The next five married tips to help you think about and act on how to do marriage well: Marriage Tip #26 Rage, Rage against the selfishness of the me. Just as online people tend towards stupid [a brettfish original], offline people tend towards selfish. In a world that has at times whispered but more often shouted 'THIS IS ALL ABOUT YOU!' into your ear as it has watched you grow up, this should not be [...]
Marriage Tip #21 Tend towards the cleaner one. Now this is not to much specifically a marriage tip as it is a people-who-live-in-the-same-space tip and i probably observed this more living in community with tbV and others in Philly than with just me and Val. But it can be huge. The person who hates breadcrumbs on the counter is MUCH MORE emotionally invested than the person who doesn't care [or notice] breadcrumbs on the counter. [...]
Last night was the big combined end of year poker game for a group of mates i had been playing poker with once a month. Thirty plus people and a long evening of challenging competition planned. In a nutshell, i had all of the best cards but got completely bad beat three times and ended up being second person out with Val still representing and looking set to continue for a good while. She suggested I [...]
Marriage Tip #16 Communication. Work at it. i touched on this yesterday when mentioning Expectation as missed expectations can be a huge source of conflict or resentment in marriage. And someone mentioned Communication which is key to having a healthy marriage. We looked at the five love languages in tip 5 and in some ways, i think communication works in a similar way. We communicate in different ways and we hear things or retain them [...]
A lot of people hate social media - and with good reason. Those bridge lurkers have ruined it for us. But it is important to remember that social media in itself cannot be good or bad. It is simply a tool. People use tools for good or bad. And i have a deep-seated theory that 'People tend towards stupid' which is why some tools have warnings that look something like this: Which [...]
The Twitterer absolutely loves Betty White and she is never going to be allowed to die, so we decided to work together to create some bucket list items for dear Betty to tackle next... [The Story So Far: Every Wednesday at 12 noon South African time [6am EDT] an inspired and growing number of brilliant, creative and absolutely fun people from all around the world take part in what is called a Hashtag game. @AFrikkinHashtag [...]
Marriage Tip #11 My friend Robert Martin, who recently lost his wife, asked if he could share a tip and having gone through this with a best friend before i can echo so much of this: Treasure EVERY moment... I, unfortunately, sit in a place where my other half is no longer around to exercise tips 1-10. And there is much regret that I'm wrestling with. Time that we BOTH wasted in our lives together [...]
So yesterday tbV [the beautiful Val] returned from a two week trip to the UK and i went to meet her at the airport dressed up as a Mummy. Not to be confused with dressing up as my mummy. That's a whole different set of counselling. Shiny, Happy, People i thought yesterday, as a tend to do pretty much every time i dress up to meet people at the airport [yes, it's a thing!] that i [...]
'White Fragility' by Robin DiAngelo has been one of the most helpful books i have read on the subject of race and racism. It has helped put some language on some concepts i was aware of and it has shared some useful analogies that break down complex issues into much simpler ideas. i highly recommend you get a copy and give it a read if you are trying to navigate these race waters and [...]
Marriage Tip #6 Be quick to deal with issues. The bible [whether you believe in it or not] has this great piece of wisdom: 'In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.' There are times when anger might be a justified response to something but the key is not letting that anger cause you to hurt your [...]
