Monthly Archives: August 2009

broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

A good dad

I had once a long conversation with some of my friends about pregnancy. One of my friends just learned she got pregnant, but she has just begun her relationship with her man. And she wasn’t convinced at all she met the right guy. She told us he was far from the man she always dreamed of. But yet, when she got pregnant, instead of running away, her man just stood by her side, and promised her to do his best to raise the kid. We all told her to keep him. They are still together right now.  But one of my other friends felt a bit shocked by the news at the time, and told her how the hell she could get pregnant so quickly with a man she wasn’t in love with (my friend is a desperate romantic), and asked her what was she thinking. I  just tried to calm the conversation and explained that in my office, two of my fellow coworkers have children, but don’t live with the father. One of them got rid of the father because they kept on fighting on how to raise the child (among other things). There was a time in our newsroom when she always shouted while she was talking with him on the phone. And one day, she announced to us that she was leaving him, because she had enough. Since then, she got married, and got pregnant again. The other one has three children, all coming from different fathers, and lives with neither of them.

I don’t think there’s still a classical pattern to have a kid. Personally, I always thought that I would carry the child of the one I love, no matter if I’m married or not with him, and that I could tell to my kid when he/she will be older that he was the result of her/his mom’s greatest love. But I wouldn’t consider getting pregnant with a guy I feel nothing for. Some women do get pregnant with the man they love. Some don’t.

I met once a woman who told me she wanted to get pregnant, but didn’t care at all who will be the father. She went to a holiday resort where she picked three different guys, hoping she would get knock up, and she reached her goal. She’s now bringing  her child on her own. And she’s happy like that.  I also met a woman who told me she got pregnant with a man she didn’t think he would make a good father, and got rid of him one year after the kid was born. She met another man, who takes great care of her child, but she told me she doesn’t want to get pregnant with him. She feared she would destroy her happiness by giving him a child.

A child is a very important decision in our life. Yet, we don’t necessarily choose the best option to have a kid.

So, what is a good dad?

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broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

Back in the game

Can we get totally disgusted with the dating game? One of my friends is currently fed up with her multiple failures with the opposite sex, and she told me that she won’t date any man for a long time. “It’s hopeless. I have enough of falling in love with the wrong guy. Why do I never gain? I always end  up as the fool in the story. I don’t know if I’m able to trust a guy again after F.” she said. F., her last boyfriend, was a true asshole. We all warned her about him, but she didn’t listen. He didn’t treat her the right way, was very mean and macho with her. He always criticized her in front of everyone, including her friends. He was also jealous and hated all her male friends. But that didn’t stop him flirting with other women, including her friends.  He also cheated on her.  Numerous times. She only found out about this recently, hence the break up. But this really took a toll on her. “I’ve done them all. The macho, the afraid of commitment, the married guy, the guy who wants to marry you for his green card, the cheater,..” she said. I replied to her that at least, she had never dated a manipulative or violent man or that she had the lucidity to leave before it could get really nasty for her. Not everyone can do the same, unfortunately.  But it didn’t cheer her up.  “Maybe it’s me. Maybe I want too much “ she said.

It’s clear that her last relationship made her lose her confidence. But I’m sure that she will be back in the game. She has to. That is said, in French, we have a proverb that says “Chat échaudé craint l’eau chaude“, which translates into “a cat boiled once would fear hot water“. Once we have shed too many tears, hurt too much, fought too much and got betrayed, we can get afraid to get fooled again. In this case, time again is our most precious allies. We just need time to forget, and forgive. It’s the only way to move on. During that time, it’s important to focus on ourselves, but on the good part of ourselves, instead of ruminating our bad feelings. Another friend of mine just ended her three years relationship with a guy who barely respected her.  After one month of mourning, she decided she would spend her free time in something useful. So, she volunteered to read stories to children in a hospital.  And she told me that she begins to feel lighter again. I think she has reason to do so.

We all have our own recipe to feel good about ourselves. We shouldn’t forget about that when we have our heart broken. Again, the pain we can get from a broken heart can be translate into something positive, something creative.

Besides, if we don’t move on, this is how we can miss the great encounter of our life.

So, do you think it’s possible to get totally disgusted by love?

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broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

Love is a battlefield

  Last edited by modobs on August 29, 2009 at 2:10 pm

Recently, I had a long conversation with one of my friends, who just got dumped. She feared she would never find her significant other. But when I ask her why she couldn’t, she replied that it is because of her.”I expect too much from my relationships, and I got hugely disappointed every time, because my man cannot fulfill what I need from him, and I get very critic against that” she said. Since I know her, she hasn’t loved herself that much. And this is her major problem in every relationship she has had so far.

When we wish too much for something to happen, not only chances are this would never happen, but also we can get hugely disappointed if this doesn’t turn out to be exactly we wished for. But it’s not easy to depart from this kind of wishes.  Especially when you’re a dreamer.

With my friend, we might have found a solution. We have known each other for years, and yet, even if I’m not perfect, I have never disappointed her on the long term. I asked her why, and if she also acts like that with other people.  And she replied that she learned to let it slide with us. We did have many fights at the beginning because I couldn’t attend a party where she invited me or missed a promise I made to her. But each time, I have apologized. And as she grows old, she tends to not get bitter if I don’t do what she wants. I just told her to drop her expectations, that nobody’s perfect. I also told her to love herself a little bit more. This could clearly make the difference.

Besides, like my grandmother said, “you have to act with him as if you don’t give a damn“.  I guess she had it right.

So, do you expect too much from your relationships?

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life, love, men, miscellaneous, relationships, thoughts, women

A big ego

It’s too big, it’s too wide, it’s too strong.  It won’t fit.

Among my acquaintances, there’s a man with a really big ego. A very narcissistic one. Sometimes, I wonder if he’s entitled to be like that. He’s  a quite known intellectual plus a business man. Yet, no one knows him outside our country. Of course, he likes to talk about himself, and loves hearing himself talk. With him, I can only have subdued exchanges. Even if I try to lead my interviews, I do have a hard time managing him, and I hate it. He can be really mean. And shows no empathy at all. He’s also threatening me to write good articles about him, if I do want to keep him among my contacts. So, I try to minimize as much as I can any articles I could write about him. I hate lying to my readers.  Yet, from time to time, he tries to be nice with me. It’s very very destabilizing.

Luckily for me, my encounters with him are very limited. On purpose. But I can’t help wondering: is he acting the same with his wife? If it’s the case, I don’t know how she can handle him. I may have the answer: once, I heard him talking on the phone with her, while I was waiting for our interview, and I heard her shouting on the phone that he was always repeating the same thing. Well, maybe he found someone who can dominate him. But I wonder if this kind of individuals really finds someone who can dominate them. I just hope that at least, he respects his wife and doesn’t treat her like a tool, like he would consider everyone around him.

I”ve asked my friends about what they think, and some of them think that no, he can’t make an exception. “With this type of personality, forget about it. Usually, they were spoiled kids who learned very quickly how to manipulate people around them. They are simply not programmed for love” one of my friends said. “Well, you never know. Maybe he has created a charachter, and God knows if he’s really like that in private. We tend to be different at work than in private” anpther one said. “If he’s mean with you, he will be mean with other people too” another one said.

According to Freud, we all have a narcissistic personality. But it’s healthy. It becomes a problem when we perpetually seek admiration for what we do and when we lack empathy. When we fall in love with a narcissistic person, it could lead us into trouble. How do we recognize him/her? Read this.

So, do you like a big ego?

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broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

Inglorious Bastards

I was reading recently an article about George Clooney’s love life, which underlined his complex of being stuck at the age of 12. At that time, poor little George looked like in the picture above, and I can imagine that he didn’t score that much with the opposite sex. Plus, his father was a famous journalist, and poor little George felt the challenge to keep up with him really hard, according to the article. Years later, Geeoooorge is now unable to settle down with a woman, and keeps on seducing young waitresses who will never overshadow him, unlike Brad Pitt. In other words, George is a perfect toxic bachelor.

Among one of my acquaintances, there’s a George too. I’ve known him since kindergarten. When we were kids, he was the chubby little one every other child made fun of. Years later, the ugly little  duckling  turned into a swan. And of course, he began to deal with a heavy turnover of girls all of the time. At 14, he was dating 5 girls at the same time. When we were 20, he slowed his rhythm and started to have relationships that lasted at least several months. But he has never settled down so far. Once, we were discussing during one of our friends’ wedding, and he admitted, with the help of alcohol, that he needed to seduce as many women as he could to be reassured. He also regretted to have broken so many hearts, and reckoned he wasn’t faithful.

One of my friends had the unpleasant experience of dating a George. And of course, she wasn’t warned at all at the beginning of the relationship of this little detail. Unfortunately, toxic bachelors never come with a warning signal. She got charmed by his clumsy ways. “He wasn’t the typical seducer. We met at a friend’s house. He was there with his mates. Very very handsome. He accidentally spilled his drink on me, and to make himself forgiven, he invited me for a drink the next day. There, we talk about him, a little bit about me. From time to time, he was selling himself short. And the next minute, he would say a joke that immediately made me laugh. I found it extremely touching. We dated shortly after. Everything was fine with him, until I discovered he had another woman in his life” she said. She told me that her ex  explained to her that he was a fat little kid and didn’t like himself much for that.

Apparently, Geoooorge has also this tactic with women. “I just say stupid things and they fall” he says. Geooooorge has also a type of women.  But here, it depends. My acquaintance doesn’t have a type. My friend’s ex neither. It doesn’t mean anything.

So, have you still a complex poisoning your relationships?

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celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

Dress to kill

Once, I was talking with one of my coworkers who just got back from NY (and with a flu, but not the H1N1). He had the occasion to meet the journalists from prestigious publications like the Wall Street Journal and the FT. He didn’t like that much some of his encounters, though. He told me he was shocked to see female journalists dressed like executive women. I replied to him that hey, they work in Wall Street, so they probably have to dress properly. It’s part of the code. In my country, there’s no such thing. I do try to dress properly for my interview. But I would never wear stiletto (my feet would kill me) nor red lipstick. And I feel overdressed compared to my fellow journalists.

I also joked that maybe, those journalists were looking for a FBF, as the DABA girls say. In French, we say “On n’attrape pas les mouches avec du vinaigre“, in other words, you don’t try to catch your prey with small means.  If  indeed, their goal is to catch a banker, maybe it’s the right way to dress for seducing him. Maybe not. One of my friends is a banker, and married his highschool sweetheart. He says she’s genuine, not like all her coworkers who are way too tough and scary for him. So, he told me that he could have never been seduced by a woman dressed “like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct”. Another of my acquaintances is also a banker, and her wife is a teacher, not the “Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct” type either. I guess dressing like an executive woman would never do with him either. I also heard that Hank Paulson doesn’t fall into the category of the plain FBF type too.

But it’s true that you will never catch your “prey” if you dress like a ho.

Again, if you dress like Pamela Anderson, you can also miss your prey. But here, it depends on what kind of prey you want to catch.

Besides, if you try too much, you might end up ruining everything. How many times haven’t we tried to be sexy, and felt not comfortable at all with our clothes? There’s nothing more embarrassing than putting your thong back in its place, or tearing on your skirt all of the time because it’s too short.

Many of my friends told me that when they got on a first date, they just pick their favorite clothes. One of them has her favorite dress, another one has her favorite top, another one just picks clothes that will make her look good. There’s no need to put that much effort on your look.

So, how do you dress for a first date?

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broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

The real thing

I was reading recently an article about Heidi Klum and Seal, which described their “perfect” relationship. At the end of the article, there was an interview of a psychologist, that asked: “will he still love her when she won’t be a model anymore?  Will they still love each other when their kids will be independent?”. He also said that love is an illusion, and that accepting our significant other as an ordinary man/ woman is part of the process of the maturity of love.

This reminds me of a recent conversation I had with one of my colleagues. He’s a great and respected journalist, yet, he hates when people worship him. Working with him is quite special, because we often discuss with each other about our jobs, the news, … But in the end, we consider each other as normal people, with our family, our every day problems, our conflicts with plumbers, electricians, taxmen, … He’s been married for a long time to his high school sweetheart, and he once told me that she never reads any of his articles. And he’s perfectly fine with this. “This reminds me that I’m just a man, and that being a great journalist doesn’t serve me at all when I’m trying my best to raise our children or fixing one of the problems in the house” he said.

When love urges us to take its guidance, we only see the perfect side of our significant other. There’s a huge part of narcissism in the process of falling in love. Simply because we use our power of seduction. But sooner of later, this illusion will fade away. And all you will have to deal with is your significant other’s personality. The landing can be really hard. This is why breakup can happen after the regular 9 weeks and a half of passion.

We can easily lose ourselves with  the sirens of narcissism. We can  suddenly fall in love with someone who will mirror a great image of ourselves. It is marvelous when someone you admire accepts to love you back. Take for example, if George Clooney falls in love with you, wouldn’t that be great for your ego? Wouldn’t it great to have his children?  But then, when you dust off the glitters, what’s left of George? Reality can be really disappointing. Will he be there when you go through difficult times?

In the end, what matters the most in a relationship? The image that your couple reflect to the world? The true bonds you can develop with an ordinary person, just like you and everybody else? Some people will choose the first option. Personally, I ‘ve picked the second one.  What would you choose?

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We’re one

In the novel Wuthering Heights (probably one of my favourite books), Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff consider themselves as one. “I’m Heathcliff” says Cathy. I’ve always wondered if such a thing could be possible. I can’t imagine having someone who would think exactly like I think, who will be so close to me that I could understand and anticipate every of his feelings. Once, with my friends, we talked about this special connection between two people, and most of my friends agreed it’s not possible. Yet, one of my friends do believe it’s possible. Because her cousin and her husband are a bit the same. “They’re like attached at the hip all of the time. When they talk, they finish each other’s sentences. She knows all of his tastes, he knows all of hers. They have never made a mistake choosing a gift for each other. And if her husband suffers from an illness or something else, she will feel the pain too. It’s mutual. Oh, and seeing them together is often disgusting because they look so happy and cannot help to show plenty of PDAs” she said.

I met once in a seminar abroad a journalist who told me she was very very close to her husband. They met each other through their job. They are both journalist. “He was working for a rival publication, and wrote about the same topics than I. I didn’t read him, he didn’t read me though. Until one day, one of my coworkers put our two articles side by side, and told me they were really similar. They looked like if they were copied from each other. Several of our articles were built the same way. I couldn’t believe it. We met in a seminar and immediately became inseparable” she said.

I do believe we can share many common points with someone. But I don’t think this can really push us to read like an open book in our significant other’s mind.

What do you think about it?

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celibacy, men, relationships, sex, thoughts, women

Are you romantic?

When I talk about love with my friends, it always boils down to romantism. Most of us cannot conceive love without a bit of romance in it. And when it comes to sex, most of my friends and I admit that we can’t yield to anyone’s advance unless he’s done a proper courtship. A friend of mine recalls that once, during a party, a guy tried to flirt with her, and  managed to pull her out of the room. Outside, he just unbelt his trouser, and let his undies down. He told her to take him. She ran away. “Even if I was drunk, I would have never had done that. It’s just gross. Raw sex, with a guy a barely know, has nothing exciting on me. Who does he think he is?” she said.

When I was in College, I was once invited to a party where my friend’s roommate spent the evening trying to get a hit on me. I just had my heart broken at that time, and cursed on men all of the time. So, I wasn’t in the mood at all for the guy. And he didn’t manage to flirt properly with me. Instead, he spent the whole evening looking at me, and tried several times to tear me in one of the dark corners of the room. I just told him to get lost. Three days later, I bumped on him again at another party, and he tried the same approach with one of my acquaintances. And scored. I just thought to myself: geez. Like my friend, raw sex has nothing exciting on me, with a total stranger.

I guess that my friend and I fall into the category of the romantics.

Why romance is so important for most of us? For women, it’s because we all have the dream to meet an everlasting love. And if this dream may never come true, or just gets lost along the way, at least, we will have those precious moment from the beginning. So, courtship is important. But not especially like in a Danielle Steel novel. Eeewwww.

Most of my friends and I hate when it gets too cliché. For example, if he invites you to dinner and ask the local Mexican band to sing a serenade for you. If you hate to be the center of attention, chances are this won’t do the trick. At least, for one of my friends, it didn’t. She told me she thought the guy was a total loser for doing this. But it depends. If the guy does that to you on your first date, for sure, this sucks. But if you’ve been in a long term relationship, this might make you laugh. And produce an effect on you.

We all agree on one thing: if he does something that does touch your heart, that is considered as romantic. An example?

“He wrote me a song” C., 34, said.

“He invited me to have a walk with him, in his special place. Then we talked for hours about nothing and everything. We ended up caught up in the heavy rain. And we just laughed” N., 35, said.

“He got me the impossible interview no other journalist could have. And I didn’t even ask for it” F., 36, said.

“He wrote me letters, sent me flowers, invited me to dinner, told me everything of his little secrets”O., 40, said.

So, are you romantic?

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broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

A pain that I’m used to

Last week, I read that study that has ever since made headlines everywhere on the Internet. If you haven’t heard about it, here’s a reminder: divorces are supposed to be bad for your health, according to scientist Linda Waite.  Really? I do believe it depends on who’s the one left behind in the relationship. The study underlines the stressful situations that can come after a divorce. It may be true. But then again, it depends on who’s the one left behind.

One of my acquaintances recently divorced. His wife left him for her lover. They have four kids to share the custody for. Before his divorce, he was relying heavily on his wife for running the house while he was busy working. All of the time. Each time we paid a visit to them, we could notice how clean and well groomed was their house, their garden,… Now that she’s left, the house is left to itself, and so is the garden. He’s flooded with work, and have a hard time handling the rest of his tasks. He takes the custody of his children one week over two, but can’t keep with the rythm. So, he has cut back a bit his job. He had no choice. And we have never seen him so sad since his divorce.

In his case, I can understand that a divorce can really be bad for your health. But for some people, divorcing is seen as a freedom, as an end of a suffering. You can really be unhappy in your marriage. You don’t have to divorce to suffer and have your heart broken. This can also happen during a marriage, unfortunately. An example? One of my coworkers used to be married to a guy who’s been unfaithful to her, who put in doubt her fidelity all the time, who was possessive, violent, and kept on bringing her down in public. He was also alcoholic. She was the shadow of herself during her marriage. Then, one day, she felt the gut to leave him. He was heavily drinking at the time, and his violent ways were just knocked out because of alcohol. She took the decision for her kids. She was afraid he could hurt them, or just neglect them because he was numb must of the time. Her decision wasn’t easy, but she felt relieved of a heavy weight the day her divorce was pronounced at court. And since this day, she has started to live a normal life again.

Those who divorced because they have found a new love won’t suffer either. If they have a heart failure or something similar, maybe it’s because of their intense sexual activity…

A heart broken is for sure not good for your health. But there are always ways to mend it.

So, do you believe divorcing is bad for your health?

 

 

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