Odd Situations
Winning Despite Failure – Thanks Jim Kukral for the Timely Perspective
Yesterday, I found myself sitting in bankruptcy court, definitely, a first for me. Long story short, business has been good, but my personal finances went into a tail spin when Wells Fargo foreclosed on my home in the middle of an Obama plan refinance. BoA didn’t help the situation eith
er by jacking my interest rates up to 30% even though I hadn’t ever missed any payments at the time.
So after months of work reorganizing my personal finances, things came to a head when my wife and I went to court and asked for a discharge of debt, aka we went bankrupt filing chapter 7.
Not happy about it, but as I was thumbing through the book, Internet Marketing from the Real Experts by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit fame, I came upon the 3 minute lesson from Jim Kukral, whom I’ve had the good fortune to have known for a few years now.
The chapter was his famous ‘Are you a Loser or a Failure?’ topic.
Now, I have been lucky enough to here Jim speak more than a half dozen times. In fact, one winter, I heard him give his presentation ‘Are you a loser or a Failure’ three or four times in a week. It’s a good presentation, but by about the 2nd or 3rd time, well, I had heard that one before. Lesson learned, internalized, filed away, and appreciated.
Context is Everything
Then yesterday while I’m sitting in bankruptcy court with dozens of other people in the same situation, I came across this familiar topic again.
Well, even though I could just about give this speech myself from memory, it sank in on a new level.
The general point of the topic is that Losers give up and quit and people that are failures, learn from their mistakes and try again.
That pretty much sums me up. The downward spiral of my personal finances can be traced back to my corporate accounting days when I made $100k per year. Salary was great, but to support that salary and stay on the fast track, I had to relocate every couple years. That led me to rack up a lot of debt, which I could maintain when I was making $100k, but then the Chinese Mafia got involved (literally).
One day I found my division at Motorola transferred and sold to the Chinese Mafia. That’s not the type of thing they tell you during the HR employee transition meeting unfortunately. They just give you the name of the most visible corporate shell owned by the mafia, aka your new bosses.
So to keep my long story short, once I found out who I was working for, I turned those assholes in to the Feds as fast as I could, lost my corporate accounting job, but saved my life and the lives of my family. Who needs a $100k per year salary when you are dead or ‘disappeared’?
For the next 5 years, I worked to build my own business, and looking back, I have done pretty damned good. I just didn’t grow it to the point where I was profiting $100k a year, this that and another thing, and before you know it, I’m seeking bankruptcy protection and REALLY starting over.
But not starting over completely. Because I’ve got 5 years of lessons learned, a growing business built on my reputation and results (but not physical assets hence the chptr 7).
I wasn’t feeling down or negative yesterday, the low point of this whole mess was last March when I learned that I had been foreclosed on 
without any written notification. That blindsided action was depressing a bit, but there’s only so much you can do in that situation.
But it was definitely a boost to internalize Jim’s message again yesterday, especially in the middle of a week, when I’m working like crazy on projects for my clients. The future looks very good, business is looking good, I’m not only working from a clean slate financially, but I’m working from a clean slate with a lot of great experience.
Icing on the Cake
Now today, the day after bankruptcy, Amazon just delivered Jim’s new book “Attention This Book will Make you Money – How to Use Attention Getting online marketing to increase your revenue”
I’m expecting big things out of the future.
Barefoot Craze in North Carolina- Toe Shoes not so Crazy
A few weeks back I was interviewed by the Charlotte NBC news team. They came out to my office on my dock and interviewed me for about an hour, then I went running around the neighborhood for about an hour with essentially a two person news team. That story finally aired last night(
‘Barefoot running’ craze hits Charlotte
and the article and video are now available online too. (Note the maroon toe shoes below are not the shoes I have, and not really the best shoes for running either, there’s a different model better suited for running. These shoes are better for yoga and martial arts.
Here is the result!
It was a lot of fun, and frankly felt like something of a tv show from a production perspective. I don’t have a lot of experience with TV nor the news myself. But I have been on TV several times over the years.
But this was a first from the perspective of combining both an interview and from the experience of all the filming. They recorded what seemed to be about 2 hours worth of material. Well actually it was probably really about an hour, it just took 2 hours to set everything up. But that 1 hour boiled down to 2 minutes and twenty seconds of interview, which also featured a few other people in other interviews. 
So any way, I was fascinated with the process. I’ve done some video work for the web over the years, mostly video tutorials, and with much inferior equipment and training, but that experience gave me enough of a perspective on what was going on to appreciate the whole situation better.
It actually took about a month or so for the interview to actually make it onto the news, which was probably more of a surprise than I expected. I had this notion that the interview would probably air with a week or so, but even in my own experience videos I shoot or create often times don’t see the light of day for weeks or months and some never make it off my hard drive at all!
Now, since the interview was taken, I have started to move on with my barefoot adventures. This week in fact I started cross training going completely barefoot.
When I first started running in Vibrams, I would run a mile and then walk a mile.
Now, I am taking it even easier, walking a mile and jogging a bit during that walk.
Mostly, I am trying to build up the pads on my feet a bit, and maybe more so build up my confidence that I can run barefoot on the streets.
So far the experience has been very good. Not quite as much of a pleasure as putting on toe shoes were the first time, but I can definitely feel even more muscles getting a work out when I go barefoot all together.
Frankly, I’m not sure where this is all taking me, but the journey has been interesting so far.
Trick is to Catch the Raccoon Not Your Cat
It has been a long night. I worked until about 4. The raccoon came twice while I was up, which basically let me first figure out that the dogs weren’t going crazy over nothing and then it let me get a picture of it. I figured it wouldn’t be back again that night after being chased off by our pack of dogs.
So I went to sleep, or at least laid down. Then the damn raccoon came back 2 or 3 more times. The dogs went ape shit each time making all kinds of racket. Our neighbors light started turning off an on, they apparently didn’t realize that we had an intruder and that are dogs weren’t just being noisy.
By morning (90 minutes later) my wife was getting up for work, she fed the dogs and the damn raccoon came back again!
This time the dogs chased the raccoon up the lattice work on our back porch and then finally the raccoon got tired of essentially hanging from our wall/ceiling on the porch and just climbed up on our roof.
We haven’t seen it since. It might still be on the roof for all I know, but the pesky booger is probably sleeping off his fun in a hollow somewhere. 
Last night I couldn’t do much about the thing. It was too quick and jumpy to take a shot at it. It looked relatively friendly, not rabid so I was inclined to shoot it anyway, at first. But after it came back 5 or seven times, and as my sleep was put off more and more, I was becoming more tempted to shoot first and bury the raccoon later.
Fortunately, for the raccoon, I was aware enough to know that shooting at things (in the general direction of my neighbors house) would not be a smart idea anyway.
Unfortunately, the live trap was out somewhere around the barn, it was dark and I couldn’t find it in the dark. So I had to wait until the sun came up to actually start doing something useful.
So now the sun is up, I’ve found the trap, got it set, and baited with cat food.
The raccoon probably won’t be back until 1 am tonight, and one of our 2 cats will probably manage to get themselves caught a couple times by then, but hell, I don’t want to go through another night like last night and the cats have been caught before without any harm to their health or sanity.
Posted via email from Brett’s posterous or follow me on twitter @brettbum
Flying through the Holidays – January Conferences
I’m wrapping up what has been a pretty good week all in all. All week, I’ve been working to provide free upgrades for my clients sites from last year. I haven’t hit them all yet, but I’ve hit most of them. Upgrading their WordPress installations and any plugins that are out of date. I’m doing this free, and not expecting anything for it. I mention it for other WP designers out there.
Consider, you could charge for this service, you could charge a maintenance type of contract even. You could also charge your clients an arm and a leg if their site gets hacked because they were running an out of date version of WordPress or using a plugin that has a security vulnerability in it.
All those situations however, hing upon the concept of your customers experiencing a problem and you fixing it. Ergo, they have to experience some level of pain, and then make the association of you with that pain, even if you are the cure.
I’m not big on codependence, creating it, fostering it etc. I am big on helping people, and helping them avoid pain and problems. So I’m helping my clients avoid this issue going forward.
Plus, honestly, it is a little self serving. Yes, I could make some decent money charging to clean up a hacked account, but that type of work is really a pain in the ass, not very fun, and every one involved (client, designer, hosting company and more) all go through the process reluctantly.
Who needs that type of hassle? That goes double during the holidays!
So happy holidays to everyone, and I hope you update your WordPress intallations and plugins too! The tighter your installation and security the safer the web is for everyone.
Travel and Conferences
I’ve been working on getting ready for January travel and conferences after the holidays. In this area, I’m really looking forward to my third Affiliate Summit. I’m covering the show again this winter, and something about this show gets me jazzed everytime it comes around.
It is not an easy nut to crack. Even though I’ve been covering, writing, even working in the affiliate world myself for several years now, there are a large number of disciplines to understand deeply. This is not a get rich over night scheme. It involves a large number of professionals that work on the web and have been honing their craft and skills and tools since the earliest days of the internet. When Yahoo! was still trying to figure out how to build a revenue component into their business plan, the affiliate marketing industry was already profitable.
This time around, I’m again going to be focusing on any tips I can pick up in understanding analytics and PPC management. I’m also going to be VERY focused on trying to find affiliate networks that provide products or services through their network that play well in the realm of content that has entertainment value. Anything from Blogs to podcasts to video casts to movies and tv shows online. I see a big future here for a number of reasons, and I’m looking for ways to make this work.
I will also keep my eye out for anyone that builds in better integration with WordPress or other CMS systems.
This will be my third show and I think as a blog marketer, WordPress CMS web designers, I could offer back some useful insights to this community as well. To this end, I’m hoping to discuss this more with Shawn Collins and Missy Ward. I haven’t gotten a good bead on how or where I might be able to give back to this industry that has taught me quite a bit already, but I think there is an opportunity there.
I’m also trying to figure out how to juggle in CES, Atlanta WordCamp, Boston WordCamp and Indiana Barcamp this next month.
Atlanta Wordcamp organizers sent me a request to send in a speaking proposal for that conference. They specifically asked for something, a topic, that hadn’t been used elsewhere before. So I took an extra few days to put something together, got it in by the deadline, then didn’t hear anything from them. I started seeing other speakers added to the list, covering some of the same exact topics I’ve heard them cover more than once elsewhere. (not saying there is anything wrong with that, but I kind of figured when Atlanta WordCamp asked for something unique they meant it. )
Guess that wasn’t really the case. lol
It looks like its going to be a good WordCamp if for no other reason than Scott from WordPress Pods is going to be presenting. I really hoped that he could have spoke at the Birmingham WordCamp but it didn’t happen. So I was glad to see him get on the docket for Atlanta.
Anyway, Atlanta WordCamp happens right at the same time that CES is taking place in Las Vegas. So I was looking at flying to Vegas, then taking the Red Eye back after the tweet up at the LV Hilton to make it to Atlanta WordCamp in time to speak.
That’s not necessary now as they lost my proposal in the pile, filled up the schedule with other great speakers, and decided they didn’t need me after all. That’s all fine and dandy. I was waiting on feedback on whether they needed me or not and got no response all week long.
So I finally was able to track down a Google voice number for one of the organizers (think there are a couple), and called. Nice guy, that I met in Birmingham (didn’t remember me lol even though he requested I send in a proposal in the first place ). So he told me that they didn’t have a spot for my topic (which is true, there are about 3-4 people presenting the same topic already, sans the tool that will enable people to actually walk out of the room with the ability to use the skill taught. 
That’s all well and good, but when I went online to finally get my travel plans locked in stone, the airline rates have gone up by $400!
So essentially, submitting my speaking proposal, and then not backing out, and waiting for someone to follow up with me and confirm whether or not they really needed/wanted me to speak after they asked, just cost me $400.
Merry Christmas from WordCamp Atlanta!
Now, anyone that knows me, knows that I’m not rich or anything. I’ve got a home in Atlanta with an updside down mortgage. I’ve got other challenges stemming from my run in with the Chinese mafia when I used to be a corporate accountant for Motorola. I don’t really have $400 to spare, especially when I’m trying to do right by someone or some group.
I realize its the holidays. I realize December is a tough month. I realize that 99% of people that work in Social Media wouldn’t know how to return a phone call or follow up with someone in a meaningful (nonfollowfriday shout out) way unless you were threatening to decapitate Steve Jobs and put his head on a pike in the middle of the Microsoft Corporate Headquarter campus.
I know all that and my expectations are very very low. I’ve been working in this industry for 4 years now. Its par for the course.
But well, it is still annoying, especially when it takes money out of my bank account.
Sorry Bank of America, guess it took money out of your bank account too.
Fortunately, the week has been pretty good from a financial perspective. I had done a fair job of bringing in new business this month, and before this happened, it looked like I would be going into the holidays with all pluses on my tick sheet. So now I have a $400 set back, plus, not sure if I can make either the WordCamp in Atlanta nor CES! ($400 extra might blow my budget for that trip) I could go to Atlanta WordCamp if I don’t go to CES, but now I’m a little annoyed, and there’s really no room for politics or bad attitudes at WordCamps.
Its funny, over the years I’ve heard quite a few of the speakers that frequent WordCamps in the southeast, bitch moan and complain about the inherent politics that screws them out of grandeur. Other than empathizing with friends, I never really paid it much attention. I do my best to stay out of politics. If someone wants my help, I’m there. If they don’t, that’s cool too. I’m pretty easy going. So getting sucked in on this one, with the invite first, the stall second, and the blow off last even managed to get under my thick skin.
At least they weren’t threatening to kill me and my kids like the Chinese mafia in Buckhead were! Some things in Atlanta are getting better I guess.
…..
deep breath, btw , this IS a blog, in the diary sense of blogs. I write here to express myself and for therapy reasons these days. Nice cleansing feeling of getting this crap off my chest. After I hit publish, I won’t care about this any more.
OK, so its finally snowing here. The kids were let out on a snow day 5 hours ago, when there was not any snow or rain in the sky. (silly)
I’m going to get cleaned up then head over to a holiday party at some of our friends house. My wife and kids are already there. I’ve just been finishing a few things up before heading out. Trying to put in something of a full day.
A Week Later – A new understanding of my relationship with my wife – Fast Track to a Free Love Socially Networked Society
Its been over a week since I went out with my wife and what I thought at the time was her online boyfriend, whom she had met first in real life while we were out celebrating our wedding anniversary.
I’ve taken the last two days off from talking or writing about this topic. When all of this first happened, I was definitely having a difficult time trying to understand, decipher, cope, be supportive, not get mad, not drop into a massive depression, etc.
Ultimately, writing about it, helped me immensely. I just didn’t have anyone else to turn to in order to dig through all the facts and information. I didn’t have anyone else to talk to about what I was feeling or what I should be feeling, if it was even appropriate or not.
I wrote quite a bit, probably something close to 20,000 words. If this were NaNoWriMo, I’d be two thirds done with a novel.
- Things that completely Derail your Week: Server problems, Noisy Neighbors Construction and Your Wife’s boyfriend
- Recovering After the Date with My Wife’s Boyfriend
- Until Un-Happiness Do Us Part – The Perceived Risk of my Wife’s ‘Friend’
- Surprise! Your Wife Has Mail (from Him)
- How Do I Compete for my Wife’s Attention When He has as much Access to her as I do through Social Networks and Text Messages?
I was not writing for volume by any means. Just trying to get through things. By the time I finished the fifth one, ergo my fifth day of therapy, my therapy was starting to hurt my wife.
I did not want to turn this in to a zero sum game, where she hurts me, so I hurt her back. I didn’t want to go out and find some other woman to turn things on my wife just to see how she would like it. I did not want to harm her with my words either. We have always had a difficult time talking about these things, which was why I wrote in the first place.
But early on, she started reading what I was writing (not always finishing for obviously long winded reasons) and she was starting to feel that my writing painted her too negatively, painted her actions too negatively, and she felt that this was putting her on the defensive. Long story short, I don’t think Becky really thinks she did anything wrong. She says she did not intend to hurt me. She says that she didn’t realize that I didn’t know about her online relationship with Hobie. Since I have never really gotten ‘jealous’ in the past, it was a surprise when all of this hurt me.
A New Kind of Jealousy
So in person, I am not the type of person that gets jealous. Becky can flirt with someone all she likes and I will not really blink an eye. I won’t really compete either. If she wants to flirt she can, but I don’t play gladiator games with other guys to win her attention. Its just not my way, never has been. The lack of games like that is one of the reasons why I fell in love with Becky in the first place.
Years ago when I was single, I learned how to play those games. I was very adept at it. For the most part, I thought they were kind of stupid, and they usually torpedoed any chance at a better relationship with someone. When I met Becky, we didn’t play any of those stupid games, and I think that is one of the reasons why our relationship lasted this long (16 years) already.
Fast forward to the present, and I don’t mind, never have if she flirts with another guy, but I’m not going to regress to the point where I have to play games to keep her love or attention. I think she knows that and I think that when she flirts, she does so not to hook up with someone, not to fall in love with someone, she just does it because she likes the repartee’ or something. I do too for that matter, and its something that is difficult to engage in with someone you’ve been married to for so long, because you know that just around the corner all flirting pretenses can evaporate in a minute or two. With a stranger, the boundaries can remain up indefinitely.
But I’ve learned that I can be jealous of my wife when she has a constant and regular electronic relationship with another man via text messages, phone calls, chat messages, email and facebook. I can be even more jealous when she doesn’t even let me know that this is going on. It may not be in secret, it may not be hidden but its not in the light of day either.
Flirting in person, rarely lasts day after day, night after night for several weeks. Meet a stranger in a club, bar, anywhere and you might have a few minutes, maybe time through out the evening to chat back and forth, but that is unlikely to turn into repeat sessions.
Meet a person online and you are connected, possibly forever.
They can see what you are thinking, what you are doing, who you are talking to, what you are talking about, they can see pictures of you regularly, your kids and family and more.
I do not live in an internet bubble by a long shot, but I don’t develop relationships like that with other people very often and can’t remember the last time I developed a relationship like that with another woman.
Talking and flirting electronically is essentially like passing love notes. You may not be telling someone else that you love them like a third grader might, but passing messages back and forth with sexual overtones, double entendres, and other personal talk is essentially the stuff of love notes, maybe more at a high school level.
The electronics and the medium make it feel almost acceptable. After all, if you can talk with your brother, your mother, your sister, your boss in that medium, then talking with a member of the opposite sex must be OK too.
If you aren’t sending dirty pictures back and forth, no phone sex or masturbation is involved, it must be all right?
Well, despite the fact that I am extremely , ummm, liberated, especially about what humans can or should be able to do, if you want to buy into the concept of monogamous relationships (which I think is stupid, but have agreed to for the happiness of Becky) then this type of activity is NOT ok.
It seems to fall under the auspices of if you can’t do it in front of everyone else, then there must be a reason.
If you think it would hurt your spouse, then maybe you should reconsider.
If you think it would embarrass you or get you in trouble at work (sexual harassment or something) then maybe you should reconsider.
If you think it would embarrass your or your family if it were done in front of them, maybe you should reconsider.
I do not think my wife was knowingly engaging in any activity meant to hurt me or destroy our relationship nor probably even build a physical relationship with Hobie.
But I don’t think she thought through what she was doing either nor the repercussions. That is partly because I’ve never been the jealous type before, and partly because the mediums of conversation are so easy and readily available to keep connections and conversations flowing.
She did end up hurting me because she didn’t make me aware of what she was doing with Hobie. I wasn’t involved in the conversation. I wasn’t privy to the conversation (not even in a voyeuristic manner). She never really made that an option.
At one point, the height of my fear and angst, I toyed with hacking into her computer and trying to find out what she had been talking about with Hobie, but I backed away. She might have been further down the rabbits hole than I realize, and I could be a fool, but if I had looked, it would have signaled the end of my trust of her and her trust of me.
I would have gained everything in knowledge to lose everything in reality.
She tells me that she has backed away from her relationship with Hobie, telling him not to flirt with her and she says she is not flirting with him. The communication has not stopped. I can’t tell but hope it has decreased in quantity. She’s been talking with him about his challenges dating another woman with the same name as my wife, counseling him basically. I haven’t read these messages or conversations, but have heard second hand about them from her.
I’m more comfortable with this. She could be pulling the wool over my eyes, but I don’t think she is. If I’m wrong, well there’s nothing else I could do other than snoop on her in which case she might as well be lost to me anyway. If I had to engage in an intervention to win her back or something, I’d probably consider it, but knowing her nature and her tendency to be extra stubborn when confronted I don’t think that would help. I don’t even think she has mentioned this situation to other people in her family, even though they read my blog too.
Great Sex
The article before this one, I toyed with the notion about writing about what has essentially been great make up sex. I backed off and instead wrote about some of the remaining aspects of things that were still troubling me.
I should have written about sex.
Apparently, the last article really upset Becky quite a bit. I think she was worried that no matter what she said or did, she couldn’t convince me that she wasn’t in love with Hobie and had no real intentions physically towards him.
But basically ever since this issue came up a little over a week ago, our sex life has been great. In our relationship, sex has always been very good, and no matter what our issues were over the years, too much work, moving, school, trying to get pregnant, pregnant, weight problems, finances, health issues, moving again, Chinese mafia threatening to kill us, the sex has always been good and always something that we could both count on.
Since this situation arose, my wife has been off work mostly. We’ve spent more time together over the last 9-10 days that we normally are, and we’ve been going at it like crazy.
I’m not going to go into all the lurid and fun details, but in addition to the writing, the sex has helped too. Its possible for men and women to fake orgasms, but its not so easy to fake emotions, especially during the extended rounds of foreplay and sex that have kept us up late the last week.
Our sex life, wasn’t really lacking before this all happened. It wasn’t slow and it wasn’t over done. We’re probably slightly more active than the average couple in the US, having sex 2-3 times per week, some weeks more than that, never much less. The trickiest thing about our sex life is our mis-matched work schedules, coming and going is our biggest problem, but once we meet up there is not much of an issue at all.
Becky is not frigid nor difficult to please. I wouldn’t say she is ‘easy to please’ but she’s definitely not impossible to please either. Some women have difficulty having orgasms, or can only have orgasms in a limited number of ways. Becky is lucky compared to some women and can have orgasms in several different ways and combinations. As her husband, that makes my life relatively easy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try regardless.
Over the last week, we’ve been putting in the extra effort so to speak, and its been a very very pleasant week, and I guess enough said about that.
Where to Go from Here?
I now know that I AM the Jealous type when it comes to some situations, especially secretive or non-transparent ones online. That’s not something I knew 2 weeks ago. Even though it has been painful, I do savor the opportunity to learn something new about myself.
I have learned some new things about Becky as well and that is a good thing too.
I do not know if she has grown as much during this event as I have. I hope so, but I am not sure. She’s still a little closed about a lot of this so its hard for me to tell.
I dislike the fact that we may have both just gone through the crucible and possibly only one of us benefited from surviving it. I do want Becky to know that I do not mind if she has male friends online or off. I do not care if she flirts with guys in person, especially if I’m there.
I do mind if she maintains a regular and constant online relationship in the form of multiple conversations each day electronically and that communication includes flirting dialog. That does bother me and does make me jealous. I do think that can result in feelings and later temptations that she might not want to resist. I think if she keeps these private from me, then she is essentially opening the door to meet someone, fall in love or lust with them, have an affair and I would be completely blind sided.
As a guy, who is relatively nice, kind of tall, not too fat, and doesn’t look much like a troll, I have to be careful not to let myself get into situations where physical temptations, especially if alcohol is involved, might get the better of me and I would do something that would hurt Becky. Its not happened yet, and that is largely because I am careful not to let it happen.
I think that Becky unwittingly walked into an area where the risk of something happening eventually was there. She was confident for several reasons that she would have said no or shut it down, but I’m not as confident largely because I was not aware of what was going on, what did go on, or just how close she actually got with Hobie. I’ll never know if I our relationship was on a razor’s edge of a cliff or if it was ten miles back from a rolling slope of a hill.
But I do want Becky to be more aware in the future of the danger and of what she now knows hurts me, something I didn’t even know 2 weeks ago.
I can’t handle going through this on a regular basis. Its not something I’m going to get used to, grow into, or learn to accept. If she develops an online relationship with a man, flirts with him in person, talks with him through out the day for days on end and doesn’t tell me about it, I’m going to be hurt, and I’m going to look at it in the future like she is trying to create an opportunity for something to split us up.
I do not think she will do that, but based on what I have learned about myself and our relationship, I can’t see any other way to view that type of thing in the future. I do not think it is unreasonable.
I do think Becky loves me, and I doubt this will come up again, until some dumb ass techy nerd develops some social network that allows people to communicate by reading each other’s minds from a distance.
Then we are all either in trouble or on a fast track to a real free love society.
Surprise! Your Wife Has Mail (from Him)
Would it trouble you if your wife starts getting email from another man?
Odds are she gets emails from other men every day, all day long, just like everyone else in the world.
Its a little different however, when that email comes from a man that you have recently seen man handling your wife a bit . . . hmmm maybe touchy/feely/patting/rubbing your wife might be a more apt description.
That was the surprise that I had to deal with last week, when I wrote ‘Things that completely Derail your Week: Server problems, Noisy Neighbors Construction and Your Wife’s boyfriend ‘. I was having a great week, things were coming together, life was good.
Then a brand new reality hit me between the eyes. A reality that was there before, just out of my range of vision.
Becky, my wife of 16 years, had met another guy on our anniversary (Halloween). I was there, sitting next to her. We were all having a good time and I was happy for her, getting attention from other guys.
One of those guys Friended her on Facebook 3 days later. I didn’t notice nor see it in her stream.
I don’t pick apart my wife’s Facebook stream and read every single thing she writes or that others write in it. I’m interested, but the way Facebook works it just doesn’t show me everything, unless I go to her profile and look at her Wall every day.
So I missed that new friendship she created with a guy she had been heavily heavily flirting with a couple days before when we were out celebrating together, our monthly date night amplified by our anniversary, and the first time we’ve celebrated it alone since we had kids 11 years ago.
There is no real significance other than unfortunate timing that my wife picked up a guy on our anniversary I guess. I suspect there are some serious fucking taboos for a husband to pick up a girl while out with his wife on their anniversary, but I’m not sure if that goes both ways. Maybe its a double standard, maybe its just a silly taboo in my own head, but for whatever reason, it did not bother my wife that night. It did not bother me, that night either.
I did not expect that bond/phsyical relationship to go anywhere else at all afterwards. So I was not worried nor concerned about losing Becky.
Ironically and BIG FAT DISCLAIMER HERE . . . SOMETHING Becky reminds me that I have failed to mention, that night on our anniversary, I did know about the flirting and groping. I did not discourage it. I was fine with it, even encouraged it, not in a goading sort of “Hey why don’t you go rub up against that guy so I can watch.” kind of way, but more in a “if you are having a good time flirting with the guy sitting next to you when I’m here and more fun when I’m in the bathroom, have fun. Enjoy yourself.”
But we live in an extra connected super social world these days. I should know, I work as a web designer, blogger and social media type.
I know the ins and outs of the business pretty well at this point, and I know social media pretty well as well.
So it shouldn’t have surprised me that a Facebook friend connection developed afterwards. In general, in my business, many many people friend each other extremely casually, for almost no reason other than networking.
Personally, I’m not as cavalier with my Facebook friends. I will connect with anyone on LinkedIn for business networking. I will selectively follow people that carry on conversations on Twitter and allow anyone short of a spammer or stalker to follow me there. But on Facebook, I try to limit my friends to people that I have met in person, know somewhat well and generally, like.
Those categories all fit for my wife and her new man friend. They met in person, they got to know each other fairly well physically. They had a good time together singing along to music all night, and a Facebook connection even by my crusty old standards was not terribly nuts.
I just never saw it coming. I never saw it happen.
I don’t tell my wife every time I make a new Facebook friend. I don’t tell my wife every time I add a new Facebook friend that is a woman. I do tend to tell her if I have added a Facebook friend that I have slept with (decades ago before we got married and that list is pretty short). She tends to mention that to me as well.
But this situation seemed different to me, still does. I’m not saying it is or isn’t, just feels that way to me due to everything involved:
- Our Date Night adventure
- Our Anniversary
- The significance of our first anniversary away from the kids
- The fact that they met and had a lot of physical contact, then became friends.
- Take that last item and add to it that she did not tell me that she was still talking with the guy, who I’m going to call ‘Hobie’ (that’s not his name, but is a code word that Becky will probably understand when she reads this. I feel like I have to give him a name, and I do not want to use his real name. I’m not convinced that he has any blame in this situation (its possible but I’m deferring judgment)
- Despite having my business card (and hers I think) Hobie, chose not to Friend me on Facebook. I never expect gratitude, but if a guy lets another guy fondle his wife at a bar, you’d think the beneficiary could at least be civil after the fact and offer to be a friend, or mention, I had a good time hanging out with you and your wife the other night, hope things didn’t get too carried away and that we can be friends, so I’m sending you and your wife a Friend request.
- He didn’t do that, so in my mind even though she may not have been sneaking around, I think he was.
- I think she did not see that he was sneaking around, but she should have because lets face it, guys tend to have sex on the brain. Especially single guys, and especially single guys that have just spent the night fondling a woman that continues to talk with them on Facebook, Yahoo chat, Yahoo email, and on her work email.
Whether Becky realizes or realized it or not, she was continuing to send out steady signals to Hobie that she was interested in him after a sexually charged introduction and encounter and unlike the night when we were out together and she was flirting with another guy in front of me, she was now sending off these follow up signals where I could not see.
I don’t think I’d mind this half as much if she had slept with him that night and I had known. I probably would not have participated but knowing and giving my blessing as her husband would have made it ok in my book.
This doesn’t feel OK because it got hidden behind closed technological doors.
Helicopter Parents and Helicopter Spouses
A friend of mine shared this article from Time Magazine called “The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting”. It is a very good article and as the parent of 3 kids, I completely relate with the article. (The article also talks about Lenore Skenazy and her experience being dubbed by Google as one of the worst moms in the world or something. I think she’s a great mom from what I’ve read myself.)
We’re not on the worst end of being helicopter parents, but due to the culture of so many families all operating at this over parenting level, our kids literally can not play with other kids outside in our neighborhood. The other kids just do not come outside to play. They only go where there are organized sporting events.
It is terrible.
I was reading this article while I still had the situation with Becky and myself on the brain. In particular, late last night, a casual comment she made on Facebook about going running with a friend (female) from work last night caught my attention.
Two people had pushed the ‘Like’ button on Facebook. One of those people was Hobie.
I suddenly felt all the crap and bad shit all over again (at a smaller level). This guy is in my wife’s life and he’s not really going away. I do think my wife has the capacity to love, friend, help other people, not just me. I’m not selfish for her attention, but the injury that I felt from some of the things listed above and more, are still fresh wounds. So every time I see Hobie connect with Becky online or in the real world (see Recovering After the Date with My Wife’s Boyfriend ) it rips open part of that un-healed wound all over again.
Yes it is scarring over and not as raw as it was originally, but its not fully healing each time either before its split open again.
I realized that one of the things that makes parents, ‘Helicopter Parents’ is that all this extra connectivity from cable news about molesters and child abductions, to mobile phones and text messages and emails with their kids and teachers, to web cams and much much more. It all pounds us with this extra information about the perils and evils and dangers of life.
Our natural reaction, is to shield our kids behind us with our backs to the fire and fend off the danger. That is just how we are wired. The more danger that presents itself (electronically) the more we get our hackles up and try to fend off the perceived danger.
That’s what is partly happening with Hobie and Becky’s online relationship.
I’m seeing small snipits of their online relationship, things in her Facebook stream like them Friending each other early in November.
I went back and looked after the fact, she also friended 2-3 other guys this month. I have no idea how many people I friended in the same time period nor how many may have been women.
I have seen snipits where she has talked with him back and forth in chat messages on her computer. I’ve seen emails (subject/sender not body) that he sent her on her computer, when she left her screen open one afternoon for several hours. Not exactly hiding from me, but seeing his name after I realized they had a relationship in emails bothered me.
As a guy that loves Becky and doesn’t want to lose her, I see a handful of danger signals
- Physical flirting >
- Turned to new online relationship >
- Grown into continued conversations and relationship >
- Resulting in invitation by him to her to go out again, oh and ok bring your husband too if you need a designated driver (btw Becky doesn’t remember passing on the invitation to me only to come as the designated driver, but she did want me to be the designated driver. )
- And then following that night out (almost can stop calling it a date) they are still in contact
I have not asked Becky to stop talking with him. She has stated that they are friends. I would not be happy if she asked me to stop being friends with someone, and I will not ask it of her. I have not asked her not to un-friend him on Facebook either. Although last night in a week moment I seriously though of doing the extremely stupid and immature thing of changing my relationship status from ‘Married’ to ‘Its Complicated’.
I think those relationship status things are really stupid in general, but I felt like doing it (tired from night of work and emotionally disturbed from seeing his latest contact with her) . . . I felt like doing it to signal to her that I do see a problem in our relationship.
I have mentioned before that a bunch of this is my own issue. Something I need to work through and get out of my system. But we are a team, a couple, we love each other. If something hurts me, its hurting us. If something hurts her, it hurts me.
Hobie’s relationship with my wife has hurt me.
I wish it hadn’t. I wish I wasn’t vulnerable like that. I think if Becky and I had simply been dating or living together for 16 years, I might even be a little more equipped to deal with this, but that’s one of the problems with marriage. It makes you believe falsely that your relationship with the person you love is safe, just because of some stupid promise and a document.
Relationships are never safe. They have to be protected and worked at all the time. I know this, because I’ve seen to many fail from lack of protection and work. Or in too many other cases because the couple lost or never had the key to making the relationship work from go. That fatal flaw in their relationship that ultimately breaks them apart.
Becky and I have a fatal flaw like that in our relationship. We have built up these barriers to protect ourselves over the years, protect ourselves from each other, and that is the weakness in our relationship that opens the door for disaster.
It could have probably happened the opposite way as well.
- Becky needs someone to lavish affection on her in front of other people. She needs to be flirted with, and touched.
- I need someone to have deep conversations with. I need to have that love for their thoughts and mind rekindled all the time.
- Becky can’t talk with me in depth, if I’m not lavishing affection on her.
- I can’t lavish physical affection on her if she’s not talking with me in heart to heart conversations about what is important.
Our needs are caught in a catch 22 (she abhores the concept and the word ‘paradox’ and ironically I love it).
We have to do something about this weakness together I think. We have to be aware that it is a weakness.
Superman can’t defend himself from kryptonite if he doesn’t know that kryptonite can hurt him. Same goes for our relationship.
In this case, something came between us because she was not talking with me and I was not lavishing attention on her.
In many ways, I think we are safe because it happened this way.
If it had happened in reverse. If I had met a girl in that bar that night and instead of touching her and fondling her, but had had this amazingly deep conversation with her that night, and then a few days later engaged in the act with that girl that Becky needs most ‘lavishing of physical attention’ but done that in a setting where Becky could not see and then Becky later found out. I think Becky would have been extremely hurt, as I have been.
So the two of us have to be aware of this situation and problem so that we can work to not set ourselves up in a situation where we are superman walking into a kryptonite esspro shop needing a shot of caffeine and not realizing that it comes with a kick of kryptonic self destruction.
Its All in the Unveiling of the Bad News
When I was young, I read the book the Hobbit about 7 or 8 times. I read the Lord of the Rings a few times as well, but the first book was my favorite. There’s a short story that is part of that book where the group of elves and hobbit and maybe gandolf too have been traveling for days and they desperately need refuge for the night. There is a character whose name might be Beoren or something. He’s a half man half bear, looks like a man during the day and changes into a bear at night. He’s a hermit, bear man too and doesn’t like large groups of people.
So there are like a dozen/maybe 14 people in the group and that is far too many, so they devise a plan where a person or two will go introduce themselves and then additional people will show up at intervals by twos.
The first two arrive, introduce themselves and start to tell their tale of adventure, and then they hint at the their friends (not present) and just as Beoren is asking about these friends, two more dwarves show up. This repeats over and over until the entire band of travelers are present and Beoren has been able to accept them all a bit at a time.
In this situation with my Becky and Hobie, the situation was revealed to me in a fantastically terrible way.
I didn’t know about the new friendship after our anniversary celebration and my Becky meeting Hobie. I didn’t know that the relationship was kindling into a friendship or anything. Then suddenly I was hit with the existence of the relationship, the invitation that sounded as if it were designed for them to meet together again, and my bit role in that future meeting, followed by evidence on top of evidence in the cyber world that indicated that their relationship had grown over the previous 2-3 weeks, but none of that evidence was qualitative, ergo I couldn’t read the chat messages, the emails, the facebook chats or messages. I had no grounding for how fast or serious things might have developed. I didn’t know if there were cause for alarm in this situation or not.
But I did immediately realize that are relationship had a weakness, I wasn’t keeping Becky happy, and that our barriers could be used to split us apart. That knowledge drove the fear of my first article, and I’ve been striving to keep up with putting a cap on that fear and moving forward in a positive way since.
I’m getting there. Becky and I are getting there. We are making progress, but I do desperately look forward to the day where the reminders of this situation stop piling up on top of me at all the wrong times, in all the wrong ways. I say that after I just spent 2 hours writing this article, relatively short at around 3,000 words compared to some of the others. If total word count indicates my passion on the topic, or my pain spilling over, I think I’m over the top of the bell curve of pain right now and on the downward slope.
I hope its a slope and not one of those fucking long tails. I need the long tail of pain like I need my wife to have a secret boyfriend.
Addendum – About 4 paragraphs up or better, Becky and I talked on the phone several times as she was driving home. It was one of the best conversations we have had on this topic yet, and might also be part of the reason why I was capable of slimming this article down a bit. Thanks Becky, I know you are not trying to hurt me.
Love Brett
Recovering After the Date with My Wife’s Boyfriend
That’s an unfair headline, but I’m going with it for now until I think of something more appropriate. Regardless, I am basically recovering from the date Friday night when I went out with my wife and her ‘boy friend’.
I wrote about this before hand a few days back
Things that completely Derail your Week: Server problems, Noisy Neighbors Construction and Your Wife’s boyfriend
Now, before I go any further, I need to say some things up front. This site is called There’s Something about Harry. I’m Harry, its a play on my middle name. I started this site almost 4 years ago and the site has no purpose. If you are reading this, all you are going to get is a little insight into my thoughts, a snapshot in time of my mind.
Years back, I created the site to practice some things with html and css. Then soon after I used it to break writers block, going through a number of silly exercises to get my creative juices flowing. Back then I was working as a new blogger, a ghost writer and a business developer.
Anyway, this site never had a purpose other than to be a support for me. That is something that I appreciate a great deal more the last few days, as my site has turned into my therapist.
Time for Therapy
Deep Breathe, ok one more of those, Deep Breath
So after I wrote that last article a few things happened. I wrote that article Thursday afternoon. I was pretty sure I was not going to go out with my wife who had been invited by a guy she met on our anniversary when we went out to celebrate 16 years of marriage. She’s a flirt in a physical way, and he flirted back heavily.
They exchanged contact information and developed a ‘friendship’ in the days and weeks that followed. I didn’t know about the friendship until sometime around Tuesday night, which was about 3 weeks after the fact give or take a few days.
We had plans to go and see the New Moon premier after midnight Thursday night, Becky and a friend from work (female) and her friend/old boyfriend.
I wasn’t super thrilled about seeing the premier, but that was mostly because I’m not crazy about the twilight movies. They are a little too teenage focused for me.
Twilight Series Spoiler alert
The books are fine enough, even though I get a little annoyed that
- Edward takes too long to figure out that he should turn Bella into a vampire (3 books) sorry about the spoiler . .
- Edward, a 109 year old male, doesn’t realize that he is capable of producing sperm, and that a girl could get pregnant from sperm
End of spoiler
But my wife loves the series, the books, the movies, the sound tracks, pretty much the whole works and she reads a lot of vampire books and series now as a result.
So we went, and I had a good time. We stopped by a bar on the way. I had two killian’s red beers before the movie and I enjoyed it. The movie complex ran the movie in 9 different theaters and the place was packed. The movie wasn’t quite as teeny bopper focused as Twilight. The special effects were alright (the werewolves in the early scenes were a little goofy). The romeo and juliet vibe between bella and edward is realized in a campy romantic way, and Jacob’s ability to steal a scene really showed its teeth in New Moon. I almost got the sense that whenever there was a scene with Edward, the movie was going down hill and whenever a scene with Jacob showed up things were better. But from an artistic perspective that’s kind of the point of the second book and probably done intentionally in the movie too.
Throughout the night, I made a couple joking comments via twitter, and all in all it was a decent night,but . . . I was dreading Friday night and the DATE.
To make things more complex, my wife was awaiting the results of her National Boards. They were due sometime on Friday. So the night out at How at the Moon in Charlotte, took on a new importance. It was either going to be a celebration or a consolation for my wife depending on if she passed her boards or not. She completed them last spring and it takes the board something like 6 months to tally up scores. Rather ridiculous if you ask me, and I know a thing or two about board processes. If you haven’t been through a medical board, or a military board, or an educational board, you might liken it to something like a CPA exam or sitting for the Bar exam.
Friday, we woke up late after being up late. We got the kids on the bus for school and Becky dropped our youngest off at school.
Sometime in the mid morning she got her results back, and she did not pass all of her boards. So she now has to redo/retake some of these. This is a grueling process and a shit load of work. Not to mention she (we) had to pay $4k out of pocket last year for her to take them. Now we will have to pay another $1k to retest, and finances have not been great this year, nor last year. We’re going to do it, but its not going to be easy.
She was pretty upset, and despite all of my issues with the DATE, I did everything I could to make her feel better. We went out to eat, and went shopping at Kohls for something for her to wear to the DATE that night, then we went around to two of the schools picking up our daughters.
Got home, she took a nap and I picked up our son.
Sometime after that I think I wrote that article above.
She might have had another nap as well. Stress and being out late, and me hemming and hawing about whether I would go or not, mostly me leaning towards not going at all, or possibly driving her there, dropping her off and picking her up after she was done and ready to leave so that she had a safe trip to and from without any cabs or opportunity to go home with her boyfriend. (I didn’t think that latter aspect was likely, but well, we’re all human.)
We did talk about things throughout the day a bit. It was helping (me) to talk about it, but I didn’t get a chance to really express my feelings until I wrote the blog article. When I did write it, that was my subjective perspective. I’m not an objective writer, by choice. I can write objectively with the best of them, but I see little value in objectivity, something I won’t go into in this article because it doesn’t relate.
People, friends and family, kept asking me if I was going and wishing me a good time. I kept telling them, I’m not sure if I’m going or not. They didn’t understand. Got a lot of weird looks that day, but they didn’t know about my wife’s friend nor did they have the visuals of him groping her stuck in their head.
Ultimately, towards the last minute, I decided to go. I had a lot of reasons for this, but primarily I wanted to BE THERE, I wanted to present myself as a candidate for my wife’s attentions. I didn’t feel like this was fair, we’re married. Now, I don’t believe in marriage for a lot of reasons, never have, never will (new fodder for the fire in this). But for those that do believe in marriage (sorry about that flawed condition if you have it) people tend to think that if you are married you should not fall for someone else, you shouldn’t flirt with someone else, you shouldn’t make your spouse/significant other jealous, yada yada yada.
That’s all bullshit. People are humans and we aren’t wired that way. I know that, appreciate it, and live aware of it. I don’t embrace the fact in a free love kind of way popular in the 60’s, but I know that things can happen. That emotions and feelings can develop.
I mentioned in the article that I did not want to lose Becky. I love Becky. I didn’t want to compete for her, because that goes against my nature, against the few beliefs I have, but that night I chose to at least be there.
She needed my support for the boards, she needed a designated driver, and any other time, I would have loved to go and have a good time.
Before we left I had a shot of seagrams. Becky drove, we picked up her girl friend and we headed to Charlotte. I had a couple more beers before switching to diet coke and sobering up. I just couldn’t face the night with the edge that was present in my head. Plus, its a fucking dueling paino bar. You almost can’t go there and deal with the place on a normal night without some alcohol. (The performers are good, and funny, but alcohol is part of the experience.)
We arrived and joined the table that the boyfriend had won, driving the invitation and my purpose as the DD. He was sitting with another couple, some friends, 1 of which he worked with I think. It was their first time at a piano bar, and I don’t think they were really into it(they were drinking, but probably not enough). I couldn’t really make much contact with the boyfriend. I figured if I did, I’d probably end up doing something I would regret. That might have ranged anywhere from cracking a bunch of jokes, insulting him out right, belittling him in front of a crowd, throwing stuff, taking a cheap shot at him with my fist, starting a full blown fight, getting pissed at my wife and storming out, ditching her there, or who knows what else.
So I basically watched the band and sang along. I put on a good face and held it together pretty well.
On the drive there, I got a tweet from someone that commented about the fact that I had mentioned in a tweet that I was heading out with my wife so she could be with her boyfriend.
@brettbum sounds more emasculating than dumb. #goodluckwiththat
I think he was responding to one of these messages, but I’m not sure which:
Some people would read that and feel a little embarrassed, others might even feel like it was a little insulting or described them as being less than . . . .something.
For me it actually kicked off a little bit of courage. I’ve never bought into the whole masculinity crap. I don’t fret about my masculinity. I’m actually extremely confident in myself and don’t have to live up to some goofy stereotype. (like driving your wife to a date with her boyfriend is bad apparently).
OK, I need to set something a little straight. I’m referring to the guy as boyfriend and the event as a date. But in fairness, that is more me writing. When I write, especially about my life, there are a lot of odd things that have happened to me over the years. For example, I had a run in with organized criminals in china that were knocking off Motorola 2 way radios and selling them on the black market, these ended up as key parts used for IEDs in Iraq. I became a whistleblower, they threatened to kill me. My life is not uneventful.
To deal with shit like that (and this) I have to use words that help me summarize the experience in terms that others will understand quickly, otherwise, I’ll write or say 10,000 words explaining a fine point. So when I call it a date, she wasn’t going out on a date just to be with this guy, but that’s the easiest way I can convey the event and the emotions in my head that I experienced then when I thought about the event.
My wife is not a bad person. I don’t think she has cheated on me. I don’t think she intended to hurt me. ( I was hurt, but I don’t think the intent was there.) And she did need to go out and have a good time that night to lick her wounds from the results of the boards.
Anyway, for now, I’m going to keep referring to things this way. I have to partly for my own peace of mind to help exorcise the daemons in my head. I have to say the words enough so that they won’t have any power of me or my emotions any more, because right now they are tearing me up inside.
So anyway the comment actually helped me remember who I was a bit, and remember more importantly where I came from and how I came to be, and that gave me some strength to put it into perspective and when I got there, I didn’t just drop Becky off and come back later. I went in and stayed until we left later, together.
Now, while we were there things weren’t all perfect. I was having a mostly good time for the first few hours as long as I didn’t look the wrong way. I opened up a tab, Becky and her friend had a shot, bought by a third couple that joined us late.
We sent in a lot of song requests, including one from me, Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum. That song has a lot of history for me and symbolizes the energy I need to get through very very difficult personal situations. I’ve turned to it in times of need many times over the years. I haven’t had need of it in a few years.
I gave $5 to get that one played, normally I give $2 or $3. The piano player saw it and gave me a look, like fat chance. (they didn’t play Every day is Halloween, on Halloween when we were there for our anniversary), so I figured that I just lost $5.
But much later that evening they played it. That helped quite a bit, but before we got there, I was writing up a later song request, when the other piano player turned the spot light on me (we were at a table close to the stage) and said that he’d have to get me up on stage because I was not singing along to the current song (I wasn’t even paying attention because I was writing a song request). He made some joke about me being ‘too cool for school’ and the blazer I was wearing and told me to get my Nicholas Cage ass up on the stage.
I went and had to sing the chorus of Chuck Berry’s “My Ding Aling” in front of an audience, including my wife’s boyfriend.
I was a good sport, but holding that microphone at that point in time was a dangerous thing. I was having a hard time singing, not because I was embarrassed about the song, but because, I thought about ripping into the boyfriend with the mic or explaining to the audience the situation that had brought me up on stage to be the subject of a ridiculous song. I also thought about throwing the microphone at the guy, but doubted my aim given my high level of fury. That and the spotlights in my eyes were messing with me a bit.
So I kind of sang, in a William “Bubba” Shatner kind of way.
That was not my last time on stage singing that night.
the next time was more comfortable for strange reasons.
The night went on, Becky had a great time, danced quite a bit (with the crowd of other women that were dancing in front of and on the stage). She was having a good time, and I was happy for her.
Later that night, they brought a guy up on stage. He’d just gotten back from Africa or Iraq (not sure which) where he had been serving with the military. I think his first name was Jerry. For some reason I got a feeling he was a Doctor, just had that look. Before you know it they were calling out to have all veterans come up on stage.
I’m a veteran, I joined the army when the US was building up on the Kuwait border in the fall of 1990. I started Basic, the day the war started. I served during but not in the first Persian Gulf War. I later supported the mission to Somalia and Haiti, I worked the Balkans desk in the early 90’s but never deployed. I see myself as a veteran, but I see a big difference in veterans that have been deployed to a foreign country to fight and those that haven’t. Normally, I don’t stand up for recognition during these types of things, but this time with the encouragement of Becky I found myself heading up on stage, where my Nicolas Cage ass joined with other veterans to sing Proud to be an American, a country song (not terribly fond of country music) which I learned to sing along to and drink copious amounts of beer when I was in the Army stationed in Texas years ago.
That felt better than singing My Ding aling in front of my wife’s boy friend.
As the night went on, I mostly held in there. My wife sat across from me the entire night pretty much. One of her beefs with me is that I don’t flirt with her in public, I don’t hang on her, tickle her, kiss/fondle her stuff like that. Its mostly true. Its not her, its me. I try but it just doesn’t manifest, which is one of the things that drove her to flirt with the other guy weeks earlier, and knowing that I don’t give her what she wants in this way, I didn’t mind, then.
But I couldn’t quite do it Friday night either. I was trying to keep a level head and not do something that would make me look like a complete asshole and might increase my wife’s sympathy for the other guy, like ridiculing him on stage, or throwing a beer bottle at his head.
Towards the end of the night, most of the people from our table’s party had left, including a woman that had come to be something of an almost date with my wife’s boyfriend. She was uncomfortable all night long, I think they are mismatched, and that’s just me being honest. Some strange lady at the bar that night even tried to set this girl up with her brother at a different table, taking her away from my wife’s boyfriend and his chances of possibly connecting with someone else (besides my wife).
I seriously felt bad for the guy for the way she was treating him. I don’t dislike this guy (for the most part). I see my issues or complaints here as a problem in my own head. A personal emotional weakness that I didn’t know I had, or something new that has developed over 16 years of a ‘safe’ marriage relationship.
However, she eventually left kind of early, after playing text messaging games most of the night. She did finally start to sing along after a couple Blue Moon beers at the very end for 20-30 minutes.
But when she left, the boyfriend was at one end of the group of tables separated by the rest of us by at least one chair. My wife eventually moved chairs on the opposite side of the tables and sat next to him. She was trying to flirt
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Things that completely Derail your Week: Server problems, Noisy Neighbors Construction and Your Wife’s boyfriend
OK, I need to whine, bitch, moan and complain a little bit. Please don’t read anything more into this than my airing my complaints, because that is all it is. Sometimes you just need to exorcise the deamons from your head a bit and that’s what I’m doing right now.
I would have done this yesterday, but I’ve been having server problems (one of the things I’m complaining about) so I couldn’t even blog about my troubles.
My week hasn’t exactly gone as planned this week. It started on Monday.
I had outlined a number of video scripts that I needed to record this week for a new set of tutorials for designing wordpress themes that I have been working on for a while now. I’ve been to a bunch of conferences now where I have given a bit of the intro (101 level) presentation on how to design a wordpress theme from scratch with no prior experience.
Its a great presentation, and I’ve helped a lot of people learn something useful, something they wanted to learn, and something that can make them money.
I always like teaching people how to fish. . . . well not so much fishing but teaching them how to make money so they can buy fish.
If you want me to speak at a conference, camp, or event that you are hosting, please get in touch with me through my company site at Softduit or via twitter, email, linkedin etc. I’m not too hard to find, just google Brett Bumeter.
Complaint 1 – Noisy Neighbor
So I need to complain about my neighbor. he’s a great guy, getting ready to take his band on tour in europe, and he’s been recovering from a house fire for the last year. I’m not mad at him and don’t fault him for this, but it proved to be a problem for me this week.
He’s had construction workers at his house all year since his house caught fire. Tragic story(no one injured), and I feel for him, but this last Monday as he was finally moving back in, the construction workers were making a lot of noise and I couldn’t record my video and audio work.
Tuesday, I spent scoping out a coworking space in Charlotte, which I will probably sign up for just as soon as I get the membership agreement, which is a couple days late coming to me now, but no worries. Seems like a good deal, and I’m looking forward to it. I think I will scope out office space in Savannah next, but that’s another story.
Tuesday night I get home after perusing the new office and then hanging around for a tweetup afterwards. My wife is in bed chatting on the computer with her boyfriend. She met him on our 16th anniversary at Howl at the Moon in Charlotte when we went out to celebrate.
I’m not a jealous guy by a mile and a half, and didn’t mind when he flirted with her nor even when he started groping her. She was enjoying the attention and having a good time. Together we had a great time that night. It was Halloween and just a fun night all in all.
But I wasn’t exactly expecting her to hit it off with the guy on a long term basis either.
Its about 3 weeks later and she talks with him regularly via chat and stuff. I’m not real nosy, but I think she talks with him via email, messenger and she’s friends with him on Facebook.
He’s got my business card, so who knows maybe Mike’s even reading my this article right now.
Hi Mike
Anyway, I don’t mind my wife flirting with people. Never have. I kind of look at it from the perspective that I’m a relatively nice guy, decent husband, decent father, I don’t smoke, do drugs, beat anyone, haven’t been to jail etc. Sex life is good, not too kinked up not too boring. I want Becky to be happy, so if someday she decides that I’m not the guy anymore, well I want her to be happy and find the person that is the right person.
I’m not trying to push her away, don’t want to lose her, but I’m not going to stifle her either nor entrap her in a marriage just because. I don’t see that as a good option for anyone.
So if she wants to chat with some guy she met at a club every day, well whatever.
If she wanted to go have an affair with the guy, I probably wouldn’t stop her there either. I’d hope that she would come back, maybe sew some oats or something (its been 16 years, if she’s bored or needs something I’m not providing well I want her to be happy). But I’d do that HOPING she would come back.
Maybe I’m vain to think that the grass IS greener on this side of the fence, but well, I do. Always have, and if she doesn’t think so, she needs to tell me or find better pastures. ( again not trying to send her away).
But the flirting/groping turned what she calls a new friend type of relationship grates on my nerves a bit.
Complaint 2 – My Wife’s New Long Term Boy Friend
I look at it from the perspective that he met her with sex on the brain. Drunken, flirty, groping situation and it definitely was not absent from their thoughts. I don’t know how seriously she entertained the idea with having sex with him. She speculated that he might be more interested in having sex with me.
I used to get that a lot from guys, ergo they wanting to have sex with me, but I’ve never found that right guy, and odds are I’m not going to. I’m not looking and never have been. I’m pretty much straight as an arrow, despite my propensity for disco.
Drunkenly, that night I lightly toyed with the notion of the three of us having a thing. I don’t think my wife has ever slept with two guys at the same time, maybe she’d like that. I don’t know. If she asked, I’d probably oblige as long as I didn’t have to touch the other dude too much, preferably not at all.
I don’t know if the other guy looks good or not, can’t judge guys looks, never really could. I’d include his facebook picture or something, but don’t think that would be really fair. I’m not complaining to harass him nor my wife, just need to air my thoughts and don’t really have someone that I can talk about this with on the phone or in person.
So I’m publishing it, I’m sure that’s a bad idea, but trying to salvage my sanity first.
So anyway, her talking with him via chat and email and stuff wouldn’t be probably all that annoying. Its 2009, conversations online happen. But this is where my complaint comes in . . .
He invited her to go back to Howl at the Moon this Friday, and bring me and some friends of hers.
So my complaint is that, I don’t really care if she talks with him, don’t care even if she sleeps with him (says she hasn’t and is not going to probably), but I don’t necessarily want to be there when he courts her, attempts to woo her away, and she asked me to go with following her invitation so that I could be the designated driver!
That last part kind of hits the nail on the head. Not only does she want me to go out with her so she can be with her boy friend . . .
She calls him a close friend now because she has counseled him online in regards to some girl he’s been infatuated with for a long time and is finally going out with this Friday night, which to me sounds a bit like my wife in code or something.
. . . . so not only go out with her so she can be with her boyfriend and he can see my wife, but she wants me to drive so she can get drunk with him, and I can take her safely home.
I do want to see her get home safe. For all I know this guy is a serial killer or something, and it is a long long way for a cab drive from Charlotte.
Add in to the mix she wants to take her friends from work with her, so not only will I be out with my wife and her boyfriend while they get drunk at the club they met at on our anniversary, but her friends will get to drink and wonder why I’m there letting my wife get drunk with her boyfriend at a club where they met on our anniversary.
just a touch of public humiliation thrown in on top of letting my wife go on a date basically.
Well, it was until this week that I finally found a context to that Meat Loaf song that I have always hated and still do.
“I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that.”
I guess this is my thing that I just won’t do. She’s upset because I don’t want to go. She had fun the last time we went (mentioned that above) and says she wants to go and have fun with me there.
In her defense, I’m not great at public displays of affection. Never have been, just not in my wiring, which is part of the reason I didn’t mind other guys (there were a couple others that night) showering attention on her. I think its healthy for people to be adored a bit every now and then. Furthermore, (feels weird to write a paragraph with furthermore in it about this topic, not really trying to make a federal case out of this ) I travel quite a bit these days for work. I have to socialize and go to a lot of those cheesy social media parties in crazy places like Vegas.
I know that is not easy for her to cope with. I’m not much of a flirt these days. I used to be when I was single, but I got so tired of the games of flirting and picking people up . . . .well it was one of the reasons why I got married. And that relates to my wife, because she didn’t play those games when we met or dated. It was refreshing then. Maybe more importantly, I don’t grope girls at the parties I go to, ask anyone (this is the internet and I’m sure there are lots of pictures and maybe video) its just not my style. Anyway, my point is that I’m away a lot, meeting lots of people, men and women, and she doesn’t see that which is not easy for her.
One of the differences here is that I DID see her meet this guy, flirt with him and get groped for a couple hours. So its difficult for me to now envision the two of them ‘just as friends’. Its been a long time since I did grope someone other than Becky, and I can only think of one girl I groped that I didn’t have sex with (I was 17). We are still very distant friends on facebook, but I have seen her since I was 17, and the odds of her inviting me to go out and party and then asking my wife to come along as the designated driver are just not going to happen.
So Wednesday morning, I woke up after watching my wife chat with this guy the night before and her receiving the invitation and then emailing it to me. I had this hollow feeling in my gut from the minute I woke up.
I didn’t really think I’d lose her, but weirder things do happen to people. I sure as hell didn’t want to contribute to losing her just because I lack that healthy dose of jealousy gene that most people have.
I couldn’t work at all that morning, ended up going back to bed for a couple hours, but could barely sleep, even though I hadn’t got much sleep the night before or all week for that matter.
Woke up that afternoon and tried to get it together for a customer meeting online, and just couldn’t do it. Backed out of that meeting with a poor ‘DSL down excuse’ but how do you tell a customer you can meet with them because you are torn up over your wife’s boyfriend?
By the way, if you don’t know this about me by now, I should lay it out for you as I AM aware of it. I have a tendency to be a little overly dramatic. While I’m not exaggerating the events, I HOPE I am seeing something possible where HOPEFULLY nothing is possible.
My wife got home from work and I told her I didn’t want to go and wouldn’t likely go. I told her if she wanted I would drive her, drop her off and pick her up.
I do want her to be safe, and seriously, it wouldn’t surprise me if this guy was a serial killer (we do seem to have one in Gastonia these days, again, 2nd girl’s body was just found, although I suspect it was drug related).
So I’d go so far as to take her and bring her home to make sure she is safe, but I don’t want to be there and watch, nor be in the situation, nor walk away with a re-enforced memory, good bad or otherwise. I just want to do a memory dump on this situation basically.
I’m not demanding she stop emailing/chatting/facebook friend him or anything either. If they are friends, great. Whatever. But I don’t want to be a part of possibly creating a situation where they have a greater chance to connect or something.
IF there is a spark there, I’m not going to blow on it.
Hell, I’ve already agreed to go see New Moon with her tonight after midnight. She’s a big fan of that book series and movies, over the top type of fan. I think the books are decent enough, but the movies seem a little too teenage for my tastes.
So going to New Moon tonight and then out with her boyfriend tomorrow night is just too much. I keep thinking maybe I could just let it go and go and have fun, but that’s the thing. Given the situation, I don’t think I can have fun, even if I go and drink myself silly. I don’t want to go somewhere, knowing the odds are good that I’ll sit there and sulk and be a brooding asshole, nice contrast to her new boyfriend who will likely be in a better mood.
Seems likes like a recipe for disaster if not Jerry Springer.
Then on top of all of that, last night as I’m finally trying to get back on track and get caught up with the work that I was too depressed to deal with yesterday, my server crashes last night around 1 am.
Complaint 3 – My Server went down again
My server with inmotion hosting has been driving me nuts since July. I’ve been with them for almost 4 years and have historically loved their service and support.
In July, they convinced me to upgrade from one server to a newer ‘faster’ server. I’ve had nothing but problems ever since. Almost everyother week, my server goes down and they threaten to cancel my prepaid account ($500 per year) because I’m using up to much CPU time.
I have a handful of sites that get very little traffic. I have actually closed or moved half the accounts I had on my server before July because of this.
The server crash, completely torpedoed the last of my energy last night, so I went to bed hoping that it would be better enough in the morning. Scrunched up in bed and tried to sleep, barely pulled that off.
Got up around 6:50 and the server is still down. Got my daughter on her bus and then called tech support. I got the impression they were just starting to look into it 6 hours later (I could be mistaken, but that was the impression the phone rep gave me who was interfacing with the higher level support reps, who used to field phone calls and now do not).
I’ve been through this with them before. I figured, I can’t fix things with my wife right away, but maybe I can fix my fucking server at least. So I started seriously looking into switching to Host Gator, which I’ve been scoping since this problem came up.
I’ve done a massive amount of optimization for performance on my sites over the last 5 months, and I had no issue before the server upgrade. I’m pretty sure its not me, its them, but their system provides almost no information about what is going on with my accounts on their server.
I’m completely in the dark with them.
I had one last talk with them, indicated that I was going to move elsewhere and started to work on that.
Then I get a call from Marco at Inmotion. He was doing some super heavy lifting on my server trying to reconfigure it and move my sites to a different machine where we could figure out what was going on. His super hero efforts stopped me from switching, but I’m not sure if that’s good for either one of us just yet.
Many hours later, I think my sites are actually back up and working without the errors and things. They’ve been up and down all after noon as he works his magic.
When I started writing this blog post 90 minutes ago, Something About Harry was still up. Hopefully it still is because I’m getting ready to hit the publish button. I feel better and I’m tired of bitching.
If you read this far, thanks for listening. I have a lot of good luck and a tendency for surviving very odd situations, usually to my benefit. I hope these complaints and the situations that caused them have a positive outcome.
New Keyboard Didn’t Come with All the Parts – Scotch Tape to the Rescue
I’m currently in the middle of testing out my new keyboard on my laptop. My old keyboard built into my laptop, was very slightly buggy from day one. The 9 and 0 (zero) key never worked terribly well, especially when they were pressed simultaneously, like when you might type a number like 909990909990999.
Well last week, the old keyboard just died. I have never replaced a laptop keyboard before.
I’ve replaced batteries, RAM, hard drives, CD/DVD roms and such but never a keyboard.
So I tried to pull out the old one, initially to clean it, and in doing so the plastic bridge like plug thing that hold the keyboard wire attached to the mother board broke.
Can’t make ommeletes without breaking eggs
So I ordered a new keyboard online hoping that it would not only ‘work’ but would also come with the same attached plug affair that the old laptop had.
It didn’t have it.
So I had to rig up a scotch tape bridge like device to wedge around the plug to make my shiny almost new (8 months old) $1300 laptop function again.
Guess what?
It works!
I’m typing on the new keyboard right now. The new keyboard is not as slick and shiny as the old keyboard for some reason, but the 9 and 0 keys work splendidly!
This is all very important as I depend on my latpop for my living. In fact, I’m a week behind on laptop stuff, so I’m going to hit publish now that I have tested the new keyboard and confirmed that it works, under fire.
Note to self, never follow an online tutorial for keyboard cleaning or removal ever again.
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