I was having a conversation the other day that made me think. People always say that a good relationship should just happen. They say that a good relationship doesn’t take work and that it should just happen naturally.
Do you know what I say to that? I say that’s bullshit. A good relationship takes a lot of work. Ask any couple who have been together a long time, and they will tell you that it takes a lot of work.
It seems, though, like everybody has a negative connotation associated with the word work. The truth is that if you love the person you’re with and you love the relationship, then it doesn’t feel like work.
Every day when I wake up, I never feel like I’m going to work. I love what I do. I enjoy the subject matter. I enjoy the people with whom I work. I enjoy each day as it comes. So the truth is that I never feel like I’m going to work. I just feel like I’m just enjoying myself.
The same thing is true about my relationship. I am constantly working on things in my relationship. I am constantly working on myself and my issues. None of that feels like work, because I truly believe the payoff for doing this is immense.
Do what you love, and the money will follow. Love yourself, and the love will follow.
Last night in New York City, I had the chance to catch up at dinner with an old friend. It is a friend I had not seen in almost twenty years, and I have the power of Facebook to thank for making this happen.
Anyway, there is nothing better than to see how life has changed, and to really reconnect with old friends. What is really amazing is being able to see how this friend has progressed through life, and how he has grown since the crazy wild days of my 20s in New York City.
Something that I realized is that it is never too late to search out an old friend, because the bridge to your pasts can really help you understand who you are today. So today, think about making a list of some people with whom you would really like to reconnect. Then get on Facebook and search them out.
Good friends from your past are probably also wondering about you. It’s never too late to pick up where you left off with someone.
No on to today’s blog where I tell you how to take a look at how you are interracting with the person you see all the time…
So you’ve started this great relationship and everything is going really well. You’re having so much fun. She’s the one for you, and you are the one for her.
Then you get in your first fight. You start brawling. You start screaming and yelling.
All of a sudden, you get into a pattern wherein you start arguing with this person on a regular basis. You think to yourself, “God, we got along so well the first three months. What happened?!”
You need to think about your arguments. Are you arguing just for the sake of arguing? Are you just trying to get your point across when you argue? Is your ego not allowing you to hear another viewpoint? Do you just argue because you are a lawyer deep down and you want to win every single argument?
You have to look at these things. A lot of arguments with your partner are just an absolute waste of time, they really are. They’re ridiculous. They mean absolutely nothing, and are often times just silly.
One thing that I’ve learned in life, and it’s something that’s really important, is when you’re arguing with your partner you need to walk away once it starts. The argument could be about something really stupid (which many arguments are), like about you forgetting to walk the dog when it was your turn to do it.
Instead of saying “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry I didn’t walk the dog,” you say something like “Oh, I got busy.” You defend yourself, and that escalates into a bigger argument.
The problem with arguments is that they can get pretty ugly when you get into them. When they get ugly, you may start to hit below the belt. A lot of us are below the belt fighters. I learned from my mom how to hit below the belt in an argument.
A lot of people have the mindset that if you’re going to argue with someone, you might as well get ugly and let everything in your head out. The problem is that the things that come out of your mouth at that point tend to be both stupid and below the belt comments. Those below the belt things can get pretty nasty.
It’s funny. If you look at every single argument you have, they all start with same basic little things.
So my advice to you is that the second you get into an argument with somebody or feel frustrated, walk away. Catch your breath, and apologize immediately if you were at fault. A simple apology based on a simple misconceived moment can actually go a long way to saving you from those horrible argument moments.
What is it about hotels? Why is it that no matter in what type of hotel you stay, you can hear the plumbing?
Also, why does housekeeping start so early even when you have the “f*^k off” sign on the door? You can hear them at the crack of dawn knocking on doors up and down the hallway.
I mean, if someone is out of their room at 7:00 am, I highly doubt there are coming back at 8:00 am. So I think the mandatory start time for housekeeping ought to be 9:00 am so the rest of us can get our money’s worth and our sleep!
I am writing this in a cafe called “Mommy World.” We are the only non-childbearing, non-pregnant, non-breast feeding people in here!
OK, I’m off to the streets of New York City, and leaving you with today’s blog…
So, you’ve got to break up with somebody. Breaking up is hard to do.
I’ll tell you something – I was never a good breaking up person. I mean, it was one of the hardest things in the world for me to do. Through much of my adult life, I would work to get women to dislike me so the relationship could end.
Once a relationship was over, I just hated having to have “the talk.” I hated having to have that breakup talk.
The breakup talk is the worst talk in the entire world. To sit down and to break somebody’s heart is awful. Then again, they may want to break up with you too — you just never know.
There are, however, rules about breaking up that everyone should follow. I really think breaking up is something that needs to be done face to face. Silvester Stallone is famous for breaking up via Fed Ex.
Other people will break up with someone via text message, which I think is cowardly. Never break up with somebody you’re dating via text message.
Never break up with someone via email. It think that is really tacky. Never stick a Post It® note on someone’s refrigerator or their pillow case right after you’ve had sex saying, “Sorry but I don’t think this is going to work out.”
Once you realize that you need to break up with somebody, you need to sit them down immediately. The passive aggressive way of breaking up (of which I’ve been guilty in my past) wherein you try to get someone to break up with you by putting them through a year of torture to get them to hate you, is totally wrong.
Once you know you no longer want to be with someone, it needs to be you who initiates the breakup — now and face to face. When you know you need to break up with somebody, you need to sit them down and be honest about how you feel.
You shouldn’t be that passive aggressive person who stops returning someone’s phone calls to get the other person to be angry with you.
Think about it from their perspective. Here is this person who is getting to know you for a month or two, and then all of a sudden you stop taking their calls and stop calling them.
They’re going to be confused. They won’t know what’s going on with you. They will start to get really nervous. They’ll start having talks with their friends about it. They’ll start to wonder what they did to cause you do act this way.
You will be leaving things open-ended. Instead of causing all this upset and anxiety in the other person, all you really need to do is to tell them that you are no longer feeling that relationship. By doing that, you are giving them closure.
You don’t want to leave someone without closure in these situations. Why? Remember what that feels like when someone in the past has done this to you, and you will never do it to someone else again.
So, breakups are something that should be done immediately once you know you want to end things with someone. Don’t hesitate. Breakups should happen fast.
The minute you know you need to break up with someone, you need to figure out how to do it quickly and face to face. There should be some kind of 48 hour break up rule, wherein you must do it within 48 hours of deciding you need to do it.
For any of you who are wondering where the usual Wednesday podcast is, it is still going to be here every Wednesday EXCEPT for this week (when it will be making a special appearance on Friday). So be sure to check back here on Friday for a very special podcast and blog!
Have you ever been driving when that cute little gas guage light comes on, and you look at the computer which says “30 Miles To Empty?” I always wonder how it knows that, because I always drive until the car says “Refill Fuel Now!”
So it’s kind of like the car is lying, sort of like how someone is lying when they say “Give me a second.” I think the same person invented the phrase “give me a second” and the “Refill Fuel Now” message.
You can tell it’s Saturday since these are about the only thoughts on my brain. Good thing I have a blog written, otherwise the “refill fuel now!” message would have been the topic of today’s blog.
So onto a less “gassy” topic. . .
Do you really respect your partner? Think about all the people in your life. Think about your best friends. You respect your friends, otherwise you wouldn’t be friends with them.
Do you really respect the person you’re dating though? Do you really respect their wishes and the things they like to do? Do you make sure there is enough balance between the things you like to do and the things they like to do?
Say one of you is a late night person and the other is an early morning person. Do you compromise about that? Do you respect each other’s wants and desires? It is really important that you do. A lot of people tend to tune out or ignore their partner’s wishes.
Say your partner wants to go out for dinner to a Chinese restaurant. You had Chinese food for lunch, but you know how much your partner is craving it. So what do you do? You just kind of don’t answer them. You go into silent mode and hope they don’t ask you again.
Here’s how you should handle it. Don’t ignore them. When you ignore someone, they will immediately start to think that the answer is no and that you’re not on the same page with them. You don’t want to do this.
It’s just human nature that if someone asks us to do something we’re not really in the mood to do, we will tend to go on mute mode (and will just ignore the request). Pretty soon what happens when you do this, though, is that your partner will start to think you’re not interested in doing that thing with them (when maybe you just aren’t interested in doing it that night).
So if your partner wants to go to a Jazz club one night and you aren’t in the mood that day to do that, answer them by saying something like “No, I’m really not in the mood to go listen to jazz tonight and get drunk. Let’s do it tomorrow night.”
So, don’t ignore somebody when they have a wish. Don’t ignore somebody when they want something. Just tell them you’re not in the mood for it that night, otherwise you are going to cause your partner to form all sorts of erroneous opinions about you. If that happens, you will all of a sudden start to see your relationship go in directions you never wanted it to go.
What are the four worst words in the English language? Do you have any idea what they are? They are: We have to talk.
What a powerful phrase that it. It’s never good when anybody says those four words to you. Usually when people say “We need to talk,” they do so lurching at you with a frustrated energy, because no one wants to have the talk that follows the announcement that “We need to talk.”
If you think about it, the reason that you have the “We have to talk” talk before you have the real conversation, is because you’re full of anxiety. What you have to talk about is probably something you’ve been thinking about for weeks, but just couldn’t get yourself to raise with the other person.
Because there has been all this buildup, when you do finally bring it up the tone that is taken is unbelievable. It is never a loving tone.
If your boyfriend or girlfriend ever says to you “We need to talk,” you know it is not good news. If it was good news, you would have heard about it already..
Nobody uses the phrase “We need to talk” to tell someone that they love them. When your boss calls you into the office and says, “We need to talk,” it’s never good.
It’s funny, too, because you could have just been in the kitchen with your boyfriend or girlfriend five minutes before talking about breakfast, then all of a sudden you are hearing “We have to talk.” So you say, “Weren’t we just talking?” and they will say “No, we weren’t having the ‘we have to talk’ talk.”
I don’t have a solution for the “We have to talk” problem, but I can tell you one thing. If you have something good to say to someone, you’ll never preface it with “We have to talk.”
Also, no matter what you have to say to someone — whether it’s something great or telling someone they are driving you up the wall — don’t start it off with “We need to talk.” Start it off with something more loving like, “Hey babe, I want to share something with you about the way I’ve been feeling that I think will really be beneficial to our relationship.” Doesn’t that sound much better than “We need to talk?”
Let’s talk about this. There are so many better ways to start a conversation than, “We need to talk.”
What would the theme music be for ‘we need to talk?’ Maybe the theme from The Exorcist? It must be something ominous sounding. Let me know if any of you have suggestions.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone in which you are pouring your heart out about something, and the other person makes an assumption about what you are saying based just on the surface stuff? Let me put out a very simple example of what I’m talking about.
Let’s say you and your significant other are discussing whether or not to go to the beach that day. You say that you are apprehensive about going to the beach, and don’t really want to go. The other person’s immediate reaction is, “You don’t want to go to the beach with me.”
Now, I know the beach isn’t the best example, but stay with me here. The other person didn’t hear the part where you said you almost drowned in the ocean as a kid. The other person didn’t hear about how frightened you are of the water.
So even though you’re telling the other person all this information so they will understand your background, and so that maybe you can open up about wanting to try and go in the water again, the other person makes an assumption about what they think you are saying.
A lot of people in life are “assumers.” Assumers always assume the worst because that is the way people have always treated them. It is the way they have always been treated by everyone in their mind.
They have always been rejected, or they will reject themselves before anyone else can reject them. This is what happened in the beach example above. The other person rejected themselves very quickly, and didn’t stop to really listen to the the real meaning behind the words being said to them.
They have not been able to get really deep with themselves. So many of you do this over and over again when it comes to meeting members of the opposite sex.
You don’t approach someone because you either look for a certain “sign” that you don’t get, or you get what you perceive to be a negative sign. You’ll think, “Oops, they looked in the other direction, so that means they don’t want to be approached. They don’t find me attractive and just rejected me.” All that from someone looking in the other direction?
You are always looking for the negative because you are a negative person and negativity is your comfort zone. That is what you are used to, i.e., being rejected or assuming the worst.
I have a friend who is like this. If I don’t immediately call them back or answer an email from them, they assume there is something wrong. They assume they did something wrong.
The truth is that I didn’t answer an email because I was busy. The truth is that I didn’t call them back because I didn’t have my phone on me over the weekend. I’ve told this friend over and over that I don’t carry my phone on the weekends because (1) I’m not a doctor and (2) I find the phone obnoxious during my time away from things. No matter what, though, this person assumes there is something wrong.
They will ask me, “What did I do? What did I do wrong? Are we back in the non-communication mode?” This person reacts because of the way that people have treated them their entire life, and they can’t see past it no matter what I say to them.
They don’t want to see past it. They don’t want to listen to the depth of what I’m telling them, because all they do is hear what they are used to hearing.
They are used to that rejection. They are used to feeling that way.
It is really time you listened outside of your comfort zone, and really listen fully to what someone is saying when they talk to you. If you are someone who has trouble really processing this in your life, then I have a great exercise to help you.
When you have a conversation with someone, write down bullet points of everything you hear. Instead of immediately reacting, take time to really review the conversation and change you pattern.
You pattern will never change until you do this. I know because I am a reactor too. My mother taught me how to react.
The minute someone says something negative, I used to react and say “Aha! I knew you felt this way. I knew it!” We do this because it makes us vulnerable to change our ways and this pattern.
If someone is constantly saying to you that you are assuming things in what they say that just aren’t true, then it’s time to change the way you do things. It’s time you learn to listen outside your comfort zone.
You need to step up and realize the things that you bring upon yourself. It’s really, really important to do that. When you do, you will live a better and more enlightened life.
You want to live a more enlightened life and really feel someone’s energy, instead of always focusing on the negative things they might say. If you focus in on negative things, it’s because you’re a negative person.
You’re not somebody who really wants to grow. Even though you say you want to grow and even though you say you want to make changes, you have a hard time doing it because you don’t follow what you’re saying.
So, look into your life. Look deeply into your life. If you’re somebody who has really been focusing in on the negative and only hearing what you want to hear, then you are missing the entire conversation. You are missing an amazing npart of what another person is giving you — the gift of themselves and the friendship you could really have — all because of this neurosis.
I can’t believe it’s week 5. Week 5 in the NFL season, and I’m 12-1 in my picks so far.
My football record stands on its own at 12-1. 12-1 is pretty good I think. The Titans are my only blemish. So, with that, I am going to go out on a limb and tell you which teams I’m picking this week
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The Giants are going to dominate over the high school quarterback led Oakland Raiders. The Vikings will be victorious over the Rams and its equally inept quarterback. Really, the Rams aren’t rams at all; they’re more like goats.
The Ravens will beat the Bengals. I’m not buying all the hype about the Bengals yet.
Here’s another tough pick. The Eagles will beat the Buccaneers. Let me tell you, Jon Gruden is laughing every single day. They fired him? Are you kidding me?
Braylon Edwards will catch a pass and lead the Jets to a victory over the finless Dolphins. The Patriots will win big.
Denver is going down this week. Is that not the worst 4-0 team you’ve ever seen?
Dante Culpepper will wish he was still on the bench after the Steelers destroy him on Sunday. As for the Buffalo vs Cleveland game, really who cares? It’s not even worth predicting.
As for Dallas, Tony Romo better start learning that finding the end zone is not as easy as finding one of his celebrity girlfriends. Maybe he should go back and run one of his family’s rib businesses. Tony Romo notwithstanding, Dallas will squeak a win out this week.
What is it about ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends? They seem to somehow know the exact wrong time to text you.
Here you are, about to have sex with your partner, and all of a sudden there it is. You hear that certain beep telling you that you have just received a text message.
You think to yourself, “Oh man, who is texting me? It’s really late. Who is texting me?” You get nervous about those 1:00 a.m. texts that come in.
It’s nerve-racking, because the only one who should be texting you at 1:00 a.m. is the person with whom you are laying in bed at that very moment. So you keep wondering who texted, until you can’t stand it anymore and you instinctively check your phone like Pavlov’s Dog.
At first you are relieved and you think, “Whew! Thank God it’s not me.” Then all of a sudden you notice that it is your partner’s phone that is blinking. You both have the same “beep” for incoming text messages, and the beep that you heard is theirs (not yours).
Now you think to yourself, “Oh man, I know EXACTLY who just texted them. It’s the ex.”
So here you are laying in bed, either just about to have sex or just having had great sex, and you have to have “the ex talk.” You may have already had the ex talk before several times. When that ex intrudes into your personal space at 1:00 a.m., however, that ex talk goes into a whole other dimension.
You will lay there wondering what your partner is thinking and feeling. You will want to know what the emotions are that they are experiencing, and how they are feeling at that moment about their ex.
Ex’s are a very powerful influence in a relationship. Even though you are with somebody new and you are sharing amazing feelings together, you will still wonder what your partner is thinking and feeling about their ex when a text comes in like that.
You tell yourself that you are not going to let your paranoid mind take over. After all, it is you who is laying next to then (and not the ex). You are the one with whom they are now hanging out and sharing feelings.
Regardless, you have that ex talk right there and then at 1:00 a.m. You are wondering about it, and your partner really needs to let out whatever is on their mind about it.
You need to be 100% okay with whatever they say, because the topic needs to come up and your partner needs to get out what is on their mind. Eventually, your partner is going to need to confront the ex issue, because at some point the ex needs to stop holding on to whatever part of that old relationship to which they are clinging.
The key is that your partner needs to feel that there is an open space where they can talk to you no matter what is going on and no matter what they have to say. They need to feel like they can talk to you anytime and about anything, because building a relationship is all about open lines of communication. That is the only way that two people are going to get close.
I am always fine with the ex talk because I like clean slates. Both people need to have clean slates when you’re in a relationship, and sometimes you need to clean those slates together to get there.
You’ve got to deal with things. Relationships are all about supporting one another.
I woke up this morning and realized that I am perfect. Okay, before you think think that I woke up with a very large ego, you are way off base.
I realized that I am perfect (6-0) picking football games this year, and I am so ready to put out this week’s picks and to keep that perfect record intact. Some of the NFL’s 3-0 teams will not be unbeaten after this week, but I will remain unbeaten with my picks for this week.
So for this week, I like the Houston Texans and the New York Giants to win. The Tennessee Titans will will their first one. The San Francisco 49ers will rebound. The Cincinnati Bengals will crush the self-proclaimed genius Mangenius, who could go down in history as the dumbest coach ever to coach in the NFL. My last pick is that Favre will get redemption this week.
Now onto today’s blog…
Good boy! Good boy! What a good boy!
You cleaned the house! Good boy! You look good tonight for my parents. Good boy! Wow, you picked up the kids today! Good boy!
If you guys are thinking that I am possibly a dog that drives or a dog that puts on a new collar for the parents, you are absolutely wrong!
I am talking about the way that men like to be praised. I am talking about the way men need to be praised.
It is so funny with men (and I’m making fun of my own gender, so I can). We are really very simple-minded at times.
What does every man want to hear from his woman after sex? He wants to hear, “Baby, that was the greatest thing I’ve ever felt. You are such an amazing lover!”
When he gets dressed, every man wants to hear that he looks good. He wants his ego stroked a little bit by hearing something like, “Wow, you look so hot today!”
Every man who does a task around the house wants to be patted on the back. He wants to hear what a great job he did. He wants to hear, “It was so great that you took the garbage out today. You are amazing!”
It is amazing how simple it is to please a man. It really is.
You won’t believe how long we stick around if we know that we are your best lover, or that we give you the best advice advice, or that we look good and you find us super-sexy. We are actually a lot like dogs.
Like dogs, we need to be fed. They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I that a way to a man’s heart is really through his emotional stomach.
It’s funny. Women ask me all the time, “I just can’t seem to keep a man happy. Why?” Really? We have a manual that comes with us. It is only one page long. You just have to read it.
The women’s manual is more like one hundred pages long. You have emotions all the time. If you are PMSing, we can’t say certain things (or you take things differently). If we tease you during PMS, you freak out. If we say the wrong thing, you freak out.
When you tell us what you’re feeling during those times, we get defensive because we don’t understand things we don’t experience. As men, our manual is a whole lot shorter.
So, women, just think of us as giant, overgrown Scooby-Doos. Remember to tell us “Good Boy!” the next time a man does something (and the next time you want him to do something).
Be very specific when you’re talking to a man or when you want to talk to a man. You can’t just say, “Hey Babe, my parents are coming by tonight. Can you straighten the house up?”
You say that, and we’ll just find the obvious things. We will go to the sink, find the biggest bowl and put it in the dishwasher. If the toilet seat is up, we’ll put it down.
With men you need to be very specific in your instructions. Tell him, “Hey Babe, my parents are coming. Can you straighten up the kitchen, fluff the pillows and make the bed?”
Then, when you get home, don’t forget to praise us. Don’t forget to tell us, “You did a good job. Good boy!”
If you are all looking for some extra motivation today, check out what this master motivator has to say:
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