells me that he's been seeing another woman, C. Who is rich as fuck, and recently divorced from the president of a nationally famous company HQ'd in NYC. C knows about R and G, so I guess it's all very adult.
Parents!
*brain injury, never fully recovered, in hospitals/care homes the rest of her life
If he marries C, do you get in on the inheritance?
138: Nah, being unchill about that is legit. Hammering a screw should, except in extreme circumstances, cause you to lose your tool privileges.
141: Words mean things!
I have cow-orkers who are horrible about the names of things. One uses the term "bottle jack" to refer to the bottle cart, which would be fine except a bottle jack is a completely different thing. She also uses 'pliers' to men wire cutters. Drives me up the wall, but I suck it up in the interests of lab harmony.
Now I can't remember what was so sad. I think maybe the entire town burst into song as we were leaving.
Wait, that was in The Muppets Movie. It was sweet when they did it.
138 sounds like an amazingly annoying thing to do. It would infuriate me because I would be sure that the person who was doing it was deliberately trying to appear incredibly bad at DIY so that I would stop asking her to help fix the bathtub. (cf. drop enough dishes and sooner or later she will stop asking you to wash up.)
It's fortunate all the women have different first letters in their names or he might make a mistake suitable for a romantic comedy film.
138: I wouldn't think screws or nails would be much use in fixing a bathtub.
Speaking of home repair, as regular readers know, I have successfully replaced a sump pump and cleared a french drain and repaired a dryer. Now I'm going to change a ballast in a fluorescent light after watching a YouTube video for instruction.
If my wife is one of the women in this thread, I hope she doesn't confuse "circuit breaker" with something else.
156: yes, I agree, but I'm drawing on the description in 138. Maybe Thorn is terrible at DIY as well! Moby, get yourself over there, clearly those ladies need a man who's handy about the house.
I really should fix my own bathroom ceiling first. It's just hard because I can't maneuver a whole sheet of drywall very easily.
I wouldn't think screws or nails would be much use in fixing a bathtub.
Possibly in the sense of keeping it in one place, making it a fixture.
I need to remove the base of a broken light bulb in an outdoor fixture. I've been delaying on this since the tools are still back in our apartment. When I mentioned this to my father, he sent me a link to an instructional video as well as the comment "Other sites say vegetables are a no no". I'm still uncertain whether that was meant to be a setup for a dirty joke.
162: People say to use a potato (after turning off the power).
I'd try pliers myself (after turning off the power).
161: "oh, the bath works fine, it just tends to wander around the place a bit. This time of the year it's normally under the stairs, where it's cooler."
163: yeah, (after turning off the power) I intend to use pliers. Or maybe a wrench.
I tried to remove a broken lightbulb using the potato trick once. Once.
Screwing a hammer is also deprecated.
I'd rather screw a hammer than a nail
Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would
Don't forget to turn off the power.
I neither wanted nor asked for her help! She is a disaster at DIY, but is persistent nonetheless. The upstairs bathtub is a clawfoot and there's a metal ring for the shower curtain. The end that's connected to the ceiling (as opposed to the shower head side, where it's screwed to the wall) had gotten disconnected because the bolt that holds the rod in place had come loose. Her plan to have me hold the shower ring part up while she used a wrench (actually pliers, but not even needle-nosed ones that might have worked) to tighten failed. While she was off calling a handyman, I climbed on the windowsill, unscrewed the part that connects to the ceiling, put the metal connector tube in place and tightened the bolt, and then screwed the thing back into the ceiling. So I win, but it's even more boring than you probably imagined.
Weird that "hammering" and "nailing" are both fine verbs for that action, but "screwdriving" isn't a variant of "screwing." I guess it is a little redundant.
So what did the handyman do when he showed up?
I'd been thinking we'd remove the subway tile that goes halfway up the wall when we remodel in a million years, but it was convenient to put one foot on top of that and one on the windowsill and be stable. It's great to have ceilings 10 or 11 feet high except when you have to get to a spot that's hard to access.
171: no, what's weird is that it's called a "screwdriver", and not just a "screwer".
172: He'll be here at 4 to pick up the pressure washer he let her borrow and I'm to ask for a quote on having him sand most of the paint off our new hutch to make it look more distressed. I was able to get her agree to not asking him to sand off all the paint because then we'd have to refinish it. He's a lovely guy, but I think it took him a year or so to figure out we were a couple, even after painting our bedroom and after multiple explanations, and I'm pretty sure his only interest is to pray for us.
Not when it's 110 years old and smashed all over the place, Moby! But maybe we'll replace it with more subway tile.
Wrench and pliers I can totally understand, as they're just words if you're not used to using them. But not understanding the difference between a nail and a screw is at a totally different level. That'd be a dealbreaker for me.
Our bathroom as a pink marble floor and an beigeish top on the vanity. We really need to redo it, but it's such a pain. At least the walls are not white, not pink.
Our bathroom as a pink marble floor
Oh, now you're just taunting me.
171: Hrm, yeah. Must have been a marketing thing. But "plier[s]" makes no sense, then. Or British "spanner".
Is this the renovation complaining thread? We moved out of the front half of our house, set up makeshift kitchen over the washer/dryer, etc, two weeks ago. So far the contractor has replaced 1 window and done a little demo work.
I'm very excited about the window, but it took him an afternoon. Camping out of the back of the house kind of sucks and I'd like to minimize it, and at this rate it will take him months.
171: "Driving screws" is normal, isn't it? Although, come to think, I think I'd use that specifically when I wasn't using a screwdriver, but a power drill (with a screwdriver bit). Although, living in an apartment, the last time I interacted with power tools is long enough ago that I'm probably forgetting how to talk about it.
Power tools are the best. (I leave it to the reader to decide if that goes to the DIY or a relationship thread.)
185: I usually only say "driving screws" if I'm using a power tool and I do stuff like that fairly often.
184- We want to do renovations that will involve camping in half the house but can't even pick a contractor. We got three estimates for our renovation to convert two top story bedrooms into four small ones by extending into the lower-ceiling area near the sides of the house (standard gable roof.) We expected about $40k. One was $93k, one was $56k, one was $23k so we talked to $26k guy more and he said whoops I meant $41k and just randomly tacked on numbers to hit that (he wasn't very good at math.) So we went to $56k guy and checked his references and they were good except for one that was totally awful. So now we're back in getting estimate mode and have delayed the work until later in the summer. Given that the first round were 1x-2x-4x of each other, is there any way to figure out what is actually what we should expect to spend?
You should expect to spent $37,506.23.
187: If you lose your wife in a freak circuit-breaker accident, Di might be interested.
If you lose your wife in a circuit breaker accident, you might find her once you get the lights turned back on.
Ugh. When we built the back of the house, we went with the offer that detailed exactly how the expenses went, line item by line item. They added up to more than anyone else's expenses, but no one else seemed to have a very clear picture behind their estimate. He stuck to the budget very closely, and there were no rude surprises, and he's a very conscientious, perfectionist guy. (So we had the same guy do the fence and yard, and now the kitchen.)
JRoth is a good person to ask for your problem specifically, though.
So youns only say "driving screws" specifically when you aren't using a screwdriver? What the hell, English.
In other home repair news, we also have some sort of issue with the wiring going to our outside AC unit, so until the electrician comes we're finding out exactly how much heat our house traps (much). Good news for the winter, I guess.
At least it's really, really humid this week.
But "plier[s]" makes no sense, then. Or British "spanner".
Pliers bend things, Fr. plier, as long as they're pliable. Spanners join things, and if you span something (if you are a bridge, say), you join the two edges of it. (If you inspan things, eg oxen, you join them together with a yoke).
173: I am going to say "don't be fatuous, Moby", solely to prove that I can get that quote right after being corrected for saying "naive" the last couple of times I misquoted it. I am learning.
The real question is: why do the misguided Americans say "wrench" and not "wrencher"?
Spanners join things,
I thought a spanner was what I'd call a pipe wrench. Am I wrong about what a spanner is, or is there some sense in which you join things with a pipe wrench?
Now that I look at that written out, I suppose screwing one thing into another counts as joining them. It still sounds odd to put it that way, though.
I think if I tried to comment I'd be lumped in with the annoying spouses who hammer buttons and ply tin cans.
If you stand the pliers (esp. needlenose) on end then open them they look like a little person bending their knees so pliers are named after the ballet move.
129: Yeah, sympathies on the joys and horrors of dating people who are in your field and are also your competitors. On one hand they can be brilliant! On the other hand, conflicts of interest, and if things go bad, you've got a new enemy at work!
198: That is exactly the folk etymology I made up for myself to explain "spanner". I have no idea if it's true, though. And no means of ever learning the truth.
Our bathroom as a pink marble floor and an beigeish top on the vanity. We really need to redo it, but it's such a pain.
Word. We're going to remodel our main bathroom this summer and I'm not going to even try doing it myself.
197. So did I. You use it to tighten and loosen bolts, n'est-ce-pas?
You use a spanner, mainly, to tighten nuts and bolts - which join things together.
Pipe wrench is pretty specific and seems wrong for spanner; I would have imagined an open-end or Crescent-style thing. Wikipedia claims that even though "spanner" in British English is about as generic as "wrench" in US English, "pipe wrench" isn't included. On the other hand, I've never heard the term "Stillson" that's cited there.
A US synonym for "Allen wrench" is "Hex key". Also, "Channel lock" for adjustable pliers.
Wiktionary says that an adjustable wrench is Englander in German and γαλλικό κλειδί in Greek, that is, French wrench.
Sympathies to Dolly, Frankenstein, Grover and Elvis up there.
Well, taking her much younger African husband along golfing with her retired golfing buddies for their regular weekly game seems to have worked out about as well as could have been expected for my mom. Apparently she will not be golfing with them anymore, because they so offended her.
She sure is not going to have very many friends left at the end of this.
You need to take notes and write a screen play or novel.
Oh, a spanner is a wrench generally? I think I must have seen a cartoon or illustration with a pipe wrench or monkey wrench, and thought it was a specific term.
209: Urgh. It probably didn't help any if their reaction was somewhat racially driven.
209: is this the same mother who was en route to marriage with African boyfriend a few years back? I didn't know she'd actually gone ahead with it. Blimey.
More of 211.last: And of course whether or not they actually were being racist about it, there's no way to have a negative reaction that couldn't be interpreted that way.
Did they know of the marriage already? If so, they were just plain rude.
214: Well, of course, we don't know what they actually did or said that she's reacting to. Fairly ordinary nosy chatter about the immigration process, how did you two meet, what are you planning to do in the US, seems like the sort of thing that could be reacted to with a certain amount of touchiness.
They apparently failed to hide their annoyance at playing with somebody who had never touched a golf club before in his life, and then failed to call her to see if she wanted to play the next day. ("Even though I've been playing golf with them for right years!")
Sorry, that was me. "Remember personal info" is hard for us 19th century Presidents.
Oh, I didn't even think of purely golf-driven annoyance. Yeah, it's not an easy game to pick up on the fly, I understand.
Ah. That sounds par for the course. KA-CHOW.
Presumably like the rest of us they were also struggling with the cognitive dissonance of not saying "what the hell are you doing?" to my mom every five minutes or so.
216: In the movie, he slices, the ball hits a tree, and on the rebound knocks the blue hair right off one of her friends.
No, I like the movie. As I said before, just because this isn't funny to me right now in the moment doesn't mean it's not funny.
Well, Don Cheadle isn't returning my emails regardless.
225: well it was in terrible taste for you to bill it as "a sequel to Hotel Rwanda"
Jamie Lee Curtis is Mrs Grant, senior, in
"A Fish Called Rwanda"
You need to take notes and write a screen play or novel.
Isn't it a shame one can't write novels about one's friends' lives! One day when my friend Cathy (who actually writes novels) and I were hashing over the strangenesses of our lives just then, I said "we should totally write novels about each other's lives" and she indicated that friendships probably ended that way.
She's only 6 years older than Cheadle. They both have enough talent to make it work, but still...
Jamie Lee Curtis, that is. I don't know Cathy.
Golf or not, annoyance seems like an unavoidable and fair reaction to bringing him along. If you're going to go off the deep end and insist on bringing the results of your late life nuttery to social gatherings then maybe you stop getting invited to those gatherings.
A Fish Called Rwanda
A less-than-three heart! My kingdom for a less-than-three heart!
131: A generally good point, though I tend to think that if you have to resort to mind reading to try to figure out if someone is crazy in love with you, there's a problem anyway. But our state of things has been made sufficiently explicit that bad mind reading skills aren't the problem.
Isn't it a shame one can't write novels about one's friends' lives!
Isn't this why we blog in secret?
My dad has played golf for pretty much his whole life and as far as I can tell there are only about three people he's ever met whose company he can tolerate on the golf course. Golf people seem to be touchy about things that slow down or distract from the game.
"somebody who had never touched a golf club before in his life"
Oh hey that's going to be me next week. Although I'm generally coordinated so maybe it won't be too bad. Also I forgot to check when I agreed to go and it's during the USA-Ger game.
||
Because this is the active thread that has become partly about race, let me recommend the review of books about Marcus Garvey that the always-impressive Keith Humphreys has just posted at samefacts.org, in observance of Juneteenth.
Corrected some misconceptions and myths re: Garvey I'd picked up, and highlights the role of the black establishment in his downfall.
|>
By the way, for the purposes of the movie I should also mention that my mom brought her husband along to the season-opening gin-and-tonic reception for the (~100% lily-white, mostly old) beach club to which she belongs.
The obvious end to the movie is that the African guy, by virtue of his strong religious beliefs, traditional culture, reverence for elders, instinctive skill with a three-iron etc becomes completely accepted into the golf club, which continues to shun mom because they think she's a bit of a flake.
Did your mom's husband make it into the country in time for the goat roast? Did your mom have to pull political strings?
I kind of love that your mom includes him everywhere. Since she is doing this, might as well get people used to it.
First, doesn't he solve the community's long held divisive rift with his simple wisdom? Then he reveals that his natural spear throwing has made him a natural for golf. Then he's tempted by all the rich old ladies who previously spurned him but now lustily throw themselves his way. But he stays true to Grant's Mom, who's been true to him since he was a lower-case-g.
Did your mom's husband make it into the country in time for the goat roast?
No.
Did your mom have to pull political strings?
Yes.
Wait! So do you have new brothers or sisters? Have you met them?
Ulysses' Mom has got it going on,
She's all I want, and I've waited for so long.
Golf or not, annoyance seems like an unavoidable and fair reaction to bringing him along. If you're going to go off the deep end and insist on bringing the results of your late life nuttery to social gatherings then maybe you stop getting invited to those gatherings.
And then have only your family to socialize with.
Since she is doing this, might as well get people used to it.
I'm guessing the odds favor people shunning her rather than getting used to it.
Well, depends on what the guy is like. Golf is a special case, because people who play care about it a lot and a newbie is going to be maddening. But if he's generally personable, it's not crazily implausible that people might think she's remarkably ill-advised for marrying him, but politely keep it to themselves and not object to socializing with him.
Not expressing views on the partners that other people select is really an important life skill.
It'd be pretty shocking if she brought along an adult nephew who'd never played golf to a regular group of regular players. It's really a huge burden on everyone.
Ok, that's just a poor restatement of 249 But it was o be the set-up for this:
It's so outré, that maybe she's fishing for disapproval.
|| My earphones broke this morning--the plastic on the wires near the connector is slightly broken, and when I plugged them in I would only inconsistently get any sound. Now they're in a state where the bass and low-mid come in fine, but the mid-range (especially vocals) have lots of extra reverb. I've tried them on both my phone and laptop, so it's definitely the earphones. I don't understand electrical engineering or Fourier analysis or anything else that might be relevant, so it's entirely mysterious to me how it could fail in that way. Any ideas? |>
You could give Dr. Dre a few hundred dollars.
Empty your pockets,
but do it slow
take everything you got
and lay it on the fucking floor.
This is great. Which Mad Men character are you?
255: That is, indeed, great.
Back in the days before listicles, I really liked some Cosmo personality quizzes-- they clearly had one or more writers who were wry and cynical. But the quizzes had no byline, and they were as ephemeral as old telenovelas, so stay off my lawn.
Oh, is this now the thread to link to great things? Because this is great.
It hides my gut and my inability to coordinate an outfit.
A goodlooking man in a nice suit is a pleasure to look at. Unfortunately, most of my time spent with men in suits is in New York State courts.
Yes. It's satirizing the tendency of certain Christian men to ask women to dress so that it isn't as easy to be tempted by titties (hooray). Still, I do look better in a suit.
They really are very flattering on most men.
83, 84: my youngest just turned 5. As special needs go, hers are fairly mild, apraxia of speech, but she has to go to a lot of speech therapy, and she is not an easy child--easily frustrated and prone to tantrums, hitting and kicking when she goes to time out, she has a hard time making transitions, and is very inflexible. Some of this is related to her disorder, some of it may just be her personality. She is not easy in public places--ie a stranger will say hi to her In the supermarket and she will scream " don't talk" at them and run behind me. She will have a huge screaming fit about sitting or not sitting in the cart, etc. I am often " that mom" whose kid is melting down. But I don't think we qualify for any in home help.
Dolly, that sounds really hard, all the more without a supportive spouse. Turning 5 should mean kindergarten though, right? Maybe you can at least get a break because of that, and get some of the speech services in-school rather than with you doing the transport. I don't want to say much more because I'll just be projecting my own stuff, but I'm sorry you're going through this and I hope it's part of a path toward easier times.
Thanks! Like I said earlier, it's not terrible, just a drag.
I know I haven't found it great to have day after day of regular old drudgery and annoyance and then a few horrible days a month. Things don't have to be terrible to be draining and depressing.
aw man did that link make me want a nice suit. I had three weddings after almost four years without any, and I went shopping for a suit, but didn't fall in love (this one was tempting but I didn't love the material on the summer suits) and decided to save $500 and just get my seersucker spiffed up a bit at the tailor. but man do I want a nice suit.
270: Yeah, I want one, too, although those pictures need a "*your results may vary" under them.
|| And we just found a carpenter ant in our kitchen. Awesome. |>
270: Yeah, I want one, too, although those pictures need a "*your results may vary" under them.
|| And we just found a carpenter ant in our kitchen. Awesome. |>
Seriously, youns needed to know that.
Apparently a not-uncommon orthographic variant of Pittsburgh plural-you "yinz". I read it as something closer to my native "youse" so I've started using it more.
Apparently a not-uncommon orthographic variant of Pittsburgh plural-you "yinz". I read it as something closer to my native "youse" so I've started using it more.
I admit I was slightly startled to see Richard Ayoade at that link, as I hadn't previously thought of him as a candidate for London's Dapperest Chap; I'd thought of him as Moss from The IT Crowd.
Will in 143: But, the real message is that it takes both people willing to work.
So true. Getting back to the OP, luck/fortune matters, but our choices matter a lot too. My individual therapist dying when she did was tragic, but it was also an event whose timing helped us move to a much better couples therapist for the two of us. My search for a new kink-friendly individual therapist turned into an opportunity for us to see the new therapist together as a couple, not just me as an individual. I give my wife a lot of credit for being willing to overcome her fears enough to come with me the first time to see the new therapist, for recognizing that the new therapist was better for both of us than the one we had been seeing, and for being willing to stretch into some much more emotionally challenging territory for her in working with our new therapist. And that has led me to feel much more positive about the relationship, and our prospects for the future, which in turn has made it easier for us to have certain discussions in a positive way.
We still have a long way to go. There's a lot of stuff we still need to talk about together, and some issues where we've gotten agreement in principle that haven't yet translated into much change in our actual sex life together. But I feel like now we are both working together to make progress on the differences dividing us, and that feels good. In one of the last sessions I had with my old therapist, I told her that I was determined to make it through our anniversary last year before forcing any issue that might lead to us splitting up, but I wasn't sure we would make it to the next one. Now I'm sure that we will, and probably many more. It's still possible that at some point after thoroughly discussing our options, we might decide to go our separate ways, but that seems less likely now.
Now I'm sure that we will, and probably many more.
Congratulations. I appreciate all that you have shared here, and I'm glad to know that things are looking up.
I'd thought of [Richard Ayode] as Moss from The IT Crowd.
I do as well, but that reminded me to find this video. I think he's hilarious in the first clip (his answer to the question, "which items did Gordon Brown allegedly throw at his colleagues?")
On the other hand, this is just odd.
