Confidence Leads to Relationships

Recently I’ve begun to ponder a rather strange concept. It concerns the idea that there are a tremendous amount of people on the planet. Out of this mass of humanity there exists only one perfect mate for each and every one of us. Does that make sense to you? Is this a little confusing? I think it is, only because of the shear multitude of people calling this rock home. I mean people are everywhere. If you are confused on this subject, all you have to do is spend a couple of hours anywhere near New York City and trust me you’ll be convinced. Out of this confusion of people we are supposed to search the planet and find that one true love.

My point is the likelihood of actually meeting that one special other person in the world is extremely low. It’s so low in fact that the narrow possibility of this wild prophecy coming true is beyond me. I remember as I grew up people told me I will meet the right “one” for me and everything will work out great. This is bullshit. I mean come on, if this idea really holds true then how come people don’t search the world over for their “only one” and always end up with people they live close to or who are from their home town, or they work with or… ? You get the idea. My point is that most people don’t go to great lengths to find their mates. Wouldn’t that one person more likely be on another continent; and wouldn’t that person probably speak another language?


This can’t be true. Tons of great matches exist in the world. People have to realize this and make a decision to make a match work. This of course shatters the belief system of at least 1/3 of the planet, I’m sure, but love and relationships are a series of decisions that we, who are in relationships, decide to act out. It’s not some magical blessing; it’s commitment and honor. With that honor you create your own world and live in it according to the rules of your relationship.

This leads me to the next part. The rules of your relationship are whatever you decide they are. I know people who spend all their time trying to nail people other than their partner and their partner is the same way. These people swing more than children at a playground and yet they have perfectly productive, even loving, relationships. I even know a couple who swung with another couple on their wedding night. It’s a little creepy for me but hey, it really does work for them. They have enough confidence in themselves and their relationship to do whatever they feel is appropriate.

There is this guy who lives next to me right now. He decided to take an opportunity to work in another state away from his wife. They see each other a lot on the weekends, but he has confidence in her and she has in him. When I met them both I could just tell, and they are both great people.

Finally this brings me to the real basis of everything: confidence. Confidence to me is the one thing that can make or break any situation. Confidence is the foundation, the cornerstone of everything that happens in our world. How do you think Donald Trump got to the position he is in life after he lost all of his money in the 90s? It’s because he was confident he could do it. When you look at all those people who have great relationships what do you see? You see a quiet confidence between the two of them. Each person is confident of themselves and they believe in their relationship. Confidence can bring walls down and build mountains. Confidence is the most attractive thing you can offer the opposite sex. And if they aren’t in to confidence then you don’t really want to be with them, because that means the person isn’t into respect.

I think I’ve made my point so I’ll leave it there. The only other thing I can say is that confidence is available to everyone. All you have to do is make a decision to live your life with it and work at it.

Well that’s all for this week’s column. I just want to send a shout out to my buddy George Fredericks. My recent discussions with him helped me come up with this week’s topic. As always, have a great week and thanks for reading to the end.

He Becomes a Man

I think it’s time to ramp things up a bit. I’m not exactly sure what that means but I plan to figure it out as I go along. It should be fun. Let’s get started.

Today I sit here in my underwear doing my weekly writing. My daughter eats her breakfast and I ponder life in accordance with my belief system. All that means is that I woke up where I live and now have to deal with all the things I face on a day to day basis. None of this is too riveting if you ask me, it does however afford me the opportunity to look at some pretty interesting things.

A few days ago I received my previous farewell column from when I wrote for the University newspaper. I was surprised to see a couple of things. The first thing I noticed was that I had significantly more hair at that time, which is always startling. The second was how I am basically in a different place. At that time I was in the midst of truly facing life for the first time. My ex-wife was threatening me whenever she could and I was trying to decide what I wanted out of life.

I guess that’s a good thing to talk about. You see I believe that every person goes through a period where they decide to grow up or not. In my case I call it deciding to become a man. The funny thing is that I never did this until just recently. I was busy hiding in whatever I could find to hide in. My life existed in a constant paradox of tremendous opportunity and avoidance. In other words I was faced with many chances in life but just couldn’t bring myself doing anything about them. I gained weight, I tried to use sex and I even wanted to drink sometimes. I spent money frivolously. I did anything I could to create a barrier between myself and any measure of success.

About 4 months ago I really looked at what was going on. I had all the skills I needed. The only thing I had to do was decide to use them. I am writing a book that has stayed in relatively the same state for 2 years. I’ve done nothing really to improve my quality of life, that is until 4 months ago. That’s when I decided that I needed to either shit or get off the pot. In my case it means that I had finally decided to become the person that I’ve always wanted to be. I decided to become a man.

Now I realize that a lot of people think that you acquire this certain station in life by simply growing up or by experiencing life as it may and go with the flow and see what happens. I am not one of these people. You see I think becoming a man is a decision. It’s a very important decision. It’s where a guy looks at his life and decides if he wants to end up a schlep or wants to do something that’s meaningful to him. This does not mean that a guy has to become a doctor, engineer, super-pimp or go to the moon. All I’m getting at is that a guy has to decide to do something. Even if you decide to do nothing, that’s still a decision. I mean look at the Buddha… that guy created a whole way of life out of just sitting in one spot until he was “awake”. He gave himself meaning in life by doing essentially nothing. My point is that I think it’s important to “declare” something and then go after it.

What this has meant to me is that I started to exercise, changed my diet, lost 40 lbs since March, gained a new perspective and became motivated to do something. It’s a strange place for me. My wife marvels that I have just made these discoveries because she made them like 10 years ago but I always tell her it’s better late than never. What the future can hold only the future knows. All I know is that now I look forward to it instead of facing it with jaded dread-filled eyes.

Well this ends my third renewed column. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any comments feel free to leave them and I’ll take them into account in future columns. Thanks for reading to the end.

The Real Married Man Ponders His Personal Sexual Evolution

After going over last week’s column I realized that I missed some rather important items that needs discussion. The first is to tell you my plan, or rather what I’m going to do with this thing I’ve created. I’m going write a weekly column. Second, it’s going to be my take on relationships and how people relate. I know that sounds redundant but each word or phrase, i.e. relationships and how people relate, have different connotations. I think so at least.

This week I thought I would talk about sex. Sex is a good thing to talk about. I like it and I think most people do. The funny thing about sex is that its meaning tends to evolve over time. It has for me. I’m now a 35 year old man. I’m on my second marriage and I still pretty much live for sex. It’s great. I’m not talking about it being great in terms of the whole pizza analogy either. You know where sex is like pizza, even if it’s not that great it’s still pretty good. I’m talking about real sex. Sex you work on. Sex you achieve.

Way back when, when I was like 12 or so I had my first sexual experience. I’m not talking about the time the idiot older boy next door got this bright idea to trap me under the bed and make me suck on his penis when I was only 6. He sucked on mine and told me it tasted like chocolate. He asked me what his tasted like and I said I didn’t really know. All in all it was quite a strange experience. I don’t feel affected by the whole thing. I still love a good blowjob, so that’s still in order. And I can honestly say that I like watching a woman do it, so that pretty much rules out the homosexual tendencies one might hint at from an experience such as the one I just mentioned.

I guess my first sexual experience happened when I was 6. Hmmmmm… Anyway getting back to the 12 year old thing, I had played doctor with girls and we had played around but that’s not what I’m talking about either. I guess I had a lot of sexual experiences before I was 12, but 12 is about the time I started kissing other girls and playing with them and we experienced mutual pleasure for the sake of experiencing mutual pleasure together. It wasn’t some random, "I’ll show you mine if you show me yours", or the inevitable, “hey what’s that you’ve go there” thing kids do when they notice boys have different parts than girls. We didn’t have intercourse or anything like that. We just kissed and touched each other a little bit through our clothes. It was nice. I had a pretty innocent view of sex at that point in time. I’m sure I was sporting some major wood and I’m sure the girl knew of the hardness between my legs but it was wholesome. There was a goodness about just feeling each other for that first time. There was nothing dirty about it.

I still remember the first time I experienced intercourse with a woman. I was 17. I remember the feeling of our naked skin touching. It was electrifying. I thought of sex at that point as this incredibly religious thing. It was something that I just had to have. I had to know what the hell everyone was talking about. So we did it. I will thank my first girlfriend for the rest of my life for the beauty of that first experience. The funny thing was after that sex turned into something different. Even though I was doing it with the same girl, we had already done it. Now I sort of looked upon it as maintenance. Now we just did it together because it was something that felt good.

Next came my later teens and early 20s. I pretty much fucked at that time. I fucked for fuck’s sake. I did it because I was a screaming hormone locomotive cruising down the track and my track was maybe a little too small. I was the test plane doing mach 27 that turned into a ball of fire and crashed to the earth. Basically I spent my time wishing I was doing it. I was a mating machine and vagina was the oil for my piston.

At that point I met this girl and we ended up getting married. Things were pretty good for a while. We did it all the time. That kept up for like 4 years and we entered into the married sex phase. I decided that I wanted to assign some sort of meaning to the whole thing. Sex now meant expression. I no longer just fucked my mate, but occasionally I “made love” to her. It was a new phase for my sexual existence. I had progressed from the innocent 12 year old sexual endeavor to my screaming, “why aren’t we doing it NOW,” phase to the caring and compassionate married sex/make love phase. Well I have to tell you that this first marriage ended badly and I inevitably ended up back in the “why aren’t we doing it NOW” section, but that’s another story.

Then I finally met my current wife and now I’ve come up with this whole new phase and it is great! You see, now I’m in the “innocent 12 year old sexual endeavor”—“why aren’t we doing it NOW”—“caring and compassionate married sex/make love” phase. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever come up with. I think basically this comes from the fact that I really love the person I’m with. She rules! She sort lets me do whatever I want, which includes this column. Now I spend my time thinking not of just having sex but how exactly do I want to do it. Also, how do I want to feel when we do it? Like I said, it’s great! I think about the whole experience I want to create for her. I have goals damn it! I have things to work for and she is where I want it all to happen.

I can’t imagine the next sex phase that I come up with, but I’m sure there will be another one. I can just imagine the swinger/hedonism/plastic surgery sex phase. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

Until next week I hope all is well, and please leave your comments if you have any. Also if you have anything you want me to write about let me know.

The Real Married Man!

The Real Married Man Begins Again

I guess there is no better time than now to begin this venture, journey, sojourn or path. It seems an endless thing in which I now undertake but it does indeed end and only I know the meaning of its finality. Basically what I'm saying here is that I know when enough is enough and I know when to quit. Without further adieu... here we go.

Herein lays the very first posting of the Married Man blogger style. Once upon a time I began this whole thing as a college student, fresh from a failed marriage, child in mix and one hell of an antagonistic ex. I thought to myself, "hey maybe if I share my experiences with others I can in some way help out." I had visions of grandeur where I saw myself as the savior of men who didn't have a clue. I would field questions from readers and start like an advice column, but that never happened. In fact the only responses I did get were from a nutcase who happened to be a former professor of the university. He went at length to provide me with leading and insulting responses. We carried on this conversation, me through the newspaper, him through anonymous letters sent to me through campus mail, for some weeks. Finally it all ended when he accused me of being a faggot because I chose to ignore his letters and talked about decorating my apartment, which just happened to be the first apartment sans relationship.

So anyway, getting back to my admirer. He showered me with letters about how God would have saved my relationship and so on, which I appreciated until he called me names. That, my friends, was the final straw. I found out, by luck actually, who he was. It seems that he would actually just go to the secretary of the Undergraduate Student Government office and have her mail them to me. Well since she knew who I was she just put them in my mailbox at the newspaper. Also, she knew who he was. When I started talking about what a joke this fella was she told me who he was and pointed him out to me.

Well guess what happened next... I decided to confront the guy. I went up to him in the Student Union cafeteria and told him that I knew he was sending me letters and that I no longer appreciated the tone of said letters. He started to shake visibly. He denied sending them but let slip a detail about the letters that only he and I knew since I never published anything of what he wrote to me. I only shared the general idea of what he said in his columns. He shook more violently. So here is this old guy sitting in school cafeteria shaking with me standing over him. I'm not a small man. I am 6'1" and at that point I was about 230 lbs. I weigh more now, unfortunately, but we'll get into that later. I decide to hunker down to his level. I said, "I know that it's you, and I want the letters to stop." And viola' they stopped. Just like that! See what you have to go through when you have your own idea and decide to publish it for everyone to see? I can't imagine how Clinton felt when he decided to start banging interns and people found out about it. I digress.

Anyway, the main point of what I plan to do now is to share my experiences again. I am now remarried, hence the Married Man title and have a wealth of stuff I can talk about. Plus this time I would like people to respond with what they think. Sometimes I'll be sappy, sometimes I'll be crass and sometimes I'll probably just blather on about who knows what but it will always be me doing the talking... unless of course people respond to my posts. I'm sure I'll be able to handle that and deal with it when I have to. So look forward to more writings by me and I'll let you know what I think about Life, the Universe and Everything and not just the book but the world around us and how I think relationships affect us all. Feel free to submit ideas for me to talk about too. That was one of the biggest things I did before I guess was that I would go up to people I didn't know and ask what they would like me to write about. By the way, the column became wildly popular much to my surprise and I got to learn more about life along the way.

Until next time... the Married Man