As a newly married, self-analyzing, overly-introspective couple, April and I often find ourselves examining our relationship and comparing it both to other couples we know and to the general stereotypes of similar (monogamous) relationships. Our feeling is that our relationship is fairly atypical, and what works for us doesn’t necessarily work for other people. How we comported ourselves prior to marriage probably wouldn’t work for most couples, and our marriage has thus far been remarkably blessed. We still have issues, but I ask that you take what I’m about to write with a grain of salt. I’m presenting this as how I think things should be, but I don’t pretend to speak for all guys or all couples. You know your friends better than I do, so your best bet is to simply ask them.
However, I was asked, and this is my response. My friendships with members of the opposite sex have changed drastically since April and I first started dating almost three years ago, though I didn’t even realize this until after we were engaged. Prior to formalizing our relationship, the vast majority of my friends were female. I spent probably 90% of my social time with females, and felt somewhat alienated from my own sex due a lack of common interests. Every college ministry male-bonding social event revolved around sports in some fashion: watching a basketball game, playing touch football, playing basketball, going hiking, going “floating,” going rock climbing, etc. I like to read, drink coffee, converse, and write, and I’m not terribly athletic, nor do I desire to be. Women made better conversation partners, so it was with women that I spent most of my social time.
However, I met a girl at FnC soon after April and I were engaged and, after a few conversations with her in that context, I realized that I was treating her differently than I would have prior to dating April. I hadn’t suggested we get together and hang out, and I’d remained more emotionally distant than I would have done previously. I was guarding myself somewhat because I was already committed to a person.
This only had to do with a new relationship, though. As I analyzed my behaviour and motivations, I realized that the changes I was making regarding the opposite sex only applied to meeting new people. There is the potential that these changes had less to do with being in a relationship and were motivated more by the fact that I simply had less time to invest in friendships that might not last. With both males and females, I am more jealous of my time now due to my tight schedule.
Old friendships did not change for me, and this has a great deal to do with mine and April’s relationship. We trust each other completely and there are no jealousy issues. I can spend time with my friends without her worrying about my fidelity or loyalty, and vice versa. Some women worry that their guy is looking for something in those friendships, but April knows that she’s my priority.
Michelle asked what the mysterious line is between a married man and a single woman, and I think that depends on the individuals in question. But for me and my old friends, I don’t see a line. Our relationship is exactly the same as it was when I was single.
That’s pretty much the answer to Michelle’s question in a single, tiny paragraph at the end of a long, introductory ramble. Now that the floodgate’s open, though, I want to write more on this topic, but I’ll break it out over a few days so as to not overwhelm my readers. Next I hope to evaluate more why my relationships with older friends remain unchanged, followed by how a married man should behave regarding making new friends of the opposite gender.
Also, just as a sidenote for those of you who managed to read this far, April and I are planning on writing a book on marriage. As that begins development, a new blog will begin and there will be a tab for it along the top, just like there is now for stories and poetry. Since I’m starting to write these things, that might show up in a week or two.
Posted on July 22nd, 2008 at 9:28 pm by Matthew
Filed under: General | Tagged with: boundaries, Friends, marriage
| No Comments »
…if the alternative is that you get nothing otherwise.
So, I’ve had a story sitting half finished in my drafts for the last four days, and because it was finished, I didn’t publish it. Then, tonight, I scrapped it and started over, and got about half done before I ran out of steam. Rather than let it sit in my drafts until tomorrow or the next day, I decided to let it go and publish.
Today, we signed a paper saying our landlord can show our apartment to prospective renters. The hope is that someone can move in to our apartment right after we move into our house, that way we don’t have to keep paying rent. What this means practically, right now, is that our apartment needs to be clean and showable, which it’s not at this time, so after I got home a little after 5 p.m., we started cleaning and I felt like I finally sat down in not-cleaning-mode at around 7:30.
My writing lasted until about 8 or 8:15, when the aforementioned steam ran out. Still, I’ve had a lot of visitors to the site today, so I thought you at least deserved something. You deserve more and better, really, but I’ll give what I have and hope that is sufficient for now.
I returned to work today after a week’s semi-vacation (most of it was spent on house-buying related work), and it was everything I thought it would be. Take that as you will.
Michelle, I’m going to write you a response tomorrow. For now, though, I think we’re going to finish our episode of The Office.
Posted on July 21st, 2008 at 8:40 pm by Matthew
Filed under: General | Tagged with: procrastination, rent, the office, Writing
| No Comments »
I finally got around to writing the next story in The Stormsworn Saga. It was a bit delayed because our weekend was 1) very relaxing and 2) surprisingly busy.
April and I started attending open houses (where a Realtor is at a house and it is open for just anyone to walk in and look around, ask questions, and check out the house) a few months ago, just for fun. We weren’t planning on buying anything until next spring because the lease on our apartment isn’t up until May, 2009.
Then we walked into a house I absolutely loved. It was too expensive, too big, and the utilities were ridiculous, but we got bit by the house-bug. We started looking more, and I thought I might go ahead and talk to a bank, see what our options might be.
So I visited my mom’s old boss, who is now a lending agent at Great Southern bank, and we discussed our (mine and April’s) financial state, what price of house were looking for, etc. The meeting was somewhat comical because when I told him what price of home we were considering, he practically laughed at me. “That’s all you want?” he asked, and showed me how very much money he was willing to give us. Of course, as these things tend to go, if I took that amount we’d be bankrupt in a year because we’d never be able to make the payments and still eat food. But his reaction was somewhat comforting. The payments were reasonable for the price of house we were considering.
When I told my mom that I was meeting with Dave to discuss a loan, she told me she was going to call Scott and refer us to him. I told her that we weren’t necessarily going to buy a house right now, but she thought it prudent to get the referral in now, and since Scott had been highly recommended to us (first by our pastor, and then by my mom who had apparently trained him back in the day), I acquiesced.
April had found a house online she wanted to look at, so we did. Then we got together with Scott and looked at some more houses. And then even more. All told, between open houses and what Scott has shown us, we’ve probably been to about 25 houses in the last few months.
But last Saturday, we found one we really liked. I’m not one to throw around words like “love” too freely, so I’ll avoid that term for now, but we really, really liked this house. It was a bit further from campus than we wanted, and not exactly what we were looking for, but at the same time it was almost perfect. And it had some features we hadn’t been looking for, but which were definite perks and, if we had thought about them in advance, we definitely would have had them on the “preferred” list of features.
We decided that it was a great house, easily the best we had seen (even compared to more expensive ones we’d visited) and that we wanted it. So, we bought it.
That’s still sinking in for me. Our closing won’t be until early September, at which time there will be a move-in party with a 6-foot sub sandwich. Housewarming party to follow on my birthday. I’ve been making calls pretty much all day to set up the home inspection and get my insurance agent out to take a look, rescheduling a meeting with a financial consultant, talking to our lending agent so I can meet with him later this week, going to our savings account and transferring money around… my vacation has certainly started with a bang.
To make a long story short, I was later getting today’s story up than I had intended. This won’t be the last time; my mind has been elsewhere 
If you’d like to see perhaps-too-detailed pictures of the house, there are some on my photo gallery I took so I could send them to my mom (who has been in real estate for probably 30 years now). Also so I could remember what the house looks like and gaze at them for long periods of time. April and I rode our bikes up there yesterday morning to discover that it will only be about a 15 minute ride to work (depending on traffic; might be a bit longer), and began making plans for finishing/remodeling the basement and what furniture we wanted to buy.
It’s all pretty exciting. Nothing’s definite and done until the closing in September, so if the home inspection turns up some really serious flaws in the foundation or something, this might all fall through. But we’re pretty hopeful; the house has been lovingly cared for and is in fantastic condition, and it has been completely updated as well. It’s 90 years old but, except for the styling, it looks almost brand new.
April and I will be in Branson with her parents pretty much all day tomorrow, so Wednesday’s story will be late in the day as well. Still, I’m hopeful that you will forgive me
Posted on July 14th, 2008 at 9:22 pm by Matthew
Filed under: General | Tagged with: busy, house, meetings, shopping, Writing
| No Comments »
After succumbing to procrastination last night and deciding to play World of Warcraft rather than write, I thought, “Hey, I can write tomorrow night and still be publishing a story on Friday (thereby meeting my update schedule).” I had no idea what today would be like.
Meetings all morning until noon, grabbed some Chinese food to work through lunch, and had a ton of stuff to get done before leaving promptly at 5 p.m. Nine hours without a break other than to walk quickly to the student union so I could grab something to eat.
I don’t know if my brain will handle writing. It’s barely managing this blog entry.
Regardless, I slightly edited one of my favourite poems and posted that for your consumption. If I’m not getting a story up, at least I can do that much.
April and I are looking at houses with our Realtor tomorrow morning. I intend to spend a good portion of the afternoon writing the next story (Arias finally meets “the adventuring party!”) so I can set things up for next week. I’ll be doing a lot of writing on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so I should be able to meet my goals and get a bit ahead.
But not tonight. Tonight, I need something brainless, like reading fantasy fiction or playing a game. And something to drink. And eat. And… my brain just quit on me.
Posted on July 11th, 2008 at 5:58 pm by Matthew
Filed under: General | Tagged with: busy, Poetry, procrastination, tired
| No Comments »
After the mass export/import process, I then converted a ton of categories to tags in order to reduce redundancy and the size of my sidebar. Overall, the process went smoothly, but it left me with a lot of uncategorized entries that had to be fixed manually. Thankfully, the process isn’t too arduous, so I already have it fixed, and it gave me the good opportunity to skim some old entries.
It also put me in the frame of mind to remember that I’ve written a fair amount of stuff in the past. Therefore, when faced with Lorelle’s challenge of the week, I realized that I could simply link to an older article I’d written that addresses her question without having to invest time in writing a response. Of course, I had to add a disclaimer to the entry, and go through to update some things and correct grammatical mistakes, but it was a pleasant realization that the work was already completed.
I am on vacation all next week and quite excited about it. Most of my time will hopefully be spent at the Mudhouse where I will drink copious amounts of coffee and write-write-write. I did some more research on self-publishing today because I’m finally going to start on a book next week, though I haven’t decided which. I have four options on the table.
- Somewhat auto-biographical work that seeks to relate my conversion from paganism to Christianity, my experience with withcraft, why I made the decisions I have, and how Christians can address witchcraft in America.
- Editing together a book from about a year’s worth of theological writings by me (mostly from my sophomore year), geared towards college students and addressing the struggles of incoming freshmen in addition to the problems college students often encounter throughout their undergrad (in regards to their faith).
- A discussion of spirituality in America and how “spirituality” is not good enough titled Reconnecting with Religion (subtitle to be decided).
- A book about the Ten Commandments, one commandment discussed per chapter, that attempts to relate the historical context and meaning of each commandment, its application in modern society, and to do so in modern, easy-to-understand language.
Of these four, which appeals most to you? Where do you think I should invest my energy next week?
Posted on July 10th, 2008 at 2:07 pm by Matthew
Filed under: Writing | Tagged with: cms, ideas, lorelle, vacation, wordpress
| No Comments »
