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By subscription only! Welcome to the fourth issue of:
"THE BALANCED WOMAN".
You are receiving this newsletter because you
requested a subscription. Instructions to Unsubscribe
are at the end of this newsletter.
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IN THIS ISSUE
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=> Welcome
=> Feature Article:The ABC's
of Time Management
=> Household Tip
=> Guest Column: 50
Ways to Beat Insomnia
=> Parenting Tip
=> Keeping Romance Alive
=> Pampering Yourself
=> How to be a Guest Columnist
=> Guest Column: Why
Budgets Fail
=> Direct Answers from Wayne
and Tamara
=> Favorite Links
=> On the Web
=> Subscribe/Unsubscribe
information
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WELCOME
Welcome to the "The Balanced Woman" and thank you for subscribing!!!
We're really excited about this issue. It's jam packed full of interesting
articles and new features! More importantly we've begun to focus
on those issues you, our readers, have told us are important to you, beginning
with our article on Time Management. Keep that feedback coming!
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FEATURE ARTICLE, THE ABC'S OF TIME MANAGEMENT
by Jacqueline McLaughlin Hale
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Over and over again, day in and day out, I hear women
complain that there aren’t enough hours in the day, that they’re too
busy and that they’re burned out.
This seems to be their credo; sometimes it feels like
their badge of honor. Ultimately it makes their lives
less enjoyable and in the end it hurts only them.
And so as a society we spend millions of dollars a
year on books and self-help products that teach us how
to simplify our lives and how to reduce some of our
stress. We search ravenously for anything that seems as though
it could be the “magic formula” for our over
committed exhausted lifestyles. We crave a quick
answer (because we don’t have TIME for some long drawn
out process), some miracle pill or a sudden decreased
need for sleep to put our lives back in balance again.
Unfortunately, it’s just not that easy. As we’ve
heard so much with respect to weight loss, it requires
long term lifestyle changes. So, I don’t’ have a
quick answer; I don’t have a miracle pill and I can’t
tell you how to obtain a sudden decreased need for
sleep. But I can tell you that a more enjoyable life
of balance includes:
1 Conscious Prioritization (a phrase I’ve just coined!)
2 Time Management and
3 Organizational skills
I began to write this piece as one article but I
quickly found that it became too long to be just
that. So once again without intending to, I’ve
created a series. This month we’ll skip Conscious
Prioritization and begin with Time Management because
it’s one of the topics that you, our readers, told us
is important to you. We’ll come back to Conscious
Prioritization and Organizational Skills in future
issues.
Time Management. This seems to be the focus of the
90’s and probably the new millenium as well. We have
more time saving devices available to us yet we seem
to have less time. We live our lives with too much to
do in too little time.
I have made a career of time management. No, I’m not
a time management consultant, just a busy executive
longing to find more time in every day. And over the
years I have discovered that there seems to be four
key elements to effective time management skills:
1. An accurate understanding of how long tasks really
take to complete.
2. A single focus on the goal or task at hand.
3. Efficient uses of small amounts of time you don’t
even realize you have
4. More efficient ways of completing the more mundane,
but necessary tasks in your life.
1. An accurate understanding of how long tasks really
take to complete.
I’ve been managing people for over 15 years and I have
found that those who share poor time management skills
have one thing in common: they have NO idea how long
activities really take them to complete. For example,
I once managed a woman who was going to go to
Starbucks on her 15-minute break to get a café mocha.
Starbucks was a 20-minute drive from the office, one
way!! She insisted it was a five-minute drive. It
wasn’t. Many who are habitually late underestimate
how long they spend getting ready to leave the house
or how much time their drive will take.
So the first key to time management is to obtain a
REALISTIC estimate of the time it takes you to
accomplish most of the tasks you perform every day.
The only way to do this is to time them! Next time
you leave for work in the morning, look at your watch
the minute you get into the car. When you arrive at
work, look at your watch again. How much time
lapsed? If you are “time challenged” I bet you will
be surprised at how long it really took. When you get
out of bed in the morning, look at the clock. When
you’re ready to leave the house, look at the clock
again. How much time lapsed? When you begin to clean
the house, look at the clock. When you’re through,
look at the clock again. I could go on and on, but
you get the picture. The objective is to take a
typical day in your life and clock everything you do.
It’s probably a good idea to jot your findings down.
Keep a log of the time it took you to get to work, to
leave the house or to do your weekly cleaning, etc.
etc. Once you have a REALISTIC perspective of your
actual time requirements, then you can begin to plan
your day in accordance with the priorities you created
using the Conscious Prioritization method discussed
above. Remember NOT to underestimate your time when
you plan. Refer to your time log and learn how to say
“no” so that you do not over commit yourself.
2. A single focus on the goal or task at hand.
This is a BIG ONE! So many “time challenged”
individuals do not even realize that when they get
little accomplished it’s because they have been easily
distracted from their goals. An example of this is
when you say you’re going to clean out the closet. In
the course of doing so you find some old photo albums
which you spend a significant amount of time looking
through (although you’ll swear you only spent an hour
looking at the albums!). At the end of the day you
discover that the contents of the closet are all over
the floor around you and that you are no farther along
in your efforts to clean it out. So you put
everything back and sincerely wonder why you made no
progress at all!
If you’re going to clean out the closet, clean out the
closet! Do NOT allow yourself to become distracted by
the contents within it. If you were going to drive
from your house to the grocery store, would you turn
down streets that wouldn’t get you there? Would you
deter along the way? Probably not. So why do it with
any project you’re going to undertake. This principle
can be applied equally to your work environment and
your home environment. Choose a task and stayed
focused on only that task until it is completed or
until your allotted time has run out.
3. Efficient uses of small amounts of time you don’t
even realize you have.
This is my favorite strategy of all. It has become
somewhat of a game to me. I’m constantly trying to
find ways to be productive with the few minutes here
and there that I’d normally waste. For instance, I
purchased a cordless phone. It turned out to be (as
I’d hoped it would) the BEST investment I’ve ever made
with respect to accomplishing more with the time I
have. Whenever I talk to anyone on the phone and
ESPECIALLY when I’ve been left on hold, I wipe down
the kitchen sink, the kitchen counters, the microwave
oven, the stove top, the refrigerator shelves, the
bathroom sinks or the bathroom mirrors. Or, I may do
the dishes or throw in a load of laundry or two.
I don’t know about you but I find I am constantly
struggling with clutter and things that are out of
place. So, whenever I walk from one room to another I
take something with me to put away.
From time to time I find myself waiting, waiting for
my son, waiting for my husband, waiting for the
babysitter, waiting for the phone repairperson or just
waiting. So once again I use those previously wasted
moments to pick up toys, put away folded laundry or
clean out the refrigerator. Commercials are another
great source of time. Remember that there are LOTS of
chores around the house that CAN be done in 2 or 3
minutes. If you take advantage of those moments
you’ll find you can do more in seemingly less time.
Lastly, don’t forget to make productive use of the
time you spend in the dentist or doctors’ waiting
rooms. Be sure to take all the reading you want to
catch up on or your bills to pay. You could decide to
take your cookbooks or recipe cards to plan the next
week’s meals and your grocery list at the same time.
Write those letters you’ve intended to write. The
point is to remember to make efficient use of the
small amounts of time you don’t even realize you have.
4. More efficient ways of completing the more
mundane, but necessary tasks in your life.
This strategy is really about devising better (i.e.
quicker) methods to get things done. Since
housecleaning is the one thing that’s probably
universally dreaded, I’ll use it as an example again.
(I’ve chosen this example specifically because if
you’re doing something you ENJOY you really don’t want
to rush through it, do it more efficiently or do it in
the small amounts of time you don’t even realize you
have. The point is to FREE up time from the “have
to’s” so that you can give more time to the “want
to’s”).
If you want to clean your home more quickly (to save
time to do more of the things you enjoy) than you must
reduce scrubbing! You’ll notice that the goal of all
of the housecleaning methods below is to eliminate it
entirely. Scrubbing, I have decided, is the root of
all evil (okay, not really but it does take up a
tremendous amount of time!) Additionally, you’ll
discover that the majority of the following tips are
focused in the bathroom and kitchen areas. This is
because these areas, more so than any other part of
the house, seem to be the most time consuming to
clean.
Using an inexpensive shower squeegee wipe down the
shower doors after every shower and save oodles of
time cleaning and scrubbing. To clean white grout or
caulking around the bathtub, soak paper towels in
bleach and lay them directly on the affected area.
Walk away, or do something else for about a half-hour
or more. Remove the paper towels to find the grout
and caulking clean and white. To clean the bottom of
the bathtub fill it with just enough water to cover,
add bleach and let it soak. A half-hour or an hour
later, come back to let the water out and enjoy the
sparkling clean bathtub bottom. For mildew and soap
scum, there are no better products than Scrub Free.
The Scrub Free SOAP SCUM product also works well on
faucets. Put as much in the dishwasher as you
possibly can. Load it with pots and pans, Tupperware,
spatulas, you name it, just about everything except
china and crystal. Some pots and pans may not be
suitable for the dishwasher so be sure to use
discretion. And obviously you’ll have to run the
dishwasher more so the cost of running that should be
balanced against the benefit you gain in time saved.
Use rubbing alcohol to clean stainless steel sinks,
bleach to clean ceramic sinks. (I love bleach—have
you noticed?)
Dust less often, unless someone in your family has
allergy problems. Vacuum tile, hardwood or vinyl
floors weekly. Scrub them bi weekly or monthly.
These are just a few of the household hints that have
saved me hours of time throughout the years.
Remember, the objective is to spend as little time as
possible on those mundane yet necessary tasks in your
life. I have illustrated my point using housecleaning
as an example but really this can apply to any area.
I’m sure if you analyze some of the less enjoyable
chores you do, you too, can find more efficient
methods to complete them.
As you have seen, time management is about:
1. An accurate understanding of how long tasks really
takes to complete.
2. A single focus on the goal or task at hand.
3. Efficient uses of small amounts of time you don’t
even realize you have
4. More efficient ways of completing the more mundane,
but necessary tasks in your life
But ultimately, the real goal of time management is to
organize your days more effectively so that you can
create more time for yourself and the things that you
enjoy! I have.
Jacqueline McLaughlin Hale is a CPA and the editor of
“The Balanced Woman” a monthly ezine. It contains
parenting tips, household hints, ideas for pampering
yourself and more. Subscribing is easy and FREE.
Just send a blank email to: -TheBalancedWoman-
subscribe@onelist.com. She is also the author of The
Woman’s Guide to Resumes and Interviewing, Lessons
From a Toddler and 77 Ways to Pamper Yourself. All of
these publications are available through AJAY
Publishing at:
http://angelfire.com/sd/jobsearchforwomen.
Webmasters and publishers may use this article in
their ezine or website, as long as the *entire*
article is used, and the *copyright notice* and
*resource box* are left in tact, including this notice.
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Personal Note: Just a very few months ago I met a wonderful,
caring, supportive woman who changed my life, literally, in just a few
short weeks. She helped me to determine my dreams and she believed
in them as much as I did. She gave me the confidence to pursue them
and in doing so everything for me has changed for the better. She
is a personal life coach. If you think about it athletes have coaches,
successful business people often have coaches, businesses themsevles have
coaches, so why not us? If you're interested please email Janina
Balfour at janina@kos.net.
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Family E-zine--
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is a digest type publication of things found around
the net with a humor base suitable for families. Humor, Tips,
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Published Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Send e-mail
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HOUSEHOLD TIP OF THE MONTH:
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Having trouble getting stainlees steel sinks to sparkle? Try
cleaning with rubbing alcohol. It's inexpensive and it makes stainless
steel shine!
Having trouble getting ceramic sinks their whitest? Cover with
paper towels and pour bleach on top. Walk away for about a half hour
and when you return, the ceramic will sparkle!
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BE HAPPY, BE HEALTHY, LIVE LONG AND
PROSPER!
Subscribe to A Better Life: ItsYourFuture! FREE Ezine.
mailto: itsyourfuture-subscribe@egroups.com or visit: http://www.egroups.com/group/itsyourfuture/info.html
Website: http://www.itsyourfuture.net (coming soon)
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Guest Column: 50 Ways to Beat Insomnia
by: Gail Miller
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About a third of us have sleep problems occasionally,
but for some people insomnia can be a chronic problem
which lasts for months or even years. If you need a
bit of help getting off at night, follow some of these
tips to help you get a better nights sleep.
1; Instead of counting sheep, count peacocks,
giraffes, or emus!
2; Go to bed at the same time every night, and get up
at the same time every morning.
3; Sleep on a good, firm mattress.
4; Lie on your back and gently rub your stomach in a
circular motion. Gradually let the circles get
bigger and bigger.
5; Avoid alcohol, caffeine and tobacco.
6; Start at one, two, or five hundred, and count
backwards down to one.
7; Try to recall a poem that you used to know off by
heart when you were at school.
8; Think of a boy and girl’s name starting with each
letter of the alphabet. For example; Albert and
Alice, Bryan and Betty, or Carl and Camilla. See
how far you can go.
9; Listen to a recording of crashing waves, dolphin
sounds, heartbeats, or raindrops.
10; Don’t have tea, chocolate or cola in the evening.
11; Imagine walking through a lush valley. Hear
the birdsong, smell the trees and visualise the
beauty of the countryside.
12; Sleep in a well ventilated room.
13; Don’t have the temperature of your room too hot,
or too cold.
14; Sleep on your back, as this enables your internal
organs to rest.
15; Do not fall to sleep on your front, as this
results in shallow breathing and causes pressure
on
your internal organs.
16; Drink warm milk ten to twenty minutes before
retiring.
17; Stretch your body. Point your toes, arch your back
and stretch your arms above your head, then relax
completely.
18; Try to recite the National Anthem in your head.
19; Make a long list of words in your head by
changing just one letter at a time, for example;
part, past, post, most, mast, etc.
20; Have a drink of herbal tea before retiring to
bed. Some health food stores sell blends which
are designed to aid restful sleep.
21; Fifteen minutes of exercise a day will supply your
body with the activity and oxygen it needs to
relax at bedtime.
22; Make a list of everything that is bothering you
and therefore keeping you awake. Imagine yourself
writing the list onto a piece of paper and then
screwing it up and throwing it away.
23; Try to settle yourself by repeating soothing words
to yourself,such as calm, peaceful, relaxing.
24; Imagine you are sewing the hem of an extremely
wide curtain. Use tiny stitches and visualise
in
detail every stitch you make.
25; Try to get your partner to give you a relaxing
massage just before bed, or while you are both in
bed.
26; Make love.
27; If your partner is in bed with you, listen to his
breath and try to synchronise your breathing with
his.
28; Go back to a special time and place in your
mind. Relive the sights, smells and
feelings you
felt at the time.
29; Avoid naps during the daytime.
30; Take a warm soothing bubble bath, or use bath
salts or aromatherapy oils in the water to help
you
relax before bed.
31; Try to keep your bedroom as dark as possible by
hanging thick lined curtains if possible.
32; Imagine you are on the beach. Feel the hot sun
on your body, smell the salt water and feel the
warm, granular sand under your feet and between
your toes.
33; Avoid illuminated bedside clocks. A lit clock face
can be extremely disturbing if you have a hard time
getting to sleep.
34; Practice slow, deep breathing for five minutes.
35; Sleep with your head facing north. Sounds bizarre?
Try it and see if it makes a difference for you.
36; Imagine you are decorating your dream house. What
colour scheme would you use? What style of
furnishings and decoration would you prefer? See
each colour and pattern in detail.
37; Keep your bed a place for sleep. Don’t read, watch
television, work, or do crossword puzzles in bed.
Let your body and mind associate bed with sleep.
38; Think of as many famous people as you can with
double initials,for example; Anthony Andrews, Tina
Turner, Bobby Brown.
39; If you really can’t sleep, get up. Don’t lie awake
for more than thirty minutes. Read a book, have
a
drink, and when you feel tired again, go back to
bed.
40; Lie on your back and try to relax. Wiggle your
toes up and down, both feet at the same time, 20.
This should relax your whole body.
41; Listen to soft and soothing music. Classical or
folk music is particularly good for dropping off
to.
42; Imagine it’s morning and time to get up. The alarm
has already gone off, and you are in that sleepy
period when you just want to drop back off to
sleep for a few more minutes. It’s surprising how
sleepy you will start to feel.
43; Think back on everything you did throughout the
day, from getting up, having breakfast, going to
work, right through to getting ready for bed and
lying where you are now.
44; Try to remember what you were doing this time last
year.
45; An hour before you go to bed, light an oil burner
with somelavender oil in.
46; Mentally visit the town you were born in. Think
back to how the streets looked, and imagine where
you used to play, or the places you used to visit.
47; Repeat to yourself ‘I am getting sleepy, I am
growing tired, I am falling to sleep.’
48; If you are a fan of soap operas, replay some of
the scenes in your mind, with yourself as one of
the characters.
49; Stare with your eyes closed at the insides of your
eyelids.
50; Build a two letter word into the biggest word you
can make. For example; on, one, lone, alone.
SWEET DREAMS
From Great Britain, Gail Miller had her first non - fiction book "Wild
Child" published recently and she
writes and publishes "The ADD / ADHD Gazette" - a free
on - line newsletter accenting the positive side of
ADD / ADHD. Subscribe at
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/ADDGazette
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Awesome Party Secrets award winning free newsletter. Theme party tips
for adults and children, recipes ideas, catering secrets,book reviews,
party etiquette and more. Articles are original, rich in content with lots
of website links. Reader participation strongely
encouraged. Subscribe at http://delong.listbot.com or visit Amazing
Party Place for more party tips http://www.delongpublishing.com
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PARENTING TIP OF THE MONTH
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Whenever you go shopping do you have to put up with the constant pleas
of your children begging you to buy them something? Set up a reward
system complete with some type of scorekeeping.
Everytime your children do something good, something out of the ordinary, something YOU'VE defined as worthy of a point (or a star or whatever it is) log it, list it, record in your scorekeeping system. When they reach a predetermined (by you) number of points, stars, etc allow them to go shopping to buy whatever it is they want within a price range set by you.
That way when you're in the store and your children are begging you
to buy them something, you can tell them to go home and earn it and that
then you'll come back and buy it. It stops the fighting and the whining.
And best of all it teaches your children about earning what they want!
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You and your friends might like to join a free, weekly
newsletter "LowFat Tips, Shortcuts, Conversions & Recipes".
If you have questions, problems, would like a high-fat recipe converted
to low fat, or have a tip or recipe to share, You'll love this free newsletter.
It's really a great group. Hope you join. To subscribe,
send a blank email to:
mailto:lowfat-tips-subscribe@onelist.com or visit
http://www.GuiltFreeTV.com This information will NOT
be repeated, so CLICK' away now.
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ON KEEPING ROMANCE ALIVE
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Take a walk, hand in hand, after work, in the evening, without the
children...in the moonlight.
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Do you need to be cheering up? Want to start your day
off with a smile? You can get the best clean jokes that actually will
make your Mom laugh from Daily-Humor And It is All FREE Sent Monday
- Friday for your enjoyment - Sign up today- You won't regret it !
http://www.Onelist.com/subscribe.cgi\Daily-Humor
or send Email to:Daily-Humor-subscribe@onelist.com
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ON PAMPERING YOURSELF
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Imagine you're one of your friends. Make a list of all the positive
things she/he would say about you. Review the list daily.
excerpted from: 77 Ways to Pamper Yourself, by JA
Hale, copyright 1999
I ran this idea last month and I think it's so important I'm going to keep running it. So here it is again...
DRINK PLENTY OF WATER EVERY DAY!!!
I know it's hard to do. I know it's hard to remember. I know it keeps you in the bathroom a lot. But I can't tell you the difference it has made in me!!! I was ALWAYS tired and lethargic---always. I just assumed that it was because, like all moms, I was trying to do too much in a day. Since I have been drinking water, my energy level has picked up. My skin looks and feels better and the frequent headaches I used to have have all but disappeared.
Obviously, if you have any unusual physical symptoms that cause you
discomfort in any way you should see a doctor first, as I did. But
if your doctor can find nothing wrong with you, try water, it can't hurt!
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How to be a guest columnist instructions
We LOVE receiving articles from our readers, or
anyone else. Please submit your article about any of "The Balanced
Woman's" topics (i.e. being a wife, mother, employee, chef, housecleaner,
friend) to
jahale95@yahoo.com by the 15th of the month for
inclusion in the next month's newsletter.
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GUEST COLUMN: Why Budgets
Fail
THE DOLLAR STRETCHER
BY: Gary Foreman
gary@stretcher.com
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Failure. Don't you just hate to fail? Especially when
you've invested time and effort into a project.
But it happens all the time. Especially for
people who are starting to take control of their
finances. So we thought we'd take a look at why
budgets fail.
When you analyze it, there are really three reasons
why people are unsuccessful in budgeting. The most
common causes of failure are unrealistic goals,
quitting too soon and misunderstanding what a budget
really is. Let's take a look at each one of these
reasons separately. Then we'll show you how the same
solution can overcome all three problems.
It's easy to fall into our first failure trap. In
fact, in some ways it's hard to avoid it. That's
because it's built right into the process. Our
first step in starting a budget is to add up all our
income and also all our expenses. Then we try to
juggle the two until we get the income equal to the
expenses. It's a game of getting the math to work
out.
What's wrong with that? Well, quite often, we take
the list of expenses and pick a number that just
seems right. For instance, we might decide that we
can live on a grocery budget of $200 per month. But,
if that target is just a guess, it's probably the
wrong number. And, if we reduced it to get the
expenses below our income, it's probably too low.
So now we put the budget into practice. Then we get
near the end of the first month. There's a week left
to go and we've already spend our budgeted $200. Out
comes the credit card and we begin to curse our
budget.
But, what's really happened here? We set up a target
that's unrealistic and missed it. So what. That
doesn't mean that our budget won't work. It just
means that we need to set a more realistic target.
In fact, we're in a better position now to accomplish
that because we have a better idea of what we
actually do spend on groceries. No more guesses. This
is no time to quit. Rather it's an opportunity to
make adjustments and keep moving towards our goal of
having control of our finances.
The second common cause of failure is similar. That's
quitting too soon. Say you've been trying to use a
budget for a couple of months. You've done all the
math and kept track of both the money coming into
your home and where you spend it. You've worked hard
on this. Yet you always seem to get to the end of
your money before the month is over. Frustration
sets in. The temptation is to throw in the towel
and give up. A perfectly understandable
response. But it's the wrong answer. Look at it this
way. Suppose you were driving to Disneyworld and about
half way there you realized that you had made a wrong
turn and had driven 50 miles off your planned route.
Would you quit and go home? Of course not! So why
should we give up on a budget just because everything
doesn't work perfectly the first few months? Do the
same thing that you'd do on your vacation. Look at
your map and adjust your route to find the best way
to reach your destination. Make the adjustment and
move forward.
Our final cause for budget failure is not
understanding what a budget really is. Too many people
think that a budget is something to keep them from
spending money. And that's wrong. It's not a
straightjacket. A budget is a tool to provide you
with information to manage your finances. The
knowledge you gain by tracking income and expenses
will help you get the most for your money. In
fact, a budget can help find money that you can spend
where it will give you the most enjoyment.
Fortunately, all three problems can be corrected with
the same answer. And that's to use the budget as a
management tool. Each month your budget will show
what you planned and actually earned and spent.
That's valuable information. The trick is to see where
the actual number was way off the expected number.
Once you've found a big difference you can begin to
analyze why it happened. Was there a big one time
expense this month? Maybe you committed our first
mistake and just guessed at what you'd spend. But it
could be that you've been spending carelessly on
groceries. If that's the case you'll look to find
some savings this month.
Each month work on the biggest differences until the
whole process runs smoothly. Just take on one or two
at a time. Each month you should get closer to
actually having control over your finances. After
awhile it's just a matter of checking to make sure
that everything is roughly on target and making minor
mid-course corrections.
Now that's not to say that it's easy to resolve those differences.
Sometimes it's not. But it's always
easier to work when you have some clues to help point
you in the right direction. With the information that
your budget provides you know where to look for
possible savings. And often that's the difference
between frustration and success.
It's always a shame when you work hard and don't get
any benefit from your work. Don't let that happen to
your budget. Because it takes much less effort to fix
a budget than to start one. You've already put in the
hardest work. Take the time to get the benefit. You
deserve it.
Gary Foreman is the Editor of The Dollar Stretcher
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Direct Answers from Wayne and Tamara
No Meeting Of Minds
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I've been married for four years to a wonderful, fun-loving man with
whom I share many things - including a sincere friendship, a passionate
sex life, a love of being creative in many ways. I couldn't be happier
in my marriage with him. The only problem is our differing views on
having children. He has a
grown child from a previous marriage. I have no children.
He is ten years older than I. I would like to try to start a family
and he is reluctant. He thinks he is too old to start this again,
he knows (he
says) the enormous work it takes, and he loves the freedom we have
to do what we want when we want.
I believe, though, that his feelings have much more to do with his
first marriage. His first wife made motherhood her only focus after
their child was born, and my husband felt like the "seed donor."
Their
marriage deteriorated so badly that even years after the divorce, his
first wife refuses to speak with him. I knew about his mixed feelings
when we married. I hoped time would change this. Though I have
absolutely no desire to let this turn into
something that breaks us up or causes irreparable damage, I am now
occasionally experiencing feelings of resentment. (How can he do
this to ME? I've always wanted children and HE'S denying me my chance…
etc.) I don't believe, however, that this should be only MY choice
- it is ours. But I'm in a quandary and feel like time is running out as
I approach 35.
On top of all this, we are both very fond of children and frequently
spend time with friends who have children. We're always asked if
we plan to start having children and when - and people comment about our
obvious love for children. So… help!
Kimberly Kimberly, in our mind's eye we picture you and your groom standing
at the altar at your wedding. The minister solemnly intones the line,
"If
anyone knows why this couple cannot be joined in holy matrimony, let
them speak now or forever hold their peace." Unlike some old movies,
no one comes forward. But there is one person who knows a reason
why the wedding shouldn't occur. She holds her peace…that person
is you. Your husband was up front with you. He had three reasons
he didn't want to start a family: he felt he was too old, he felt it was
too
demanding, he didn't want to give up his freedom. His reasons
were based on experience.
And you? You have every right to want children. But if
you felt this way before the wedding, either you concealed a material fact
in order to get married, or you decided you were going to make this decision
regardless of how he felt. It is the ancient complaint of men…after
the wedding she changed.
There is no room for compromise on this one. You can't have half
a child, and we can't give you the words to make him come around to your
point of view. Children need to come into this world when they are
wanted by both parents with all their heart. They should come
from joy and unity. When they come from resentment, conflict, or
a terrible
compromise, it is an injustice to everyone.
You did yourself a disservice to marry a man who doesn't want children.
Nobody is going to be happy with this, and he may end up losing two wives
over the same issue. You can't continue on in the same manner, refusing
to admit it isn't what he has done to you, but the position you have put
yourself in. Put everything on the table. You need to be totally
honest with your husband, and let whatever happens come from honesty.
Not from secret agendas, "accidental pregnancy," or hidden resentments.
Wayne & Tamara
Wayne & Tamara Mitchell are the authors of YOUR OTHER HALF (www.YourOtherHalf.com).
Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO 964, Springfield, MO 65801-0964
or
e-mail: DirectAnswers@echowork.com.
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On the Web
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Parenting advice: Ann Landers
<a href="https://www.angelfire.com/sd/BalancedWoman/parenting.html"></a>
Some Interesting Perspectives:
<a href="https://www.angelfire.com/sd/BalancedWoman/perspective.html"></a>
64 USES FOR VINEGAR
http://angelfire.com/sd/BalancedWoman/vinegar.html
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DISCLAIMER
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express or implied for any products or services mentioned. If expert
assistance or counseling is needed, services of a competent professional
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Copyright 1999, JA Hale
Editors Comments:If any of you have any ideas,
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