Longterm love

Young love was fun. Longterm love is different—different things are fun. Familiarity. Having a good woodpile. Memories. Projects. Grandchildren.
. . . . Sometimes we start to recite one of our repeat arguments, but we remember it's a re-run, and jump to the end, or trail off. They're about feeding cats (how to), or putting tools up (one of us is too short sometimes, and figures "on the bench" is close enough), how to do laundry (mostly we do our own now, and it pisses me off that his isn't totally ruined for his not following my instructions).

I guess the trick is to know it's about cats, tools, and laundry, and not about the soul of the other person.

—Sandra Dodd, 2018

Originally on facebook, now at the bottom of SandraDodd.com/spouses (slightly longer there)
photo by Rachael Rodgers

Figuring out what helps

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Think about how you feel when you are "out of sorts." What will help you? What do you want from your family? I doubt it would help you for your husband to threaten, "If you behave badly again I'm going to take away your cell phone." You WANT to feel better, happier, nicer, right? What you need is support for doing what you, deep down, want for yourself.

Same with your kids. Lots of times that means to help them have the chance to be alone to recenter themselves.... Your kids don't KNOW yet what helps them—your role is to help them figure it out.

—Pam Sorooshian

Attentive parenting
photo by Julie Daniel

Rational perspective (cool!)

Deb Lewis wrote:

My mom was a kind person, but she was a negative person. Something was always wrong, something was always going to bring about the next big war, the end of the world, the destruction of human kind. As she saw it, we were all about to be thrown into chaos every day I can remember from my childhood. It wasn't good for me. I can tell you that it hurt my relationship with my mom, and made me resent, and mistrust her. Don't do that.

Even though you know there are worrying things in the world, even if you're sure you're right, every time you laser focus your attention on whatever those problems are, you're super heating your worry, and chances are you're losing rational perspective in all that steam.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/indignation
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Doing and being

They don’t live to grow up. They’re living in the present. They don’t relate to questions about what they will do later or be when they’re grown. They’re doing and being now.

SandraDodd.com/sustainable
photo by Colleen Prieto

Let things flow

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

What's your favorite thing to do? Watch movies? Read a book? Garden? Go to Disneyland? Why don't you just do that all the time and nothing else? I mean — if it is your favorite, then doesn't it give you higher utility than anything else? Why do you ever stop doing it?

The answer is that as you do more and more of something, the marginal utility of doing even more of it, goes down. As its marginal utility goes down, other things start to look better and better.

When you restrict an activity, you keep the person at the point where the marginal utility is really high.

—Pam Sorooshian

Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children
(and it's not just about tv)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Positive and sweet

Find beauty and hope wherever it can be found. Say and think sweet things about your children. If people can be positive and sweet, it doesn't matter so much where they do it. Being better is better.

Deposit the good stuff.
photo by Jesper Conrad
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Focus on the relationship

Create a situation where the children are calm and at peace and glad to be there.

More "calm and at peace" posts

The quote above is from the end of Learn Nothing Day - A Conversation with Sandra Dodd, from July 2024. The title words were spoken by Cathy Koetsier, my interviewer in the podcast linked here.
photo by Cátia Maciel