I followed my friend Chris’ link to an article at Psychology Today on procrastination, and then saw a link to this article entitled, “Lust for the Long Haul” which I promptly read through. Because I’m a sucker for sex articles and subscribed to Glamour for years just to read the silly articles about How To Please Your Man In Bed (it all comes down to blowjobs, ladies.)
Very interesting, and fitting for today, since two good friends are getting married this evening, and the article had a lot of good thoughts in there for making a relationship last through the long haul.

Though it did seem like a lot of it wasn’t news. How you’re really feeling can affect your sex life? No! Tell me it ain’t so! Shocking! Come on, this isn’t news. But how a few of the therapists talk about the joy of being grown up and taking on responsibility was a little more interesting, to me, at least. I feel as if I do take on responsibility, but I seem to resent doing so, which could probably earn me a couple of months worth of sessions in a therapist chair.

“What he’s doing is teaching people the joys of adulthood,” he says, “of the wonderful things that can happen in a relationship when you take responsibility for yourself…”

A quote in the article from Frank Pittman, a marital therapist and author of, Grow Up: How Taking Responsibility Can Make You a Happy Adult. I think I should read that one!

“You examine your own behavior and see what you expect others to do for you that you could be doing on your own — for example, learning to feel good about yourself without requiring someone else’s praise and compliments.”

This is directly from the article, and at first glance, I feel like saying, “A-DUH!” This seems like a no brainer, I mean, in high school, in college, in LIFE, I’ve known certain type of girls/women who seem to identify themselves by the relationship they are in, when really what they should do is stand on their own two feet and determine who they are first, be OK in their own skin, LOVE and accept themselves as they are, BEFORE getting into a relationship. If you have to depend on some man for acceptance, then you’re in trouble. I don’t think I’ve seen this specific trait in men, but that’s just because the symptoms in women are so easy to spot to me. Maybe it is common for men, I just couldn’t say.
So a part of me is saying, ‘Hello, everyone knows that,’ but another part of me knows that sometimes this need to be grown-up, be responsible seems to possess me in a stifling vise-like clamp of inaction, and I shouldn’t be throwing all these handy stones when obviously there is something going on in my noggin that I cannot seem to face straight on.

Anyway, there you go, a few disjointed thoughts on this article about how to stay groovin’ in your relationship. Basically, I thought the article was interesting, and had some pretty good points, and I think you should read it 🙂

– amy