It was Valentine’s Day, and I didn’t have a boyfriend, which I was telling myself was actually pretty nice. The last boyfriend had gotten me a heart-shaped box of chocolates. I don’t like chocolates. I don’t like hearts. He had also written some ill-conceived poetry, comparing my face to the moon, or something. Or maybe he was comparing my boobs to the sun. Whatever. Keep reading »
The first and only time my husband called me a “nag” invoked a cringe-worthy shudder, followed by the thought, “Am I seriously turning into my mother?!” In my personal catalog of unsavory labels, “nag” occupies a space somewhere between “brownnoser” and “snob,” insults I neither want to be called nor become, yet sting fiercely because they often embody a flicker of truth. No woman aspires to be a nag. Yet the moniker remains synonymous with marriage, as though men across the globe all spat, “Nag!” when the word “Wife” is drawn in those psychological word association tests.
The stereotype that all wives are nags is filed neatly under another catalog of mine, the Marriage Myths List. My favorite examples include “married couples don’t have sex” (really?), “all husbands are under the thumb” (mine’s not), and “new moms inevitably let themselves go” (yes, she’s a model, but has anyone seen Miranda Kerr lately?). Since I am in the business of debunking matrimonial fables, it’s worthwhile to expose the easy and cliché tag for wives who mean well everywhere. Truthfully, nagging should be defined as a breakdown in communication that can characterize any relationship, not just marriage. Keep reading »
There were a lot of things I knew I’d have to think about when we decided to get married. I don’t just mean the lofty “What is marriage for?” questions. I mean the practical questions about the ceremony and party. What I’d be wearing underneath my dress for the big day wasn’t, however, one of the things on my mind.
That is until I watched an episode of “Say Yes to the Dress” in which a former beauty queen is lectured by her father about not wearing a thong to her dress fitting. “Thong” is not a word I would ever want to hear come out of my own father’s mouth, but I guess if that’s their relationship, who am I to judge? Prior to that, however, I wasn’t privy to the entire world that is bridal undergarments — a world wherein you’re not just expected to wear something stain-free and seamless, but sexy too. Indeed, “bridal underwear” is its own species in the genus of undergarments. Keep reading »
In elementary school, Valentine’s Day was fun. I went to the stationery store with my Mom, picked out a box of perforated Smurf Valentines, and sat in front of the TV with a copy of my class list, making sure to include everyone as I wrote out my cards. I decorated a brown paper lunch bag with stickers and glitter, and carefully wrote my name in cursive with a red Magic Marker. The next day, I taped the bag to the side of my desk, and walked around the room depositing cards in everyone else’s bags. In return, I received cards from everyone else. All was fair in love and Valentine’s Day until 6th grade.
Then everything fell apart.
In 6th grade, my crush Josh* asked me to go to the Valentine’s Dance with him, which basically meant that I was his girlfriend. This being my first boyfriend, and for Valentine’s Day no less, I took it very seriously. After a class trip to the library to learn about the Dewey Decimal System, we stopped at the mall for lunch. I headed to a gift shop and studied the Valentine’s Day cards, finally selecting one that looked like a personal ad. For my boyfriend. Keep reading »
I spend most of my time at work in a one-piece bathing suit blowing bubbles with four-year-olds and occasionally getting sneezed on. I have been teaching swimming for over six years to supplement the minor income I earn from writing. Teaching swimming has never been a source of inspiration for my writing until recently: it seems that my granny-like one piece has caught the eye of one of my clients. The only problem (well, problems) is that he is married, twice my age and I also give his wife private swimming lessons. Keep reading »
After hours in front of my laptop, my back is usually gnarled into a “C” shape. I’ve learned to remedy the Ladyblogging Hunchback with some yoga. But this afternoon, when I checked the schedule and read the instructor’s name, Matthew, I started making excuses not to go. I don’t know Matthew, but I might have felt differently if his name were Melissa or Miranda. It isn’t just about my fear of a dude adjusting my warrior pose, it’s a pattern. I have always been like this — with male dentists, doctors, therapists, even Santa Claus. Why am I scared of men? Keep reading »
Two days before my birthday last November, I got a facial at my favorite spa. I lay down on the bed, with the paper gown tucked around me, and the technician went about working her magic on my pores. She put a mask on my face and left me to relax for 10 minutes, with cucumbers resting gently over my eyes, the lights dimmed, and soothing music playing. The setting should’ve been everything I needed to stay calm, and it was … for about two minutes. Then my phone beeped, and I saw a text from a friend telling me to check her Twitter stream ASAP. Of course, I was curious, but I couldn’t get a signal, and spent the rest of the “rest period” feeling antsy, continually picking up my phone to see if suddenly service had been restored. The serenity that I look for when I go to the spa, the chance to shut off my mind while getting my skin rejuvenated, wasn’t there, because all I could think about was when I could get out of the room to check my phone. Keep reading »
What do you do when one of the things you used to like about yourself the most, looking back, becomes one of the things that you like about yourself the least?
From as young as I can remember, a rocket ship of ambition propelled me forward in all that I did. I didn’t — and still don’t — have a wide variety of interests, because writing was where I excelled. I threw everything into it. My parents, of course, fanned the flames of this. They loved having a daughter who made them proud.
And I loved getting some attention. My older brother Eliot*, his bipolar disorder and his drug and alcohol addictions, consumed most of my parents’ energy and nearly all of their attention. I wrote a poem when I was 13 or 14 that I can remember to this day because it still applies to my life sometimes. It was called “Measuring Cups” and it was about parents struggling to measure out love and attention equally amongst their children, but failing. When I was that young, the best way I could find attention, short of developing a heroin addiction myself, was to impress my parents with awards and articles and prizes and accolades. There was no confusion about this lifestyle, no hard choices to make. All I had to do was whatever made me look the best. Keep reading »
Relatively recently, I dated two men in a row with the same first name—I’ll call them both Tom for the sake of this essay. One I fell in love with, and while I’m mostly over him, I’m not there all the way. Both are guys I was friends with before dating them, and I considered the possibility that the name thing would get weird with Tom 2.0, but I’d had a crush on him, so I overlooked it. They’re fairly different in personality, but the fact that in addition to sharing a name, both Toms have similar body types and professions adds to my sense that men with this name are not my type. Not to mention the fact that after I dated Tom 1.0, I had to keep calling Tom 2.0 by his full name when telling my friends about him, lest anyone get confused. Keep reading »
I probably could have written the Modern Love essay, Exit Left, Wordlessly, in this past Sunday’s New York Times. Not that I could have penned it better than writer Aimee Lee Ball, just that I have a story which is frighteningly similar. Ball’s tale is about breaking up with a man only to have him resurface eight years later for round two. But instead of the happy ending that would ensue in Rom-Com Land, after a few months of “too good to be true” dating, the man disappeared from her life without explanation. “No message. No note,” she says. I refer to this dating phenomenon as ghosting — when a man disappears without a trace.
“Ambiguous loss” as Ball calls it, is a particularly heinous and cruel way to have a relationship end because you’re left without any indication of what might have gone wrong.”[It's] unfinished business, without closure or understanding,” Ball explains. Keep reading »
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