Category Archives: relationships

The Keeper of the Calendar

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Image by digitalart, freedigitalphotos.net

Image by digitalart, freedigitalphotos.net

For as long as I can remember, my girlfriends have been an important part of my life. We’ve graduated from Kool-Aid and cookies to brie and Cabernet and have gone from dissecting Barbie’s hairstyles to debating whether “Blonded by the Light” or “Brazen Raisin” will better cover up our grays, but one thing remains true after all these years: without my girlfriends I’d probably never have made it this far.

My girlfriends are the ones that keep me (relatively) sane. They’re the only ones who really understand my drink order at Starbucks, or my irritation with the ten-items-or-less-line, or my love-hate relationship with Christmas.

This is why girls’ nights out are so important. They’re therapeutic, actually medicinal, and I’m not just talking about the vodka in our martinis. Men are great for a lot of things, and not just killing spiders (which my husband refuses to do) and reaching things on the highest shelves. But you can’t really talk to men about the importance of chocolate, the beauty of a new lipstick, or the ability of the perfect pair of black boots to update your whole wardrobe.

They just don’t get it.

My husband doesn’t really get it at all, but he doesn’t really complain about it either. I tell him I’m going out with my friends, and he looks up from the crossword puzzle, nods, grunts, and maybe, if I’m lucky, tells me to have a good time.

We’ve been together for 19 years and in all that time, he’s made social plans seven times, not including Mother’s Day and my birthday, where I have to remind him about what I want to do at least three times a day for a month beforehand, so I don’t think that really counts.

I’m the keeper of the social calendar and that’s okay, it’s worked for us all these years. At least until recently, when I told him I was leaving the house to meet my girlfriends. He looked up from the crossword puzzle, nodded, grunted, and said, “OK. I’m having boys’ night out on Thursday.”

Excuse me? Did I put that on the calendar? Since when are you scheduling your own “play dates,” honey?

I was sure I had misheard him. But no, come Thursday night he put on a jacket and actually left the house, all by himself. This has got to be a fluke, I thought.

Then it happened again the next week. Uh oh. Was my husband finally realizing how much fun it was to escape his family for a night on the town? This could be big trouble for me.

I thought I could nip the problem in the bud the night we both had plans. After all, a PTA meeting (followed by cocktails, but still, “It’s for the kids”) trumps an action movie, so he would just have to reschedule. I told him this, quite reasonably, I thought. But he just smiled, devilishly, and said, “It’s okay honey, your mom’s going to watch Koss so we can both go out.”

Oh dear. Couldn’t he at last have called his own mom?

The next thing I know he’ll be planning mancations and taking up fly fishing and snow boarding and how will I ever get away to the spa with MY friends if that happens?

I definitely need to stop this train wreck before it’s too late. He needs to tone his social life way down if I’m ever going to be able to keep up with mine.

“Honey,” I begin, in my sweetest most devious voice, “We need to talk.”

“Yeah, I’ve been forgetting to tell you something,” he says.

All right. I bet he’s going to tell me that he’s been spending too much time with his friends and realizes he would much rather be home spending time with his family, while I’m out with the girls.

I smile in anticipation.

“The guys and I are talking about a boy’s weekend. Let’s check the calendar.”

Uh oh, you mean my calendar?

Oh no. I’m doomed.

Share your tips for keeping your man at home with Leslie at email. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on January 27, 2012.

F is for Frenemy

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Photo by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

Photo by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

A friendship, too, is a kind of romance-complete with possessiveness, jealousy and mistrust. -Nick Laird

While sifting your friends from your foes should be straightforward, it’s not always obvious who’s got your back, and who’s getting ready to stab a knife in it.

Friends are supposed to bring out the best in you, even when you’re at your worst, which is why it’s so disturbing when someone you thought was your friend turns out to be a frenemy. Whether you’re dramatically dumped, or you simply discover that she’s just not that into you, you never forget your first frenemy.

“Sometimes people bring out the worst in each other,” I tried to explain to my young friend, who had recently been excluded from the cool kids group at lunch. The poor girl was in tears, and I certainly couldn’t blame her. All summer long she had played with Queen Bee, a neighbor, and returned to fifth grade thinking they were the best of buds. But as soon as school started, poor Wannabe was ostracized in favor of Queen Bee’s more popular minions.

“It’s like all of our summer fun never happened,” Wannabe wailed. “We hung out at the water park, the beach, went to the movies, had tons of sleepovers. I can’t believe she doesn’t want to sit with me at lunch!”

Hearing this sad story brought me right back to my own fourth grade summer and the back-to-school diss from my own generation’s Queen Bee. Quite frankly, I’m still devastated and I want my yellow ski jacket and my puka shell necklace back.

“Will it be any comfort for you to know that she’s going to end up divorced, raising three kids from three different fathers?” I offered.

Wannabe looked at me blankly. “She was mean to me yesterday at school, but then after school she came over to play like nothing had happened.”

Oh dear.

“Then today, she spread out her lunch box and said there was no room for me at their table,” sobbed Wannabe. “I can’t believe it.”

Unfortunately, I can. You just found yourself your first frenemy.

It’s hard enough for an adult to understand the wicked combination of arrogance and insecurity that creates cliques, let alone explain them to a child who has just had her heart broken.

Times may change but mean girls are eternal.

I took a deep breath.

How could I explain to Wannabe that even the best of friendships can be odd, complicated and messy? Every relationship has an ever-shifting balance of power. There are some people, like Queen Bee, who thrive on other people’s neediness or weaknesses. She bosses her little bees around and they’re too spineless to stand up to her.

Wannabe might have been sad, but she wasn’t spineless.

How could I help her understand that there’s this whole social convention when a romantic relationship breaks up, but there’s no parallel convention for friendships, even though the breakup of a friendship can be more shocking and more devastating?

“Does any of this make sense?” I asked, and again I got a blank stare from under her tears.

I took another stab. “If someone doesn’t treat you like a friend, all the time, no matter who else is around or who else is watching, then they’re probably not really your friend,” I explained.

Finally a flicker of recognition in her sad, sweet eyes.

“They are what we call a frenemy, someone who is both a friend and an enemy, which is no way to be a friend.”

“Like a bad friend,” said Wannabe. “A bend. Or a frad.”

I almost yelled at her that the word was frenemy, not bend, and that she should grow up already because my word was better than hers-seriously, bend? Frad? What are you, a ten-year-old?-but then that might not have been the friendliest thing to do.

“Exactly. Someone who will continue to bring you down and make you sad until you stick up for yourself, at which point you’ll probably have a fight and won’t be friends anymore anyway.”

“That doesn’t sound like someone I want to be friends with in the first place,” she said.

“That’s right,” I said. “It’ll get better, I promise. That’s your first lesson of the school year. You’ll have lots of good and true friends. Now give me your lunch money.”

When Leslie’s not offering sage advice to anyone who will listen, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on November 11, 2011.

The guilt gene

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Image by Stuart Miles, Freedigitalphotos.net

Image by Stuart Miles, Freedigitalphotos.net

G-U-I-L-T should really be a four-letter word.

Years ago, when I was in full-blown rebellious teenage daughter mode, I jotted this quote down from Katherine Lee: “If there’s anything that can match the heights of mother-love, it’s the depths of mother-guilt.”

Boy is that ever true.

I was raised on a diet of guilt. Sure, it was well seasoned with humor (which I must add, so I won’t feel too guilty when my mom reads this), but guilt is so deeply embedded into my DNA that I feel guilty not having mastered guilt yet.

I’ve spent most of my life making important decisions based on the avoidance of future guilt. If I don’t finish the laundry tonight then my son will have to wear dingy underwear tomorrow. What if he gets in a car accident because he has dingy underwear? Does the dentist really know if I skip one night of flossing? If I watch “The Next Food Network Star” tonight instead of “Desperate Housewives” will I be personally responsible for the end of scripted television? What if I skip that one school board meeting and they vote to cut out recess? It never seems to end.

Some days it feels like my whole life has been one, big, guilty, mental dress rehearsal for all of the bad things that might happen if I don’t do all the good things I’m supposed to.

Yet, despite so many years of good girl-dom, good wife-dom and good daughter-dom tangled with all the woulda coulda shoulda catastrophes in my head, I am still surprised by how entwined guilt is with being a mom.

It’s not even noon yet and already the ugly wheels of self- recrimination are grinding against each other in my head. When I dropped off Koss at school, I felt guilty for driving my big fat carbon footprint car (but I can’t afford a Leaf or a Volt, so I feel guilty for not working more to make more money). Then I felt guilty paying $4 for a latte when I had perfectly good coffee at home. But I hadn’t gotten up early enough to make the coffee, another thing that made me feel guilty.

Plus it was Beach Day so I made sure Koss had sunscreen, a towel and his own sandwich in case he didn’t like the ones the other mothers made, but I wasn’t driving on the field trip and wasn’t even going to come to the beach until after lunch because I had to finish writing a story first, which of course, I felt guilty about. Then there’s the fact that I didn’t sign up in time to bring the sandwiches he likes, not to mention all the baking I haven’t done for all the parties and events in these last four years of school.

It’s enough to make you drown in guilt.

Erma Bombeck once called guilt “the gift that keeps on giving.” She was so right. I used to blame it all on my mom, who has an amazing ability to shoot guilt darts with the slightest change in the tone of her voice. Of course I feel guilty about blaming her, especially now that I realize that she couldn’t help it.

I’d blame my husband, but he doesn’t care. Whoever said, “men feel guilty about nothing and women feel guilty about everything” clearly spent some time with him.

I finished the story but left dishes in the sink and beds unmade in order make it to the beach before the party was over.

The minute my son saw me he gave me a huge grin and a hug. All that rushing and hustling was worth it after all.

Then he hit me with the stinger: “Finally you’re here, mom. What took you so long?”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t respond to Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. But you should at least go read more columns at www.LeslieDinaberg.com.  Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on August 26, 2011.

Is happiness overrated

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I Just Want My Kids to be Happy!“America’s youth are drowning in happiness,” says Aaron Cooper, Ph.D., a psychologist concerned about the rising rates of youth depression and anxiety.

“Millions of well-intentioned parents have made life harder for their children by shielding the kids from every kind of unhappiness,” according to Cooper, who co- authored a book on the dangers when parents make happiness the most important thing in their children’s lives. “These parents try to soften every edge in their children’s lives, and it’s crippling the kids emotionally.”

That’s a scary thought, but he might be right. “I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy!” has become the mantra of today’s parents. I hear people say that all of the time. I’m just as guilty as the next mom of sometimes valuing my son’s short-term happiness over the long-term lessons I could-and should-be teaching him.

I just read Cooper’s book called, I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy! Why you shouldn’t say it, why you shouldn’t think it, what you should embrace instead,” which he co-authored with Eric Keitel, M.Ed., and they explain why buying into the happiness mantra is a mistake.

“Without plenty of practice coping with ordinary sadness, upset, disappointment, and hurt, kids don’t develop resilience,” Cooper says. “And without resilience, they’re vulnerable to all kinds of problems.”

Of course everyone wants their kids to be happy, that’s human nature. But according to this book, “I just want them to be happy” is more than just a wish. It’s also expressing a belief that our kids’ happiness is the most important thing.

After reading it I began to think that happiness might actually be overrated.

Some of the negative consequences that result from just wanting children to be happy include:

Being captive to our children’s moods. I am so guilty of this one. From the time that Koss was a teeny tiny baby I have hated to see him be the least bit unhappy or god forbid, cry, and will do just about anything to make it stop.

Feeling unnecessary guilt and shame when our kids aren’t happy. I’m the poster child for this one. When Koss is upset I feel personally responsible. It’s all my fault. It’s always all my fault. Even if it’s his fault, I feel like it’s all my fault.

Overprotecting our children from adversity. Guilty again. I can’t help it. It’s so hard not to want protect your child from life’s pain. Every time I hear about another kid being mean to Koss, or even inadvertently hurting his feelings, the mama bear in me wants to swoop in and make everything all right again-even if it means permanently banishing the mean kid from the forest. I’m still holding grudges from kindergarten while Koss has long since moved on.

Abdicating parental authority rather than cause our kids unhappiness. Again, guilty as charged. Really guilty. I can’t tell you how often I abandon my plans to run errands after school and agree to let him have a friend over, or agree to five more minutes of playtime (which turns into ten or 15 minutes) because he looked at me with sadness in those big brown eyes. This one’s a double whammy because after I give in, then I feel guilty for not being strict enough with him.

It might even be a triple whammy because, as Cooper explains: “Kids know how much their parents want them to be happy, and so when they’re sad or upset for whatever reason, they feel guilty thinking they’re letting their parents down. Many hide their distress at home, which compounds the problem and they end up feeling worse.”

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned as a parent-okay I’m still working on this one-is to allow Koss to be unhappy. My impulse is to want to wipe away his sadness like it was spilt milk. At the same time I know that I’m doing him a disservice by trying to “make it all better.”

When it comes to our children’s happiness, less may actually be more. So instead of focusing on happiness, what should parents emphasize? Cooper and Keitel reviewed decades of research and found eight ingredients in people’s lives that reliably predict who is happy and who is not, including a sense of gratitude, closeness to others, and an optimistic outlook.

I think I get it now. The next time Koss is sad I won’t try to make it all better, I’ll just give him a hug, tell him how much I love him, and hope for the best.

Are we overemphasizing our children’s happiness? Tell Leslie what you think by emailing Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 15. 2011.

Heating up to Fifty

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Between a Rock and Hot Place, by Tracey Jackson

Between a Rock and Hot Place, by Tracey Jackson

Let me start out this column by saying that I am not 50 yet.

I am nowhere near 50 years old.

OK, the sum total of my journeys around the sun is not quite 50–yet–but I’m a heck of a lot closer to being 50 than I am to being 30.

The fact that I have difficulty wrapping my head around this oh-so-obvious reality was part of the inspiration for Tracey Jackson‘s humorous new book, Between a Rock and a Hot Place: Why Fifty is Not the New Thirty, a part memoir, part self-help, part rant and always entertaining look at what happens to women when they hit the big Five-O.

“The idea that just because we want to we can turn back the clock and pretend to be thirty is both amusing and insane,” laughed Jackson, speaking to me from the back room of a hair salon. This busy lady fit in our interview during a quick trip home to New York before flying off to D.C. to continue a book tour that includes visits with Kathie Lee and Hoda, Meredith Vierra on “The Today Show” and the Writing Mamas of Corte Madera County.

“Being on a book tour is tiring, but it’s a good kind of whirlwind,” said Jackson, who has had a lot of whirlwinds since her childhood in Santa Barbara, where her extended family still resides. A comedy screenwriter for 17 years–Confessions of a Shopholic and The Guru are some of her better known titles–Jackson writes frankly about being shocked when she got older and the writing jobs started drying up. Ironically, her last screenwriting job was adapting a book called “The Ivy Chronicles,” about a woman who loses her job and reinvents herself.

Jackson also reinvented herself, producing and starring with her daughter in a documentary film called Lucky Ducks, (about the complex relationship boomer parents have with their over-indulged teens), daily blogging and most recently, writing “Between a Rock and a Hot Place.”

All of the hot button middle age stuff is there, with her amusing takes on what could be depressing topics like menopause (“it’s not all in your head, it’s in your vagina”), money (“I didn’t mean to spend it all”), death (“ready or not, here death comes”) and my favorite, “Sex, Estrogen and Not So Much Rock and Roll.”

Of course I immediately turned to the chapter about sex, where Jackson describes in hilarious detail her attempt to spice up her marriage with a trip to a very posh sex store. The resulting misadventures involving Jackson, her husband, a shiny black bag of toys, and Lola Falana (their Chihuahua) made me laugh so hard that I woke up my husband.

With sex, face lifts, finances and sandwich generation challenges of aging parents and exhausting teenagers sitting side-by-side, the book casts a pretty wide net over the issues of “second adulthood.” Jackson said that was her plan from the start.

“When you’re writing a comedic book, which a lot of this is, and then you have to throw in things that aren’t funny, it’s hard. … When you’re writing about death, you’re writing about death so it’s trickier to make that buoyant and make that something that people don’t go ‘OK now I’ve read this really funny chapter about sex and now I’m reading about dying.’ How do you keep that light? … At the end of the day you kind of give in and say OK I’m writing about death, this is not a funny topic any way you cut it, so we just have to kind of go for it. ”

She still manages to get the comedy in– when she talks about death she includes the story of her husband’s spinning teacher dropping dead at the gym. In fact, no matter what the topic, the laughs and hard truths resonate throughout both the book and my conversation with Jackson.

“We aren’t old and we aren’t young; we are in kind of in-between states, passing through the transit lounge of life,” she writes. “No matter how much Botox you get, things will start falling apart: some marriages end, some kids are job, some jobs are terminated, most faces fall and all boobs do. No one bothered to fill us in on this.”

Luckily that’s where Jackson and “Between a Rock and Hot Place” come in.

Tracey Jackson blogs daily at www.traceyjacksononline.com. Maybe Leslie will do that when she’s 50, but for now she writes weekly. Read her columns every Friday in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound or at www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on March 4, 2011.

Tackling the Season Like a Man

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Portrait Of Beautiful Woman Wearing Santa Claus Hat by David Castillo Dominici, freedigitalphotos.net

Portrait Of Beautiful Woman Wearing Santa Claus Hat by David Castillo Dominici, freedigitalphotos.net

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from my friend Ramey: “If you don’t want to be the only one doing all the work then you have to let other people do stuff using their own standards–no matter how crappy or inferior they may be.”

She was talking about diaper rash and Desitin, but over time I’ve found that her advice applies almost everywhere from the schoolyard and the soccer field to the domestic front and delegating at work.

You can explain it by whatever nature versus nurture notion noogles your noggin, but the fact is that men are overwhelmingly better than women are at letting go of perfectionism. They don’t really notice–or if they do, they certainly don’t care about–that pile of laundry waiting to be folded on the couch. It’s simply an obstacle to sit upon or pushed aside in their quest to find a place to rest their fatigued fannies after a hard day’s work.

They aren’t the least bit disturbed if the dinner table lacks floral finery, or even utensils, as long as there’s an ice-cold beer at their fingertips. They may be masters of their domains, but most of them have absolutely no interest in anything resembling a throw pillow, quilt or home decor accessory (unless it comes in HD and surround sound).

And as for calendars, schedules and to-do lists? Forget about it. Somehow it’s more manly to store things “in your head,” despite the sometimes sieve-like filter associated with this system.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of things that men simply don’t care about and thus they don’t stress about. As hard as it is for me to admit it, I think they may be on to something, especially when it comes to the holidays.

Have you ever in your life met a man who felt guilty when a caring neighbor brought over a homemade dish of goodies and he didn’t have a lavish platter at the ready to gift them in return?

Have you ever heard of a man stalking the aisles of an all-night drug store after midnight because the five shades of curling ribbon he has at home are just not “quite the right red?”

You don’t see men stressing about losing weight to fit into a cute new outfit for the company’s holiday party or going to 17 different stores to find the perfect Secret Santa Gift for the receptionist in their office who won’t even know it’s from them.

Nope, men don’t take it as their seasonal call of duty to personally manufacture every bit of holiday magic that comes into their household. For the most part, whether the laundry is waiting to be folded or not, they sit on the couch, relax and enjoy the spirit–and spirits–of the season.

Which is why this year I’m going to try to take the holidays like a man by relaxing the perfectionism, kicking back and enjoying them.

I hope you’ll do the same.

When Leslie’s not obsessing about not obsessing about her holiday to-do list, she can reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.  Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on December 10, 2010.

Defending Facebook Friends

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Screen shot 2014-07-11 at 7.17.28 PMWeak Ties Still Equal Strong Links

Marlene Dietrich once said, “It’s the friends you call at 4 a.m. that really matter.” Agreed. But the friends whose walls you post on at 4 a.m. matter too.

“Weak ties are your windows to the world,” wrote Stanford University sociologist Mark Granovetter back in 1973 in “The Strength of Weak Ties,” one of the earliest academic theories about the spread of information in social networks. Of course, he had no way of knowing back then how apropos his words would become in these days of social networking. “When you’re looking for new ideas and new connections, you don’t get them from family or close friends. It’s the weak ties that connect you to different circles and opportunities,” he wrote.

It’s also the weak ties that connect you to community.

Which is why I get so irked at all of the high falutin’ Luddites who diss communication technologies like Facebook on the grounds that they value “quality and not quantity in their friendships.”

Excuse me, but just because I enjoy connecting with people online doesn’t mean I’m holed up alone in some hovel wearing a dirty gray hoodie and mainlining Red Bull all night.

My pajamas are perfectly clean and I much prefer red wine to Red Bull, which you would know if you read my Facebook page.

Besides, people like that completely miss the point of Facebook and other social networking sites. Of course Facebook isn’t a substitute for close friends and I would have serious concerns for the psyche of anyone who chose to use it that way. For me social networking serves an entirely different function-it’s a community.

Much like going to my neighborhood coffee shop or hanging out with other parents as I wait for my son to finish soccer practice, I have a nodding “hey, how’s it going” kind of acquaintanceship with most of my Facebook friends. We share little bits and pieces of our lives-sometimes a bit too much, girl who posts endless cat pictures-but for the most part we save the nitty-gritty details for our real friends, who aren’t necessarily the ones we chat with on Facebook.

Still, I love getting these little glimpses of the day-to-day fabric of people’s lives. I like to know what’s going on in other people’s heads, even the mundane stuff. But these kind of peripheral friendships are very, very different from the deeper friendships I have.

Which isn’t to say that peripheral friendships aren’t important.

According to a 30-year long longitudinal study at Harvard, the state of our entire network (“our community”) impacts our well being. The study, of 12,000 people, found that your odds of being happy increase by 25 percent if a direct connection in your network is happy.

Got that. Happiness is contagious.

The study also found a similar effect for secondhand associations; if your friend’s friend is happy, the odds of your friend being happy increase by 15 percent-and the odds of you being happy increase by 10 percent.

So c’mon, let’s get happy.

That reminds me of a favorite Partridge Family song. I think I’ll look it up on YouTube and post it on my Facebook page.

When Leslie’s not wiling away hours on Facebook she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on November 5, 2010.

The Upside of Arguments

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Photo by David Castillo Dominici, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Photo by David Castillo Dominici, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Though it pains me to admit it, I’ve got a mean streak when it comes to arguments. Whether I’m right or wrong, or even arguing about something I don’t really care about—I like to win.

So does my husband.

This can lead to some heated discussions, most of which are amusing and some of which are actually our busy parent version of foreplay.

So you can imagine how hot I got when-in yet another scientific example of something I knew instinctually must be true—I came across a University of Michigan study that found that expressing your complaints and frustrations can actually help you live longer.

Did you hear that, honey? Told you so.

According to the study, married women who squelched their anger when they felt wronged by their husbands died earlier than wives who expressed their anger.

Good thing I pride myself on keeping a squelch-free house. I am going to live forever.

Of course the Michigan researchers and a whole arsenal of psychologists agree that fighting a “good” fight can be healthy, but that fighting dirty might be just as bad as letting your hostility simmer. Was I so dead set on winning my arguments that I was crossing the line between healthy discourse and downright nastiness?

I wasn’t sure, so like any logical yet lazy 21st century lady in search of information, I decided to take a quiz on the Internet at http://discoveryhealth.queendom.com/arguing_style.html.

OK.

“The results of the test you just took indicate that you are not a bad fighter, but you still have a lot to learn when it comes to your fighting style.”

I can live with that.

Then I read on.

“A lack of focus is the cause of many overly long, exhausting fights. Do you carry grudges about old conflicts and bring them up time and time again?” Of course I do! It’s called nostalgia. That’s a big part of how we keep the love alive. Without all of those misty water-colored memories of long lost battles we’d have so much less to argue about.

And yet, the quiz still advised me to, “Do your best not to bring them up all at once! When you’re in the heat of the moment, try not to let your judgment be clouded by old hurts and buried issues it’s certainly not easy when you’re seeing red, but it’s for the best. Keep focused on the issue at hand, and learn to recognize when enough is enough.”

That sounds familiar. In fact that logic is a lot like my husband’s frequent plea, “Can we just fight about one thing at a time?”

Aurgh. There’s even data to back that one up. I hate losing. Now I’ll have to bring up something from 1993 to torment him with.

According to research from the Gottman Institute in Chicago, to argue in a healthy fashion couples should “edit their arguments.” I should be able to handle that, right? I’m a professional editor. But seriously, “refrain from saying out loud every single angry thought during an argument. Sometimes, talking about sensitive topics can turn really ugly if everything is let out. Couples who edit their arguments are consistently much happier than those who don’t.”

You mean I shouldn’t explain every one of my husband’s faults to him in excruciating detail and if he doesn’t agree with me the first time, then I shouldn’t say it over and over again in an ever more shrill tone of voice? You mean I shouldn’t constantly nag him with my well-intentioned and ever-so-helpful suggestions about how to fix his shortcomings?

Nope. The health quiz experts advised me to “avoid irony all together. Ideally use even-handed logic to settle your arguments.”

Excuse me. No irony, no sarcasm, no satire, no mockery, no way! Where will I sharpen my wit if not in the soft underbelly of my beloved hubby? And even more importantly, if I have to use logic to win my arguments, how can I possibly win?

When Leslie’s not strategizing to win her next battle of the blurbs, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.  Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on October 22, 2010.

I Second That Emotion

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Stockimages, freeimages.net

Stockimages, freeimages.net

I’m not quite sure why I felt like doing a victory lap when I read about the latest round of “Mars versus Venus” differences between men and women research, but I couldn’t help myself. It may have something to do with the fact that when I told my husband about it, he pretended not to hear me.

A recent academic study found that, contrary to popular belief, men are actually more affected by rocky relationships than women are. That’s right, no matter how many stupid movies and TV shows there are that portray women as banshees in the boardroom and dandelions in the bedroom who blow caution to the wind at the mere whiff of romance, thorny relationships actually take a far greater toll on men than they do on women.

“Men are more sensitive than we often think they are,” said Robin Simon of Wake Forest University, in an interview with Courtney Hutchison for ABC News. She then snickered, “Wusses” under her breath. I might have made up that last comment.

I’ve been saying men are sensitive for years, and insensitive as it may sound, I couldn’t help but yell out “gotcha” for every single time I’ve heard a guy tell me to “stop being so sensitive.”

That’s a lot of “gotcha’s.”

I’ve always been sure that somewhere deep inside my husband was a super sensitive side, and that I just needed to chip away at that jokey exterior for a few more decades and that treasure of emotion would be mine, all mine!

Besides, I know that women aren’t the only ones getting all weepy at that Folger’s coffee commercial where Peter comes home for Christmas. And you’d have to have a heart made of stone not get emotional at weddings, graduations and when your kid finally scores a soccer goal, right?

Sure, some of the stereotypes still ring true. When women get together we tend to drink poetically named cocktails and chat about designer footwear and our children’s wisdom beyond their years with the same level of passion and precision in which we dissect our romantic relationships. Guys tend to drink beer, play poker and watch or play sports-which is likely one of the reasons that women fare better when things go sour in the romance department. We have more opportunities to express our emotions because we can discuss our problems with friends.

Guys, at least the ones I’m around, tend to joke and needle each other when the conversations get serious. It takes a while for them to be comfortable enough to express their own emotions, let alone show empathy for each other. Guys are much more likely to identify their wives or girlfriends as their “best friend,” which may also be a factor in making breakups more emotionally difficult.

Of course the study, published earlier this year in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior by Simon and co-author Anne Barrett, associate professor of sociology at Florida State University, drew on mental health and relationship data among college students, and most of my experience, at least recent experience, is with full grown adult men.

But even among “Men of a Certain Age,” there is a large body of research that shows that they are actually more affected by relationships than women-they just don’t like to admit it. For example, married men live longer. And women fare much better on their own than men do, both physically and emotionally, although maybe not so much financially,

I guess the one thing we can count on is that interest in the “Mars versus Venus” differences between men and women conundrum will continue to compel lots of research and cocktail party conversations-where the men will only pretend not to listen.

When Leslie’s not pondering the mysteries of the opposite sex, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on September 17, 2010.

Gored by the Truth

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Al and Tipper Gore's wedding day, May 19, 1970, at the Washington National Cathedral, courtesy

Al and Tipper Gore’s wedding day, May 19, 1970, at the Washington National Cathedral, courtesy Wikipedia.

“Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.”

— Erma Bombeck

I was shocked and sad when I heard about the toppling of Tipper and Al Gore‘s marriage. Talk about an inconvenient truth.

With all of the fawning and fanning and cyber-ink devoted to Barack and Michelle Obama’s wedded bliss, I thought crowning them the king and queen of Washington couples so early in their residency was a bit premature. Al and Tipper, on the other hand, seemed to have gone the distance and come out smiling and holding hands. They had even bought a sunny, retirement estate in Montecito, for gosh sakes.

What could possibly have gone wrong?

After so many years in the political hot seat of D.C., I thought they’d be sailing into the Santa Barbara sunset for their golden years. Getting over the painful loss to George Bush, the Gores seemed to be on a roll. Al won a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar in 2007, and seemed to be well on his way toward distancing himself from his formerly wooden political punch line persona. And Tipper always seemed to be smiling by his side, happy with the role of helpmate.

Of course the news of the Gore’s separation brought back memories of their famous kiss at the 2000 Democratic Convention. Sure, some found it a bit painful to watch, but don’t forget, back in those days it seemed like the sight of a happy political couple was an oxymoron.

Even now, despite the Obamas’ seemingly solid partnership, there aren’t many examples of long-married-happily-married couples in what one astute Washington Post reader called our “national neighborhood,” so any tension in the ranks can make other married couples feel a little nervous. Instead of that momentary feeling of, “Wow, if they’re still happily married, there must be some hope for the rest of us,” like we did after the convention, Al and Tipper’s breakup feels like, “Huh, if these two people can’t make a go of it, what hope do the rest of us have?”

Not that my faith in marriage or your faith in marriage or anyone else’s faith in marriage-except possibly the Gores’ daughter Karenna who announced she was splitting from her husband of 13 years just a week after her parents announced their separation after 40 years of marriage-should have anything to do with anyone else’s wedded bliss. But still, “it’s more threatening to us if we see a couple we thought were happy just drift apart,” as sociologist Andrew Cherlin told the Post. “If even well-behaved people get divorced after 40 years, then some of us will worry about what our own marriages will be like later in life.”

Thankfully, I have yet to experience one of those, “If those two can split up then is the earth still round and will the sun still rise?” uncouplings among my close circle of friends. Still, I’ve experienced enough vicarious break-ups to know one inconvenient truth-you can never really know or understand what’s really going on in another person’s relationship.

Email Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com with your vote on which Gore should get the Santa Barbara mansion if they divorce. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 11, 2010.