If you're interested, I also contributed to this anthology, compiled by the same editor:
Ah heck, let's go for broke. I'm in this, too:
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Thursday, October 1, 2009
P.S. What I Didn't Say
Today is release day for the latest anthology to which I contributed. Here, I get to say what I never got to say to a former friend who dumped me.
If you're interested, I also contributed to this anthology, compiled by the same editor:
Ah heck, let's go for broke. I'm in this, too:
If you're interested, I also contributed to this anthology, compiled by the same editor:
Ah heck, let's go for broke. I'm in this, too:
Sunday, August 23, 2009
P.S. What I Didn't Say (the book)
A little shameless self-promotion here ... this is a trailer for an anthology coming out October 1 in which I finally get to say something I never got to say. Other women wrote heartwarming letters to the special women in their lives, but I indulged in a final, satisfying, "fuck you" to one who did me wrong. Because that's what I needed most to say.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
bitching and moaning: friend or foe?
Where do you stand on bitching and moaning to friends?
Some people staunchly refuse to gripe. I suppose that’s partly temperament. They’re all sunny-side-up 'n' shit. As an enthusiastic griper, I have trouble relating to that. It seems cockeyed to me. And when people reflexively deflect legitimate gripes with some sort of Suzy Sunshine crap, I put a little checkmark next to their names in my head: Doesn’t Want to Hear About It. Which is certainly their prerogative, but it will also change the nature of our friendship. That’s just the way it is for me. I don’t get optimism, they don’t get pessimism, and that’s an essential truth.
Which is not to say I’m proud of my gripiness. I’m sure I wear my friends out, as my friends sometimes wear me out. I suspect we all have friends who turn up mostly when something is wrong, and friends who get stuck in negativity until you feel like running for cover when you see them. I remember one particular time like that for me, when I was deeply dissatisfied with my job at the newspaper. My gosh, my poor friends. I could tell they wanted to dive under their desks when they saw me coming.
I suppose it’s a matter of finding that balance between griping and rejoicing. I know I wore some friends out during a particularly long brutal stretch of my life, so I try really hard to be upbeat with them these days. I don’t want to be That Person, Debbie Downer, the Well-Known Buzzkill. No really, I don’t. And I find myself enjoying recreational bitching and moaning less than I once did, both doing it and listening to it.
Does complaining serve a purpose? I actually found some research on this, by a Robin Kowalski of Western Carolina University Her article, “Whining, Griping, and Complaining: Positivity in the Negativity,” was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. While Kowalski acknowledges first all the drawbacks of complaining (including the diving-for-cover factor), she also lists some of the benefits.
For one thing, she says, complaining can make you feel better. It's a little pressure release. And a well-placed complaint can also have financial benefits, such as when you complain about poor service or product defects.
Complaining also is a “social lubricant”-- when you’re uncomfortable in an unfamiliar place or situation, you can connect with others by sharing a gripe about the temperature or the length of the wait or whatever. And, she says, in close relationships, complaining can improve a situation and it can help you assess the other person’s commitment to the relationship—does he or she care about your dissatisfaction or just blow it off? Good information to be mined there.
So griping does have its benefits, which is good to know because I’ll always be a griper. I try to be less random about it than I once was and limit it to legitimate problems. Perhaps to some of my previous partners in griping, I’m getting a little Pollyanna. On the other hand, I’ll never be a total happy face because if I were, I’d find myself intolerable.
Some people staunchly refuse to gripe. I suppose that’s partly temperament. They’re all sunny-side-up 'n' shit. As an enthusiastic griper, I have trouble relating to that. It seems cockeyed to me. And when people reflexively deflect legitimate gripes with some sort of Suzy Sunshine crap, I put a little checkmark next to their names in my head: Doesn’t Want to Hear About It. Which is certainly their prerogative, but it will also change the nature of our friendship. That’s just the way it is for me. I don’t get optimism, they don’t get pessimism, and that’s an essential truth.
Which is not to say I’m proud of my gripiness. I’m sure I wear my friends out, as my friends sometimes wear me out. I suspect we all have friends who turn up mostly when something is wrong, and friends who get stuck in negativity until you feel like running for cover when you see them. I remember one particular time like that for me, when I was deeply dissatisfied with my job at the newspaper. My gosh, my poor friends. I could tell they wanted to dive under their desks when they saw me coming.
I suppose it’s a matter of finding that balance between griping and rejoicing. I know I wore some friends out during a particularly long brutal stretch of my life, so I try really hard to be upbeat with them these days. I don’t want to be That Person, Debbie Downer, the Well-Known Buzzkill. No really, I don’t. And I find myself enjoying recreational bitching and moaning less than I once did, both doing it and listening to it.
Does complaining serve a purpose? I actually found some research on this, by a Robin Kowalski of Western Carolina University Her article, “Whining, Griping, and Complaining: Positivity in the Negativity,” was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. While Kowalski acknowledges first all the drawbacks of complaining (including the diving-for-cover factor), she also lists some of the benefits.
For one thing, she says, complaining can make you feel better. It's a little pressure release. And a well-placed complaint can also have financial benefits, such as when you complain about poor service or product defects.
Complaining also is a “social lubricant”-- when you’re uncomfortable in an unfamiliar place or situation, you can connect with others by sharing a gripe about the temperature or the length of the wait or whatever. And, she says, in close relationships, complaining can improve a situation and it can help you assess the other person’s commitment to the relationship—does he or she care about your dissatisfaction or just blow it off? Good information to be mined there.
So griping does have its benefits, which is good to know because I’ll always be a griper. I try to be less random about it than I once was and limit it to legitimate problems. Perhaps to some of my previous partners in griping, I’m getting a little Pollyanna. On the other hand, I’ll never be a total happy face because if I were, I’d find myself intolerable.
Monday, July 7, 2008
rock on marriage
Did anyone see the Chris Rock special on Comedy Central this weekend—his “Never Scared” show?
Tom and I caught the last 40 minutes or so—and since we celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary on Sunday, we felt justified in laughing our asses off at his riffs about marriage. “Married people are disgusting!” Rock said and we howled at our own disgustingness. “You ever been to dinner with six neutered adults?”
Yeah, we’re boring.
“Married and bored or single and looooonely,” Rock said.
“All good relationships are boring,” he said. “The only exciting relationships are the bad ones.”
We laughed hardest at the “grown man playdate”—wives putting their husbands together in a room so they can make friends. “He likes baseball, just like you…”
Oh god, the grown man playdate. We have so been there and will be there again. I’ve had a few close friends whose husbands were such a bad match for Tom, the playdate was painful to witness. We gave up ever trying to make it work and settled for socializing only sans boys.
I have other friends with husbands Tom can make nice with (and vice versa) now and then, but it’s a stretch. By the end of a long evening, Tom is worn out and retreats to his happy place. I can see it happen and it’s time to go home.
We have some couples friends we can hang with easily, although we wouldn’t necessarily choose to hang with our same-sex counterparts one-on-one. As a foursome it works, as twosomes, not so much.
From time to time, in the perpetual quest for new couples friends, we go on couples dates, which are every bit as awkward and stressful as date-dates. Sometimes couples first dates end with everyone getting way too drunk—just like date-dates. Sometimes second dates occur, sometimes everyone slinks off and pretends the whole thing never happened. Sometimes these first dates feel like we have found our soulmates but more often than not, it was just a deceiving first-date glow.
The quest for couples friends is one of the difficulties of marriage that no one tells you about. Are you old enough to remember the show Thirtysomething? What a big lie that show was. Once past their 20s, few people have a gang to run with anymore. It’s the couples-friends version of all the rosy romantic bullshit that is shoved down our throats our whole lives. Just like romance fades into boring (if comforting and no less valuable) marriage, friendships get more peripheral and less vital—and I don’t mean less important, but they pulse with less juice. If you have one or two decent friendships on top of your marriage, you’re ahead of a lot of people.
I found Rock’s Married People schtick on YouTube and I’m laughing at it again. I won’t post it here, what with the whole copyright thing, but go find it yourself. If you’re married, you can laugh at yourself. If you’re single, feel free to laugh at me.
Tom and I caught the last 40 minutes or so—and since we celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary on Sunday, we felt justified in laughing our asses off at his riffs about marriage. “Married people are disgusting!” Rock said and we howled at our own disgustingness. “You ever been to dinner with six neutered adults?”
Yeah, we’re boring.
“Married and bored or single and looooonely,” Rock said.
“All good relationships are boring,” he said. “The only exciting relationships are the bad ones.”
We laughed hardest at the “grown man playdate”—wives putting their husbands together in a room so they can make friends. “He likes baseball, just like you…”
Oh god, the grown man playdate. We have so been there and will be there again. I’ve had a few close friends whose husbands were such a bad match for Tom, the playdate was painful to witness. We gave up ever trying to make it work and settled for socializing only sans boys.
I have other friends with husbands Tom can make nice with (and vice versa) now and then, but it’s a stretch. By the end of a long evening, Tom is worn out and retreats to his happy place. I can see it happen and it’s time to go home.
We have some couples friends we can hang with easily, although we wouldn’t necessarily choose to hang with our same-sex counterparts one-on-one. As a foursome it works, as twosomes, not so much.
From time to time, in the perpetual quest for new couples friends, we go on couples dates, which are every bit as awkward and stressful as date-dates. Sometimes couples first dates end with everyone getting way too drunk—just like date-dates. Sometimes second dates occur, sometimes everyone slinks off and pretends the whole thing never happened. Sometimes these first dates feel like we have found our soulmates but more often than not, it was just a deceiving first-date glow.
The quest for couples friends is one of the difficulties of marriage that no one tells you about. Are you old enough to remember the show Thirtysomething? What a big lie that show was. Once past their 20s, few people have a gang to run with anymore. It’s the couples-friends version of all the rosy romantic bullshit that is shoved down our throats our whole lives. Just like romance fades into boring (if comforting and no less valuable) marriage, friendships get more peripheral and less vital—and I don’t mean less important, but they pulse with less juice. If you have one or two decent friendships on top of your marriage, you’re ahead of a lot of people.
I found Rock’s Married People schtick on YouTube and I’m laughing at it again. I won’t post it here, what with the whole copyright thing, but go find it yourself. If you’re married, you can laugh at yourself. If you’re single, feel free to laugh at me.
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