Dorie Morgan’s Rising Up
Navigating Twenty-Something Suburban Life
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Archive of "relationships" Category
Purple means friendship. Duh.
One. Two. Three knots.
Charlotte and I tied matching purple wish bracelets on our ankles as if we were still thirteen year old girls. As if Charlotte was not going to turn thirty at the end of the month. As if I wasn’t waging a one woman battle against my biological clock.We wished for friendship.
We had hemmed and hawed over the display for a while. Did we want passion? Charlotte has passion and since I have my true love, that ruled out red. What about wisdom? I pushed for wealth instead. After all, I have student loans to pay.
Friendship it is.
So we stood in the sun, tying cheap bracelets on and wishing for friendships.
It did not escape either one of us that friendship was what we received.
As we get older, our little girl traditions get lost along the way as we find boys and reject boys, as we find ourselves and then find out we were wrong, as we set out to take over the world and later realize we don’t want the world the way it is now. We put sleepovers on hold so we can be adults, make dinner and pay bills.
We forget how important those traditions were when we were small. Some women get to be reminded when they have babies of their own. The language those children may use with each other might be different but the intent is the same. The embroidery floss bracelets traded will always look the same.
I don’t want the bracelet to fall off but like all childhood traditions, it must ultimately pass. This time in the form of falling off without help from me.
Awesome Blogger
Yesterday the interview/conversation I did with Jun Loayza for his Awesome Bloggers series was posted. It was a lot of fun but it was still slightly nerve wracking for me because I tend to over think things and get distracted by my over thinking. I’m also not entirely sure I am always an awesome blogger and especially after my blogging break, I’m still trying to get back in the swing of things.
At the end, Jun said something about top three tips for couples and if I had any to share. Nope. None. Not one. I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole. No way, no how.
So instead, I’ll share with you my top 3 reasons why I’m not doing it.
1. Misinterpretation.
So many people take amazing advice, twist it around in some weird way in their heads and then apply it in some god awful way to their own life/career/kids/whatever. Maybe they take the advice as literally as they can. Maybe they “tweak it” for their own needs. But then later on, they blame the person who said it initially. I’m not opening myself up for that, or at least not on this topic.
2. Most people are the rule.
They don’t want to be the rule. They want to be special and unique and different and better than everyone else. They want to be the exception to the rule. And then they (especially chicks) read books like “He’s just not that into you” and don’t seem to get that it was written for them. In fact, Greg Behrendt could have titled each book individually to the woman reading it and she still wouldn’t understand the point directed at her. It isn’t fun, glamorous or sexy to be the rule but it is the way life works.
3. We started out as the exception and then became the rule.
Or rather, if you are operating under a different set of rules, look at us. If you want advice on whether or not your current sweetheart is the one for you or how to get your man to buy you the engagement ring you really want, we are not the ones to look at. Brian and I didn’t date. We courted. And even if Brian died tomorrow and it was time to start having relationships again, I still wouldn’t date because I have no business dating. If you want advice on how to court, by all means, call us and we’ll be happy to tell you about our experience. Or in other terms, if dating is the rule, we are the exception. If dating is merely one set of rules, we opted for the courtship rules instead.
So after all of the why I’m not giving relationship tips, here is one tip for you: advice rarely lives in a vacuum, especially when it comes to interacting with other people. If you are given a piece of relationship advice that cannot be applied to any other relationship you have, throw it out. At the end of the day, there isn’t much of a difference between how a person should treat a colleague versus how they treat their spouse versus how they treat the homeless addict on the street. Be kind. Be respectful. Have healthy boundaries. The boundaries are what help you determine what is and is not respectful behavior.
Of course there are extra things you do for your spouse, but the fundamentals of being a person are always appropriate in any situation or relationship.
I am so grateful to be featured by Jun. He’s done a great job with the series so far and I can’t wait to see who he will interview next. Check out the interview here and while you’re at it, check out the guest post Jun shared in September here.
Define Family
For the last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about blended families. I grew up in a blended family. My father is not my bio father. My mother is my biological mother. I was raised by my grandparents. And then I was raised by my mom and dad but not bio dad. And then I was adopted.
It gets confusing.
But I’m not the only one in this situation.
I would tell you that the face of a typical American family is changing but the truth of the matter is the face of the typical American family has not existed for years. I hope I am not telling you anything you had not heard or experienced before.
As the composition of families change, many of us are going to have to reevaluate our definitions of families. Does a family consist solely of a husband, a wife and at least one child? How do adopted children fit into our ideas of family? Can step parents be included in our definition of family while excluding bio parents? Can grandparents realistically double as parents? Is there really such a thing as immediate family versus extended family? Can a couple constitute a family unit? Does gender or sexual orientation matter when we talk about family structure?
As we struggle to answer these questions within the context of our own lives, we will also find that many companies will have to do the same thing. But, the upside is that as Gen X and Gen Y rise through the ranks of their organizations, their home life experience will have a large impact on how these definitions are shaped. We grew up in a world where these questions had to be asked. And while our Baby Boomer friends may have created that world, they never had to face the repercussions.
And really, that benefits all of us.
A Very Romantic Rising Up Valentine’s Day
Our first Valentine’s Day as a couple was rough. In fact, it was so bad it made me wonder if Brian and I should even get married. I was drunk, there was a card with a picture of a dead rat (that I suspect Brian went out to buy while I was drunk) and then there was crying. We never had the intent of making a big deal out of the day but then it somehow was a big deal.
We were inadvertently trying to keep up with the Jones’.
Except Mr. and Mrs. Jones had crazy money and went out for a romantic dinner with flowers and chocolates and jewelry and more presents and we were just two drunk twenty somethings with a card that had a picture of a dead rat.
The Jones’ may have won that night.
But it changed the way we thought about romance and now those pesky Jones’ don’t have anything on us.
Romance is baking cookies together on a Tuesday night (try our chocolate peanut butter chip macadamia nut cookies… they are amazing). It really doesn’t matter what we make though. It is the time together that really matters and playing in the kitchen is a fun way to enjoy each other’s company with the TV off.
Romance is going to the community ice skating rink on a Friday night for the open skate. Sure the place might be filled with obnoxious teenagers and might resemble a roller-skating rink during the 80’s. Its fun to remember doing those things when we were younger and now enjoy new things together as adults. Plus we get to split a soda at the Penalty Box (the refreshment stand) and giggle as the teenagers point and laugh.
Romance is pouring over paint colors while we plot and plan what our home is going to look like. We plan ridiculous color schemes and watch as the other one squirms. We make suggests that we think the other will love even though it may be something we hate. We get to envision our future together and share our ideas.
If you are starting to notice a theme, romance has nothing to do with gifts or expensive dinners or showy displays of affection. Romance has everything to do with experiences together. Those experiences don’t have to be expensive but there’s nothing wrong with it if they are (but if the only good experiences you have are expensive experiences, you have some other issues we should probably be talking about instead).
Without the day to day experience romance, the gifts are meaningless.
Last year, Brian bought a beautiful jewelry chest for me and after our first Valentine’s Day together, I was shocked to receive it. It wasn’t opening the present that made the gift romantic – it was filling the box with treasures together. Remembering the ring he gave me on our honeymoon. Smiling about the diamond earrings my grandmother gave. Carefully tucking away his stainless steel ring I wore as an engagement ring until we found the right engagement ring. Without the memories together, it would have been just a box with stuff in it.
This year we aren’t doing anything special for Valentine’s Day. There will be no fancy dinners out. There will be no tickets for the theatre. There will not be any lavish gifts.
There will only be a man and a woman who love each other with a pure heart. There will only be me and my true love. After all, he is stuck with me.
Zeus is just a dude
Yesterday, Rebecca Thorman and Ryan Healy let out a public announcement about their relationship. In the form of a post on Rebecca’s blog which I thought was fabulous. And really messed up too (but my inner blogger with voyeuristic tendencies can’t resist). After all, if social media is all about transparency, then why aren’t we talking about everything online from the beginning?
But there are such good reasons for not talking about everything online. Holly Hoffman may have blogged openly about her alcoholism but she also waited a year to do so. Milena Thomas is a happy blogger because she has set her boundaries. After all, is it really anyone’s business? Probably not.
And I have my very own, built in appropriate meter. His name is Brian. You may have heard of him, he’s that crazy guy who thought marrying me would be a really great idea. (Side note: it totally was.)
Brian keeps a good portion of my blogging desires off of the internet. I would love write about sex but sex isn’t just about me anymore. It’s really about my husband. And he would rather it if I didn’t tell everyone about his penis. I’d also love to blog about my in-laws. Because on some level, I still identify them as Brian’s family and therefore, I can mentally critique their behavior in a way that I cannot do with my own family. But he is my family and therefore his family is my family and once again, my built in appropriate meter tells me to put the laptop down. I would also blog about some of my more neurotic tendencies but something tells me that Brian would need to be able to show his face in public again and perhaps I should keep my mouth shut.
I’d love to be a totally open book. But I can’t be.
And then I realize how lucky Rebecca and Ryan have been to have the option to keep their romance off of the blogosphere, at least for a little while. They let themselves have time to be quiet and enjoy the newness of what was happening between them.
Brian never had that option. He just had a wife who blogged.
To make up for my own presence in social media, Brian is just not there. He isn’t on twitter. He occasionally comments on Brazen Careerist as his alter-ego but he’ll never have a profile (probably because he knows I would out him fast enough to make his head spin). He finally has a Facebook page, but he only has that because I created it for him, added all of his friends and then informed him that he had to get with the times. (By the way, you should totally add him as a friend and tell him I sent you. He may squirm a little bit but I think it’s good for him and character building).
Brian has been living on the web for through my identity. I tell you about our life together, usually in six hundred words or less. And then you comment while Brian reads. We rarely hear his portion of the experience, just the way I perceive the world happening. His online identity is based largely on how I see him and not as much on how he sees himself.
And for awhile, Ryan was in the same boat. We saw this mysterious “Zeus” character through Rebecca’s eyes. While he probably could have given her a cute little name and blogged about it on Employee Evolution, he didn’t. But since we weren’t reading about him in terms of “Ryan Healy, Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist”, Zeus’s behaviors made sense to us. Will Zeus still make sense to us tomorrow? Or did the assigned alter ego die a public death?
Now that it is all out in the open, will it change the way we perceive Rebecca’s writing? Will we feel more quick to judge now that the whole world knows? Will we find descriptions of interactions more questionable?
Rebecca knows Ryan for who he is at the end of the day and we just have a sense of who he is during the work day. And really what happens between the two of them is none of our business (we’re not investors in their start-ups).
These questions make me happy that B doesn’t have a blog. I’m not sure I could answer any of those questions in my own online life.
Commitment is Liberating
Out of everything Starbucks has printed on the side of a cup of the years, my favorite is The Way I See It #76.
“The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is remove your head as the barrier to your life.” – Anne MorrissI’ve loved the quote since the first time I saw it. I read it out loud at my best friend’s wedding as I made my toast (she may have laughed because I had been carrying it in my purse for months or maybe it was because something I loved was related to coffee yet again). Before I moved in with Brian, I had the quote hanging on my dresser mirror to remind myself of its importance each morning as I started my day. I since lost the quote but it still came to me from time to time.
Commitment is deeply liberating. It is a fact that proves itself on a daily basis.
When I committed myself to my marriage, so many other aspects of my life came into place. I had the freedom to take risks in my career because of unconditional love and support. I did not need to worry about the port I would return to at night so the chaos of my career was not overwhelming but manageable.
When I committed myself to my writing after a long period of neglect, I felt a surge in my creativity and in my sense of who I am. The commitment to craft words that could stand for me released the built up tension in my mind. I didn’t need to worry about what I was going to write, what my ideas would be, or how to best articulate my ideas – I just needed to stay committed my writing. I was liberated.
That is why commitment is liberating. It frees you from a question that plagues your mind and consumes your energy. Instead you energy is spent on what you love, what you care about, what is most important in your universe.
My internal critic had a lot of time to practice being a critic. That was also called being a teenager. But the danger with that is as time goes on our inner critic grows stronger, more jaded. The critic sees why this won’t work, why this won’t be a fairytale ending, why you don’t deserve what you want. Commitment scares my internal critic. Commitment reminds my critic that she does not run the show. And there are times when it is appropriate and relevant for my critic to make and appearance but that is most definitely not all day, everyday.
After the turmoil of the critical teenage years, it seems to me that your twenties should be an exercise in learning how to listen carefully to yourself and how to take what the critic says with a grain of salt. It makes me wonder: do the people who learn how to listen to themselves in the twenties enjoy a more peaceful thirties and forties?
I hope so.
In grief, it is the small things I think about
I canceled my hair appointment that I scheduled for last Friday. I justified it by saying that my roots really aren’t that bad, my layers are falling in a very cute way around my face and if I waited till closer to Thanksgiving, I’d look nicer for the holiday season.
Money has been tight in the Morgan household lately and I didn’t want to ask Brian for $100 for a cut and color when he’s been eating PB&J at lunch for the last month. If you’ve been reading along, you know that my husband is a carpenter. With the current state of the economy, people are not adding crown modeling, shadow boxes and staircases with the same enthusiasm they did three years ago. He’s still working most days now but that doesn’t mean I can keep spending the way we used to.
Canceling that hair appointment seemed like a really smart idea. It would also give me more time to think of a low key idea for my hair – red hair may make me feel bodacious but it’s a lot more work than I thought it would be. I don’t dye my hair myself because the last time I did, it turned pink. That was okay for college but this is the working world and the pharmaceutical industry is not filled with pink haired employees.
But on Thursday, a close friend of the family (Demi) died suddenly. We didn’t hear about it until today and the viewing is tomorrow.
Suddenly, my roots look like Shakira’s in the “Underneath Your Clothes” video. My cute layers are not feeling so cute. And don’t even get me started on the state of my eyebrows.
It’s a reminder that the way I present myself might be different from the way I see myself.
When things are going well, it is really easy to look in the mirror and think about how great you are/look/feel.
But when life hits you unexpectedly, it is easy to let those doubts (that are usually kept at bay) seep in.
Reality is somewhere in the middle. My hair doesn’t look as great as I thought it did last week when I canceled my appointment but it doesn’t look as bad as I think it looks today. And really, my hair has nothing to do with the world that surrounds me.
There is this fine line between taking pride in your appearance and letting your appearance take over you. You need to go to work each day, dressed with the same passion that you dressed with before your first job interview. You need to also be able to still get your hands dirty in life – whether that be making mud pies with a small child or trying something new for the first time.
Demi was a person who saw my family at their best and at their worst. She set my parents up on their first date even though neither of my parents were interested in dating. She stood by my mom when my mother was raising a small child by herself. And it was at her house where I got stuck in a tree when was five.
It is easier to fixate on my own appearance than it is to really process what happened. Because I can change myself but I can’t change what happened.
Brian, Dorie and Stress
I used to forget that men and women deal with stress differently. But I also think that most of us forget we deal with stress differently until we watch someone be beaten over the head violently with their own stress. Then we remember. And then we go back to the blissful state of ignorance when the poor victim of stress walks away. Life is great.
This stops working once two people decide to walk down the aisle. Then, all bets are off. I’m not trying to scare the single friends out there but it’s true.
Then you get the pleasure of living with your mate’s stress and their way of addressing their stress.
Like many women, when stress hits I give myself a pep talk and pull myself up by my bootstraps. Your house collapsed and you have nowhere to go? Great, I’ll organize a community meal schedule and prep the house for you to stay with me for a month. I’m five minutes away. Oh you need a baby sitter with ten minutes notice? Great, by the time you pick up your family, the kids will be fed, homework will be done and my house will still be immaculate. Money is tight, we got a surprise bill and you don’t know how we’re going to manage it? That’s fine, I moonlight as a miracle worker, and I’ll make it happen.
It sounds ridiculous but this is how I process everything in my head.
Brian’s approach to dealing with stress is much different. He shuts down. He ceases to function. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. He’s okay with stress to a point, and then he is not. He just stops.
I go into “Super Bitch” mode when I get to that level of stress. At that point, I’m going to get my shit done and you will not get in my way. Brian is very kind when he calls me “Cranky Face”. A little too kind perhaps. Kind to the point of lying to me.
We both get a little annoyed with the other for our respective coping mechanisms. The coping mechanisms that worked best when we were single are not necessarily the best coping mechanisms in terms of a marriage.
I talked to my friend Carmella about this. Carmella is a marriage counselor and a newlywed herself. She is also my frequent voice of reason. When I cross over into crazy land with my expectations of other people, she is the one who can say I’m being unreasonable and I know that statement from her does not come from a defensive place. It comes from the voice of someone who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Psychology.
Carmella, of course, tells me that this is normal and most couples find themselves with similar responses. Which I find hard to believe at first. Because how did we as humans manage to populate the planet if the men-folk were shutting down every time stress happened? “Uh-oh Honey, some prehistoric beast is attacking our cave! No wait; don’t hide in the corner, save our offspring!”
But while I am still contemplating the evolutionary implications of our stress reactions, Carmella tells me that the dinners I make are excessive. And she’s right. Because dinner is a massive undertaking in our house. It takes me at least an hour to make dinner every night. Maybe I’m going overboard but I want my husband to have one really good meal every day.
The night after I talk to Carmella, Brian looks at me and says “you get home every night and it’s late. And then you make dinner and it’s late. And then you clean up dinner and it’s late. And then we watch TV but you fall asleep.”
I deal with stress by trying to make a perfect meal and Brian deals with stress by wanting to watch television with a wife who is awake.
We continue the dance of figuring out what it means to be in a marriage with each other.
Craving Community
Today, I hate community. A lot.
Community is tough to deal with day in and day out. Community means you willing let the people around you be up in your business. I don’t always want the people around me to be in community with me.Sometimes, I want to be an island.
Sometimes I want to be left alone with my own self destructive devices.
The important thing to remember about community is that we always crave community. Even self declared loners crave community; they just are more vocal about only craving community on their own terms. And we all try to have community based largely on our own terms. We seek to build communities that are filled with people who are like us.
Even if you say that diversity in a community is important to you, you are still entering a community that is filled with people who are like you – people who crave diversity.
So what ends up happening is that bloggers join communities that are filled with other bloggers. Christians join communities that are filled with other Christians. Greek life alumnae join alumnae associations for their own organizations.
It is simple really.
Community is rough because ideally your community is filled with people who are going to call you out on your shit. And more importantly, people who are going to call you out on the important shit. Because it is so easy to call someone out on their shit when it is trivial. It is far easier to call me out on the fact that I never return phone calls than it is to call me out on my ability to write people off who wrong me.
I might say I want a community that calls me out but what I really want is a community where I can call other people out on their shit. Because calling other people out feels safer than it does to be on the receiving end.
But what I need to grow as a person is a community that is going to tell me, quite loudly, when I am messing up hardcore. I need a community who is going to be there for me, whether I want them there or not. I need community that both humbles me and lifts me up.This is why we crave community. We crave community to save us from ourselves.
Wanting community just isn’t enough. We have to crave it in order to venture out to seek community. We are, in fact, social creatures.
But today, I hate community. Because community also means being involved and sometimes being involved is just inconvenient. Sometimes being involved means going to things that you aren’t interested in, just because it is important to someone else. Sometimes being involved means making a meal for someone when you really want to be at home on the couch, watching bad television. Sometimes being involved means listening to someone rant like a lunatic when you really want to tell them they sound like a jackass.
Community does not equal easy.
Being a part of a community, not just lurking on the fringes of community, means that there is work involved. It is the same kind of work that goes into building a marriage. It simply doesn’t work if the parties involved don’t put in the effort.
So today, I hate community. Because I don’t really want to put the work into community. And that’s okay. My cravings for community trump my inner urges of laziness. So I keep putting the work in, even when it is not easy and even when it is not convenient.
I do it because tomorrow I’ll want to be apart again.
Life with Don
I keep finding posts and articles about Gen Y and moving back home stumble flash across my browser and I think it’s time I say something about it. Mostly in the form of a confession.
Brian and I have spent the first 18 months of our marriage living with my father-in-law, Don. I usually try to avoid saying it flat out but I know I’ve alluded to it in the past in both comments and posts.My name is Dorie, I’m 26 and I’m a boomerang kid.
I moved back home follow graduation. Which was horrible. I am convinced that the only way possible for my mother and me to function as rational people is for us to live in different zip codes. Life post graduation in my childhood bedroom was mind numbingly horrible. We fought constantly, I tried to be drunk for as much of it as humanly possible and I was stuck. It’s a miracle anyone survived.
Then I met Brian, we decided to get married and I moved into his father’s house. Most women fear moving from their father’s house and directly into their husband’s house. Brian and I were flat broke and that wasn’t an option.
We spent the first six months on a futon on the floor of his high school bedroom. For the last year, we’ve actually had a bed to sleep on. It was by no means comfortable living but we did it.
Part of the weirdness comes from the fact that I run my late mother-in-law’s household. It’s her organizational systems that I maintain. I cook in her kitchen. I use her washer and dryer for the household’s laundry. It kind of feels like limbo. Because it is limbo.
So why did we do it?
1. Housing in Lower Bucks County is really expensive. A one bedroom apartment in the bad part of town will set you back at least eight hundred dollars a month. For about four hundred dollars more, we could get a mortgage. Since we were committed to the Philadelphia area, why rent when we could buy?
2. We could not afford to buy a house right away. We did not have enough money for a down payment. It took about a year for us to save enough money for a down payment. Had we been renting, we calculate it would have taken 3 to 4 years to save enough money.
3. We wanted a place we could stay rent free while we renovated a home. Brian is a carpenter. It made sense to get a handyman’s special.
4. Nine months before our wedding, Brian’s mom passed away. Moving was just too painful.
Now that our time in Brian’s childhood home is wrapping up, I catch myself reflecting on the time. There are a lot of pros and a lot of cons too.
Pro: It taught us how to fight. Having someone else in the house to hear it when we were disagreeing helped us to stay kind to each other. Because it’s one thing to have in-laws. It’s a whole different thing to have your spouse’s family hear your disagreements. The upside is that we’re pretty good with disagreeing without yelling.
Con: Sometimes you just want a good fight with no one listening. Sometimes I want to rant and rave like an absolute lunatic and not have my father-in-law listening to my insanity.
Pro: It’s broken down the typical “in-law” issues. Brian’s dad isn’t just “my father-in-law” but Don. He’s a real three dimensional person, not just someone to deal with at family functions. These living arrangements have connected me to Brian’s family in ways our marriage couldn’t do by itself.
Con: It makes it harder to be “Dorie” in terms other than “Brian and Dorie”. Limited living space a couple means that there is also limited space for me to still be home but alone. For the first 6 months, we were literally on top of each other because our “bed” was so small. We now live in two rooms but it can still be a challenge.
Pro: We didn’t have to buy what was available. We were able to be fussy about the house we purchased because we didn’t have to worry about when a lease would be up. We also were able to start our renovations without having live in construction or pay rent. It took a lot of pressure off.
Con: Sometimes it took a little too much pressure off us. To the point of becoming lazy. It becomes easier to say “no, I won’t work on the house today because it is raining” instead of saying “I have to move in a month, I have to get to work”.
Pro: We were able to save a ton of money. We were able to have money for a down payment for our home and still have money left over for renovations. I won’t say we are rolling in cash but we are able to get by today without too much panic.
Con: Sometimes it was really tempting to spend that money. Sometimes we were able to practice self control, other times we just couldn’t do it. While I may have loved coming home some days to random jewelry surprises (“Hello Sapphires, I love the way you look on me too”), it did not help our plan to put money aside.
Overall, living with Brian’s dad has been very good for us but I’m not sure I would recommend it to anyone else. If you do find yourself in a situation where you are married and living at home, set some ground rules first and get those rules in writing. Some questions you should ask:
1. Are we expected to pay rent? How much? What day should I give you money?
2. What household responsibilities are we responsible for?
3. What household errands are we responsible for?
4. What are your responsibilities are you response for as the home owner?
5. How will we handle the holiday seasons?
6. What are restrictions for having guests over?Treat everything like it is a business arrangement. It may sound impersonal but it is a key part of maintaining a functioning family in an awkward situation.
And don’t forget to make an exit plan too!
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