I have been with my boyfriend for over 2 years now and we love each other very much. I am 25 and he is 28 and we were best friends for a couple of years before we even started dating. However, lately some issues have been cropping up that I don’t really know what to do about.
I have always made more money than he does, and both of us are okay with that and it’s never really been an issue. I have a job that I love (but I work long hours and it doesn’t pay very well), and he is a musician who works part time. He pays when he has money, I pay the rest of the time, and we’ve never had a fight about it or anything.
The problem now is that boyfriend lost his job several months ago and while he told me at the time that he was going to do everything he could to get a new job, that hasn’t been the case. His mother convinced him that he should stay jobless and just focus on his music. She has been paying for his apartment, car, etc. to help facilitate his career. This is all great, and he is doing very well with his music career and things are really happening for him. However, this has not translated into him making money…at all. He brings in maybe $100-$200 a month. So, he is constantly asking me for gas money, food money, etc. which I really wouldn’t mind paying for except that I really don’t make enough money to feed two people, keep 2 cars full of gas, and pay my rent and bills. On top of this he is always wanting to go out to the movies, or go get a “treat” after dinner, or go out with friends to places that are a little out of my budget when I’m not paying for two people. I find it really frustrating and I know he is mooching, but at the same time, I love him and if I had the money I know I wouldn’t mind, but I really can’t afford to be spending this much money on him.
The other problem is that now that he is not working, he spends most of his time at home alone (since he doesn’t have the money to go out and do anything) and it has resulted in him being really clingy and constantly complaining about how we don’t have sex often enough and how I don’t hang out with him or sleep over enough. I see him almost every day and we have sex about 3 times a week and I sleep over 1 to 3 nights a week. I feel like this is pretty reasonable considering how much I work and that I have a really stressful job as well as several hobbies I take part in and I am working on starting my own business.
Essentially, how do I talk to him about this in a kind and gentle way so that he doesn’t feel attacked? He is sweet and treats me nicely, we have a ton in common, and I love him very much and I really don’t want to break up with him, but I need things to change.
–Bringing home the bacon
Deart BHTB,
What his mommy thinks is best for your boyfriend might not be what is best for your relationship. Your boyfriend IS mooching, in a sad and selfish way. You, however, don’t seem to be doing your job which is to set limits.
To begin with, you sound like you have been lying to yourself for a while. Your question begins, “I have always made more money than he does, and both of us are okay with that.” Both of you, obviously, are not ok with that. You also say, “he is a musician who works part time,” in the present tense, only to later reveal that he has been jobless for months. How long have you been feeling uncomfortable?
Some men have a tendency when given a little love, a favor, to thirst for more. It is like a disease, the “I remember what it felt like to be my mother’s prized possession” disease, one that can wreak havoc on a girlfriend’s patience.
Yes, we would all like it if people knew never to walk beyond boundaries, to never take advantage of others. But in truth, communication of need is a two person job. How is he to know that he has gone too far if for what sounds like months now, you have been biting back your words?
On the one hand, you need to stand up for yourself. On the other hand, he shouldn’t be acting out in order to wake you up. What part of “small paycheck” does his not understand? It does not translate to exorbitant spending. Your man needs to know when enough is enough, both independently and from your cues. He needs to know that you work hard, and should appreciate that fact if you are busting ass to support his extracurricular habits. So step one, should you wish to keep him, is to sit down and have an honest talk about limits. Your paycheck is not a negotiable reality, it is what is paying for your life, sans stipend from home.
This conversation could be hard because in theory you should have been articulating your limits all along. Your boo is probably testing the edge of your generosity. He might not consciously sense what he is doing, but what you describe sounds like deliberate button pushing, squeezing and molding your generosity and affection in hopes of finding where they might run thin. Think adolescent boy. You need to be the woman you are and tell him how you feel, lest you return to teenagerhood yourself.
To do so, just gently tell it like it is. Don’t accuse him. Explain your needs, your limits, etc, speaking from a personal perspective. The only way this will work is if you don’t make him out to be a jerk, rather show the flat truth of your five figure waning salary.
Also, be realistic and prepare yourself for the possibility of a tantrum on his part, a shutting down, or a lack of adult understanding. If his mommy is treating him like a king, he might expect you to do the same. No one sets rules for the king. Your boundaries, however, are your god-given right. Stand firm for taking care of yourself.
As for the job situation, I would like to give a shout out to my many artist and musician friends who do find a way to bring in cash and focus on their craft. When I worked in Adam’s Morgan in DC there were tons of well-established musicians, rockers, singers, painters and more who tended bar and pulled espresso shots. As I travel from artist residency to artist residency I can’t tell you how many people I meet who straddle artistic success and a side-job. I am not inclined to agree with his mother, not if he wants to keep you in his life. Money doesn’t grow on women.
Your boyfriend’s mom might need to stay out of it, and you need to step up the backbone. You can love someone and tell them, “no.” In fact, good pure love always seems to have a safe expression of when enough is really enough.
” title=”www.send-email.org”>www.send-email.org to merissag[at]gmail[dot]com.
The Forward’s second annual survey of 74 major Jewish national organizations found that in the past year, women lost ground in leadership, continued to lag behind men in pay and did not experience the same increases in salary that a majority of the men enjoyed despite these recessionary times. (VIEW THE SURVEY HERE)
While there were 11 women serving as presidents and CEOs of federations, advocacy and public service groups, and religious institutions last year, there are now only nine. Even though the work force in these organizations is overwhelmingly female, the percentage of women in leadership roles has dropped in the past year to 12% from 14%.
In this, the Jewish communal experience is dramatically at odds with trends in the broader not-for-profit world. GuideStar, which collects the informational tax forms that not-for-profit groups are required to file with the Internal Revenue Service, reported in September that women were chief executives of nearly 47% of the nation’s charities in 2008. Although women were concentrated in smaller organizations, even in the larger charities — those with annual budgets of more than $1 million — they still held 38% of the top roles.
Israel’s first real winter storm caused major damage throughout the country, especially to the Tel Aviv beachfront and an ancient pier in Caesaria.
The storm which began Sunday and continued on Monday, included heavy rains and damaging winds of up to 75 miles per hour, which caused huge waves to wash up on Tel Aviv beaches, breaking restaurant windows, throwing café furniture, and scattering a thick layer of sand along the Promenade in Tel Aviv.
The storm caused a modern-day sea wall protecting the popular Caesarea archeological site to fall down early Sunday, exposing the walls of the ancient port and raising fears that the waves crashing on the site could cause irreparable damage.
Ben Gurion Airport closed to some flights on Sunday evening due to bad visibility conditions. Several planes were diverted to Cyprus.
A Moldovan cargo ship sank off the coast of Ashdod due to the raging sea conditions; its crew of 11 was rescued.
Thousands of homes were without power due to downed electrical lines and damaged generators.
Two people were seriously hurt when trees fell on their cars, and another at least 30 people were injured in weather-related incidents.
While flooding was feared in the Jordan Valley, the Judean Desert and the center of the country, nearly four feet of snow fell in the area of Mount Hermon. Light snow was also reported in Jerusalem.
Here’s the scenario. You meet someone you think you could like. You’ve hung out three or four times, maybe a few dates and then meeting up with his friends for drinks. You start to think you do like him. You start opening up, talking about your family or dreams or whatever it is you think makes you special. He does the same. In fact, when you meet his friends, they already know about you. You think to yourself, ok this could be something. Then….
NOTHING. He doesn’t call back. That’s how he ends it. He doesn’t think he owes you a phone call or an explanation or even a text to say “no thanks, I’m not interested anymore.” He just doesn’t respond. In the last year, so many of my friends have had little flings end like this. What does it take for a guy to dump you properly? Now, I know girls do this too, but it seems to me that by and large, this is mainly perpetrated by men. I’ve talked many times with other girls about how to have these awkward conversations so I know some of them are doing it. I also know men want to say that it’s just easier for women to communicate and that this is how men deal with stuff. But that’s just total malarkey. I’m guessing some men are either to selfish to care or more likely just cowards.
First of all, if you’re a guy that doesn’t dump girls properly because you just don’t care enough to write a simple text message saying “I’m too busy with work to get together now. It was really nice getting to know you though,” then you’re just an inconsiderate rude bastard and I can only blame your mother for not telling you to grow up already.
Second of all, if you’re just a coward, no one’s going to want to date you anyway. Having enough guts to force yourself to deal with an uncomfortable situation for five minutes is just part of life. You don’t have to like it. But you do have to be able to deal with it.
But what concerns me more, is that maybe men don’t feel they owe it to these girls to say anything to them. Like there’s some magic cut-off mark at the six month period perhaps and only if you make it there do you owe a girl an official “it’s over” talk. But shouldn’t the standard relate to how much you both share with each other? I know one girl who found herself wishing for the it’s over talk after spending multiple evenings with a guy’s entire family. I know one girl who spent the whole weekend with a guy, sleeping over, spending the day together, walking around the neighborhood arm in arm for three months. I know another girl who listened to some boy sob about how lonely he had been till he met her. And then BAM. Like that. Just nothing. She calls once and leaves a voicemail checking in. She sends a follow up text. And there’s just no answer. Ever. The girl can’t call more or she looks like a psycho stalker. So that’s it. She waits out the days and usually after about two weeks says well I guess it’s over then.
Don’t these guys owe her more than that? It’s just so insulting to think that after getting to know someone like that, a man doesn’t owe a woman the courtesy of a simple let down conversation. You don’t even have to see her to do it. Is it really so hard to pick up the phone? How intimate do you have to get to earn the right to be broken up with? When I was in college, I very casually dated this guy (who I adored cause he lived in a co-op). We never got that intimate, emotionally or physically, but I think of him so fondly because of how he ended things with me. He took me out to dinner and we had a really nice time. I knew something was up when he insisted on paying the check because we had always been splitting things up till then. Then he walked me back to my dorm and honestly I can’t even remember what he said. Maybe he said he met someone else or that it was just over, but either way he told the truth and that was that. I still feel warmth towards him because of it and he’s been happily married for years now. He certainly didn’t owe me all that, but he was just the kind of stand-up guy that wanted to let a girl down gently.
Why are we evolving away from that? Why is it becoming more and more acceptable to break-up via the silent treatment? By today’s standards, it seems that if a guy sent me a text saying “not into you anymore. Have a nice life,” I’d be running through the streets yelling with glee “I just got dumped!” I mean really, what does a girl have to do these days to be told to take a hike?
Tonight was the annual Festival of Lights dinner sponsored by the international pro-Israel educational organization StandWithUs (SWU), one of the highlights of my year. I’ve been affiliated with SWU from the beginning, and had the honor of serving on its first speakers panel with Tashbih Sayyed (of blessed memory), Roberta Seid, and Cookie Lommel. More than a thousand people of many ethnicities, religions, and races crowded the Century Plaza Hotel to pay tribute to the efforts of an effective organization that is working to educate leaders in several countries about issues relating to Jews and Israel.
Truth be told, the SWU dinner and similar events in the Jewish community are always a little bittersweet for me. While I love seeing my friends and celebrating their achievements, I always find myself asking the same question that was put to me during this evening’s reception by a rabbi: when are the Mormons going to have their own pro-Israel organization? I gave him my usual retort about the Mormon Church already being the world’s largest pro-Israel organization and quickly changed the subject.
While it is true that the LDS Church has always supported Israel (indeed, it is the only country whose creation was prophesied and publicly sanctioned by church leaders), the rabbi’s point was valid. The LDS Church does not take official positions on political issues, including those related to the Middle East. I believe that this is a wise policy for a church to take. However, in a time when Iran is threatening Israel while developing a nuclear weapons program, boycott and divestment movements are gaining steam in the U.S. and Europe, and efforts to delegitimize Israel and Zionism are increasingly targeting mainstream Christian churches, it would be nice for the many Mormons across the country who staunchly support the Jewish people and Israel to have an LDS organization that speaks for them, while not claiming to speak for their church. There is already a wonderful Utah-based LDS organization (B’nai Shalom) that seeks to further Jewish-LDS understanding, but it does not take positions on political issues.
Without an organization that deals with local Jewish leaders on a daily basis, Mormons will never have a seat at the Jewish community table. Right now the only Christians at that table are Evangelicals, and wise Jews will accept their support. Indeed, I know several Mormons who regularly attend events sponsored by prominent pro-Israel Evangelical groups. However, as I have attempted to show in this blog, Mormons have much more to say to Jews than other Christians, and our theology concerning the House of Israel is much more complete. In addition, we can show others how it is possible to support Israel without being anti-Muslim or anti-Arab. Some Mormons worry about whether non-Mormons could mistake the positions of unofficial LDS groups for the official positions of the LDS Church. Thankfully, this is not a concern with Jews: since no Jew can speak for the entire Jewish people, Jews do not assume that a Mormon (or Baptist or Catholic) is speaking on behalf of his faith unless he explicitly says so. A simple, repeated disclaimer by the pro-Jewish LDS group should be sufficient. There are always reasons not to reach out to other groups, but in this case any Mormon fears of possible confusion do not accurately reflect the thought processes of the target group (the Jewish community). Jews are highly intelligent people, and I have absoute faith in their ability to distinguish between an official position taken by Mormon officials and statements of support made by Jew-loving Mormons.
The proverbial field is white for Mormons to become an important part of the organized Jewish community. At tonight’s event, the rabbis and pastors in attendance were not announced by name, but the LDS representative was. Two important Jewish newspapers allow Mormons to blog on LDS-Jewish issues on their websites. Mormons work for many Jewish organizations, and their numbers are growing every year. I can think of many fine Mormons around the country who should be interfacing with local Jewish leaders as leaders of an unofficial pro-Israel Mormon organization. There is no doubt that the Jewish leaders who came to the StandWithUs event tonight would be happy to attend a similar event put on by Israel-loving Mormons. I pray that the day will soon come when Mormons who want to support Israel will not need to attend events sponsored by Evangelical groups, but will have the resources to organize their own. I welcome any ideas and/or suggestions from LDS and Jewish readers on this topic.
——-
I will be speaking at the Jewish Community Center in Salt Lake City on the evening of January 12. I will also be speaking with Rabbi Alan Cohen in Kansas City on the evening of January 16. Single LDS women are especially encouraged to attend.
Henry Kissinger is heard saying on newly released Nixon tapes that the genocide of Soviet Jews would not be an American concern.
The tapes chronicle President Richard Nixon’s obsession with disparaging Jews and other minorities.
Kissinger’s remarks come after a meeting he and Nixon had with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973 in which Meir pleads for the United States to put pressure on the Soviet Union to release its Jews. Nixon and Kissinger, then the secretary of state, dismiss the plea after Meir leaves.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” The New York Times on Saturday quotes Kissinger, as saying on the tapes. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
Nixon replies, “I know. We can’t blow up the world because of it.”
Six months later, during the Yom Kippur War, Nixon rejected Kissinger’s advice to delay an arms airlift to Israel as a means of setting the stage for an Egypt confident enough to pursue peace. Nixon, among other reasons, cited Israel’s urgent need.
The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants in a statement called for an apology from Kissinger, who is still consulted by Democratic and Republican administrations and by Congress on matters of state.
“Henry Kissinger’s comments are morally grotesque and represent a disgraceful perversion of American values,” said the statement. “He owes an apology to all victims of the Nazi Holocaust.”
Nixon secretly recorded his White House conversations. After this was revealed during congressional investigations, the tapes became government property and have been released over the years in intervals.
Elsewhere on the batch of tapes recently released by the Nixon Library, the late president repeats many of the ethnic and racial slurs that had appeared on earlier such releases: Irish are “mean” drunks, he says; Italians “don’t have their heads screwed on tight”; Jews are “aggressive, abrasive and obnoxious”; and it would take blacks “500 years” to catch up with whites.
Mah Jongg is the most fun when the participants are friendly even though the game is intrinsically competitive.
When the game is over and everyone is mixing the tiles and building the Wall, that’s the time to chat and exchange ideas. But once the game begins, your attention should be focused on what’s going on in front of you.
Inattention was the problem in a game a couple of weeks ago. As the game progressed, one of the players discarded a 5Dot and mistakenly called it 5Bam. There is usually not much ado about it—and another player usually picks up on it and corrects the mistake. No harm—no foul. But one of the players we’ll call her Jan, started to call for the 5Dot, which was really a 5Bam.
Didn’t the player have to discard a 5Dot instead of the 5Bam? No. Did the miscaller need a 5Dot and mistakenly called the Bam a Dot? Maybe.
Although she didn’t disclose the fact, it became obvious to the others that Jan needed a 5Dot for an Exposure. Her big mistake was not paying attention to what was going on in front of her, because even if a tile is miscalled, players have the responsibility of attending to what is discarded, regardless of what the caller says. So, unfortunately, she revealed to everyone a 5Dot was essential to her hand and of course, no one discarded a 5Dot.
But what if Jan called the tile and used it in an Exposure? Presumably the Exposure is in error and therefore the hand is declared “Dead”. A shared fault, because again the Exposee should have been paying attention. It’s pretty drastic, but that’s the rule.
However the rule changes if Jan called the misnamed tile for Mah Jongg. Then the onus is on the miscaller. The penalty for misnaming a Mah Jongg tile is to pay the mah Jongg declarer four times the amount the hand is worth. No one else pays anything. Pretty stiff penalty!
So the lesson here is to pay attention to what’s going on. If you don’t, the consequence can be costly….
Ross Douthat, whose NYT mug reminds me a bit of DiCaprio’s in “Inception,” wrote in his weekly column that the United State’s cultural chasm is fading:
This week, the National Marriage Project is releasing a study charting the decline of the two-parent family among what it calls the “moderately educated middle” — the 58 percent of Americans with high school diplomas and often some college education, but no four-year degree.
This decline is depressing, but it isn’t surprising. We’ve known for a while that America has a marriage gap: college graduates divorce infrequently and bear few children out of wedlock, while in the rest of the country unwed parenthood and family breakdown are becoming a new normal. This gap has been one of the paradoxes of the culture war: highly educated Americans live like Ozzie and Harriet despite being cultural liberals, while middle America hews to traditional values but has trouble living up to them.
But the Marriage Project’s data suggest that this paradox is fading. It’s no longer clear that middle America does hold more conservative views on marriage and family, or that educated Americans are still more likely to be secular and socially liberal.
That division held a generation ago, but now it’s diminishing. In the 1970s, for instance, college-educated Americans overwhelmingly supported liberal divorce laws, while the rest of the country was ambivalent. Likewise, college graduates were much less likely than high school graduates to say that premarital sex was “always wrong.” Flash forward to the 2000s, though, and college graduates have grown more socially conservative on both fronts (50 percent now favor making divorces harder to get, up from 34 percent in the age of key parties), while the least educated Americans have become more permissive.
When Douthat says that it’s no longer clear that Middle America holds more conservative views on marriage, I can only assume he is referring to marriage between a man and a woman. Then again, as we saw in California, even liberal parts of the country have opposed same-sex marriage.
