Hasta La Gadget!

Valentine’s Day is approaching so I thought it appropriate to tell the story I often do in therapy to help describe a basic difference between the genders. It’s actually not simply a difference. More like a lack of understanding.

It’s a story about me and my husband ordering breakfast at Waffle House. Sounds simple. But when I ask both the husbands and the wives who are working with me in marital therapy if their reactions would be the same as ours, there is an overwhelming and astounding “YES” from both genders.

Here’s the story. My son Rob and I are leaving home in one car. Meeting my husband at Waffle House for breakfast. He is a few minutes behind us.

Now we have been going to Waffle House since Rob was eating Cheerios from a Ziploc bag. He is now 20. We all eat the same thing every time. Ritualistic dining.

So that day, Rob and I get there first. We say “hi” to Mary, our favorite waitress, and she seats us. We chat and decide to order. I order for my husband as well, knowing of course that he will be there soon. Plus he is starving. As he is seated, I tell him what I have done.

“Well thanks, what did you get?”.

“The usual”.

“That’s great”. We go on. Then I start thinking, something we psychologists do a lot. “Just out of curiosity. If I had been the late one, would you have ordered for me?”

He replies flatly. With a bit of chagrin. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

The answer is the $10,000 response.

“Because I would have been afraid you would have been mad.”

There’s the huge difference. “Mad? No! I would have felt cared about and known and adored and remembered and cherished.”

A major light bulb went on.

If the woman stops and is objective, what the guy has revealed is that he is afraid of disappointing us. Feeling that he has failed us. That’s what he didn’t want in the first place.

Drs. Patricia Love and Steve Stosny have written about how to work out these dynamics in their wonderful book on marriage, “How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It”. This book is based on fantastic research and includes practical and tangible guidelines. As I understand what men have told me, it is difficult for men to risk disappointing women, because as a gender they are so invested in pleasing them. So invested in fact that not doing so feels like a tremendous failure. Men basically need affirmation. So they withdraw or get angry if they get the message that they have not been pleasing.

Women on the other hand want to be understood. To know that our guy has us figured out. Knows what makes us tick. When we don’t get that understanding, what do we do? The list varies from subtle to dramatic, from passive-aggressive to being demanding.

It can be a horrendous cycle of anger and sadness on the woman’s part, leading to withdrawal or anger in men. Leading to more loneliness for the woman. And on it goes.

So what does this have to do with Valentine’s Day? Maybe the guys who really “know” their girls are out there picking out the perfect remembrance. Maybe the girls are planning an incredibly affirming experience for their man. However, there may be potential for these reactions to wield their ugly influence. Unless you know about it. Figure it out.

I got a blouse for my 20th wedding anniversary. It was a nice blouse. My spouse received tickets to two days of practice rounds at the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. Two tickets so that he and his son could have a once-in-a-lifetime experience together. (Now I am rubbing it in.)

I didn’t get mad, really I didn’t. I didn’t get mad because I finally understood the whole risking thing for a guy. It wasn’t about me or us at all.

I remembered my Waffle House story.

And actually, the blouse has grown on me.

You can read more of Dr. Margaret at http://drmargaretrutherford.com . You can also receive a free copy of her new eBook, “Second Commandments Of Good Therapy”, a basic guide to how you know if your therapy is working and/or how to choose a potential therapist.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

Like most couples, we entered the empty nest phase of our lives pretty much the same way we entered the world, starry-eyed and clueless. An anxiety-inducing mixture of excitement and terror. We had our big now what? moment and stumbled ahead, knowing that we had to do something to reconnect as the couple that fell in love all those years ago.

We couldn’t just pretend there wasn’t a big space where the kids had been in our day-to-day lives. Not just the time spent running hither and yon — to school, practices, plays, dance, ball games, and the like — but the social interaction of those activities all instantly disappear. Poof.

Six years down the road we seem to have learned a few things — we like to call it breaking the empty nest rules, but we have also been reasonably successful at making the empty nest work.

While we would never advocate that everyone do things as drastically as we did — sell everything and hit the highway on an endless road trip — we have discovered something that we thing will work across the board…

Do something completely new together

This doesn’t mean taking up each other’s hobbies — although that can be nice too — it means something totally new, something neither of you has experienced.

It doesn’t hurt to get out of your comfort zone a bit, either.

For us, this was traveling to places neither of us had ever been. Seeing awesome sights for the first time, together. Learning about new cultures, together. Trying new unique, exotic, and sometimes downright weird foods, together.

Learning to tango in Buenos Aires

We always have something to talk about, laugh about, and learn about through each other’s perspective. But traveling certainly isn’t the only way to accomplish this, there are all sorts of opportunities much closer to home.

As our nest was emptying, but before we sold it, we both took part in a community theater production of Jesus Christ Superstar. This was a fantastic way to come together as a couple, helping each other rehearse, working toward a common goal, and feeling pretty darn proud when we pulled it off in the performances.

David as Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar – Veronica scored a part in the chorus where she got to play a prostitute, a harem girl and a leper – talk about jumping out of her comfort zone!

There are plenty of other places to jump in, like volunteering. No doubt any number of organizations could use some help from a couple with the experience and wisdom of a few years under their belts.

Or going back to school. Certainly there’s an educational institution nearby that offers classes in subjects new and interesting to both spouses. It could be learning a new language, cooking, creative writing, or philosophy. The options are nearly endless.

Making what turned out to be the world’s worst sushi! Everyone else in the class nailed it, though.

How about taking up a new sport? We’re not talking about going along on hubby’s next golf date, or to the next Pilates class with the wife. That’s not new to both and will probably go about as well as our skiing fiasco. Besides, if you’re anything like us, golf usually makes us feel like killing somebody. Not good for empty nest bonding.

But if neither spouse has ever ridden a horse, sailed a boat, hiked in the mountains, biked along the sea shore, or even gone skiing or played a round golf, then experiencing that for the first time, together, can have an amazing effect on a marriage.

It’s almost like dating again.

David & Veronica, GypsyNester.com
Authors of Going Gypsy: One Couple’s Adventure from Empty Nest to No Nest at All

YOUR TURN: Are you game for any of these ideas? What has worked/not worked for you? Did we miss anything?

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

One of the prominent qualities of a true fashion freak is the ability — nay, the instinctual need — to one-up.

You wear a feather in your hair. I wear an entire ball gown made out of feathers. To Walgreens.

You wear a trendy patch of lace on your sweatshirt. I wear more lace than a Mexican quinceanera: a purple seven-layer(-dip) lace skirt, black lace leggings, a gray lace corset-style blouse and a gray scarf. Too much? Nah, I scaled back and I left the lace wrist-length gloves at home. Ridiculous? Only if you’re boring. I prefer fearless and fun.

So needless to say, when my husband achieved the master one-up on me, it sent me into an identity-crisis tizzy.

He put the card in my pants. How? How did he do it? And more importantly, how could I ever beat that?

The challenge began about a month ago in the queue at Big Lots in Longmont, Colo. Despite the Hub’s intimidating appearance — he towers above Too Tall Jones like a 7-foot-tall tattooed totem pole — he, like most huge beasts, is extremely gentle. So much, in fact, that he could not say no to the elderly cashier when she asked him to sign up for a Big Lots Buzz Club Rewards card. She said just spend something like $200 a Big Lots and you can redeem a 20 percent-off reward.

Gee whiz.

I would understand a Walmart rewards card because it’s impossible to walk out of that war zone without dropping $2,000, even if you just “run in” to “grab some batteries.”

But is it even possible to spend $200 at Big Lots? I don’t think the entire store of dinged-up junk amasses to 50 bucks. And if we were to somehow blow that much cash at Big Lots, 20 percent off is a totally sucky prize. I mean, isn’t the premise of the store that everything is already discounted? So, what, after spending $200 I can get my toilet paper for $1.40 instead of $2 discounted from $5?

Obviously, I had to make fun of my husband, because I am as short as he is tall and everyone knows that short people are generally evil. To rub it in, I sneaked the Big Lots card into his car — “Just in case you need it, sweetie.”

Later that day, I found the card in my wallet. So I put it on his key chain. Without saying a word, he wedged the card into my lipstick.

Oh, hell no. Not the lipstick.

It was on.

He nearly choked on the card while popping sunflower seeds on our recent road trip. I nearly vomited when I found it at the bottom of my beer. Then it appeared stuck on the inside of my sunglasses, in the leg of his surfing wet suit, under his scrambled eggs, wedged inside my apple pie, in the left cup of my bra.

The card made it inside my book, inside his shoe, under my pillow and in the bag for my white Halloween wig.

I was impressed when he managed to affix it to my bobby pin while shopping in Vegas without me noticing. When he grew suspicious of my actions, I enlisted a friend to slip it in his right shorts pocket while we were dancing on Halloween. I thought the superlative was when I found the stupid card taped to my back; it had been there all day.

But then I found it in my pants.

This brought up all kinds of complicated emotions for me. How oblivious must I be to my surroundings if A) He had managed to accomplish this, and B) I had not noticed for I don’t know how long. Not to mention the gross factor. He swore he’d disinfected it, but after the scrambled eggs and wet suit, I felt a little violated, I did.

Which brings us to today. I’ve been paining over how to get back at that sneaky freak of mine.

With the full acceptance that some things just can’t be one-upped — like, say, Gaga’s dress made out of raw meat — I wouldn’t be true to myself if I didn’t at least try.

Dear Husband, I hope you enjoy your lunch. I made that pizza just for you. Pick a slice, any slice. I call this game Russian Rewards Roulette.

This story originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera. Read more stories from the weirdest city in America, Boulder, Colo., here: Only In Boulder.

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If the National Republican Party had embraced the Ku Klux Klan or the American Nazi Party, would mainstream media pick up the story? Probably.

The American Family Association, sponsor of the Republican National Committee’s upcoming Israel trip (organized and led by pastor David Lane), is no less extreme and has been venting its virulently hateful anti-LGBT, nativist, religious supremacist, and arguably racist rhetoric across America’s airwaves for years. Hate speech from the AFA’s nationally syndicated radio show targets a wide range of minorities: LGBT citizens, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Muslims (generally), Mormons, Jews, and more.

And this is not a new issue: Time magazine broke the news of the RNC Israel trip (and, more to the point, who was sponsoring it) over six weeks ago, on December 8, 2014. So mainstream media has had ample advance notice.

But so far the main American non-LGBT media venue covering the scandal [see 1, 2] has been MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.

“They were making an overt argument that Mitt Romney should not be elected to public office in this country specifically because of his religion… the Republican Party is now explicitly embracing these guys. Not just people who are related to people who are related to these guys. I mean, the ‘I won’t vote for Mitt Romney because of his religion’ guy [pastor David Lane] is the same guy, the exact person who is taking Reince Priebus and the Republican Party leadership on this trip [to Israel] the day after tomorrow.” – MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, January 29, 2015, characterizing statements from Bryan Fischer, David Lane, and the American Family Association, made during the 2012 presidential election, concerning the candidacy of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

The “serious” heavyweights – the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, not to mention broadcast media (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and so on) – have thus far opted to not cover the story, which has also been covered by two major Israeli media outlets (by Haaretz and the Times of Israel), by several American Jewish outlets including the Daily Jewish Forward, and extensively in LGBT media.

The scandal

On Saturday, 60-odd Republicans from the Republican National Committee (about 1/3 of the RNC), headed by Reince Priebus, will fly to Israel for a nine day all-expenses paid trip. Financially sponsoring the trip is the American Family Association and leading it is activist pastor David Lane, whose “Renewal Project” that seeks to bring pastors into politics is bankrolled by the AFA.

Among all U.S. media sectors, LGBT media has covered this story most heavily, and for good reason; it would not be a stretch to characterize the American Family Association as leading the vanguard of anti-gay hate speech in American today:

How anti-gay is the American Family Association ? Longtime AFA Director of Issue Analysis Bryan Fischer, star of the AFA’s national radio show, is notorious for his recycling of Scott Lively’s claims that Adolf Hitler and most of the top leadership of Hitler’s Nazi movement were gay and so, by implication, homosexuality caused World War Two and the Holocaust.

While the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified the AFA as a hate group, for years People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch has been documenting a wide range of hate speech from Bryan Fischer and the AFA. Not just anti-LGBT hate speech.

Fischer has claimed that believers of non-Christian faiths (e.g. Muslims and Jews) do not have a First Amendment right to freely practice their faiths, stated that young African-American women “rut like rabbits”, and cited the Bible as justification for the violent ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from their lands. Hispanics, claims Fischer, are “socialist by nature”.

This month, arguing that homosexuals should not be allowed to run for political office, Bryan Fischer declared, “It’s a form of sex­ual per­ver­sion and remem­ber, we’re going to have to choose between the gay agenda and Chris­tian­ity.” It’s not just LGBT citizens who should be excluded from office, per the AFA, but also Mormons, Mitt Romney included.

The AFA “fires” Bryan Fischer

Media attention on the RNC/AFA scandal turned first to the hate speech of Bryan Fischer; and after Rachel Maddow’s first MSNBC treatment of the scandal, on January 28 , 2015, the American Family Association released a statement that Bryan Fischer was no longer the AFA’s “Director of Issues Analysis.”

AFA president Tim Wildmon suggested Fischer had been fired because of “the soundbite quotes, you know, the Hitler and homosexuality one…” But meanwhile, Fischer himself observed that the alleged firing or demotion was meaningless because his show on AFA radio, Bryan Fischer’s main national media platform for spreading his hate speech, would go on regardless.

Underscoring Fischer’s point was the AFA’s showcasing, simultaneous with its alleged “firing” of Fischer, of a Bryan Fischer op-ed on the front page of the American Family Association website. If Bryan Fischer was indeed no longer the AFA’s official spokesperson, evidence for the demotion was scarce to nonexistent.

And another figure was even more central to the story than Fischer who, after all, was not himself personally organizing and leading the RNC’s Israel junket. That honor falls to pastor David Lane, who helped organize Rick Perry’s 2011 The Response prayer rally and it’s recent clone, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s The Response prayer rally in early 2015.

Pastor David Lane

On Thursday night, in the January 29, 2015 segment of the MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow pivoted to Lane. As exhaustively documented by Bryan Tashman, with People For The American Way’s Right Wing Watch project, pastor Lane’s hateful and religious supremacist rhetoric has been no less extreme than Bryan Fischer’s.

Among Lane’s rhetorical firebombs showcased by Maddow was Lane’s endorsement of a 2012 statement from Texas Baptist megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress identifying Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion as a “cult.” In an email from pastor Lane obtained by the Daily Beast, Lane emphasized, “Getting out Dr. Jeffress [sic] message, juxtaposing traditional Christianity to the false god of Mormonism, is very important in the larger scheme of things.” Lane continued, “Let me go on the record, I won’t vote for Mitt Romney as Republican nominee in 2012.” Asked Maddow,

Why is the National Republican Party sending its chairman, and all its national leadership, on a trip, led by that guy [Maddow gestured at a photo of pastor David Lane] who said he wanted to be on the record about the fact that he wouldn’t vote for Mitt Romney on religious grounds, because of Mitt Romney’s religion?

Citing another quote from pastor Lane, claiming that the United States was founded explicitly as a “Christian nation” and “for the advancement of the Christian faith”, Rachel Maddow posed the question,

What will it mean to the Republican Party, going forward, if they go on a trip, to Israel, with a group that advocates that America is by Christians and for Christians only, Christians exclusively?

The ramifications of such an embrace, between the RNC, the AFA, and pastor David Lane, are many.

What it means

The trip will likely strengthen already strong ties between Republicans, Israel’s Likud Party and, specifically, current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That could, in turn, strengthen Netanyahu’s hand in his perennial drive for heavier sanctions and/or military action against Iran. Coming shortly before a planned Netanyahu speech before the U.S. Congress, it is easy to see how the RNC’s Israel trip could further Netanyahu’s chances in the upcoming election in Israel.

On the domestic U.S. front, the implications are profound. Some in the Republican Party seek to rebrand and reshape the GOP, as more multi-racial and multi-ethnic, and tamp down the party’s historic anti-gay stance.

But Priebus’ trip stands to present to the party a grotesque fait accompli, by placing his authority as head of the RNC behind Lane and the AFA. In 2012, Reince Priebus himself was blessed and anointed, with the laying on of hands, by fellow “believers” in the radical stream of dominionist Christianity David Lane, Bryan Fischer, and the AFA represent. Since 2008 the ranks of national Republican figures “anointed” in similar ceremonies have included Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and others.

By embracing the American Family Association, and by extension its de facto spokesperson Bryan Fischer, Reince Priebus gives the GOP a veritable Father Coughlin reincarnate for our age, as well as a new de facto Republican prayer leader, a pastor whose naked assertions of Christian supremacy have included calls for believers to “Wage War To Restore a Christian America” through acts of Christian martyrdom that would force all Americans to either bow to Jesus or else “begin drinking holy blood”.

The Party of God

In a 2013 World Net Daily op-ed “Wage War To Restore a Christian America”, Lane, who has described himself as a “political operative and a mechanic” working “under the radar” to pull pastors into politics, called upon believers to sacrifice their lives in order to force Americans to either acknowledge Jesus as their supreme ruler or else “begin drinking holy blood.” Wrote pastor Lane,

“American Christianity has not done a good job of producing martyrs… Christians must risk martyrdom and force Babel to the crux where it has to decide either to acknowledge Jesus an imperator and the church as God’s imperium or to begin drinking holy blood.”

The same year, in 2013, Lane also predicted car bombings in major U.S. cities because of “homosexuals praying at the Inauguration [of Barack Obama]”.

Lane’s pastors rallies have regularly featured figures such as Wallbuilders head David Barton, who appears to endorse “biblical slavery” and has claimed the U.S. Constitution is based on the Bible.

In 2013 at an Iowa pastors rally, Lane and Barton helped lead public blessings of U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Also publicly blessed at that event, according to a special report from Christian Broadcasting Network reporter David Brody, was RNC head Reince Priebus: a photo posted by Brody shows Reince Priebus amidst a tight knot of men laying hands on Priebus, to bless and anoint the RNC head as one of God’s elect.

Other indications that RNC head Priebus holds a similar form of Christian supremacy as pastor David Lane include an October 2013 interview with CBN’s David Brody in which Priebus lashed out at a USA Today story which claimed the RNC head had urged “tolerance for views of gay marriage.” “[T]here’s only one sovereign God”, Priebus assured Brody.

Lane’s close ties to Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee were also on display in a January 19, 2014 story from CBN reporter Brody. According to Brody, Renewal Project head David Lane had sent out an email, to 10,000 pastors, which featured a ringing endorsement of Priebus as a GOP leader who “the masses will follow” and who could lead the American evangelical right to political triumph :

“Reince Priebus is making a stand this coming Wednesday in Washington, DC…but let’s see this for what it is — Reince Preibus is moving the ball down the field.

30 years ago Ronald Reagan branded the Republican Party as the leader of limited government, lower taxes, deregulation of business, the attitude of ‘the-one-thing-government-can-do-for-me-is-leave-me-alone’ — which brought in the Reagan Democrats and Independents; Reagan then won reelection in 1984 with 49 States.

He then handed the ball to Bush 41′, who quickly lost, and then Bush 43′ needed the Supreme Court in 2000, and OH in 2004 to win the presidency.”

The Evangelical/Pro-Life Catholic constituency didn’t show in 2008 or 2012.

We need someone with principle, the masses will follow.

Will you — right now — stop and whisper a prayer for Reince Priebus please. He’s making a stand, which is what we are all commanded to do…

Reince Priebus — Salute. “

This strong mutual endorsement, of Lane by Priebus and Priebus by Lane, is striking. As I have documented, Lane works closely with the most radical faction of the religious right, the New Apostolic Reformation which, per the testimony of leaders who have helped create the contemporary American religious right, represents the American answer to Al Qaeda or the Taliban (or, some might suppose, ISIS).

Rachel Maddow’s rhetorical question can be answered, in short: while some are working to build a bigger, more inclusive GOP tent with room for LGBT people and other minorities, both ethnic and religious, Reince Priebus, David Lane, and the AFA are hard at work pulling the Republican Party in a radically different direction, towards a future as the party of Christian religious supremacy, and religious war: the Party of God.

What would it mean for such people to gain top-level control of a political party that controls the U.S. Congress and Senate, and over 2/3 of governorships and state legislatures in America today?

We may soon find out.