A few years ago, when I started this blog, I created the tagline “Join me in the fight against helpful parenting advice.”

This is, of course, a joke. But like most jokes, it’s also true. I’m pretty sure my special talent is the ability to shoot down parenting advice in midair.

This is not because I think I know everything. I haven’t known everything in at least 10 years.

It isn’t because I’ve never received helpful advice. My midwife suggested I set one goal each day (clean my bedroom, do the laundry, etc.) and just do that first. The rest I’ll get to if I can. I tried this. It worked. I still do it.

And it isn’t that I think you know nothing. I watch you. I see you succeeding. I know you know all kinds of things. Well, some of you. Some of you are are not succeeding. Like Matt Walsh, for example.

There’s some ego involved. When I share some story about my kids, particularly if there’s a hint of negativity in it, and Other More Knowledgeable Parents share their “how-to tips” with me, I often respond (in my head) with a tween-like “fuck off” for no reason beyond I don’t like being told what to do.

Maturity. It’s my jam.

Who the hell are you to tell me how to parent? You know nothing about my family. I wasn’t writing for help. When I want help I’ll ask for it.

I DON’T WANT YOUR ADVICE.

And the reason is pretty simple: IT NEVER WORKS.

Or it might work, but probably not. And if it works, it probably won’t work with the next kid, or in 6 months, or tomorrow. And after I hear your advice, and try it, and it doesn’t work, I’ll spend a while feeling shitty because the advice isn’t working, but there’s a chance I won’t be able to face that fact, because IT WORKED FOR YOU so it “SHOULD” work for me so now I feel like a failure for not applying advice correctly so I just keep trying and trying and trying until I say FUCK THIS NOISE and start a blog.

Because I’m tired of the bullshit, the idea that there’s any uniformity to this insanity, that parenting philosophies will work for all, or even most, or anybody for that matter. I’m tired of people creating road maps for that which cannot be tracked.

Hey parenting books, you’re applying your map to my land and my land has never been seen before. So fuck your maps.

Oh come on. I know I’m not the first person in the world to have kids. I know my kids aren’t some never-seen-before uniquely gifted snowflakes. They’re kids. We’re a family. Pretty standard.

But the fact is that the shit that makes my family really difficult, the parts that are tough and unclear and gray and rugged – the problems for which I really wish I had solutions or “advice” that works – cannot be “solved” by something that worked for you. I listen to your ideas. I think about them. I try it out. But the brutal truth is that just like anything else in life, there is no silver bullet. There is no “sure fix” to the shit that isn’t working in my life.

But we don’t want to admit that with parenthood because the stakes are too fucking high. We can’t accept “don’t know shit” as the pinnacle of our parental credentials. We don’t want to accept “flawed human” as the CEO of young lives.

It’s too hard. There’s too much happening. There are babies and kids and tears, trust and reliance and broken sprits and wild kid joy, there’s innocence and vulnerability and memories to be made, reformed, forgotten and recrafted through a lifetimes of what the hell will my kids remember?

When I yelled? When we laughed? When I lost it and screamed in her face? That camping trip in Tahoe? The crystal blue? Or the dark and cold?

I couldn’t stop yelling at my older daughter. She will be 13 in a month. Every day, I couldn’t stop. It was like everything she did was an affront to something in me.

We battled over and over and over and over again.

I’d lie down at night and wonder if there were any moms meaner than me. Secretly I knew they’re weren’t.

Sometimes I would try to blame her. She can be annoying, you know. She’s got a very strong personality. Rigid, at times. If she would just.

No. Not it.

I’d conclude I’m unfit to be a mother.

Why did I have all these kids?

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I’m the only one who treats their kids like this.

On and on like this. Days, weeks. Maybe months.

It’s exhaustion, from the newborn. The stress of lack of money.

No.

Wake up, drink some coffee. Try again today. Fail again today. Tell them you love them.

Until one day I lost it. It built and built and built. I could feel it coming, rage, a voice in my head, “Janelle, stop now. STOP NOW.” But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I saw red, screamed and swore at my daughter. Not the kind of yell you tell your friends about. The kind of yell you pretend didn’t happen because you can’t face it in yourself. The kind you want to run from, hide from, forever. The kind that terrorizes and destroys, leaves you wrecked and shaking from shame.

After, I collapsed in my room. My fury made my body shake. My heart pound. My whole body seemed to writhe and push and pull against something. I was furious. I wanted to punch, hurt things.

And after there was utter sadness. Desperate sadness. The surrender kind of sadness. The kind that knocks you breathless and pounds your gut, consumes you at once, spits you out and leaves you for dead.

I saw myself, a monster, screaming. I felt it all again. I saw her face, her eyes. In my mind I looked deep into her gorgeous young face and realized I was not yelling at my daughter at all.

I was yelling at myself.

I was yelling at my fear.

I was yelling at my terror that she would turn out like me, make the mistakes I did, walk a path so dangerous she may not survive at all. She was entering her teenage years, the years when I got lost, when it all began for me. I was furious that she was like me, and terrified that she would not be better than me.

And there is nothing I can do about it.

It wasn’t her that was driving me nuts. It was my hatred of myself being reflected back to me through a child with very similar characteristics.

I told her that. Every word. Our relationship was reborn.

There is no book to tell me to look there, in the part of me I don’t even know exists. There’s no parenting advice called “Surrender to the most fucked up parts of yourselves so you can face the truth and move on and become better for your kids.” There’s nobody who can do that work for me. There’s nobody who can make me braver, more willing to see the truth. There’s nobody who can break me for me, stand wild-eyed with love in the gaze of these beings so entwined with my own heart, mind, past and memories.

This fucked-up path is mine, world. The victories too.

So please, sure, tell me how you fixed that clogged milk duct, or what food you started your kid on, or how you got your 6-month-old to sleep through the night or your 4-year-old to obey, and I’ll listen, and I’ll file it away as potentially useful information. I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes.

But understand that my vacant stare is because I’ve accepted that all the words in the world can’t make this gig easier. Some kids sleep. Some don’t. Some are built for school. Some aren’t. Some fit some don’t some listen some don’t some write some build some are like nothing that makes sense and some are just “right” in this world.

I have a little of this and a little of that. It’s gray and weird and shifting and relentless.

And the only one who can navigate it, in the end, is me. Them. Us.

Maybe a little of you.

I don’t really need your advice.

But I think I need you. Tell me how you keep walking your path, the unknown, as the world looks on shouting useless direction. That’s some shit I can seriously use.

We had to enter the next place, and I didn’t want to go. We’re getting there now.

The other day, I looked in the mirror as I was getting in the shower and I saw myself, 39 weeks pregnant, huge and round.

I saw breasts nearly resting on an enormous belly.

I saw the stripes racing down its curve.

I saw the layer of fat beneath the belly, the hips. I saw enormous thighs.

And for the first time in my life, I saw something beautiful.

No, I saw something absolutely fucking gorgeous.

And I’m not talking about some mind candy bullshit self-talk. I’m talking about reality, a sudden, unexpected shift in what I saw.

My own eyes.

For some reason, I saw beauty. Real beauty.

I saw the belly I’ve been ashamed of and the untamable breasts and the thighs that are too thick, and I thought to myself “Gorgeous.” A smile moved across my face. So unexpected, to see that after all these years of shrouded disgust. I saw something else, it was as if my eyes saw the same but my brain and heart saw something new, so foreign.

The round was lovely, its curve so powerful and determined and soft.

The deep lines of stretched skin that came when I was 22 and pregnant with my first baby, reinforced and redrawn and recreated a second, third and fourth time. The pain and transformation and power of each stripe, I saw.

The round that holds my heart and life and new life. My own line to my own mom once, now wrapped around the unknown. Soon to be known, or sort of known, dear unborn child. My last child.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, so I’ll show you, too.

The belly.

But really, the face. There’s a look of pride on that face, on the face of a woman who gained 60 pounds instead of the “proper” 25-35 (25 for a woman of my weight!), who has been ashamed of herself and her body, thinking her husband was just so full of shit when he looked at her and smiled with joy and adoration, maybe a quick tear, “You’re just so cute.”

I usually want to punch him in the face. Because his adoration mocked my self disdain. Maybe not anymore. Maybe I see what he sees. Not “cute,” I don’t see cute and probably never will, but I see beauty that almost never ends, that touched me days before the belly will end, the curve, its roundness, only the stripes to remain and remember.

I don’t know why it took this long to see, but I’ve seen it now, and I’ll never doubt again.

It may not be truth for anybody else, and it certainly isn’t for society, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t the truth for me, now.

And I caught it, just in the nick of time.

This is where I am, 39 weeks. gorgeous, miserable, ready.

change is always within. always.

P.S. Dear baby, if you’re listening, I would just like to clarify that just because I suddenly and inexplicably find my huge belly “beautiful,” I’d also be TOTALLY INTO IT if you, like, exited that belly. As much as I enjoy your head sitting so low in my pelvis I can barely walk or sit, and the uterine contractions that keep me up all night (but don’t produce an actual baby) and peeing 1500 times a day, and all the other joys of this glorious period of my life, I’d enjoy smelling your breath a whole lot more and we’re all really, really fucking excited to meet you. (Did I just swear at my unborn baby?)

Speaking of talking to unborn babies, my midwives told me to “talk to my baby” to help coax him or her out. So a few hours later, I was inspired. I looked down at my belly and said “Hey there little one. FYI, only assholes stay in past their due dates.” Not totally sure that’s exactly what they had in mind, but shit. It’s all I had at the moment.

Due date is June 3.

Don’t be an asshole.

***********

Hey, we have a new sponsor, and she’s a badass. She’s an artist, actor, screenwriter, filmmaker and short story writer. Yes, you read that correctly. And she writes a blog but it’s basically cooler than mine (and possibly yours) because there’s pictures and shit. Not stupid clip art (not that I’ve ever used stupid clip art) but actual DRAWINGS, as in, by her. And they’re real and raw and gritty, the blend of dark sarcasm and humanity that makes my heart sing. And resonates on that level. You know, the human one. Look at her portfolio. Read her blog. And then buy something from her Etsy shop. But first, meet Lindsey from Tense and Urgent, in her own words:

Hello, I’m Lindsey Connell

I live in Toronto with my husband and two kids, 4 1/2 and 2. They’re bananas and of course I’m wild about them. I am an actor, screenwriter, filmmaker and short story writer. All fun activities to do at home in a room by yourself with your cats, a mirror, and cigarettes by your side. A year ago I started Tense and Urgent because my cats/cigarettes had been replaced by children (not all at once) and because of the ensuing sleep deprivation, my ability to think of any story longer than a paragraph was seriously taxed. But one-liners or captions for drawings, I could do. And painting and drawing while listening to “This American life” became kind of the perfect way to spend my time.

 My work deals mostly with relationship stuff, parenting, existential dread… life stuff. And the tiny moments in a person’s life when something clicks or shifts- when a realization comes or something is professed. Often the people in my work are staring straight into the middle distance, caught in an epiphany. But there’s humour there, too. And lightness. It’d be a big drag if my cards made people feel lonelier, sadder, and dumpier than they did before they saw them, but they are called “Tense and Urgent” so that was fair warning, I think.

This website and blog are still evolving. I hope to start adding different elements to this website eventually. Short films, small animated pieces, postcard fictions. Stay tuned.

I think mothers need a no-bullshit friendship manifesto.

That way, we can go into new relationships knowing we’re in agreement on a few critical factors, thereby avoiding the awkward situation in which you realize one person is into drama and the other isn’t. I’m never into the drama. I think I’m too old. Or tired. Or there’s just so many more interesting things to think about.

Like Michael Scott from The Office, for example. What’s more interesting than him?

You know what’s amazing? Friends who aren’t into drama.

I actually don’t have any of the other variety. I think I either scare them away or I run away. One can never be sure.

However, I often hear about mothers getting on other mothers’ cases for perfectly reasonable mother-behavior like being a fucking flake. And I’m baffled.

It ain’t right!

This aggression will not stand, man.

As if we don’t have enough to deal with. As if kids and domestic life partners and jobs and uteri aren’t enough of a damn problem, some people think “You didn’t call me back in a timely manner so now I’m mad at you” is a logical addition to the list. We can’t do that to each other. We just can’t.

So behold, the No-Bullshit, No-Drama Friendship Manifesto:

1. I will not get on your case for not texting me back in a timely manner.
2. I will not get on your case for not calling me back in a timely manner.
3. This is because I will soon be the one not calling and texting you back in a timely manner.
4. If you tell me you’re going to call me back “in a few minutes” I understand I may not hear from you for 3 days.
5. I know this is not because you don’t love me.
6. If I need you for real, I will harangue and harass you until you acknowledge me. This process includes, but is not limited to: calling, texting and emailing (repeatedly), instant messaging, tweeting, tagging on Instagram, showing up on doorsteps, actually leaving voicemails (!) and/or contacting spouses.
7. This will not annoy you because you know you’re a fucking flake.
8. This will not annoy me because I know I’m a fucking flake.
9. If you don’t RSVP to my kid’s birthday party for 3 weeks then call the morning of the event and say “Uh, yeah, um, sorry, but can we come?” I’m not going to express profound irritation through a suppressed sigh and deep pause, rather I’m gonna be like “Yeah that’s cool, but do you have any candles? I forgot the effing candles.”
10. And I’m going to be happy you came, because we’re friends.
11. When my kids are acting like shitheads and you’re like “Hey child, No.” I won’t get all righteously indignant. Instead I’ll look at you in gratefulness for dealing with the little bastards so I don’t have to.
12. When you get pissed at your husband, I will agree he is the most sorry d-bag to ever walk the planet and we shall plan for the day when we live on an all-female commune with organic produce, llamas and wool spinning-wheels. And redwood trees. And the ocean.
13. Even if you’re clearly the asshole.
14. When you swear in front of my kids I won’t care. Because obviously.
15. The dinners you make uniformly blow my mind.
16. Whoever has the youngest (or worst behaving child) at the moment gets to make decisions. We all understand that children are often foul, insane little creatures and it needn’t even be mentioned that we DON’T BLAME YOU.
17. Maybe your house is clean. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe who gives a rat’s ass?
18. When I say something stupid that could be conveyed as insulting or whatever, you’re not going to get all overly sensitive and weird, calling mutual friends and psycho-analyzing what, exactly, my problem is (probably going back to childhood), rather you’re going to call me out on it and then I’m going to apologize and we’re going to move on, LIKE ADULTS, because occasionally adults say stupid shit, the end.
19. When you say something stupid, I’ll either do number 18 or, and I know this is revolutionary, I’LL LET IT GO.
20. We tell each other the truth (except the asshole part when fighting with domestic life partners).
21. When my jeans are sagging, you’re going to lovingly take me shopping. Or you’re going to not notice. These are the only two options.
22. The only time I’m going to one-up you is to prove I’ve screwed up worse than the time you’re currently feeling terribly about.
23. I will not give helpful parenting advice. You will not give helpful parenting advice. WE ALL HATE THE MOM WITH HELPFUL PARENTING ADVICE.
24. I understand that “on time” means “not as late as I usually am.”
25. When our conversation gets interrupted nineteen hundred and forty seven times by one kid or another and that thing I was going to say that was so funny and interesting is forgotten entirely, I won’t get hurt feelings.
26. When I borrow a baby item, don’t return it, then, 2 years later, when you ask for it back and I’m like “Yeah I don’t think we have that anymore,” you’re like “oh okay” but then, 4 months later, when I find it in a bin in my garage, you’re like “It’s cool.”
27. Because we’re both fucking flakes, except when it matters.

And we’ll know when it matters, because WE ARE FRIENDS.

And when it matters, we show up no matter what with whole heart, or fist, ready to build or struggle or soothe. Ready to hold or make or remake, maybe for the hundredth time.

We show up with tears and sweat and annoying kids and food, laughter and some yelling, a cracked voice and a steady ear.

Because we are friends.

We let go of the bullshit and just love. And if there isn’t love, we let go of the charade and find some real friends.

Because really, what the hell else is there? Just a bunch of humans bumbling along.

This week, my ass was saved by one of these friends. There’s something spectacular about this, all of it, the no-bullshit friendship.

The soft place and rock. When it matters.

Shrek BFFs

You may remember we were burglarized last September, twice. In one week. They stole my laptop and essentially every piece of jewelry Mac had ever given me during our 13 years together. They stole my grandmother’s ring, the single item I inherited from her.

It took months to “get over it,” but recently, the wound was reopened. Basically, through a rather coincidental chain of events I’d rather not elaborate on, we found out for sure who burglarized our home, and it was the person I suspected: Our former nanny’s son, a young man addicted to methamphetamines.

I knew it was him the moment I saw my jewelry box laid open, empty. I drove immediately to his home. He was in the street. I walked right up to him looked him dead in the eyes and said “Hey. I get it. I was a drug addict once too. Just give me back my things. Have them show up on my doorstep and I’ll give you $1000. No questions asked.”

Looking back, I realize he had probably already traded everything for a 20 sack, maybe two.

He went around and around about how it wasn’t him. But I knew it was. The sight of his face in my mind’s eye makes me feel sick. Lying motherfucker. I had no proof, but I knew. 100%.

And the worst part is I knew it was going to happen before it happened. I saw it in my mind. I literally saw in my mind that this person was going to burglarize our home.

I knew it the day my nanny sat in our living room and told me her son (who lived with her) was addicted to meth. A thought crossed my mind: One of these days, he’s going to find out through his mom that you’re gone for the weekend and he’s going to burglarize your home.

Three months later, that is precisely, EXACTLY what happened.

After my nanny left that day, I called my mom. I told her “I need to find a new nanny. I need to disconnect. Something bad is going to happen.”

But I did nothing.

I talked to Mac about it, told him my concerns. I am no stranger to drug addiction and what it causes. I am no stranger to the monsters people become.

But still I did nothing.

I did nothing against my better judgment.

I did nothing against every cell of my being screaming at me “Stop this. Get out. Bad things are going to happen.”

I did nothing because I ignored my intuition.

I did nothing until it was too late.

And that is the part I can’t get over.

That is the part that haunts me, late at night when I think about the family photos and videos that were lost in the stolen laptop and the pearl necklace gone, the one Mac gave me a couple months into our relationship, and the diamond ring I remember so clearly on my beloved grandmother’s thin, wrinkled gorgeous finger.

I did nothing because I was stuck. I was stuck in a motherfucking rut and I could not see out. I refused to see out. I would not see out.

Life gave me the signs. It gave me the chance to redirect, to move along, to do something new. The universe hinted, nudged, and at times downright pushed and shoved, but still, I did nothing.

Why? Because it was too hard. Because I preferred the comfort of my rut to the difficulty of a new course.

Our home was dark. The neighborhood was terrible. I hated it. We all hated it.  It was a dead, depressing place. We lived two houses down from a known drug house. They’d do deals in the street. They’d park in front of our house waiting for the delivery. Sometimes I’d walk up to them and knock on the car window, ask if I could help. Probably not the safest move, but it gets to the point when you don’t fucking care anymore. The neighbor on our left occasionally got drunk and poisoned animals in the neighborhood. We lived in near-constant fear of our animals getting out. One day our cat did. We found her on our driveway, poisoned the same way our two kitties died when we first moved in, two years prior, before we knew. Our street was a thoroughfare to the worst street in town, so a constant stream of addicts and drunks poured down our road like a sad parade. They left their trash on our lawn and their baggies on the sidewalk.

We needed to move a long time before, but we didn’t. We didn’t because we were stuck.  We didn’t because sometimes the misery you know is easier than the unknown, because it’s safer, or you think it is, simply because it is known.

It all starts to feel so heavy: The change. The fear surrounding it all: What will happen? What if it doesn’t work? Where will we go and do and how will it all work?

One day turns into the next and the next and the next and it’s just you and the aching intuition, the burning feeling that something needs to change. But nothing changes, because nothing changes. And fear.

The burglary ended it.

Shaken to our core, we were faced with the reality of what our life had become and how distant we had grown from that reality. Within 45 days our house was on the market and we had moved into my mom’s house. Within 90 days our house was sold and we were in escrow on another. Around 4 months from that burglary we moved into the house we live in now, a place I love so much I never want to leave (which is its own problem but one I love to have!). I had forgotten how much a miserable house can bring you down. I had forgotten what it feels like to love where you’re living, to feel “home” each day, in your home.

Action. Finally. Happened.

In a way, that burglary was the best thing to ever happen to us, but still I’m full of hatred sometimes, toward him, but mostly toward myself. Why didn’t I act? Why didn’t I do something? Why didn’t I trust my gut and heart?

I know. I already know: I was doing the best I could at the time. And really, it was just stuff gone. It’s just stuff. Means nothing.

But shit. It’s hard. You know?

Hard to face the elements of responsibility in our own lives, hard to square off with the truth about ourselves. It is not my fault that he burglarized our home. It is, however, my fault that I denied my intuition and chose comfort over change, even though that comfort was making me fucking miserable and I KNEW IT.

It is my fault that I didn’t leave a house and town and situation that was sucking the life out of me.

It is my fault I DID NOT ACT.

Life is strange, isn’t it? The way we stay in things that are killing us because at least we feel safe – hang out in the muck and dirt and mire because at least it’s the muck and dirt and mire we’re accustomed to. The way we justify the shit in our lives as if it’s other people’s faults when really it’s us – we’re the ones too chicken shit to move, paralyzed by our own indecision, cut off at the knees with terror. Of what, who knows. How could it be worse than this?

Until life slaughters us one day, to be reborn.

I’m beginning to think life is just a series of little deaths, of becoming unstuck, of seeing how fear pulses through my mind and spine and legs, moving my body for me, on nothing more than a glorified rat wheel. Around and around we call it “living.” I know the truth but I’m too scared to face it. That bullshit job, relationship, habit, whatever. The truth rests deep inside of me. I work every day to ignore it, until I cannot any longer.

I was stuck. I’m not stuck now.

I want to forgive myself, but some mental construction won’t work. “I forgive you Janelle.”

Ah, fuck off.

That shit never works. I need action. I will forgive myself by staying unstuck, by laughing at the voice that says “You can’t. It’s too hard. Stay here.”

I tried that, asshole. I went down that road and it didn’t work. I couldn’t get off  the track on my own so life did it for me, and it hurt. I was shattered into a new direction.

I’m responsible for that, too, I guess. New digs and freedom. My own failure to move – literally and figuratively – killed me. But to begin again. Unstuck, one more time.

Maybe I’ll trust better, sooner.

Myself, and life.

The real kind.

sometimes I feel like this.

Alright at this point it’s just a tradition. Happy Valentine’s Day, lovebirds…

***

The other day, while scowling at the absurdity of one of those feel-good chocolate hearts and roses Valentine’s ads, I placed my pointer finger against my face in the classic thinking posture and asked myself… “Hmmmm…what would an honest Valentine’s Day card say?”

And then, as this thought rolled around in my [acutely insane] brain, I realized that this is no simple question, but rather depends entirely on how long the couple has been together.

Because as you probably know…that shit CHANGES. (Relationships, that is. Men, not so much.)

So this small, profound monologue got me thinking about the fact that there are (in my opinion) three stages in a relationship/marriage, each of them obviously necessitating a different Valentine, were it to be honest and real and able to speak the truth of the insanity. Err, I mean “budding love story.”

Wow. Deep.

Anyhoo, I give you this. I ask that you please enjoy the clip art.

Stage 1

Years 0-2: The “I haven’t Been With You Long Enough to Realize How Much You Annoy Me” stage, comprised of long walks and hand-holding, starry-eyed dinners, cocktails, discussions, movie-watching, reasonable arguments, cuddling and pet names. Also, smug looks directed at women who are in Stages 2 and 3 with their men, and a distinct feeling of superiority, having obviously been deemed the first woman in history to not wonder if she could turn herself into a lesbian to avoid further intimacy with the male population. Also, women in this stage rest easy in the comfort and surety that they will never, ever want to pummel their little love kitten with a meat cleaver. Because he’s PERFECT. Duh.

A Stage 1 Valentine looks something like one of these:

And now…

Stage 2, Years 2-5: The “Holy Shit I had no Idea You Had These Sorts of Habits” Stage, also known as the “I Must Mold You Into Something More Like What I Had In Mind” Stage, characterized by a lot of discussions with girlfriends regarding the man’s deficiencies, as well as a decent amount of wonderment and awe as the female discovers The Male is not at all perfect (and may actually have some sort of disability, as evidenced by the fact that he can’t find stuff that’s 3 inches from his forehead and insists on passing gas in bed). This stage also involves the surfacing of all other incomprehensible tendencies, causing the female to realize she’s going have to fix this character if they’re ever going to make it. And therefore, she begins to WORK, which of course results in long, long, long discussions, unreasonable bickering, maybe therapy but for sure tears, cajoling, threatening, flailing and general malaise, and, most likely, the arrival of an infant or two.

Honest Valentines at this stage may look like this:

And then, if the couple in question makes it past Stage 2, they enter Stage 3 (years 6 – ?), commonly known as the “Well Obviously You are not Going to Change and I’m Tired of Fighting so I’ve Accepted you and your Weirdness” Stage. (Yes, these stages have awkwardly long titles. Not particularly catchy, I know. Don’t blame me. I didn’t make it up.) Oh wait.

As you can see, this is something of a deal-breaker stage – since it’s pretty much Stage 3 or Stage Bye-Bye. Stage 3 is characterized by a lot of glaring but less complaining, fewer divorce threats and a surface-level acceptance of small, irritating habits (such as buying odd gadgets that will never ever be used EVER, or eating onions before bed). It also involves some strange compromises (“Honey, if you pick up your bath towel from the floor every day, I’ll start squeezing the toothpaste from the bottom.”) and subtle retaliation (as opposed to the long, long, long discussions in stage 2 (or therapy)). On the plus side, this Stage results in a weird peace and vague sense of serenity and, occasionally, some intense relief  regarding the fact that you didn’t throw in the towel when things got rough (and therefore, thank god, you don’t have to deal with these hoodlum children alone). Women in this stage feel a little like badass survivors of some great calamity, like a tsunami, or fire. “We almost didn’t make it, kids. We really had to work HARD to make this marriage work. Ah, but look at us now…”

And we feel a little victorious. And yeah, alright, I’ll say it: A little in love.

Enough of the sappy crap.

Real valentines in this stage may look something like this:

Sometimes people ask where I come up with this crap.

In response, I give you one word: LIFE.

As proof, I give you this…

My own real life Stage 3 Valentine (from last year, but not much has changed).

xoxoxo