Why Men and Women Think Differently

Men are great at focusing on a single task and coming up with a solution. They get over anger more quickly than women do. They don’t like to discuss ‘the relationship’. Unlike women, who enjoy setting things in context, men prefer to get to the point right away.

Don’t You Trust Me?

Few women who marry plan on being widowed or divorced. Yet even modern women too often cede control of finances to their husband. This leaves them uninformed and unprepared to manage on their own in case their marriage ends.

Illusions

After the morning break in one of my seminars, I noticed that Stephanie, a pretty brunette in her late twenties, had not returned. She had come with her mother, Rosalie, who had paid for Stephanie’s registration. Rosalie wanted her daughter, who was to be married in a few months, to learn before marriage what Rosalie had learned the hard way after a bitter divorce.

Happy Mother’s Day

I was nineteen and she was five. Five days old. Six pounds of human potential for whom I was now officially mommy. The baby fit snugly between my fingertips and elbow . I gazed down at her tiny face peeking through the pale pink blanket. Love and fear flooded over me. I knew little about life, less about babies.
How will I know what each cry means or if she’s hungry, or hurts, or is just exercising her lungs? What if I diaper her wrong and the safety pin opens , or she can’t breathe in her crib, or the bath water is too cool or the formula too hot.
We drove home from the hospital, and laid the baby on the bed, the same bed where she had been conceived. I cried at her fragility and my overwhelming feeling of responsibility. I didn't understand parenting yet, but vowed to be a perfect mother. I would read everything, learn everything, do everything.
Her father unwrapped the blanket, and her tiny arms and legs reached upward. He tried to reassure me that we would know what to do, that we weren’t the first parents who didn’t know anything about babies. Bravado, of course. He knew less about babies than I did.
I still wonder what I might have done differently with more maturity. Or perhaps it is the nature of things. For first borns, we yearn to be the perfect mother, whatever that means. With their siblings, a good enough mother is enough.
Happy Mother's Day.

Who Pays for the Wedding?

If someone told you that you’d lose nearly $30,000 in four years, would you consider that a good investment?
Consider this: According to 2005 U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, 1.2 million women annually become first time brides at an average age of 25.3 years old.
The $50 billion wedding industry reports that the average wedding costs $27, 850, with the number of wedding guests averaging 165 people. One third of those weddings are paid for by the bride’s parents! We don’t have figures on how many parents take out loans or tap into their retirement savings to pay for the wedding.
But those same government agencies report that the median age at first divorce for women is 29 years old.
A ‘perfect wedding’ is part of the bride’s conditioning, her fantasy day since she received a Barbie doll for Christmas. She has been planning this wedding in her imagination for years. It doesn't work without a groom. Have you ever met a man who fantasizes about his wedding day? I haven't. Few men besides wedding planners think about weddings. There is no Modern Groom magazine. This is the bride’s big day ; the groom is part of the scenario. It's performance art for him. He’ll go along with it he's not paying for it.
I think if bride and groom can’t pay for 80 percent of their own wedding, they should postpone it until they can. They might work harder at the relationship if they were investing their own money, thereby leaving mom and dad more assets for their retirement.