Your Ex Just Might Be Right

“What do I do that most annoys you?”

I wanted to bolt before my mom could answer my question.

While I waited for her answer, I forgot why I even had asked. I had listened to an interview with organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, who has studied self-awareness. One way to increase your self-awareness is to host what Eurich calls a “dinner of truth.” Invite a trusted loved one out for food and ask him or her what I asked my mom.

And, oh, it is terrifying. 

My eyes were probably closed, my heart probably pounding while I waited to find out what I do that bothers people.

Here’s what my mom said.

Some of the Meanest Chastity Emails I’ve Ever Gotten

After I wrote each of my essays about saving sex for marriage in the Tampa Bay Times, I got a lot of emails that I still haven’t deleted. I wanted to use the worst of them to film a Mean Tweets-style promo video for my book, but I never did. Can you imagine?

There’s the one from Miki: “Are the readers of Florida’s largest newspaper and Tampa Bay’s leading news website now better informed, resting comfortably in the knowledge that you are a virgin? Or is this the first onslaught of writers [sic] block and you had nothing else to say? Try again please but in the future choose the subject of your articles with a bit more intelligence.”

Or the one from John: “No offense, but talk about the voice of inexperience. How can you contribute on the very subject you have never participated in?”

But the finale email for the video I never filmed absolutely would have been Eric’s:

Continue reading “Some of the Meanest Chastity Emails I’ve Ever Gotten”

“I don’t want to date you ’cause I didn’t feel a spark.”

Our attention spans are dying.

We’ve trained ourselves to skim. We can’t even bring ourselves to read posts if they’re long (and by long, I mean more than a couple paragraphs). Most of you will navigate away at the end of this sentence.

But if most of us only can skim the surface of content, why would we be good at doing more than skimming the surface of the people who create it? We tell ourselves “when I meet the right person, I’ll want to go deeper. I’ll be interested. I’ll want to commit.” Really?

The onus for your ability to go deeper is on how “right” someone else is? So you’re telling me you can see whether a person is right for you before you’ve gotten to know him or her deeply—that what you can see in somebody in one or two encounters is all you need to know (excluding encounters with people whose dealbreakers are evident).

Or maybe you’re saying that literally just meeting the right person suddenly makes us feel able to commit (and that there couldn’t possibly be any other reasons you’ve been unable to commit so far).

I get that you need to be attracted, that you have to like a person. Truth! But is it actually on the other person to motivate or excite you into getting to know him or her? Are we all just closed off to each other until merely being in the presence of the “right” person unlocks an ability we couldn’t access before?

Or are these just things we tell ourselves so we don’t have to admit that there may be other reasons we don’t like people or want to commit even when we like them? Like how so much of what shapes us shapes us to be shallow. How pornography, social media, video games, and texting are supernormal stimuli that rewire the brain until normal stimuli don’t stimulate, satisfy, or interest us anymore—like people and our physical, social, and emotional interactions with them.

Are you sure you can’t date him or her because you “didn’t feel a spark” or you “don’t feel what I think I’m supposed to feel” or because “in order to want to date you, I’d need to be unable to get you out of my head” (all real things real people I know have said)? Or did you really mean “I don’t want to date you because you aren’t a supernormal stimulus?”

Are You Sure You Aren’t Looking for a Fairytale?

“Your goal to find a kind, loving Catholic husband who will treat you like a princess fits my goal of marrying a princess like you.”

That, my friend, is a bold way to end a first message you send to a woman whose CatholicMatch profile doesn’t say “princess” anywhere. And—confession—I didn’t respond to him, for lots of reasons.

I’m in Florida and he isn’t. He wants to take me dancing, he said. You couldn’t pay me to go dancing on a date. But even if I were open to a long-distance relationship right now, his princess line may have done him in.

Here’s why.

New to my work? Check out my book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin.

3 Lies to Stop Believing About Conflict

Many of us act as if conflict in our relationships is intolerable. But we don’t avoid conflict because it’s truly unbearable. We make it unbearable by avoiding it. Nobody can get better at getting through it without actually going through it. 

And you have to go through it. Without conflict, new levels of emotional intimacy really aren’t an option for you.

But we’ll never be open to conflict if we don’t stop believing the 3 lies about it that I listed in my latest post for CatholicMatch.

Click here to read it.