by Marty Coleman | Jul 14, 2010 | Having Sex - 2010, Mignon McLaughlin |
Day #3 of Having Sex Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
I don’t actually think this is true, but it brings up a good point, namely that we often teach our sons and daughters differently about sex. Even if we are ‘liberated’ in talking about it we still unconsciously address the two sexes differently.
For example, talking to a teenage boy going out to a party you might tell him ‘make sure you keep it zipped, don’t do something stupid, don’t be so horny that you can’t control yourself’. Talking to a teenage girl you might say ‘watch out tonight, don’t leave your drink out of your site, don’t let the guy be with you alone, don’t drive off in the middle of nowhere with him.’
The assumption underlying those warnings is that the man will be the horny one wanting the sex and the girl will be the one deciding to give it or not, like a clerk at a store, disengaged. But the truth is you have to talk to your daughter with the understanding that she is a sexual creature as well. She could be the aggressor, she could be the one ‘wanting it’ and forcing the issue with the guy.
I agree it’s not quite as likely, but that doesn’t mean you don’t recognize that, no matter what her libido level, she still needs to know that she will feel things too. It isn’t just about her responding to a guy, it’s about her figuring out her own feelings and desires as well. It does no good service to a daughter or son to assume they fit into a cookie cutter sexual mold. Explain to them the range of feelings they may come across, not just some pandering platitude that isn’t based in their reality.
If you want to be effective in helping your son or daughter understand what is happening to them in the sexual world, you have to address them as real people, not cliches of sexuality.
………………………………………………………………
Don’t forget, we now have Napkin Dad birthday cards, cups and t-shirts available, check it out!
………………………………………………………………
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Mignon McLaughlin, 1913-1983, American journalist and author. Writer and editor for various magazines including Vogue, Redbook, Cosmopolitan and Glamour.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 13, 2010 | Having Sex - 2010, Mary McCarthy |
Day #2 of Having Sex Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
People will often state there is a difference between sex and love. But they don’t often recognize when they ask one be the other. When you are ‘in love’ it’s easy to have the sex so intertwined with the love that you don’t know the difference. But when the ‘in love’ phase settles down and you have to decide to love someone on a daily basis it might be tempting to use the easiest thing available, sex, to be the ‘proof’ of love. You basically ask sex to be love and expect your partner to accept it as such.
But the truth is sex can’t be love. It can, at best, be an expression of love the same way clothing can be an expression of you, but it can’t be you. This is important to help your children understand if you are a parent. It is so easy for teenagers to think the expression of something is the same as the real thing. That is why you hear the cliche line of the teenage boy ‘If you ‘LOVED’ me, you would do this with me.’ They are trying to persuade the girl that they are one and the same.
Sex is a physical act, love is an emotional act. They overlap and they are intertwined, but they are not the same and understanding it ourselves and helping our children understand it helps avoid much heartache.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“You mustn’t force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.” – Mary McCarthy, 1912-1989, American author. Wrote ‘The Group’ which was on the NYT best seller list for 2 years (1963-65)
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 12, 2010 | Aldous Huxley, Having Sex - 2010 |
It’s the start of Sex Week at The Napkin Dad Daily!
Not equally interesting but actually more interesting, now that is a dedicated intellectual!
Sex always intrigues me because people are so driven by it, and have some variation of it on their mind so often yet are usually reluctant to discuss it openly.
That is especially a problem when dealing with teenage sons and daughters. Not talking about sex is really not a very good option. I always feel parents are abrogating their duty if they do that. But talking about sex intelligently and appropriately isn’t all that easy.
The best advice I can give in that circumstance (and many others) is to make sure you are on their side. Don’t be their enemy. To do that you have to talk about what is in their best interest. Not your interest, not your knowledge, not your reputation, not your circumstances. But what is in their best interest. To do that you need to ask questions, you need to walk through ideas with them about the issue.
You can’t do that if they think you will be judging them or lecturing them or against them and their ideas. They have to know you will stay calm and be willing to listen to what they are really thinking and feeling. THEN you move into offering your reflections on what they said, your ideas of where it might lead, and your cautions on things to think about they may not have considered.
More tomorrow!
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing more interesting than sex.” – Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, English writer. Author of ‘Brave New World’.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 9, 2010 | Self, Travel, Vacation - 2010, William Least Heat Moon |
Day #4 of Vacation Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
I took my daughters to Europe in 2003. We traveled through Germany, Italy, France and Spain for 2 weeks. We stayed at youth hostels and Bed & Breakfasts.
When we were in Munich, Germany we had beds for 5 in our room and only 4 of us so a single woman from the US joined us. We knew nothing about her, she knew nothing about us. We went out to dinner with her and got to discover her as she was, right then. She was a blank slate, with no yesterdays for us.
We didn’t know if she suffered from depression, with an Eeyore cloud over her head all the time, or if she had been stabbed in the back by her best friend the week before. All we knew was what she decided to present to us that day.
One of the great things about moving away from an old home town, or traveling to a new spot where you spend some time, is that you get to reinvent yourself. You can practice being who you want to be, not who you are expected to be.
But here is the great secret. Every new encounter you are a blank slate. It doesn’t matter if you are in France or your local dry cleaners. That person does not know you or your history. You want to be different than you are in daily life? Then practice on that new person. Be kinder, be more complimentary, be quieter, be less judgmental, be funnier, be happier. You don’t need to go on vacation to become someone new, you just need to see the opportunities right in front of you.
Before you know it, you will become what you practice, no matter where you are.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“There are no yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon, 1939-not dead yet, American writer of native Osage heritage. Writes particularly about travel, including his best seller, Blue Highways, published in 1982, about his journey on the backroads of America.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 8, 2010 | Nikos Kazantsakis, Travel, Vacation - 2010 |
Day #4 of Vacation Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
But isn’t this against the whole idea of traveling? That is that you open your mind and allow whatever is really there to come through, instead of creating a vacation of photo ops and prepackaged tours, right?
Yes, that is true, the traveler does need to be open. But the traveler also needs to understand that what is going on when they travel is in their head. They benefit from being able to provide themselves and others a story of their travels and to do that they must be able to create a narrative. Not just a story of ‘I did this then I did that’, but a story that creates itself as you experience it. The aromas you notice as you walk, the look of the sky as the sun goes down, the feeling of the humidity or dryness in the air. You experience your world with awareness is the idea. You notice and remember.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.” – Nikos Kazantzakis, 1883-1957, Greek writer and philosopher. Author of ‘Zorba the Greek’.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 7, 2010 | Frederick B. Wilcox, Vacation - 2010 |
Day #3 of Vacation Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
It used to make me crazy when my mother, then my first wife would demand that we clean the house before we left on vacation. Nothing seemed more absurd to me than that. Why the heck did we need to clean if we weren’t even going to be there, right? Of course, as most of you reading this know (and I finally comprehended before I remarried) cleaning before you leave means you will return to a clean home and that makes the anticipation of coming home sweet, not sour.
This quote is a variation on that. It’s not just a clean home, but your good home that is nice to return to. Whether it’s the colors, yard, smells, bed, animals – whatever it is, if you design your home to be good and uniquely yours, then what a great feeling to know you will be returning to it at the end of any time away, whether vacation, business trip, family emergency or something else.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“For travel to be delightful, one must have a good place to leave and return to.” – Frederick B. Wilcox, of which I could find nothing.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 6, 2010 | Earl Wilson, Vacation - 2010 |
Vacations are the sort of thing where you have unthought out expectations of what it should consist of. I don’t mean the destination, I mean the intangibles that you don’t think of in advance, but you expect to have happen. Perhaps you expect that a vacation includes sleeping in late at the hotel while your spouse expects a vacation to include getting up early and seeing the sites before the crowd. Perhaps you expect a vacation to be all planned out, no surprises while your traveling partner is thinking a vacation isn’t a vacation unless it’s filled with unexpected moments and events.
With my first wife and I we had to come to terms with money on vacation. I remember her worrying about money and what we were spending and me getting annoyed at that. At one point it came to me, I had an expectation I hadn’t realized. My vacation was in large part a vacation from worrying about money!
When we get right down to it the best, most rejuvenating vacations are a break from worry, right? Might be worrying about money like I was doing back home, or worrying about obligations and judgment and duties. So, when you plan your vacation, think along those lines and plan accordingly. What do you want to not worry about?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking.” – Earl Wilson, 1907-1987, American journalist. At least I think it was this Wilson. The other choices are a baseball player and a congressman. I made the most likely choice to have a witty saying.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 5, 2010 | Sam Keen |
It’s that time of the summer when taking it easy is an art. What do you do to take it easy in the middle of this season?
Drawing © Marty Coleman
“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” – Sam Keen, American Philosopher
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 4, 2010 | American, Independence Day, Jose Ortega y Gasset, USA |
Today we celebrate the birth of the United States of America 234 years ago.
Who likes the idea of being mediocre? Not me. But I do like the idea that the millions and millions of average people are the deciding factor in whether a nation is great. Yes, it’s wonderful to have fantastic leaders and great managers and genius artists and fabulous engineers who lead the way. But most of us don’t live in a world surrounded by fame and greatness every day. We live in our neighborhoods with average folk. Who they are, who you are, that is what defines America.
You can read my post from yesterday on how I test myself to see if I am living up to what I consider to be American standards.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men, but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.” – Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1883-1955, Spanish author and philosopher
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Marty Coleman | Jul 2, 2010 | Henry David Thoreau, Technology - 2010 |
Day #5 of Technology Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
A tool is something that helps you achieve a goal. When you become obsessed with the tool for it’s own sake you are no longer working on a goal, but are now serving that tool. It doesn’t matter if it is the car you drive, the computer you work on, or the body you live in. If you are exclusively focused on the maintenance of those things then you are living a stunted life. Never lose sight of what you are doing with these tools, why you have them in the first place.
Are you using them or are you simply an agent to maintain them?
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Men have become tools of their tools.” – Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, American writer, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, surveyor, historian & philosopher
Like this:
Like Loading...
