Tonight I was hearing the TV play in the background and I heard Dr. Laura Berman on Oprah’s OWN channel.

Dr. Laura Berman is a sex therapist and she told a married couple that they should masturbate in front of each other.  Both the husband and the wife said they felt uncomfortable with the idea.

It is funny because I have read that some people say that masturbation is a sin.  And I have heard people say it is wrong for even a married person to masturbate in front of their spouse.

Is it wrong to masturbate in front of your spouse?
                                     
                                                   

The Pittsburgh Steelers or the Green Bay Packers?
                                         
                                                         

A woman won $190 million in the Mega Million jackpot.  It was announced she was a single mother.

Then it was discovered she is not single.  She was separated from her abusive husband.  Under Idaho law, her husband will get his share of the money.  Here is the link:  Link

Should the woman have to share the money with her husband if they were separated?

My wife was saying the other day that her boss treats her like she is stupid.  She said in general at work she feels like she is treated like she doesn’t know what is going on.

I told her I feel the opposite.  I feel like everyone at work tends to overestimate my intelligence.  We were having a problem with our Quickbooks program and they expected that I could just fix it. 

Do your family/friends/coworkers treat you like you are smart?
                        
                                    

I was reading an article about a woman who won a national figure championship.  Here is her photo:

The woman is 5’4″ tall and weighed 125 for the contest.  The woman weighed 198 pounds at one time but managed to take off the weight.  Here is the link:  Link

If you were dating someone who lost a bunch of weight, would you be afraid the person might put the weight back on?

Years ago, I was sitting around in the house of a married couple that struggled socially.  The husband physically abused his wife and they openly yelled at each other over the course of the hour or so I was in their home.



I realized that the woman did not like me.  She communicated that with her words and actions.  It is my personality to try to get along with people so I tried as hard as I could to connect with her.  But no matter how hard I tried, she still insisted she did not prefer me as a person.  I remember going home after the conversation and talking to my wife.  I mentioned the woman was socially inept and struggled to connect with people.  She did not have many friends and rubbed people the wrong way.

My wife mentioned something to me at the time.  She told me something like, “Whenever someone does not like you, you always find some flaw in their personality to explain why the person does not connect with you.”  I had not given it much thought until then but at some level that was true.  At that stage in my life I bent over backwards to connect with everyone in my life.  So if a person did not like me, I tended to think the person really struggled with relationship issues.

It is funny but I still have that same basic pattern.  I was in a group setting recently where two people sort of turned away from me.  It was subtle but I could tell I was not connecting.  I tried and tried to connect but it was not happening.  I just chalked it up to one of those situations where the two people involved just did not prefer me.

I kind of hold that same pattern even on xanga.  I tend to get along with most people.  But xanga does have an inordinate number of socially dysfunctional people.  So if someone writes a handful of negative posts about me, I tend to think the person has some unresolved issues in their personal life and that the person is just acting out on xanga.  Again, I try not to take it personally but I also tend to give some sort of excuse to why the connection does not happen.  If someone sends me 50 negative private messages, I will probably suggest they seek professional help and try to chalk it up to something that is out of my hands.

That does not mean I think I am relationally perfect.  No.  I have relational flaws.  I interact with people and I make mistakes in some of those interactions.  I sometimes say or write the wrong thing.  And sometimes I am just being a jerk. 

But I sometimes wonder if the attempt to connect with even those who clearly turn away is at some level a social dysfunction.

                                                              

Now people were pretty open about cheating in school. 




But we hear so much about people cheating in a relationship.  And yet we don’t really see people admitting they cheated in a relationship.

So lets define cheating as having sex, kissing or just doing something you knew was wrong while you were in another committed relationship.

Have you ever cheated?
                                                            
     
                        

I pretty much cheated all through high school.  I cheated on tests. 

I usually didn’t bother making notes.  I just looked at other people’s paper.  I would make friends with smart people.

I had a Latin class and one of my friends had it a year before me.  So she gave me a copy of all of the tests and they were almost all the same.  I cheated off this other girl in Spanish class.  I just copied off her paper during the tests and she let me look.  One time I got a better grade than her and she got upset.

I had a computer class in high school and I fell behind on my typing projects so I asked this girl if I could just copy all of her completed projects and I would take her out on a date.  So she not only let me copy her assignments but she actually did most of them for me. 

I had another friend who let me copy all of her homework from biology.  She did all the work and then I copied in the morning.   After copying her papers all year, she asked me to go to some dance with her and I told her no and asked her best friend instead.  I now realize that was not the nicest thing to do.

I only cheated once in college and then I gave cheating up.

I heard of a class where they caught 8 students cheating by buying papers online.  I tend to think there are more cheaters than people are willing to admit.

Did you ever cheat on homework or tests in school?
                                   
                                                

Have you seen the baby yoga video?  It is being reported that the video is real.  Here is the link:  Link

So you think that is child abuse?

Would you want your mom reading your xanga site?