the star tribune can help you with your marriage

aaron and i went out to breakfast, and grabbed a newspaper to read while we waited for our eggs and bacon.

poor aaron was trying to read the sports page, but i kept interrupting. cause all i could do was bitch about this shitty article the star tribune printed about marriage.

okay, seriously, marriage is tough. aaron and i have been through plenty of shit and we still happen to have some crap still on us. it has been a wonderful relationship, but it hasn't always been easy.

what pisses me off, is the stupid star tribune has decided that it's going to hand out clever, cheeky marriage advice to those of us in the early part of our marriage, including # 3 from the list- have more sex. i would expect this from some stupid '10 things to drive him mad in bed' magazine, but from the star tribune? seriously.

so i'm reading, and i figure it's really no big deal. the strib thinks they can give sweeping generalizations to pass as marriage advice to all the people out there, and somehow, the 2 paragraphs they have for each suggestion will be enough to actually accomplish something for someone.

and as i read, i encounter stupid little suggestions like this one: Know when to engage in an argument and when to let it go -- without resentment.

okay, now that they've told me to do that, it should be fairly simple, right? problem solved, eh? shit, we spend half our fucking lives figuring that one out, don't we? come on. does this kind of crap really help anyone?

okay, still reading and at this point i'm just minorly annoyed at the nerve that the star tribune displays in thinking that this is really helping anyone.

then i get to the place where they talk about making up quickly during an argument so that you can move on, which doesn't royally piss me off until i read this part of it:

'Move on to making up. That's the best part anyway, right? Skip the handshake and go straight for sex.'

seriously, that's the end of that section. go straight for sex.

i'm stumped, i don't know what to write. that's just fucking outrageous.

most of the world can't even stomach an argument, because it's uncomfortable. when we probably need to sit with it and really work through our problems, we're told to move on to make-up sex.

article takeaway- if you're in debt, and they gain a few pounds, and the sex slows down, and you fight about your families- you have a shitty marriage.

seriously, strib, you really fucked this one up. you could encourage people to work hard in their relationship, stick with it even when it's tough. stand up for themselves and be real. love themselves and their partner just the way they are. commit to each other on a deeper level and embrace the bad along with the good. work as a team against the crap that the world throws at you. be each other's best friend.

but no, you focus on the superficial crap and reinforce all the shallow expectations of a relationship that americans have come to expect for a few years before divorcing out of sheer laziness.

keep the good stuff coming.