I think we're moving backwards here, but I've lost track

Has anyone seen or heard about this? The California marriage protection act is a measure that John Marcott is trying to put on the November ballot trying to ban divorce in California.

I think his point is to make a statement that in regards to Prop 8, the proposition that passed in California banning gay marriage, that if we find marriage such a sacred act, that we should ban divorce considering that (according to Mr. Marcott) the 50% of marriages that fail in the country is making a mockery of marriage.

Agreed that the divorce rate is sort of sad Mr. Marcott but instead of making such an extreme political statement under the guise of satire, maybe we should be educating young men and women about the responsibilities of marriage, and make marriage more about succeeding in a relationship and finding a partner you can spend your life with and less about the wedding and all the fun and pretty things? Maybe we should embrace the responsibilities educating those ready to marry 20 somethings and remind people more often about what they are taking on before they unknowingly jump into something they may regret later?

In this country the wedding is the supposed pinnacle of a relationship, so how can you expect a marriage to succeed if according to the wedding industry and the fairy tale stories it's the best day of your life? That might suggest it's all downhill from there, meaning it's no surprise that a lot of marriages end in divorce.


I get what you're going for here, and while some may snicker, and some may choke at your arguments and your desire to get this measure on the ballot, I just want to tell you I'm sad that instead of focusing on the real problem here, of not encouraging men and women to make real responsible choices in their relationships and their personal lives (married, single, gay, straight) you're just pissing a lot of people off and graying the issue further.

Your thoughts? Do you get what he's saying and find it funny? Or are you kind of wanting to barf...you can probably guess where I lie on the issue.

Here's hoping

I haven't been keeping up with the blogs lately (sorry guys, really I am). We've been kind of busy with family, school prep, wedding prep and whatnot. But I finally got to some of them again today, and I am very glad I did.

I've been struggling with worry (shocking) now that the boy and I have decided to get married. It's scary to think that many many marriages don't survive, and when we are constantly bombarded with images of marriages going kaputz it's scary to think we are signing up for the potential possibility of heartbreak and failure. I guess that the chance you take with someone you love.

But this made me cry, and made me hopeful (something that's hard to do when you're getting married in a world where happy marriage is fleeting these days, unfortunately)

from A Practical Wedding, written by one of her readers Rachel:

"Last week, my husband and I visited my dad’s parents, who have been married 57 years. Cooking breakfast in the morning, she would call across kitchen to the living room, where he was reading he paper. “Joseph!” she sung. He would pick his head up and beam at her while she waved her fingers back at him. When we went into town, they walked with arms around each other’s backs.

Some marriages don’t last. We know that, and it’s scary to begin this journey with that in mind. But there are also people like my Nana and Pop-Pop, who have lived through the murder of a sister, deaths of their parents and many of their friends, a quadrupal bypass, three sons and 8 grandchildren, and a rash of mental illness, and who still behave like two teenagers in puppy-love. There is hope, and if we don’t leap because we’re afraid love might not be there tomorrow, it won’t."

This is so cute I can't stand it.

Have a great day.

I'm embracing our imperfections!

So yeah, mom was in town, then sister was in town, then it was July 4th and now life is back to normal...as normal as life gets in LA.

I have a bone to pick.

There's this unspoken competition going on with couples I have noticed lately. The "we're the perfect couple" competition (seriously, go on facebook and look and your couple-y friends photos). And I'm tired of it.

I feel like now that we're engaged other people are focused more closely on our relationship and who we are as a whole, whether we're compatible and whether or not we're gonna work out, if we fight and how happy we really are, I feel like we have to keep quiet about our imperfections for fear ppl will get "nervous" and unsupportive about us getting married. I feel like I look at other couples, comparing us to them; and they look SO giddy and perfect and sometimes I feel like we're supposed to look and act like that too, like there's something wrong with us if we don't. Of course I know that that's not what it's like behind closed doors. I had a friend who was madly in love, it was all she would talk about, they seemed like the perfect couple, they never had any issues and they clicked like they were made for each other...and then one day after 2 years together, out of the blue she called me crying to tell me they broke up, she wouldn't tell me why...24 hours later they were back together and now they 're married. When she called I was in shock, there had NEVER been any indication that there were issues. Are we supposed to be that couple? The couple where no one saw it coming when it ended? Or can we please be more real about it?

I know it's no ones business what goes on behind closed doors in a relationship, but maybe we should reach out to other couples for more support.

The boy and I are real people, we fight, we argue, we yell, we're stubborn and pig headed, we're both egotistical and can't let things go; but we love each other. We are not perfect, by any means but we make it work because we're a couple, and we know that we're normal people and we make mistakes.

Why is it that other couples can't admit that? I understand not airing your dirty laundry to others but I think that we should be honest with one another more often, maybe if we did that, maybe if we showed support to other couples it would make it a lot easier to navigate through this really tough part of life...love, relationships, marriage, being a partner and an imperfect human being. There should be more relationship support, we should admit as couples to one another more often that things are hard, that couples fight but that things will be ok and that there are ups and downs and people make it through alive. It might make us all fight a bit harder for what we have as opposed to giving up after feeling inadequate to those couples you know who put on a better show than you do.

I think as couples we're so afraid that people are going to judge us and our relationship that we're too afraid to not let it all hang out and be real with one another. I'm not one for throwing a martini in the boy's face at a bar but we should be more honest about things. Embrace our imperfections as people and own up to reality. So I'm here to say the boy and I fight, we have our ups and downs, our good days and our bad days, and it doesn't get any easier but to move forward we must embrace our imperfections and support each other in order to maintain balance and grow. We should do that for other couples as well...now all we have to do is get them to admit they aren't perfect first.

Who asked you?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how often people are completely incapable of being happy for others. I've struggled with this a lot lately in myself and I'm really trying hard to change that. I remember right after I lost my job last August, the weekend after I had to move out of my very first apartment I rented on my own with my own money and had moved in to a house on the charity of my boyfriend and his brother I had to move the boy's sister into her second home that she and her new husband had just purchased. This was needless to say very hard for me. I had just gained my independence, felt like it was ripped away from me, the little bit that I had made on my own, and here I was moving some chick my same age into her second brand new home. I remember going through that day numb, trying to make it to the very last moving box, and driving to have lunch with my best friend and upon sitting down burst into tears feeling so very sorry for myself. It just didn't seem fair.

Then halfway through my third margarita I had a revelation (margaritas will do that for you), her life was not mine, and her decisions were not mine, and that was not the life I wanted anyway, to own a home; I had other plans, plans that were right for me and not for her. One day maybe I would own and home but I wasn't ready for such financial burdens and responsibilities; I had a lot more planned for myself than to just settle down. But maybe that was the choice she wanted to make and I should at least try to be happy for her and let go of the burden of comparing my choices to hers, cause it was getting me nowhere.

This has been coming up a lot recently for me, now that the boy and I are engaged. I've been more wary of the stigma of marriage. For the girl, it's all I should ever want, to get married and have babies and for the boy, it's all downhill from here. There is no support for the institution of marriage; in the media it's portrayed as being the pinnacle of ones personal life and also the root of all misery, sometimes in one single episode of whatever you may be watching at the time. Even in the new Sex and the City movie (something I haven't seen yet) I know now that Carrie and Mr. Big are married (she sure chased that man for a long time)and now there's no more sparkle; like as soon as they signed that marriage contract the balloon deflated and things started to really get boring. Really? I mean when was the last time you saw anything on tv or in the movies where there was a good, fulfilling, happy marriage? Where's the support?!

I mean why would anyone be getting married if it sucks that much?!

The boy told his boss the day after he proposed that he had gotten engaged and the boss' response? "That's a HUGE mistake" (He's in the middle of a divorce).

I was watching Kate Gosselin talk to a bunch of wedding dress models on tv today, and after asking if any of them were married and all of them replying no, she gave them a thumbs up and said, "good! You should all stay that way, don't do it."

Listen people, your mistakes are your mistakes, the choices you made were yours alone, so please don't go crapping on mine. I will be 27 years old and have completed the first year of my doctorate program by the time I get married and I can tell you right now I will have thought an awful lot about the commitment I am making before I make it. I won't know what your choices were, or what personal mistakes you made walking down your road but don't use them against the choices I make for my life. Please try to be happy for other people and the decisions they are making that will make a future for them and if you can't do that...fake it...or walk away. I'd be a lot better off not having you in my presence than giving me words of advice I certainly don't need nor did I ask for.

I want more support. I know that relationships are hard, being single is hard, being alive and living and making decisions every day is hard...so why make the moment harder for someone else by making them feel bad about their choices? It just doesn't make any sense.

"I faked a sonogram today...can you do that?"

While we're on the topic of milestones I suppose I should announce that I'm engaged.

I've been engaged for approximately 31 hours now and I don't feel any different.

I'm happy and I know I wouldn't want to be with anyone else but I'm not giddy. And I think that's ok. At first I felt guilty about it, that I wasn't jumping up and down with joy (I did cry with happiness when he asked me) even when everyone else was but I've come to grips with it.

Does anyone remember the Sex and the City episode where Miranda finds out she's having a boy and fakes how excited she is so the doctor doesn't think shes a freak?

I think there is some expectation that I should be jumping up and down and freaking out and furiously thumbing through wedding magazines but I'm just not there. All the ladies I have talked to about it are thrilled, maybe even on the verge of freaking out and I feel like I should act that way or they're gonna think I'm a weirdo or unhappy with the decision I'm making; not the case at all.

I think for me I'm still in shock and mildly overwhelmed with all the changes that are taking place in my life, it's still taking a while to sink in for me. I'm also more focused on the lifetime commitment I'm making to someone and less on the dress, cake and DJ. Getting married is a huge commitment and that responsibility overshadows what colors I'm gonna make the tablecloths.

To top it all off I know NOTHING, I mean NOTHING about planning a wedding. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do next (other than enjoy this and let it all sink in) and neither do my friends (that's why I love them so). So here we go, the wedding blind leading the blind.

Did you have any surprising reactions to events in your life that surpassed the traditional expectations of emotion?

An Affair to Remember

It's my third week at the alzheimers residency, and A LOT of interesting and very very funny things have happened but this story has been the pinnacle of all experiences so far, and every time I tell it to someone I get very different reactions...so here goes.

Apparently the whole wedding/being married to another resident idea is not a new one in the home. There are women who think that some of the other men that live there are their husbands and vice versa, it gets tricky sometimes when family comes to visit but I think that most people understand its just the disease.

So I was talking to one of the managers and she tells me about another couple who wanted to get married to each other at the home. After a few weeks of the two of them talking about it the manager thought it would be cute and harmless to have a little fake "wedding." So she went to the Goodwill and bought a wedding dress, had a nurse stand in as the priest, and all the other residents sat in as guests.

It went off smashingly well, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, people were happy, the manager felt accomplished that she had been able to provide a small token of joy for this woman and man and then 2 hours later...

He SLAPPED HER.

Apparently the "wife" had mouthed off to the "husband" and he didn't like it, so he looked her in the eye and said, "You're my wife now, you're gonna behave" and then hit her in the face...

You can imagine my surprise as she's telling me this and I'm getting starry eyed about this love story only to be abruptly jerked back into reality.


Of course this leads to a lot of paper work and counseling and families getting involved and lessons learned but I'm more surprised by this:

After all this time, after the disease has taken away this mans memory and all the things associated with it he still after all this time has the idea ingrained into his mind that once he's married to a woman he can hit her; that it's tolerable.

This brought up many of my mother's lessons in my head, saying things like, "be careful who you marry, and make sure to date a long time, because people can sometimes surprise you after marriage. Sometimes if you don't give people enough time to show their true colors it might be too late..."

According to this she might just be right.

So the moral of the story, mom's might be right and don't meddle in other people's affairs, you might just have a lot of paperwork to fill out after all is said and done.

Sorry, I don't know who the picture is by.

The Marriage Ref

I don't know if any of you have been watching The Marriage Ref on NBC (you should btw it's hilarious) but I'm really enjoying it. While the idea is a little tacky, to help a fighting couple choose a winner, the fights, the couples and the panel of judges are very very funny. They do a great job of taking something that we think is a huge deal, like a big, never ending fight, and shed light on how ridiculous it is by using comedy...genius non? And then the panel votes on who has a better argument; and, they choose a winner supposedly to help end the fight for good (probably doesn't but still the idea is there).

Most of the fights have been over the top but comical, like the husband fighting over the dining room table that the wife refuses to use except for Thanksgiving, or the wife fighting with the husband who had their dead dog stuffed which now resides in the living room and creeps her out...but last thursday there was this couple...


The Spiegels. You can go read the description of the couple for yourself but I have to tell you it just doesnt do them the justice that they deserve. Clive, the husband is well...close with his mom, meaning he tells her EVERYTHING. She in return is sabotaging his 14 year marriage to his wife, Jacqueline. The mom is completely, 100% in Clive and Jackies business, she talks crap about the wife to her son regularly, telling him she's uneducated, and how awful she is and he just sits there and listens to her. It just gets worse and worse and worse escalating to a most unhealthy level to the nth degree. It was horrifying and I have to be honest I cannot for the life of me imagine that the wife has dealt with this for so long, the mother in law has been given a freedom she never should have been allowed and it's sickening. Oh, yeah did I mention he's a psychiatrist?

This got me thinking, how much information and freedom to roam should the in laws or your parents have in your relationship? I know we like to confide in our parents and we want them to be a part of our lives but how far is too far?

The boy is awfully close with his family, he tells them an awful lot (something I have taken issue with in the past), and his sister who is married has a room at her house all devoted to when their parents come to visit; which I have to say is well A LOT. I think its weird how much she lets them in to her marriage, I think it's dangerous ground. I don't have parents who are always here to see me, and I have to say I appreciate that. They have allowed me to grow up and be independent and do my own thing and it would weird me out and exhaust me if they were always here to "check in" and come for a visit. I sometimes feel that the boy's sister has allowed their parents to be too involved in her personal life with her husband. I know that she's close with her mom and I admire that but it's a bit too close if you ask me.

With a parents tendency to want to keep and eye on their kids and want the best for them even when we've grown up, what happens if you allow the freedom of openness in your romantic relationship as well? I know when I go home I try to avoid telling my dad and stepmom too much about my relationship because I know they would meddle if they were allowed and they certainly try when I'm home leaving me upset and questioning parts of my relationship I felt good about before I went home.

So, how far is too far? And how do you go about protecting your personal relationship without alienating your parents? At what age are we supposed to stand up for our love lives and start to keep privacy and distance?

I know that the boy and I could have that problem from both sides but we also love our parents and don't want them to feel unwelcome in our lives, our parents do often have experiences to share and advice to give that we may not know nothing about at this point in our relationship. But I do know that I certainly don't want to end up like the Speigels. There has to be boundaries and protection without causing distance...

To be or not to be my soul mate

When the boy first told me he knew that I was the one he wanted to marry it was not too far into our relationship. The beginning of our time together was still rather fresh in my memory. I remember that we had just come back from his sisters wedding and that events completion had steered us on a natural progression of discussions, one of which was getting married.

I remember when he told me I was flattered, and it made me feel wanted, and that is a nice feeling; to know that someone out there wants to spend their life with you, that's quite a commitment and quite a compliment. I thought a lot about that day after it happened, I thought of all the boys I had thought I wanted to marry, some of them were real and some were celebrity daydreams, I think one was even a prince (I aim high). It got me thinking, were the boy and I soul mates? Or was it more like we were at an appropriate age, where it could now be a realistic consideration? Did he want to marry me because we were meant to be, or did he want to marry me because we were in the right place at the right time?

I asked him this question once during a good oral hygiene session, mid tooth brush I looked him right in the eye and asked him if he had ever wanted to marry any of his other girlfriends? He said no. Then I asked if he thought he wanted to marry me because I was dating him at the age where people started considering it an option, the next step? He said probably.

While this is not romantic, it's honest and true and I would bet that the reason why a lot of people get married to the person they date in their mid twenties is because they happen to have run into each other right around the supposed "marrying period." I know a guy that dated a girl for 6 years, all through college and grad school they were together, and they were serious, everyone thought she was perfect and that they were perfect together; but, the relationship ended without so much as a glance at a ring. Right after the relationship was over he started dating another girl and after being together for almost 2 years he's already saving up to buy her an engagement ring. This puzzles me, he didn't even consider marrying the girl he had been with for ages...to me it appears that she just didn't come into his life during the "marrying period" of his life story and that ended that.

There were lots of boys when I was younger I talked about marriage with, but it never seemed plausible. We were young, and poor and we didn't have any idea where our individual dreams would take us, so we couldn't see how we would fit into each others lives. I'm now at an age where I know exactly where my dreams are going to take me, and I am able to see how those dreams fit into a relationship with the boy. He knows where his dreams will take him and they appear to be taking him in a similar direction as mine, because we are able to do that, we are able to blend our dreams together and this makes lifelong commitment to one another a realistic endeavor.

In Committed, Gilbert writes, "Moreover, they would likely agree that there is not one special person waiting for you somewhere in this world who would make your like magically complete, but that there are any number of people (right in your own community probably) with whom you could seal a respectful bond."

But what about that magical love we have so dutifully bought into? The butterflies and the idea that we have found the magical missing piece of ourselves in someone else? We are raised on ideas like this, practically bottle fed these stories, and a lot of grown women still believe these things to be true.

So my question is this, do you believe in soul mates? That there is truly one and only one person out there for you and you're meant to be? Or do you believe that you just end up in the right place at the right time? That you've reached a level in your life, with your age and where you are with your goals and your partner has done the same where you can see yourself marrying?

Maybe if we let go of the soul mate idea we might have a better chance of realistically embracing a partnership with someone. Being someone's soulmate, completing someone is a lot to live up to, and almost impossible a dream to fulfill. Perhaps this is why so many relationships end in disappointment.

Photo from Kristine May's photostream

Oh man

After I walked around the house on some weird wedding/marriage rant this last week I think I scared the boy. I went into a passionate speech last night involving a lot of the same topics I've been thinking about lately, he looks at me, says "Well, this is great. I'm glad you're so anti marriage now." Then slowly walks away from me on the couch mouth agape.

Let me clear something up and make it very clear. I am NOT anti marriage. Quite the opposite actually. I'm anti getting married for the wedding and forgetting about what comes after, anti getting married without thinking about what it all entails, not thinking about the commitment you are making to someone and thinking about the work, effort and nurturing you have to put into a relationship to make it last.
I'm anti losing yourself so much in your relationship that you forget who you truly are. I think that's something a lot of women have a hard time with because we are giving creatures but that walks a fine line with giving til you've lost it all. I'm anti the pressure I think society can put on young women to find a man and settle down...I don't understand it in this day and age when we have so many choices why that seems to be the loudest one.

I'm very much pro marriage and that's why I think it's so important to think about it, A LOT before diving in, and knowing who you really are before sharing that person with someone else for the rest of your life, and not very many young girls are mature enough to have truly found themselves yet and that can get you into some very tough situations throughout life. I think people just rush into things without using their heads first.

I've been thinking about it all myself lately, and I thought I would share that journey with you. I value your opinions and experiences and I feel like all of your input is important since I can only live my one life; I like to hear stories about your lives and loves, triumphs and mistakes. So please keep telling me your stories.

Little life lessons learned from mom

Still thinking (this could be a problem) so I'm just gonna go with it people. When I was in college I wrote a paper about how divorce affects the attitude about relationships and marriage for kids who were the product of divorce vs. those who still have married parents. I thought it would be really cut and dry, that those who were from divorced marriages would never want to get married or at least be more cautious before doing so, and those that still had married parents would be totally into the idea of marriage and want to get married like. right. now.

It appears its not totally that way. And my dreams of becoming a famous researcher on the effects of divorce were thus very quickly crushed. So I was thinking back about how my parents divorce when I was 9 affected me and how a few of my friends, including the boy feel about marriage when their parents are still together. It got complicated.

When I was in high school I spent all of my time with my 3 best friends and we never left each others sides. we were our own little microcosm of ideas and goals for what we wanted in life. Two of us (#1 and #2) were from divorced single mom households, and 2 (#3 and #4) were from married households (one marriage was very traditional catholic (#3), and one was uber liberal, independent mom who traveled the world doing research and obtaining her PhD and dad was a psychologist(#4)...this will matter in a minute).

It seemed to me looking back on it, that the ones that were from married homes would want to get married right away and the ones that were from single mom homes wouldn't. None of us are married yet, but the one that wanted to get married and have kids the most was #2, who's mom had been single and divorced like since #2 was born. And I would bet if she weren't dating a 40 year old man who's divorced with commitment issues she'd be married by now. #3 with her super traditional catholic family wanted to get married and have babies just as bad and she's still out there looking for the right guy. #4 just graduated with her masters in international public health and is in a serious relationship but more interested in travelling and saving the world. As for me, I never wanted to get married. I wasn't interested in dating or being committed to someone, my mom appeared to carry on and even do better on her own. She indirectly sent me messages and set an example for me, I learned from her without really knowing it, she was my one example of what it was like to be or not be married that I had to learn from.

I learned a lot from my mom about the right and wrong things to do in my own life as well as a life with someone else. I learned to always be prepared and to exercise independence and never lose my own dreams, to have my own bank account with a "rainy day" fund set aside for any "just in case" situations in life (not just divorce), I learned to get an education and have my own career, not to lose myself in my marriage and my children because those things may not last forever and what do you have left when it's all gone? Yourself and the things you worked for to provide for yourself (that could be anything, your emotional stability and financial stability).

But she became a good example of what a woman should be after he was gone, she was independent, did whatever made her happy, she learned how to navigate her way around a toolbox (quite well I might add), got a good job and stood up for herself, she had no one to depend on but herself. She had no one to depend on to make her happy, so she learned how to do it herself. It appeared she got on perfectly fine without being married and without having a man in her life and that showed me it was ok not to "need" a man, to be proud and happy to be a woman on her own and to stand up for myself and what I believe in, and not let anyone take that away from me, even the man I love. Even from a really young age I didn't want to be married and be a mom, I wanted to be a career woman, a total power B*itch, who was single and independent and didn't give a crap about men. That's changed a bit, I found someone who encourages my dreams, tolerates my attitude and someone I can see myself being able to be with for a long time; but, I still have the foundation of what my mom indirectly taught me and that will never change.

It is true though that people who have parents that are still married have a much more positive outlook on marriage and long term commitments. But on the other hand do they lack the realistic understanding that once you get married things don't become perfect? That a marriage is 2 people who are trying to navigate through life together, but they're still 2 seperate people who have seperate ideals, and goals and attitudes, and they'll fight and get angry and that's ok? We're so in love with the idea of love and forget that relationships are hard. I might be more of a cynic than that woman who grew up in a happily married home but i feel like I got a preview into the hardships of life and relationships and I feel like I'm well prepared to look out for and deal with the rough patches and more cautious in my choosing of a life partner to avoid making the same mistakes a lot of women do.

So how did your parents, single, married, dating or otherwise set an example for you? What indirect messages about marriage and relationships did you get from them? Have those changed since you've grown? We learn so much as women from our moms and dads as we grow up and marriage and relationships are no acception to the rule, what lessons did you gain, and do you wish they'd been more honest with you and told you more?

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

so...what do I do now?

I've been mulling some ideas about marriage and relationships and youth around in my head for a while now and it's all got me thinking some very serious thoughts. I'm 25 and I feel like I'm at an age now where EVERYONE is getting married. As soon as I graduated college every girl I knew or know got engaged and married within a year or so of us leaving school. Every status on facebook changed to "engaged" and that is a very big act to follow and quite intimidating when I still have a lot of questions about this relationship and committment stuff.

I was reading one of my very favorite blogs yesterday, Jezebel and there was a post on there about Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) and her new book Committed. This book got bumped up to the top of my reading list and is sitting on my night stand ready to be opened as we speak. I like Gilbert and her attitude on life and I especially love when a smart woman who questions life and all the mixed messages in it, gets married and writes a book about it.

After watching the clip on there I had a lot to sit around and think about. The boy and I have talked about getting married, we've even looked at rings a little bit, but I have to wonder are we wanting to get married because we want to spend the rest of our lives together (I'm pretty sure we do) or are we wanting to get married because it's the next thing to do in the long line of societal expectations when it comes to relationships? Gilbert in her interview on the Bonnie Hunt show says that the women who are happiest in their relationships and in their own lives are the ones who waited the longest to get married. Yet I feel like every girl I have talked to talks about getting married or wanting to get married like right now...

When I was a senior in college my roommate, someone I had admired for her electrical engineering major and desire to make big things happen in the world, got engaged to a boy she'd been dating for a year (they're married now, she's a housewife, and baby #1 is on the way) and it started a long line of thoughts in me. I remember reading the school paper a few weeks before I graduated about girls who were about to graduate and were planning a wedding at the same time (how to balance finals and invitations at the same time sort of thing) and this is at the University of California not some southern conservative private school. The day of commencement I sat next to a girl I didn't know, waiting for our names to be called so we could walk up and receive our diplomas, we chatted casually about school and what our plans were, I told her I was taking the MCAT and applying to medical school, I asked what her plans were and she smiled and raised up her left hand to reveal a diamond ring. These were not isolated incidences they happen all the time (still do)...supposedly it's just the next step; you pay thousands of dollars for an education to better your life and make something of it and then you get married and have a baby.

I can't go on facebook without seeing new wedding photos and not a single one of these women is over 25. So what is it? Is it the wedding, or just the next step, the fear of being alone, making other people happy (like the parents) or the status symbol? Are we that impatient and don't want to enjoy the relationship first? I find myself thinking about marriage and getting married and then realize I need to focus more on the relationship for now and not be distracted by the allure of a wedding because after the wedding you still have to have a relationship, and now its for a loooooong time. This new book by Elizabeth Gilbert has got me thinking over some pretty serious things and I want to explore them on here. I want to get a good discussion going with women, both married, in relationships and single to talk about things I don't know much about just yet.

If I could talk to my 40 year old self, what would she say? Wait, don't wait, don't lose your independence, maintain goals for yourself, don't lose him...I don't know. All things I want to talk about. With you. So feel free to give me your two cents...or even the whole dollar. I want to get down to the nitty gritty of it all, I don't want to just buy into the pretty pictures without thinking about it first, it just aint my style.

Where did the love go?

Ok, I'm furious and I need to rant. I know that this is coming completely out of left field but since this is a forum for my mind and opinions for this I sure have one.

As a woman, this Tiger Woods thing has me in a tail spin. We hear about love affairs and cheating on tv all the time, but this really got me. I actually cried the other day out of anger for the mere fact that women aren't famous for being intelligent or working hard but rather for having a vagina and being a homewrecker.

When did this happen?! When did we as women reduce ourselves to being a life support system for a warm place to put it? Have none of our efforts to prove our worth meant anything at all? And then I hear these awful sexist and demeaning jokes about our gender and why am I surprised when we feed into it? I watched the interview with Jamie Jungers on TODAY this morning and I wanted to punch the tv. She didn't get any money only a broken heart?! Was she expecting money for sleeping with him (and yes, she did eventually ask for money)? And did she not have any idea that there might be other broken hearts in the mix? Say, the woman he stood before God with and married and maybe Oh, I don't know, his 2 small children? One barely out of the womb?

Have we no respect for other women? We stand beside each other and claim that together we will fight for respect but then go an stab each other in the back?

I feel like we're fed these messages from the feminist agenda, like "We're all in this together" or "We have each others backs" and I guarantee you if there were a girl in a bar getting the poor treatment from a dude a bunch of girls who don't even know her would stand up for her, but then what are we supposed to do afterward...go sleep with her husband? I'm sorry I didn't get the memo.

How have we done this? How have we ended up here? Where no marriage is sacred, Jamie Jungers says, “It was a thought in my mind, of course,” Jungers responded. “I mean, I’m not raised to do something like I did, and I’m not saying it’s OK … [but] I had a crush on Tiger for many years. I was very excited and honored that he was interested in me.”

Why couldn't you just say NO?! We're that selfish of a society, that we just don't care anymore. We don't care that people are married, we don't care that other people, including small children might get hurt in the deal, we don't care about respecting other women.

And this just breaks my heart.

I know that he's rich and famous, and maybe that makes his relationship more vulnerable, but I can tell you right now that this doesn't happen to just famous people, I was a child of a marriage just like that one, and I know many people who have been in the same situation.

But here's the thing, there are many men who are rich and famous for their success and the hard work that they have done, and there are many many women who are rich and famous for having sex with men. What kind of message does that send young women? You can work hard and be smart and maybe you'll be recognized for it or you could just go sleep with a rich and famous man and take the fast track? Just ask Marianne Faithfull or Pattie Boyd.

I know that it isn't women's faults that these things happen, theres a man there too, and the media have bought in to this and glorify these situations, but why has there been no one willing to take responsibility for this? And why can't women have more respect for themselves?


I'll end with this, and I'm sorry for my emotional explosion but I couldn't bear it any longer.

In response to a question from Vieira, Jungers said she is uncertain whether she feels like she owes Nordegren an apology for the year and a half she had an affair with Woods. “Yes, and no; I mean, I wouldn’t want somebody to do it to me, but I’m not going to take full blame for this,” she said.