Finding Your Place in Love

So before you begin your series of q&a’s, turn up those feelings of inadequacy or switch on some outright anger, try first doing some introspection.  But in order to accomplish this you have to be able to ask the hard questions and be willing to accept the answers you find.

To begin the process you must ask yourself three important questions:

1. What sort of relationship am I seeking?What do I need in a mate?

Are you looking to simply have fun and enjoy the dating scene with no commitments, or are you looking for a life partner?

2. What about myself do I seek to change, alter or improve upon in order to become the best me I can be?

If you deal with issues of insecurity, how can you become more confident? If you recognize you have a penchant for arguments, how can you control your temper? If you know you fall for the wrong one constantly, what are you lacking?  Remember, you attract you exude.

The third question is extremely important and allows you to create boundaries for yourself to minimize hurt and navigate through your relationship based on your self-worth….(Drum roll)

3. What are you willing to accept or NOT accept from your mate?

Now this is tricky because there is the tendency in all of us to sweep things under the rug and ignore the “small things”. That’s simply not a sustainable way to operate in a relationship.  You must define what you will allow in your life and what you must filter out. No one but you can define your value and when you allow others to dictate their actions toward you they determine your value.

So as you venture forward in your current relationship, or are on the path to another, take the time to evaluate your entire situation, determine your worth and ensure your mate is willing to pay.

Remember “You can always expect what you accept.” -Ms Dare I Say askmsdareisay@gmail.com

Relationships Over Time

As we all know hindsight is 20/20 and, should we apply this to our lives in all aspects, we could  navigate easier. It is very easy to make different choices when we look back because we now have the knowledge that was absent in that moment. When we do take a look back we must accept that you cannot define any relationship by just a moment. However, if a string of moments intertwine and become a pattern, you truly need to reevaluate the entire situation. We must segment the whole to truly notice if in fact it was a moment or a clear pattern.

Ask yourself, does this behavior come from all of my partners or most, or just this one? Do I react the same to all situations? Could I be the cause of such behavior, after all we do attract what we are? Really delve deep and recognize if you are dating the same person with a different face. Let me give you a scenario: How often have you, a friend, the girl at Star bucks, or the guy on the treadmill two rows in front of you, etc found yourselves in a relationship that is progressing seemingly well? Life seems to be falling into place, you and that special someone are really enjoying what the relationship has to offer and BAM!! There it is; “The argument”.

The honeymoon period is gone,and real life steps in to smack you in the proverbial face. I’m sure we have all experienced or at least can admit to having a friend in such a situation. Now you are questioning: “where is this going?”, “What are we doing?”, and/or “Are they right for me?”.All of these questions begin  floating around and take root in your mind until they begin to overshadow all other aspects of your once happy affair.
You begin putting up roadblocks against the other person and the push back begins. Now let me pause our regularly  scheduled program and rewind a bit.

This is ONE argument; ONE varied point of view with a person who a moment ago you were truly enjoying the company of. Now you are arguing at every opportunity because you have convinced yourself that this relationship will not last. Inevitably you will ask “What happened?” “How did we get here?” Well my friend I shall tell you. You allowed doubt to take you on a ride down the long winding road of uncertainty. This isn’t to say that all relationships will be blissful and never incur disagreements or skewed points of view but taking it with a grain of salt allows space to truly analyze what may be going on.

This way you are able to make an informed decision based on truth and not emotion. If your focus shifts from your relationships onto one argument, or one wrong move, then you are giving that moment too much power and too much weight in comparison to more important aspects. You have allowed that one minute, one hour, one day to completely alter the many minutes, hours, and days you’ve spent enjoying the company of your special someone. The trick you may ask? As stated previously, take a step back and reevaluate the whole picture. If it seems that this is a constant state of discourse and disagreement than true compatibility does not exist. Recognize that this is who this person is and we can not under any circumstances change a person nor their behavior.

If you aren’t able to accept him or her as is without compromising yourself or core values, then bow out gracefully, because life is too short to spend it miserably. However if you take record and realize they are simple moments where you simply do not meet eye to eye, and  this person is still the object of your affection… release the anger, embrace the joy and move forward in the relationship with the knowledge that I to am not a perfect person but I am still whole and uncompromised while loving yet another imperfect person.

It is an age old question that shows no signs of resolution, but I ask you this, do we as women, intentionally or accidentally, misread signs as love?  Allow me to clarify: “He had coffee waiting for me when I got up this morning”.  For some women this surely means, “He loves me!”…But is it possible he had a need for coffee, made a pot for himself and, serving sizes being what they are, there was enough for you as well…I say YES, yes it is, and more often than not, this is the case.

Various relationships suffer from this innocent, but noxious decoding of action.  Casual flings, newlyweds, daters, even friendships are all taken through an emotional roller coaster simply because of looking deeper than needed into simple actions and words.

When so much relevance is placed on tiny actions or even grand gestures, we can suck a relationship dry with unnecessary arguments over what you “thought” a person meant. Worse yet, instead of enjoying a simple gesture that was done for you and made you feel nice, it is obsessed over and picked apart until little remains of the intent with which it was offered.  We are so busy playing “the game” that we miss out on the just enjoying another person.

People (because men do it too), it is not your position to play detective or clairvoyant in order to seek out hidden messages.  It is more likely than not, that a person will state his or her intentions and then follow through with action (at least the good ones will). Do not allow yourself to be sucked into the notion that if he changes your light bulb SURELY he is ready to move in. Maybe he was just helping out and leave it at that.

My advice would be just embrace the moments as simple pleasures, and maybe your experience with love and life will take on a different perspective. . .

Hey sometimes coffee is just coffee…

-Ms Dare I Say

Meaning of Names, What’s in a Name?

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

What rests upon the shoulders of Generation Y is perhaps best exemplified in the sheer number of labels applied to us by our ever-worried and ever-weary parent generation.

As if the burdens of rampant unemployment, floundering industry, staggering national debt, and a severe crisis of leadership that some call “the deficit of trust” are not already heavy enough to bear, this young and rising American generation is assumed to lack the will, ability or authority to resolve yet another bestowed dilemma: our own name!

Generation Y has been labeled with a litany of tag names and titles, such as Generation Why, the Echo Boomers, the Net Generation, the First Digitals, the Trophy Generation, the Entitlement Generation and, more popularly, the Millennial Generation. With a population approximated at just over 76 million strong, Generation Y has barely had the chance to step into “the real world” before having been collectively forced onto the proverbial examination table.

As Generation Y has grown into young adulthood, we have been perpetually misdiagnosed―long before we are even given the opportunity to truly realize and understand who we are. What are our true strengths and weaknesses? How can we collectively harness our skills, talents and fortes while simultaneously minimizing the faults, flaws and limitations that’ve been dictated by the circumstances of our culture, society, and upbringing?

Caricatures gracing the likes of the Sunday New York Times depict of Generation Y as trendy lowbrows and hipsters with shaggy hair who mash microscopic buttons on new-fangled devices that effectively allows them to broadcast anything and everything to an entire world that probably isn’t listening. However, GenY culture is much more significant than that. The culture that has come to be embodied by Generation Y spans vital qualities of leadership, responsibility and initiative, as well as noble pursuits of happiness and fulfillment.

Before Generation Y can grow and mature and come to realize these important aspects (about our individual selves, let alone our generation or nation), the severity and magnitude of the Great Recession has caused our parent-generation to bestow us with even more labels, like “the Chump Generation,” “the Lost Generation” and “the Dead End Kids.” They forebode our demise before we’ve had the chance to live!

How many more labels can we acquire before we are even given the chance to succeed or fail? Let us call to end this trivial name-game! The extent of the problems facing our country and our world are so significant and severe that Generation Y is at least owed to manifest its own destiny: to live up to the privileges that have been bestowed upon us and to collectively harness the culture of unsustainability and overextension that has come to characterize the Baby Boomers (and give way to our modern economic woes).

As Generation Y’ers, the time has come to cast out the judgments and labels of others. Let us escape from the examination table, pursue what we must, and rise to the occasion. While many will surely find relief in the ultimate end to our psychological examination, few among us have anything to celebrate amid the absurdity of our generation’s labeling―the world we are striving to rise, meet, and save, envisaging our collective funeral before we have yet to even leave the doctor’s office.

My name is Lei, I am a 24-year-old female and I have been dating for some time – and I am not a virgin. However, I am not comfortable with having “casual” intercourse as frequent as most people our age purportedly have. I don’t find it moral degrading, or think less of those who do; I am just not comfortable engaging in the activity unless I am emotionally involved with the individual. That said, as an alternative, I do engage in oral intercourse. Even though it is thought to be the “safe alternative,” I am still afraid of contracting an STD. I have been told that I am worrying and over-thinking things too much, however I wanted to establish if this is a safe practice/alternative for me to be doing? What’s your take?

– Lei W.

I’ve been with my girlfriend for two years. When I first met her, she loved getting dressed up, putting on make-up, and keeping herself in shape. Now that we have been together for a while, she seems to have lost the motivation to do much of that. Since physical attraction is a key component for most men, why do women tend to let themselves go when they get comfortable in a relationship? What are some suggestions you have to help my girlfriend start back those habits I dearly love?

– Frumpy at Home

First of all, let me give you my condolences over your mother’s passing. It must be horrible to lose a loved one so suddenly, and this – I think – is what your husband is feeling left out of. Let me explain: you, your father and maybe even your kids have been directly affected by your mother’s passing, but your husband’s attitude to shut it out may be the result of not being able to understand or to grieve by himself. He may feel that your attention is focused more on keeping things normal around the house – given your visitor – and he may not know how to support you. My advice to you about your situation is that, instead of trying to tackle it head on, try and give your husband small opportunities where he can take charge again as the man of the house. Let him know that you care about what he thinks when you make decisions and don’t let your father become a higher priority than your relationship with your husband.

If, however, you want to change your situation slightly, you could use your father’s presence to your benefit. By this, I mean that if your husband enjoys going out later at night, leave your kids with your father (but make sure to keep the routine more or less the same, that way it won’t alarm the kids).

On the other hand, you could always look into getting your father a place to stay that is far enough for you and your family to enjoy their privacy, but close enough that he could visit. This could be anything from a garage apartment to a house around the block to a flat close to a local bus station. The most important thing that you can do at the moment has been done already: realize that there is a problem. Now, all you have to do is take small steps to fixing it. Don’t go straight to the worst case scenario (a divorce) – don’t let it be an option.

Best of luck,

Tara

My mother passed away last year and my father has had a lot of trouble dealing with her death; it was very sudden. It may have been out of guilt for leaving him alone, but I decided that he should move in with my family. I am almost 30, have an established income and three young children. It was perfect in the beginning, my kids were overjoyed to have their “pawpaw” around more often and he was a great help out around the house.

However, after a while, I noticed his presence has been causing a rift between me and my husband.

I am not particularly sure why – he never wants to approach the subject and has been spending more time away from the house and away from me.

I have tried on several occasions to go out with him in the evenings, but that’s when my children are getting to bed and we have our routine that is important to them.

Basically, what I am asking is, how can I get my husband to communicate his disgruntled view? If this isn’t possible, then is there a way that I can change the situation I’m in? I don’t want to get a divorce over my father.

– G. Fallham