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Consulting Your Partner...

Now I know I’ve done a blog about consulting your partner about things before, but recently a situation came up and all of the sudden the sides my boyfriend and I took switched. It was about taking a job and this time he sided w/ “consult me” and I sided w/ “no way!”

Has anybody seen the new show on Bravo, “The Real Housewives of Orange County”? Well, one of the couples on the show that they follow is a man, mid thirties, child from a previous marriage, and his fiancé, mid 20s, little bit of a party girl. To give a quick background: Jo, the fiancé, doesn’t work b/c Slade, her fiancé, wants her to stay home and take care of the house and children and what not; and it doesn’t hurt that he makes bucket loads of money so she really doesn’t have to work. Well Jo wants to work. She’s a college graduate with dreams of her own and well, she wants to pursue them. So any who, 2 weeks ago Jo got a job, her “dream job”, and well Slade freaked when she told him.

So this caused a large argument between my boyfriend and I about, if one of us got a chance to do our dream job, if we’d need to consult the other one about it. Unlike with the buying things situation my boyfriend said that we should say something to the other partner before we accepted the job, and I said that unless it involved a move, there is no reason I should have to consult him before taking the job.

My reasoning is that well it’s my job, it’s not his. He shouldn’t be able to tell me where to and where not to work, not that I think he would, but still what if it was my dream job, but I’d be making less money, and so he’d tell me he didn’t think I should take it. Bull! It’s my dream job!

My boyfriend’s stance is that it isn’t about consulting him. It’s about informing him what’s going on. Yes I agree that I should tell him what’s going on, but that’s my boyfriend. What if he was the type of guy who wanted me to consult him, meaning basically ask him for permission (like in Slade and Jo’s situation); then what would I do? I would never do what Jo did, just walked in the house one afternoon and said “Honey, I got a job!” but I definitely don’t think that I should have to “be allowed” to get a job.

So I was just wondering what married couples thought? Should Jo have had to “consult” with Slade about getting a job, or should it have been OK for her to just say “Slade I want to get a job. I was offered my dream job and I’m going to take.”

Posted by Manda at 11:48 AM | Comments (3)

My Sexual Past...

What would you change about your sexual past? That was the question posed to students on the WB’s new show “The Bedford Diaries”. The show is about college students, their relationships, and learning how to separate love from sexual desire. Each student is making a video diary, which is where they talk about what they would change about their sexual past. So while watching I started to think about what I would change about my sexual past. Would I keep it the same or would I wash it all out? Would I change the people? Do I regret or do I just remember?

I think these are all interesting questions to think about when deciding what you would change about your sexual past. I’m not going to lie to you. I was promiscuous in high school. I didn’t always make the best decisions when it came to sex and well, if I could go back, I would. It’s not that I would change who or how many; it’s more that I would change the reasons why I did some of the things I did.

Then again, if I changed those things, wouldn’t it change who I am? Maybe I wouldn’t like myself as much. Who knows?

The point is, I can sit here thinking for hours about what I would change about my sexual past if given the chance, but the truth is, we’ll never have that chance. We can’t change what we did in the past, sexually or non-sexually, so why even contemplate it? What we can do is learn from our sexual past, from the decisions that went right and the ones that went wrong. Our sexual past is all about perspective. If you look at it negatively, “Why did I do that?”; “How stupid was I”; “I can’t believe I did that with that person,” you’re sexual future will probably ultimately be negative. If you look at it in a more positive light, a way that shows you understand the mistakes you made, you’re sexual future will probably be a lot brighter.

So I’m not asking you “What would you change about your sexual past?” Instead, I’m asking you to pose the question “What have I learned from my sexual past?” to your self. To me it seems like the more important question to think about, don’t you think?

Posted by Manda at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)