My partner and I have been having a disagreement recently about the etiquette of having sex when staying in other people's homes. I feel that it is extremely rude and should be avoided at all costs, while she feels that it is expected and normal, particularly if we are staying with friends/family for more than a couple of nights.
I asked my sister and her husband what their views are, and my sister informed me that they plan to have regular sex when they stay with us in our new home. She also informed me that other visitors would expect to do the same.
As our new home has my first-ever guest bedroom, which up until now I had been looking forward to having occupied by friends and family, I would be grateful if you would help clarify whether guests should have sex in guest bedrooms, and if this is conditional upon the relationship and length of stay.
Wow. Just ponder that for a moment... The man is so disturbed by the thought of his guests engaged in sexual acts with a spouse behind closed doors in his home that he's now reluctant to invite them to stay. If that's not prudery, then I'm not sure what is!
Care to guess what Miss Manners' reply is? (It's rather amusing.) She writes:
It is conditional on their not making it known to others in the house, before, during or after the event. Your sister has already violated this, but Miss Manners acknowledges that she can claim you provoked her.
That's right. People with manners do not foist their sex lives on uninterested third parties. They don't get it on in their friend's kitchen, just because they happen to feel a bit lusty. However, what people do in private -- including in guest bedrooms -- is purely their own business. Just don't break the furniture or wake the neighbors.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
I'm a philosopher, not a psychologist. Yet often the moral advice I offer touches on matters of psychology. My policy is that I'll offer advice based on common sense psychology, albeit only in general terms. I don't wish to act as anyone's therapist; I'm neither qualified for nor interested in that.
Often, a person needs only moral advice, with a dash of common sense psychology. That's what I can offer. Yet sometimes, a person has deeper psychological problems: to live well, he needs therapy.
That raises a question: How can a person find a good therapist? That's a tricky question. A less-than-good therapist can be a waste of time and money, if not positively damaging.
Happily, psychologist Ellen Kenner offers some helpful on choosing a therapist in this article on her web site. If you're looking for a therapist, I recommend reading the whole article. Here, I'd just like to comment on some highlights.
Dr. Kenner recommends asking three preliminary questions:
What is your background and experience with my problem?
What are your credentials?
What type of therapy do you offer?
That's just the initial evaluation. Dr. Kenner emphasizes that the patient must continue to judge the therapist and his advice. She writes:
In the early stages of therapy, observe the following: Is your therapist goal oriented? Do you work on specific goals? Does your therapist focus on solving problems? Is he or she a careful listener... rather then jumping hastily in with an agenda that seems off base? In therapy, do you look back at your past purposefully... or do you spend oodles of time rehashing your past with very little application to present or to the future[?]
And:
Again, as you start therapy with the person you choose... ask yourself -- "Does the therapist's advice make sense to me?" Are you becoming more hopeful that your life can improve -- not based on floating wishes, but based on facts and skills you are learning that help you cope better with your world? Do you regularly experience "ah-ha -- now I see the picture more clearly"? Or do you shake your head and wonder where therapy is headed? Always give yourself permission to ask your therapist his or her reasoning for any advice you are given. You want to grasp first hand why you should follow any advice.
That's very good advice! The critical point is not to lose your basic confidence in yourself as a rational, thinking person, just because you happen to be in therapy.
If you're seeking psychological help, you might feel very confused and burdened and uncertain due to your psychological problems. You're seeking help from a stranger. Your mind isn't working right, and you don't know how to fix the problem yourself. That's not going to bolster your confidence in your own judgment!
So you might be tempted to cede your authority to any half-way decent therapist you can find, on the assumption that he/she must know better than you. Or you might be reluctant to seek therapy at all, thinking that you'd have to cede your authority to that therapist.
That's a mistake. Unless you're delusional, you can judge whether your therapist seeks to help you live more rationally, more purposefully, more honestly, more independently, and so on. If not, then you need to seek a better therapist, using Dr. Kenner's advice. You can do that -- and you should do that.
In short, you should think of your therapist as you would think of a plumber, mechanic, or doctor. You're hiring the person because he/she has expertise that you lack -- not because you're a moron. You need to be sure to choose the person wisely, based on reasonable criteria. Then you need to judge the quality of their work, seeking someone better if you're not satisfied. If you do that, you can find yourself a good therapist.
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM
As my twitter followers know, I had oral surgery on Tuesday afternoon. Some time ago, my gum on a particular molar (#19, in fact) receded beyond the point of safety. The surgery, performed by a periodontist, transplanted a section of gum tissue from my palate (i.e. the roof of my mouth) to that problem spot.
The surgery went very well, but now I have a bunch of sliced-up tissue by that molar, plus a seemingly massive excavation site in the roof of my mouth. All of that will heal up, but for the moment, it's rather painful -- even with the protective dressings around the molar and the palate guard covering the whole roof of my mouth. Plus, I've definitely learned the meaning and importance of taking drugs to "get ahead of the pain" via my own failure to take my prescribed Vicodin as soon as possible yesterday. I was only delayed by about an hour, but that made a difference, I think.
Anyway, that's all just a long-winded way of saying that I'm not much in the mood for blogging. Hence, I'm going to lean on Miss Manners today, as I was totally floored by the woman in this column when I read it:
Dear Miss Manners:
My son got married two years ago, and please keep in mind that my daughter-in-law and I have never had a falling-out. We've stayed at their house overnight and were treated wonderfully. We get along fine because I do not want to be a meddling mother-in-law.
However, I've got some situations that I do not know how to handle.
1. First, tell me, am I wrong for believing that the bride should acknowledge her groom's side of the family with a thank-you note for gifts, rather than making the groom write the thank-you? The way they handled it, she wrote the thank-yous to her side of the family and my son wrote the notes to his side. Is this the acceptable way now?
2. Does that also hold true on Mother's Day? Only my son acknowledges me on Mother's Day with a phone call, but the both of them acknowledge her mother and both her grandmothers each year by taking them out to brunch or hosting a brunch at their home. Even though we live in another state, I felt slighted again this year on Mother's Day when all I received was a phone call from my son, no card, nothing. I was brought up to respect both our mothers on Mother's Day with at least a card, and it was always the wife's duty to keep the list and remember to buy the cards or whatever.
3. Would I be out of line by sending a thank-you note to my son thanking him for the phone call? I love my son dearly, and it's not that I expect a gift, but I don't think it's very nice to call me up and tell me what they are doing for the other mothers and all I get is a "Happy Mother's Day."
4. I really need some answers because I feel that when they start having a family, I will be slighted again where the children are concerned.
Wow. That's a woman determined to ruin her relationship with her son, then blame it on her daughter-in-law! Here's what Miss Manners said in reply:
Unless you heed Miss Manners's advice, you will indeed receive more slights. That is because you are manufacturing them yourself, and she is advising you to stop.
The premise on which you base your grievances -- that a wife assumes all social duties because the husband is the sole wage-earner -- has long been defunct. Couples sensibly decide for themselves who does what, and dividing correspondence by family is both common and sensible. You wouldn't care to have Mother's Day acknowledged by a card from your daughter-in-law and ignored by your son.
So if you expect more than a telephone call, you should deal with him. And not by a thank-you letter if you intend that as a reprimand.
Try saying "Your Mother's Day excursions sound so delightful that I'd love to join you some time. Would it be convenient for me to visit at that time? Or if it turns out that I'm not able to, I'll settle for a card."
Sadly, I don't think the woman will follow Miss Manners' good advice -- and she'll make her son and his bride miserable in the process.
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:20 PM
After many years of using David Allen's Getting Things Done method of managing life, I cannot imagine living without it. So I was delighted to find, via Gus, a 45 minute talk he gave to Google introducing GTD. In the video, Allen doesn't talk about the details of how the system works. (For that, you'll have to buy the book. Given its power to transform your whole approach to purposeful endeavors for the better, it's well the few bucks.) Instead, he's giving a broad overview of why GTD works -- unlike any other system of "getting yourself organized."
The basic lesson: The mind has identity, and if you want your mind work superbly well in your pursuit of values, then you'd better develop a system of managing information, goals, and actions that respects its capacities and limitations. That system is GTD.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
Usually, when a person needs to remember to do something, he gives himself a standing order associated with some trigger, e.g. "check the tire pressure and wiper fluid when changing the oil on the car." Sometimes, however, new standing orders will not stick to well-automatized actions. Case in point:
Early last spring, I bought a well-reviewed, cheap car seat heater. I'm using it regularly this winter. Unfortunately, it remains fully operational -- and so drains the car battery -- if left plugged into the cigarette lighter when the car is off. Predictably, I left it plugged in a few times accidentally, despite my best efforts to remember to unplug it when turning off the car. I should just be able to add it to my standard leaving-the-car checklist, I thought. That didn't work at all, however. A few weeks ago, I finally managed to drain my car battery. (Thankfully, I did so at a convenient time, as I was home and didn't need to go anywhere. Paul gave me a jump.) Given the inflexibility of my teaching schedule, that's not a consequence I could afford to risk in the future.
After that, I considered buying a "battery drain guard" (like this one), but I hate to spend $20 on a silly memory problem. So I decided to try a different solution. Instead of trying to remember to unplug the heater, I plug it in in such a way that I can't forget. I run the rather long cord over my thigh so that it's totally out of the way -- until I try to leave the car. Then I need to unplug the heater to get out of the car smoothly. So far, I've found it totally reliable: it's easy to remember to plug it in via that convoluted route and impossible to forget to unplug it.
The basic reason why this new method works whereas my old method failed is that my getting-out-of-the-car routine is very thoroughly automatized. I'm not thinking of the car seat heater; I have no immediate reason to do so. That's not true of plugging in the car seat heater; it happens whenever I notice that I'm cold. So while I'm already thinking about it, I can easily plug it in by a slightly odd route.
So I'd put the general principle as follows: If you're trying to automatize some new action, don't attempt to force yourself to remember ex nihilo, but instead find some way to connect to it to your natural patterns of thought.
Notably, that's precisely what a well-managed (i.e a GTD-type) task list does. Instead of overloading your mind with the task of remembering all that you need and want to do, you only need to automatize checking and managing your task list. For people with lots to do like me, such a task list is essential not only to productivity but also to basic peace of mind.
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