A whole pile of stuff

[geminigirl]

alibee posted this-an article about a married couple, husband and wife who don't live together, and who, as I understand from the article, never have.

I can't imagine that working for my relationship with zedrikcayne. It's not compatible with our relationship and how we function as a couple. I'm wondering what others think about this-would you call this "marriage" or would you call it something else? Would you be able to make the kind of committment that your perception of marriage includes and live like this, or would it not work for you?

Then there was this post in parenting101. I've been involved in similar discussions elsewhere, too. It's about what to call a child's genitals. As we approach parenthood even more, this is something we've talked about; in my house, (mostly) proper names were used (I say "mostly" because my vulva and entire genital region were referred to as "vagina" but it's close enough, I think.) It doesn't make sense to me to not teach children proper names for body parts.

There's also this story I saw linked in catling's journal about Pat Robertson calling for a ban on pet adoptions by same sex couples. Yes. You read it correctly. And I was glad I didn't have a beverage when I read it. This is from "The Pace Press"-the student newspaper of Pace University (which is a legitimate university.)

Anyway, here's the article for your perusal, in case the link vanishes or you have trouble getting it to load...
Pat Robertson, host of 700 Club, has recently called for a federal law banning same sex couples from adopting pets. This is a comment on Ellen Degeneres' public outburst pertaining to her incorrect "re-gifting" of her adopted dog, Iggy, to her hairdresser. Must I continue?

"It is God's will for dogs to grow up in a loving home with a Dad and a Mom and I strongly praise Mutts & Moms for removing Iggy from a harmful lesbian environment," Robertson said on his show. He explained the Bible says pets need a mother and a father and Degeneres and girlfriend, Portia De Rossi, cannot provide that dynamic. "Where was the male role model in Iggy's life?" Robertson said.

This is how dead serious Robertson is: if the future president does not pass this law, he is going to initiate ballot measures in all the states to override the President's choice. This is what I look forward to next year - a gay pets adoption right?

According to Robertson, all animals, not just dogs, must be kept safe from the hell-ridden households of gay/lesbian couples.

"The plain fact is that same sex couples should not be allowed to raise dogs, fish, birds, hamsters, ferrets, lizards, or any other animal."

However, cats are the exception from the rule because "only liberals and pagans would ever want to raise those spawn of Beelzebub."

I'd like to believe everyone with a brain realizes that this is not only the dumbest call for a law ever brought up, but to play on a media uproar lasting two minutes of air time is a definite stretch to gain some sort of power. Mr. Robertson, this is a joke to me.

We are a country finding love for Tila Tequila, Bret Michaels and Flavor Flave on national television, and he is trying to push this idea that only a man and a woman together should have the right to adopt a pet. Love is far passed sacred these days, Pat. Please check your outdated allegations at the door.

I just hope nobody joins his pet salvation crusade. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and John McCain have already put forth their vote.



For the sake of marital harmony, I must partly retract my complaint about chocolate from the other night. He stopped on the way home (even though he was working late) and brought me chocolate. And, as I picked through the giant bag of candy he did bring home, I discovered individually wrapped Lemonheads which are one of my favorite candies.

And last, for now...there was a post on a forum I frequent about sex for baby making, and how, when you're actively trying to conceive, sometimes it needs a bit more excitement. I wanted to share what I wrote, because, well, I'm in love. What can I say?



We learned to laugh at bad sex.

I think we had more fun having bad sex and laughing about it sometimes than we have when we've had great sex. For us, because we were dealing with fertility issues on both sides, at certain time, sex became kind of a chore...just one of those things we did like washing the dishes. And so, it became less than exciting some of the time.

But we laughed about it. We laughed about how I'd make the grocery list in my head while we were having sex, or he'd try and solve work-related problems. About how we'd finish and he'd lay down next to me and instead of basking the the post-coital glow, we'd talk about cleaning the bathroom.

I think laughing together is one of the strengths of our marriage. If we couldn't laugh our way through the ups and downs and challenges we had when trying to conceive, we'd have really struggled with the crushing lows. Instead, we laughed and and while we might not have always enjoyed the sex, we enjoyed each other, and our love.


I've got another post brewing that comes from a conversation with my sister in law, but I need to more completely finish it before I post it.

Comments

[sweet-tea79.livejournal.com]

I read the article about married folks living apart mostly b/c at first glance it seemed to apply to my situation. But it doesn't; we're not choosing to live apart, that's just the way it has to be right now for residency. And priority number 1 is getting into the same location so we can actually be together. That matters more to me than getting in to the perfect residency, or hell, even getting in to surgery in general. Even though we've always been long-distance, it's never been a choice to be that way. And while he's worth it, dammit I hate not being with him!

[geminigirl]

I actually thought of you two when I read the article, but I think your situation is rather different.

[sandboxdiva.livejournal.com]

My next-door neighbor (at home) sorta had the same thing going...it was his third marriage, her first. Prior to marriage, they'd go back and forth the between his house and hers (about half an hour away), but were far from joined at the hip. After they got married, they did the same thing. Unfortunately, it didn't work out - she became quite the workaholic, eventually gave him permission to see other women, and they divorced this past year.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

BTW I have a kippah for you. You should email me your address so I can mail it. pygment at gmail dot com

[geminigirl]

Thank you.

What do I owe you for it?

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

Um, nothing. I was doing them to have something to do during D&D other than eating.

[yix.livejournal.com]

You know, that sort of marriage wouldn't work for me because of the way we have chosen our kid(s). However, a professor of mine in college was married to another professor who worked at a college several states away. They had been married for a few decades at that point with the same living arrangement. Summers together, some weekends and school breaks. I thought it sounded lovely.

So yeah, I can totally imagine that.

[geminigirl]

I knew a few professors when I worked at various universities who would to the weekdays apart-weekends together sort of thing, but I know many people who do that when they have jobs that require a lot of travel.

Did they have children?

[yix.livejournal.com]

Nope, no kids. I really do think that woman in the article got the raw end of the deal, but I think a lot of married women get the raw end of the deal...so it is hard to judge.

I actually do see a time in the future when I live in Massachusetts for part of the year. (Far in the future, when the kids are older.) But I don't think that's the same thing either.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

One of Nicolai's cousins has recently gotten divorced because she was a junior lecturer (an even less settled position in the UK than it is in the US) and didn't want to give it up, and he wanted kids and, you know, a wife that lived in the same county.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

It's really hard enough being a professor, especially one in the early stages of a career, and be a spouse and/or a parent. My advisor and her husband had a nanny, because between her professorship and his job they both needed someone who could play the part of a 1950s wife for them (i.e., dealt with the kids during the day, made dinner, cleaned the house, etc.). So they outsourced it.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

That might've worked, but they couldn't even get it together enough to live together most of the time. It was kind of sad, and it also really put me off the idea of an academic career.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they were able to live together, so it probably did work better. Also, most of their relationship, they worked particularly hard to remain in the same house. By her own admission, they had gotten married a bit too early, because they were about to graduate from Cambridge, which would mean both of their student visas would have been quickly revoked. He would have had to go back to New Zealand, if he hadn't married her and followed her back to America. Plus, he followed her from one state to the next when she didn't like her first teaching assignment.

She did turn me off an academic career in other ways, though. Even with a nanny, she worked incredibly hard at both work and home. And she once told me that I would be a terrible professor.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

I really do respect people who go into teaching at any level, but I don't think I could do it.

[rockstarbob.livejournal.com]

I have heard of a few famous artists and scholars who are married and choose to live apart. Frida and Diego lived next door and had a bridge that connected their houses, which was a lovely gesture, I thought. Of course, none of these couples had any kids either (as far as I know).

It's not something that works for me, but I don't think it makes those couples who choose it any less "married." I suppose it depends on what your view of marriage is.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Insofar as living with one's spouse or not, I'm not sure why one would do so. Of course, I tend to consider marriage as something that should be embarked on for serious reasons such as having children, which is difficult to do together if you're not living together. OTOH, I get the whole devoted, longterm live-out relationship - I'm in one :) I guess what it comes down to is "whatever you want to do, I woudln't."

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

On Tuesday, Z and I were trying to have some forced sex together in case I needed to get biopsied. It didn't work very well. We ended talking about something, who knows what (hardware routing? satellite communication commands?) and fell asleep instead. But our sex life has always been markedly included bad jokes, enough so that I have occasionally thought he was just telling me amusing stories and didn't realize until later he was attempting foreplay.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

I used to have a landlord with a separate living arrangement. I'm not entirely sure what the deal was, but one lived in one house, and the other lived about three blocks away. But they were still married. I have no idea if they had an actual relationship, or if it was a marriage in name only.

At the time I lived in that house, one of my housemates was in a separate marriage of a very different sort. She'd left him because he was an abusive asshole, but didn't divorce him because he'd be deported if she did. I'm not sure what ever came of that.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Tuttie?!

And it's wrong for him to be curious?

[geminigirl]

I didn't make the word up. I just cited the post.

I suppose it's normal for him to be curious, and to ask questions. It's weird I think for the parent/caregiver to discourage that curiosity and not be quite truthful.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I know *you* didn't make it up. I can't comment there. And that was my point about curiosity, pretty much. Also your icon is excellent.

[shirleym.livejournal.com]

The Pat Robertson story originates from datelinehollywood.com, which is a satire site. It's awfully believable in that he's-a-satire-of-himself kind of way, though.

[margoeve.livejournal.com]

Alas, it seems students need to learn how to check their sources for credibility.

The about us page on datelinehollywood.com is hysterical though.

[mistdog.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering what others think about this-would you call this "marriage" or would you call it something else?

I think when most people use that word, the component uppermost in their minds is the commitment, rather than domestic arrangements? But in any case, if they call it marriage, who are we to call it anything else? ISTM there's a parallel there with sexuality - if someone identifies as bi, is it ok for someone to tell them they're not? I don't think so (and I have been told that I'm not "really" bi, as well as being told that bisexuality doesn't exist).

It's an issue I've thought about, because here in the UK, civil partnership has identical legal rights to marriage, but the name is different. But conversationally we refer to ourselves as married, and we expect others to do the same.

[papertigers.livejournal.com]

the living-apart-together relationship sounds ideal to me in some ways and impossible in others. there's no way I could or would do it with children, and my partner would undeniably hate it, but it doesn't strike me as generally unworkable for a long-term relationship. and not living together doesn't make it any less of a marriage, any more than legal recognition, having children, or sexual monogamy makes a particular relationship any less a marriage if that's what the participants consider it to be.

I'm a little disturbed at how many of the commenters in parenting101 don't actually know the proper name for the a woman's external genitalia, given that presumably most of them are adult women.

[vix.livejournal.com]

On the marriage article... fascinating, fascinating. I have to agree with a previous poster who said it all depends on what your definition of 'marriage' is. For me, that wouldn't work at all; B and I have had a long-distance relationship for almost 2 years and cannot stand being apart, but have to for logistical and financial reasons for the time being. We visit as often as we can, but one of the differences between our relationship and the marriage described in the article is that he and I genuinely share a lot of varied interests. And more to the point, even those that we don't directly share, we enjoy each others' company so much that we're willing to try something new if it means we get to spend time together or share new experiences.

It's the "sharing" bit of our relationship that seems somewhat lacking in the marriage described in the article; that couple cares for each other, shares love for their children, but I don't personally know how a relationship can maintain any sense of interest, excitement, affection, and so on when there are literally no shared interests at all outside of the children and the family unit. They're so widely disparate in most every respect I'm amazed they've been able to make it work without being intrigued by someone else with whom they share more commonalities. But hey, to each their own; I just know it wouldn't work for me. It's not the way I'm wired.

Thanks for linking it! What an interesting read.

[icelore.livejournal.com]

I'm with you - I couldn't imagine that kind of thing (living separately) working for my 'marriage'. I guess it partly has something to do with what you classify as marriage though. I've been in this relationship for 7 years, and a piece of paper from the state isn't going to change what we feel for each other, or how we act, so in essence, to me, we are married. To me marriage is a partnership of two lives, and that can't be achieved unless those people are willing to make the sacrifices and adjustments to being the other completely into their lives. I don't see how that could happen not living together....

As for the pet issues.. Wow. If you know me, you knwo that animal activism is one of my big things. They only need to change one word in the main sentence to fix the whole article though! Watch: "The plain fact is that same sex couples some people should not be allowed to raise dogs, fish, birds, hamsters, ferrets, lizards, or any other animal." See? All better! ^^

As for what you said about fertility sex vs. excitement...I don't know how long you've been together, but I think that applies in some aspects to all sexual relationships. There are going to be good sexual encounters, there are going to be bad ones. Learning to have some humor about it is an intrinsic part of a relationship's longevity. I can see where it would play an even more vital role during the times a person is trying to conceive, but even if a couple never plans on having kids (as we do), it's still a vital, vital skill. More people need to realize this.

[lovingboth]

We've used the correct terms with JA. In return, she says she has a 'tickly bit'! (And has since about age two.)

Who said reproductive sex had to be recreational too? :) Good that it turned out to be relational as well though.