Long Relationships

There is a reason they say ‘Hell hath no fury’…

In case, for whatever reason, you can’t watch the video, this is a news clip talking about a video on YouTube. A woman has YouTubed a phone call from her to her husband’s secretary talking about his sex aids and what do to with them (throw them away? Keep them?).

Obviously, this woman’s soon to be ex-husband isn’t going to be happy when he finds out that everyone who has watched this video on YouTube knows he uses viagara. (If she’s telling the truth.)

I can’t speak from experience, but I can’t see myself ever doing something like that even to someone I really, truly hate. Some things just don’t need to be out there in public, in my opinion. Especially in this day an age when people run to their lawyers whenever possible.

This woman is taking her divorce to a whole new nasty level by putting these videos up on YouTube.

My question to you is what do you think of this? Are you thinking ‘nicely done!’ or are you wondering what kind of woman wants to risk possible court charges (if she’s lying about her husband’s sex aids) and air dirty laundry on the internet?

What about other sites where you can register your ex as a jerk, a player, a cheater, or whatever else? Is that just the same as blogging or do those sites and other behavior like this video take things too far and makes things that should be private into public territory?

What do you think?

My husband isn’t your ‘typical man’ in a lot of ways, but even he obeys parts of the man code…

Allison at MarriageHacks found this very funny WikiManCode.com and I thought I would pass on some of the funnies. Thanks Allison!

Man Lingo (Mango)
Forbidden

Men are not allowed to say the following expressions:

• You hurt my feelings. (NOTE: This is only acceptable when told to a woman in an attempt to get sex by being the ’sensitive man’.)
• I’m Lost (Can you give me directions?)
• Did you see Brokeback Mountain? (NOTE: This is acceptable when mocking somebody)
• I’ve had enough beer.
• No thanks, I’m vegan.
• Where do you see this relationship going?
• I’m too tired to gamble.
• This (food) is too spicy.
• Do I look fat in this?
• I hate lesbian porn/boobs.

Feelings

Men have feelings too. This being said, Men do not “talk about their feelings.” Men have feelings same as Men have nipples. Both are useless. If you whine like Fallout Boy, be prepared to give milk on command.

Cleaning

Men are required to clean organic particulate matter from areas which may come into contact with human skin in the near future, within their own domiciles. A magazine on the coffee table is not life threatening, even if it remains after the apocalypse. Men don’t dust, nor will they clean the kitchen, unless it is a necessary requirement for sex.

Jobs

All men must aspire to have a manly job, and all men with manly jobs are permitted to look down on those without manly jobs regardless of pay or status. The following jobs are considered manly:

• Assassin
• Astronaut
• Barman
• Builder
• Firefighter
• Gynecologist (BOO YA) (NOTE: This is exempt when you are examining century old flesh quagmires)
• Hunter
• MARINE
• Mechanic
• Mercenary
• Miner
• Women’s Fitness Instructor (say what you will, this guy’s getting nailed)
• Pilot
• Policeman
• Professional Sportsman
• Roadie
• Sailor
• Secret Agent
• SWAT Officer/DEA/etc.
• Any job in the military other than secretaries and nurses (a large bonus to your Mank if your in spec ops)
• Video games tester
• Mammogram doctor (hell yes) (NOTE: This is exempt when you are examining century old cancerous windsocks)
• Roughneck (or any other job in the oilfield)

Well, it’s t-minus six days until it’s my one year anniversary. I have some fun things planned for a few of my sites, so be sure to stop by and say hello because I have some things to give away. (I’ll have more details – and links to the different contests – on Monday the fifth.) I have some stationary to give away, an awesome book, and even some chocolate…

As you might be able to tell, I’m definitely keen on spreading the love –especially if I’m in a good mood, so if there is anything that you think would be a good prize to give away, please let me know. If it’s affordable and not an amazon.com gift certificate (I really don’t like amazon right now), then I will definitely consider it.

Just keep in mind that I’m not at all made of money (I wish) and I have to ship things all the way from Australia.

In other news, Our Story is still going. Every Monday I have been posting responses to the Our Story Meme (along with links to the responder’s site(s)), and I have been enjoying the answers a lot so far. Remember, if you haven’t answered the meme questions yet, feel free to send the answers to sylvr451@tpg.com.au (If you aren’t married, just skip the ‘who proposed’ question.)

If you want to send an actual story (how we met, the wedding day, etc), then feel free to send that to the same address.

I’m very excited about next Monday and I hope you enjoy the contests I’ll have going.

Hi,

I’m Lisa Daily.

I am a TV relationships expert (on Daytime, a syndicated morning show) and I just wrote a novel called Fifteen Minutes of Shame.

It’s a romantic comedy about a TV relationships expert who finds out her husband is cheating. I’m in the midst of a 22-city book tour right now, tromping all over the country, and readers are showing up at book signings bearing wads of tissues and industrial-sized tubes of frozen cookie dough.

The first question most people ask is,

“Is this a true story?”

The answer is that some parts are true. But no, my husband did not dump me on national TV. At least not yet.

Here’s an excerpt from my new book, Fifteen Minutes of Shame

Hope you enjoy!

Best,

Lisa

Chapter 1
(more…)

Yep, I’m someone who loves flowers (even though I’m allergic to some of them) and appreciate them whenever I receive them. I have received them in the past mainly as an ‘I love you’, but there are plenty of other things you can say with flowers…

1. “I love you.”
2. “I’m sorry.”
3. “Just because.” (One of the best reasons, in my opinion.)
4. “Get well soon.”
5. “Will you marry me?” (Hopefully a ring is included, too.)
6. “Congratulations on [accomplishment.”
7. “Happy birthday/Valentine’s day/other holiday.”
8. “Congratulations on [getting married/having a baby].”
9. “Because I screwed up…”
10. “Thank you.”
11. “To make your day brighter.”
12. Secret admirer/anonymous flowers to say “someone cares”.
13. (Courtesy of my husband) Send dead flowers to say the relationship is over.

Check out my other Thursday Thirteens at Fiction Scribe, Write Anyway, and The Book Stacks

Hello everyone!

If I am correct, today is the 23rd and I promised to announce something today…

Last week I invited you all to take part in a contest as a show of my appreciation to the people who stop by and read my site (and also my appreciation for my friends). I offered the prize of a print from my friend Jenera’s photography site – Jenera Healy photography.

Well, with the help of my husband picking the winner at random, I am happy to announce that…

Beth of Astrology Explored has won!

The lovely Beth will receive the print of her choice from Jenera’s collection (which I highly recommend you check out) in 11X14 size (or smaller) with her choice of lustre, gloss, or matte.

Thank you to everyone who entered!

Again, I would just like to say how much I appreciate everyone who comes by and especially people who take the time to comment. I love writing – it’s my passion – and to earn anything, even just a little bit, from writing is an amazingly wonderful thing to me.

However, as much as I love writing, this work is made so much better by knowing people read what I’m writing and feel enough from that to actually take the time to comment.

Thank you all very much. Hopefully I can provide more contests in the future because I love giving stuff away!

In the mean time, if you’re looking for other contests, stop by Bloggy Giveaways!

There are also a few contests in this post on Fiction Scribe. Enjoy!

I always love my husband (I don’t always ‘like’ him, hehe) but there are times when I make his life not so easy. It is in those times that my husband tends to shine through (with a few good natured jabs at my expense to make sure I don’t feel too sorry for myself for long).

Due to my past, I am not bashful about saying I have a lot of issues to deal with. This doesn’t always make for smooth relationship sailing. Yet, even with all these ‘rocks’ along our relationship path, my husband takes it all in stride.

As much as this is sounding like a newlywed still in the ‘rosy glow’ love stage, I promise that’s not what I’m getting at.

As relationships progress, the intricate dance of reach and withdraw becomes more important. In the first months of our relationship, I put my husband in the place of reach a lot. While he understands why I was like that, he taught me that I need to take up the position of reach more often so we have balance in our relationship.

As with many things, there is a scale effect; if you are always reaching, then you will become worn out and feel like you’re giving 100% in the relationship while your partner is not. If you are constantly withdrawing, you’re making your partner feel that way.

Either way, you need to examine what’s going on inside you and what you and your partner can do to get things back into balance.

Do you feel your relationship as balanced? Do you identify yourself more as a reach or withdraw? What do you do to try to maintain the balance?

Hello and welcome (back) to Long Relationships.

As you know, every Monday I have been posting responses to the Our Story Meme (along with links to the responder’s site(s)), and I have been enjoying the answers a lot so far. Remember, if you haven’t answered the meme questions yet, feel free to send the answers to sylvr451@tpg.com.au (If you aren’t married, just skip the ‘who proposed’ question.)

The lovely Shelly of Natural and Sustainable, Earthly Eating, Wax and Bubbles, and Shoe Boxers is letting us take a sneak peak into her relationship this week.

Enjoy…

How long have you been together? 8 years total, 5 years married.

How long did you date? 3 years

How old is he? 34

Who eats more? He does.

Who said ‘I love you’ first? He did.

Who is taller? He is but a few inches. I’m 5′9″ he is 6′.

Who is smarter? Me, of course.

Who does the laundry? I do most of the time, when I’m lucky I get help.

Who does the dishes? I do ALL THE TIME.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? He does. It’s closest to the door and I have a fear of sleeping close to the door.

Who pays the bills? He does. Is Macy’s a bill? Then I pay that one. LOL.

Who mows the lawn? Both of us.

Who cooks dinner? I do most of the time, but he does occasionally.

Who is more stubborn? He is, dumbass men!

Who kissed who first? He did.

Who asked who out? We met on the internet so there was no asking out.

Who proposed? He did.

Who is more sensitive? I am. But, he does cry at some movies. Which, I think is awesome.

Who has more friends? We had the same amount in the beginning, now we have the joint friends now. So it’s equal, I think.

Interested in reviewing books on your blog? Would you like to interview authors?

We are seeking qualified bloggers who would like to become tour hosts for our clients. If you are a blogger who would be interested in either interviewing our authors, letting them guest post on your blog or would be willing to review their book and posting their review on your blog (or any other type of promotion) on a certain day that both you and we set up together, we would be interested in talking to you.

We are only looking for blogs who receive substantial traffic and are updated frequently.

All our tour hosts receive a link on our sponsors’ page (if you prefer hosting your banner, that’s fine, too), links on our in house blogs, and will receive copies of books where applicable for their time and effort in hosting our authors. You will also receive substantial traffic on your blog while the author is touring as we highly publicize each and every one of our tour stops.

We also spotlight our tour hosts at random in our monthly newsletter. All tour host spotlights will include blog information and an interview with the blog host as part of their feature in the newsletter. More added exposure! And…not only that…we will include your link on this page so that others can see what an outstanding blog you have.

If you are interested, you can visit Virtual Book Tours for Authors, look in the right hand sidebar for the list of authors touring, and let us know which author you would prefer to host.

Once you have decided which author you would like to host, copy and paste the below information into an email and send it to us at thewriterslife(at)yahoo.com. Please put “I Want to Be a Tour Host” in the subject line of your email.

“Women can smell desperation, and that’s not a good stink to have.”

Creature Comforts is a claymation series I have been watching since I came to Australia, and I absolutely love it. What they do is travel around and interview people on various subjects. Then they put claymation to the interviews. I was very happy to find that they had one on a subject I could feature here.

As per usual with Creature Comforts, the subject doesn’t stay with the original and drifts around a bit. But they started out with the subject of animal magnetism and that got me thinking…

What did you notice first about your spouse? Was it ‘animal magnetism’? Or perhaps something that took a bit longer to cultivate?

When I met my husband, the first thing I noticed was his sense of humor. We met online, so I didn’t have the usual ‘his eyes’ or ‘his voice’ to notice. Right from the beginning, though, he has always had an awesome sense of humor.

When I met my husband physically for the first time, I noticed how tall and handsome (and what great hair!) he is. I was in shock and thought, “He is for me? I get him?” (I had this thing where I believed I would never end up with someone who is attractive.)

What else I would like to know is if those are the things you still love about your significant other today. Or did you notice the eyes first but have come to love the smile even more?

Tell me about your relationships.

As my marriage grows longer and my husband and I truly settle into life with each other (sometimes it takes longer than you think it will), the subject of children comes up every now and then. While we both know we want to have children, there are still a lot of things to think about before we actually have them…

1. Finances! Nappies may be what everyone tells you are the biggest expense, but there are clothes, toys, bedding, beds/cribs, car seats, prams/strollers, food/formula (if you’re not breastfeeding… You get the picture. Go out there and actually start pricing things. Ask people how many diapers they go through in a week.
2. Time off work. Who is taking it and for how long?
3. Day care. If both of you are planning on going to work, then you need to set up day care for your baby.
4. Emotional impact. Are you prepared to have someone in your life you need to put first no matter what?
5. Sibling rivalry (if you have had children before/have step children).
6. Physical impact. Little sleep for new parents isn’t just a nasty myth going around.
7. Responsibilities. Who is going to take care of what? Time will be a valuable commodity as more time is taken to care for the child.
8. Relationship impact. Is your relationship strong and secure enough to go through a time of less attention paid to each other?
9. Space. Is the baby going to sleep in your room? For how long? What if you have more children? Do you have enough space for everything?
10. Medical things. Don’t let it be a huge surprise when it comes your partner disagrees about medical care or immunizations.
11. Names. You never know who your partner might want to name the child after…
12. Maturity. It may seem strange (or insulting) to say, but are you mature enough to raise another human being?
13. Baby registry and shower. This might be as important as other things, but it will come up.

Check out my other Thursday Thirteens at Fiction Scribe, Write Anyway, and The Book Stacks

Hi everyone!

Today is Reader Appreciation Day, started by the OTHER mother, and I would like to appreciate you and an online friend of mine all at the same time.

Nice, huh?

Of course, you want to know what you are going to win, right?

You have a chance to win two prizes with this, so I’ll go by each prize.

First Prize:

You can win your choice of one photo from Jenera Healy Photography in 11X14 size (or smaller) with your choice of lustre, gloss, or matte.

Jenera has some truly lovely photos on her site, and I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do.

What You Have to Do:

This involves two steps. First, leave a comment on this post. Say hello, tell me why you would like to win, tell me which photos you like the most…anything as long as it’s a valid comment.

Then what you need to do is go over to this post on Jenera’s blog. Same goes for her - as long as it’s a valid comment. Remember to tell her that JM from Long Relationships sent you over!

Once you’re on her page and have left a comment, it’s easy to get a chance at the…

Second Prize:

You can win either a mouse pad or a coffee mug with their choice of one of Jenera’s photos.

What You Have to Do:

All you have to do is sign Mr. Linky at the top of her page on her blog.

The contest will run from today - April 16th - until April 22nd. I will announce the winner on April 23rd.

Be sure to leave me a comment with a valid email address so I can talk to you about what you would like. You have until Saturday the 26th to respond to my email. If you don’t, I will draw another winner.

Good luck, and thank you to all my readers!

*You must be in Canada or the US to enter. Sorry, but shipping from the site will only go to those locations.*

My husband and I are both creative writers and both write a combination of poetry and novels. (I lean towards novels and he leans towards poetry.) We both joined an online forum for creative writing and noticed each other but didn’t talk much.

One night, we were both online and knew someone else from the site who introduced us to each other (via instant messenger). I guess you could say it was love at first chat session because we talked one way or another for almost every day for a year after we met.

I kept the relationship rather quiet because I didn’t have a supportive family when it came to internet relationships. My parents didn’t (and probably still don’t) know how to turn on a computer, much less use the internet. Because of that, they bought into every internet horror story they ever heard on the news despite the fact I a.) wasn’t twelve years old and b.) wasn’t meeting random people from MySpace in bars.

Eventually my brother calmed her down and explained to her that the internet was how a lot of people met and, taking the right precautions, it could be perfectly safe. And he’s right. More and more people are meeting online and starting relationships from there.

So I thought I would put up a poll (because I love polls even more than lists) to find out what the readers here have done and feel when it comes to online relationships. Feel free to add on your story and/or thoughts in the comments section!

PS. Tomorrow is Reader Appreciation Day! Be sure to stop by again and see what you have to do to get your chance to win not one, but TWO awesome prizes!

Hello and welcome (back) to Long Relationships.

As you know, every Monday I have been posting responses to the Our Story Meme (along with links to the responder’s site(s)), and I have been enjoying the answers a lot so far. Remember, if you haven’t answered the meme questions yet, feel free to send the answers to sylvr451@tpg.com.au (If you aren’t married, just skip the ‘who proposed’ question.)

The lovely Jean of Marital Talk and Parenting and Religion is letting us take a sneak peak into her relationship this week.

Enjoy…

How long have you been together? We met 30 years ago this month, will be married 28 years in July.

How long did you date? 2 years, 4 months

How old is he? 49

Who eats more? He does, a lot more.

Who said ‘I love you’ first? He did (and scared me…. I was only 14!)

Who is taller? He is about 6″ taller.

Who is smarter? We both are in different areas.

Who does the laundry? We both do.

Who does the dishes? Mostly me, occasionally him.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Who’s right?

Who pays the bills? We do.

Who mows the lawn? Our neighbor…lol

Who cooks dinner? I do, but he does the occasional surprise dinner, and very well too.

Who is more stubborn? Me.

Who kissed who first? He kissed me first.

Who asked who out? He asked me.

Who proposed? He did.

Who is more sensitive? He is.

Who has more friends? He does.

May I also add that he is usually the first to apologize, and that he is much nicer than I am? I am not ashamed of it, it has become a joke. I am not as nice, therefore I am not as much of a pushover…just ask the kids.

Interested in reviewing books on your blog? Would you like to interview authors?

We are seeking qualified bloggers who would like to become tour hosts for our clients. If you are a blogger who would be interested in either interviewing our authors, letting them guest post on your blog or would be willing to review their book and posting their review on your blog (or any other type of promotion) on a certain day that both you and we set up together, we would be interested in talking to you.

We are only looking for blogs who receive substantial traffic and are updated frequently.

All our tour hosts receive a link on our sponsors’ page (if you prefer hosting your banner, that’s fine, too), links on our in house blogs, and will receive copies of books where applicable for their time and effort in hosting our authors. You will also receive substantial traffic on your blog while the author is touring as we highly publicize each and every one of our tour stops.

We also spotlight our tour hosts at random in our monthly newsletter. All tour host spotlights will include blog information and an interview with the blog host as part of their feature in the newsletter. More added exposure! And…not only that…we will include your link on this page so that others can see what an outstanding blog you have.

If you are interested, you can visit Virtual Book Tours for Authors, look in the right hand sidebar for the list of authors touring, and let us know which author you would prefer to host.

Once you have decided which author you would like to host, copy and paste the below information into an email and send it to us at thewriterslife(at)yahoo.com. Please put “I Want to Be a Tour Host” in the subject line of your email.