Mom.Dad.Chat

If you fall in love with your best guy friend but unsure of his feelings, what would you do? Falling for your best friend can be a very tormenting experience because if you decide to reveal your feelings, an invisible boundary is crossed that may make the relationship not the same as it was.

My husband once had a colleague who fell for a man who has been her good friend since university days. They were coursemates but over time, her feelings for the man grew. At that time, both were already working and busy building a career but they still met up pretty often for a drink now and then.

She did not tell the man how she felt because she thought it was too high a gamble. Meaning she was afraid the warm friendship would not be the same anymore if the man has no romantic feelings for her whatsoever. And I guess she also realized that the chances of the man taking the friendship one step further wasn’t so high for her to reveal her feelings.

Anyway, she saw the man went through a few relationships of his own and consoled him during those heartbreaks. Eventually, the man found his life partner and got married. She also has moved on and is dating a guy now but it took the friend’s marriage to completely snuff out all hopes simmering in her heart.

Sad story, really. But if you find yourself falling in love with a friend, there are only 2 alternatives available, to tell or not to tell. If you choose not to tell, then the outcome will most likely be similar to my husband’s friend’s story, unless of course the other party has the same romantic feelings for you and expresses them. And if you choose to tell, there are also 4 possible scenarios:

• The other party reciprocates and both are happy,
• The other party does not want to hurt your feelings and tries to give the relationship a go,
• The other party rejects your advances and becomes uncomfortable with the friendship, and
• The other party rejects your advances but everything remains status quo.

I guess different people have different tolerance level towards rejection and the risk of losing a good friend. But my opinion is tell anyway because at worst, you lose a friend or see less of that person. If you don’t tell, you’ll never know and to me, it’s better to know once and for all than carrying a torch for years; one bitter swallow if need be than slow burning torment.

Tell or not to tell - your call?

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Does your partner or spouse has any annoying habits that you could live without? Such habits are no major sins and yet, they have the tendency to get on your nerves, especially on those bad mood days when you are spoiling for a fight. Below is a list of annoying habits that my husband (or is it men in general?) possesses:

• Leaving things unwashed in the kitchen sink - Somehow, he has a habit of leaving a dirty bowl and/or a mug filled to the brim with water in the sink. They can be left lying there for 12, 24 or 36 hours until the woman who lives with him have to use the sink and ends up washing the items for him.
• Inability to replace toilet roll - If he is the culprit who finished the last piece of toilet paper, do not expect him to put in a new roll. A lot of times, I find only the cardboard roll staring back at me after I have plonked myself onto the toilet seat.
• Delaying house chores - Sometimes, when it is his duty to do vacuuming, he will have the cheek to tell me that the place is not that dirty, even if the last time we cleaned up was a week ago. I think if he is living on his own, he will probably only start to consider buying a vacuum cleaner when the dust is an inch thick and cobwebs are hanging from the ceiling. His other favorite phrase is “I’ll do it later!” And later to him is not an hour or two later but can be 12 hours later when the time is 11pm at night and after another round of begging asking.
• Piling up magazines in the toilet - I know many people have the habit of reading in the toilet and I have no problem with that. It is when someone has the habit of piling magazines in there without clearing them that I find it annoying. Papers will turn damp from all the moisture in the toilet and who else but yours truly will be the one picking up all these yucky wet magazines to be discarded.
• Refusing to ask for directions - No explanation needed because from what I have heard, most women have this same problem with their partners.
• Leaving bags of groceries all over the kitchen floor - He has this strange inability to take grocery items out of the bags and put them where they belong. At most, I can rely on him to keep the milk and meat, but for the rest, he is just clueless where they should go.

Aarrgghh… this is the man I married. But then, I’m sure I too have my own set of annoying habits that drive him mad. So, I guess everything is indeed fair and square between us.

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Nowdays, more and more people are turning to online dating to find prospective mates. It’s an alternative way for people to hook up when they can’t find a partner through the more traditional methods of meeting new people. But do you think online dating actually works?

Of all my friends who are married, only one took the initiative to meet up with guys online and she is now happily married to a man she met on the internet. I recalled that when she first told me she was chatting with men online and meeting up with some of them, I actually voiced my disapproval because of the dangers involved in online dating.

That is the difficulty of this online dating game because for it work, you need to be honest and be able to reveal a little of yourself to a complete stranger because no one would be willing to date a fake. This is the risk that a person must be prepared to take in order for online dating to succeed.

At the same time, you must also be aware that the person whom you are chatting with may well be a pyscho who is taking you for a ride. There is no way of ensuring the person is who he/she claims to be and there lies another potential danger. The only way to minimise the risk is to ask the right and similar questions over time and be attentive to the responses to ensure they are at least consistent each time. Online dating would only work if you are always on your toes to be able to separate the real and the fakes.

Then, when I told my friend about my hesitation of her meeting up with men she hardly knew, she assured me that she only meets up with them during the day and at public places such as shopping malls. This reduces the risks somewhat but I guess after a while of chatting online, people still do need to meet up to see if they will have the”chemistry” to take the relationship further.

I think online dating does work because many people have in fact found their life partners that way. But there are risks and it takes a little time and skill to find out if you will click with the person whom you are chatting with. Personally, I wouldn’t indulge in it because I think I would feel uncomfortable trying to find a life partner online among people I haven’t met.

By the way, has anybody tried this online dating game or would you give it a go if you are still single?

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Falling in love with a colleague and having a relationship with him or her while working together can be a very challenging experience. You do need to learn how to manage an office romance because more often than not, you have to face up to the pressure and gossips of other colleagues around you and it may also impact on your work performance.

Dealing with an office romance requires a couple to be able to separate their working and private lives. When I was once working for a banking organization, there was an officer who was interested in one of the department’s clerical staff. They had lunch together a number of times and not too long after, started the dating game. For a while, everything was fine until work got in the way. The officer expected a better work performance from the girlfriend and would sulk if it wasn’t delivered. On the other hand, the clerk found the boyfriend to be too fussy and felt he was dumping all the work on her just because she was the girlfriend. The officer had a few problems getting the cooperation from the other clericals in the same department and to the girlfriend, she seemed like an ‘easy target’ for work delegation, which annoyed her greatly.

Suffice to say, the romance didn’t last because conflicts at work were carried into their lives off work. Both would be sulking after work with neither willing to call the other to resolve their differences and thus, the office romance fizzled out. I guess it’s hard to have to face your partner after work when all you want is to get away when he or she is the source of your unhappiness from 9 to 5 everyday. Anyway, the clerk left the organization shortly after the break up and the ex-boyfriend was secretly smiling when she tendered her resignation.

We can all learn something from this office romance story and perhaps, the following lessons on how to manage an office romance will make things less awkward:

• Separate working and private life. Try to resolve all differences at work professionally in the office without bringing them home.
• Be professional at all times. Do not expect special treatment just because you have a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship going.
• Be discreet. Do not invite gossip by displaying affection publicly because not only it may make co-workers feel awkward, it may also fuels more gossips when things are not going your way.
• Consider job alternatives. If the office romance turns sour, you will still need to see and work with the person everyday. If you know this will be hard for you if it does not work out, getting another job elsewhere would preempt such a situation. Besides, it may ease the pressure off the relationship if both of you are really serious about keeping it going.

Personally, I would switch jobs if I’m were involved in an office romance. It’s not so much the gossip but I just think that not many people can work for or along with their partner. I mean imagine working with your spouse. Can you see a great potential for conflicts daily? I certainly can!

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Compared to the past, our moral standards have vastly shifted and what is not acceptable in days gone by may be largely acceptable today. With the proliferation of the internet and cable TV, many immoral or adult activities can be witnessed by kids daily that it raises difficult parenting issues.

In Hong Kong, there is now an on-going case involving a few local celebrities hitting news headlines in all the newspapers. What happened was apparently, a male star sent his computer for repairs and during the process, someone illegally downloaded pictures from his computer and had them circulated on the internet. Now, what are these pictures about? They are hundreds of pictures of 6 women in very sexy nude poses that he had took when he bedded them. Half of these women are actually very famous local celebrities and everyone in Hong Kong was having a field day forwarding these pictures.

Because this case involved famous singers and actresses and has hit news headlines, everyone, including primary school kids are talking about it. Kids are asking parents about the what, when, how and why because they couldn’t understand what their idols did and what they were up to. This has certainly put a lot of parents in an awkward position.

In the past, maybe parents can confidently tell their kids that only bad girls and bad boys do such a thing. But today, when even mundane people like you and me could have slept with a few people before settling down, who are we to judge what others did, what more when these people actually lead such exciting lives as pop stars? Their only “crime” is perhaps to be caught with the evidence of their indiscretions.

So, what do we tell the kids? That it is wrong to download other people’s stuff from their computer without their knowledge? Of course. That we should respect other people’s privacy? Yes. That it is immoral to sleep around when you are still single? Err, no yes. That we should not keep pictures of naked people in our computer for our own personal enjoyment? Maybe. That we should never pose nude pictures for our partner? Err… we can, but just be smart enough to ensure he/she deletes them afterwards?

Tell me, what would you tell your kids?

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Now, what are you thinking? Good looking men in erotic poses to send your imagination wild, I’ll bet. Tall, dark and handsome males with their most sexy looks to send you soaring through the heavens, I’m sure.

 Porn for Women

I stumbled across this book specifically for women at Amazon and can’t resist listing this here. Apparently, inside this book are pictures that get women really, really hot! If you are still interested, click on the book title and check out those reviews and excerpts to satisfy your curiosity.

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Trust is obviously a very important foundation in any relationship. Yet, ‘I don’t trust my husband’ is a common problem among many married women. So, how do you deal with trust issues with your spouse?

About a year or two ago, my husband and a good friend of his used to work in the same company. Every week, they spent about 3 nights away from home in the company’s factory in China. Sometimes, the friend’s wife would call my husband to ask for her husband as some sort of spot check. Her thinking was if her husband was with mine, then he can’t be fooling around during those nights that he was away from home!

She once asked me how do I trust my husband given that he wasn’t home half of the week. At that time, I simply told her that somehow I just do. But on deeper reflection, my husband had given me no reason not to trust him. Therefore, it would be silly of me to sit down and think what he was up to and where he had gone every other night. Not only was it not productive use of my time, it would have driven me nuts to keep thinking did he or didn’t he. And it is either I trust him completely or I don’t. I don’t think I would be a happy wife trusting a husband 100% only when he is home and 50% when he is away that I need to do some kind of spot check!

Perhaps to some people it is stupid to trust a man so easily. But I also hold on to the belief that if a spouse strays, it is a symptom and not a cause of a troubled marriage, unless the spouse is a serial womaniser of some sort. Even if my husband gives me good reasons to suspect that he is cheating on me and I can’t trust him, then I see only 2 ways to get around this problem. Either I have a heart-to-heart talk with him to resolve my insecurities or I do something practical to confirm or negate my suspicion.  

I once had a friend who kept accusing her husband of cheating on her without any concrete proof. She relied on her so-called woman’s instinct. The marriage didn’t work out but I don’t see the husband hooking up with another after the divorce. Perhaps he did cheat, perhaps he didn’t. But imagine being accused of cheating when you are actually innocent. Such suspicions can easily lead to a break down in relationship because the element of trust is totally gone.

Anyway, some people just do not trust others easily, even their own spouses. It may be because of past bitter experiences or it may be a way to protect themselves from being hurt. The interesting question is how much do you trust your spouse?

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