Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 274

Our New Hobby!: Birdwatching & The Big Year

Last weekend my husband and I watched the movie The Big Year, a comedy with Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black. The premise of the movie is best summed up by a Japanese birdwatcher, who says, "Only Americans could take something like bird watching and make it competitive."

Because that's what the three of them do. They're in a race to see who can spot the most number of North American birds in a single calendar year.

It wasn't a brilliant movie, but I found it quite enjoyable. And my husband and I decided we'd take up birding!

I'm a big proponent of finding things to do together, even if they sound bizarre. And I also believe that most conversations in marriage occur better when we're side by side, doing something, than when we're face to face. It's just more natural. And besides, we get to go outside, and we get exercise.

So we've started our "life list" of birds that we've seen. It's pretty short right now, but we saw some swans today (Mute swans, to be exact). So far we have: sparrow, pigeon, mourning dove, chickadee, blue jay, Canada goose (of course), Mallard, ring billed gull, European starling, grackle, and crow.

We need to get a better camera.

Anyway, let me ask you: what do you do to keep your friendship alive with your husband? Anyone started any good hobbies lately?

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Related posts:

Quick Weekend Intimacy Tip
Date Night
Fireproof Movie: A Review

Reader Question of the Week: How Has God Made a Difference in Your Marriage?

Every weekend I like to throw up a question someone sends in and let you readers have a go at it. Last week we had a great discussion trying to help a woman who wasn't attracted to her husband anymore.

This weekend, given Easter weekend, I thought that rather than post on a big problem that people have, I'd try to put the focus back on Christ.

Gary Thomas once wrote that God's purpose for marriage was far more about our holiness than it was about our happiness. So let me ask the question this week: how has God made a difference in your marriage? What has He been teaching you?

And if some of you who are married to people who aren't as committed to Christ as you are could chime in, I'm sure that you could encourage some of our readers as well!

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Related posts:

Reader Question: Can a Marriage Survive on Quickies?
Reader Question of the Week: What Should This Frustrated Husband Do?

The End of the Story

Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario and Saskatchewan. After writing it for 10 years I always have trouble coming up with new things to say about holidays, and Easter is no exception. And I really liked my 2006 column better than this year's, so I think I'm going to post that instead!

As parents, we try to impress on our children important lessons about life. If you're nice, people will tend to be nice to you. Eat well and you'll be healthy. Listen to your teacher and you'll learn. But there's one lesson we learn all by ourselves. Sometimes life just isn't fair.

I was reminded of this anew last week by a long-dreaded email. It was the invitation to a funeral for a woman I had known years ago. We were never close, though I do know her family. But her story makes me cry nonetheless. When a 31-year-old woman dies, leaving a husband and two children who are too young to even remember her, what is there to do but cry?

I know what it is to bury someone you love. I am still haunted by the memory of my husband picking up my son's tiny casket, and carrying it to his grave. Such things are the very blackest parts of life.

When we are in mourning like this we face a crossroads. The most inviting route is often the grimmest, for in our darkness, despair is almost welcome. I believe, though, that there is another choice. As difficult as it is, we must not let death steal our life.

I will never be the same since my son died. I only had him for 29 days, but they were the most precious of my life, and I will cherish them forever. My friend Kerry only had two years to smile upon her children, but her mark is still there, for it is the mark of an undying love. And that's what love is—undying. Death does not end a relationship. It only changes it.

My grandfather was married three times to three wonderful women. He had each wife for almost the same number of years before cancer stole all of them, until, at the age of 88, he decided maybe it was time to remain single until he was called home. In these later years his house was adorned by pictures of all the women he had loved—the grandmother I never knew, the one I had called "Nana", and the one who had stood so proudly at my wedding. He had such sorrow in his life, but his life was also bigger for allowing room both for love and for grief. We cannot, and should not, block out our tears. They are just as much a part of love as the hugs and kisses were. But let us not shut out the smiles, too. Smiles and tears can coexist. And that is the challenge that, I think, faces all of us at that bleak crossroads.

Perhaps it is appropriate to be thinking such thoughts as Easter is upon us. After all, on Good Friday life seemed extremely unfair. The Teacher was dead. And yet, the story did not end on Good Friday. For Sunday was just around the corner, and on that day we were shown, once and for all, that the bad is not the end of the story.

I do not know if you believe the Good Friday story; I do, and it's one reason I can smile through the tears. Yet all of us, at some point, will need to decide how to deal with the grave. Dylan Thomas once wrote "Do not go gently into that good night; rage, rage against the dying of the light". It's poetic, it's passionate, and I think it's wrong. Death is not the dying of the light.

Changes come, even those that aren't welcome. But with those changes often comes a greater ability to love and cherish both those we can hug, and those who are now beyond our reach. The bad is not the end of the story; the sorrow is not all that is being told. Life may not be fair, but it is still good, and there is so much more to be written. That's a lesson no one can teach us. We must learn it ourselves as we stand at the crossroads, reject despair, and choose the road bathed in tears, but full of hope.

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Related posts:

The End of the Story

The BIG Secret to a Happy Marriage!

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How to Have a Happy Marriage
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Wifey Wednesday: Hitting the Reset Button on your Sex Life

It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!

Do you need a reset button for your sex life?

Have you established some bad habits with sex, and you want to start over, but you're not sure how? You're not alone! Here are some scenarios where a reset may be necessary:

When you first married, sex didn't feel very good, but you didn't know how to make it feel better. He seemed eager, so you gave in. Now it's quick, you get very little pleasure, but he assumes that this is what sex is supposed to be like because you've never done anything else.
He asked you to try some things you weren't comfortable with, but you did them. Now he assumes that this is what sex always will be. You get very little pleasure, but you don't know how to change things.
You wanted him to feel like he was doing a good job, because it seemed so important to him, but you just didn't feel very good during sex. So you started faking. And now he has no idea that you don't enjoy sex, but you don't know how to ask him to try other things because then he'd realize that all the good he thought he was doing was actually a ruse.
You have no idea if sex can actually be really fun or really stupendous, because it's always been over in under 10 minutes. You'd like to find out if there's more to it, but how do you ask him when he seems satisfied with what you have?

The majority of marriages face these kinds of problems, so if you relate to one (or more) of those options, you are not alone.

But what do we do about it?

Sex is often hard to talk about, because we're embarrassed talking about what we want, and we don't want to hurt his feelings or his sense of manliness by saying that it's not all we'd like it to be. But not talking about it can be very dangerous for your sex life in the long run. When it seems like it's "just for him", you can start to grow resentful, and feel like he's being selfish. This isn't always fair, because quite frequently the guy doesn't realize that you're not really enjoying it, because it's so good for him. But that makes you even more mad: doesn't he even notice how I'm feeling?!? And eventually you check out altogether.

So you must deal with this! You need a reset.

Here are some ways to do so constructively:

1. Talk About Wanting More, Not Doing it "Right"

Men are very sensitive about their sexual skills, and if you start a conversation saying something like "I've never felt pleasure, it's always been for you, and now we have to do it differently", this could be quite destructive. Now, you may have the kind of relationship where you can talk like this and it wouldn't be hurtful, but that's rare. I think a better way of phrasing it would be something like this:

I love being intimate with you, but I feel like we're missing something. I want more. I want it to be stupendous. I feel like it's been rushed, and while I love being with you, I don't want to settle for good or okay. I want great! Can we try to create great together?

If he asks you what you mean, tell him that you'd like to experience more emotional intimacy when you make love, and you'd like to see if you can build towards orgasm. You likely need more foreplay, and you want it to be fun. So you want a reset!

2. Ask Him How He Feels

Ask him how he feels about your sex life, too. If you're in the position that we talked about yesterday, where you made love before you were married, and this set you up with some bad habits, ask him how he feels about that. Ask him what he'd like your sex life to look like, and then make a commitment to get there.

3. Ask Him to Help You Feel Pleasure

Most men honestly do want to bring pleasure to their wives. It's part of feeling like they're men! But they may not realize that their wives don't experience pleasure in the same way. Instead of saying, "I've never felt good", or "you're doing it wrong", say something like, "I really want to see what all the fuss is about. I want to be out of control with you! Can you help me get there?" If you ask for his help, rather than criticize what he's doing, you set a different tone.

4. Pray Through Your Reset

Commit your sex life to God. If a lot of your issues are rooted in baggage–whether baggage from past relationships or baggage from having sex before you were married–confess what you need to before God, and then ask Him to give you His view of sex now: that it is sacred and beautiful.

5. Make Your Reset Visible

If the reset is necessary because of hurtful patterns in the past, it may be helpful to try a "physical reset". Buy different bedding. Change the position of the bed in your bedroom. Buy new candles or new pillows. Do something different so that you can see "we are different now".

6. Take Time to Reset

Usually the problem when a reset is required is either that you have been stressing the physical so much that there isn't a sense of spiritual or emotional intimacy, or you've been rushing through sex so there isn't enough foreplay.

If you want to jumpstart this reset, try this: commit to each other that you will spend a week just getting to know each other's bodies and feeling intimate without actually making love. This doesn't mean you can't climax; but it means that you do it in different ways after learning what you actually like. One exercise that is very helpful is setting a timer for 15 minutes and having him touch you for that full time. You can start to relax and understand what feels good, without feeling guilty like you "really should get on to the main event". One of the reasons that many women don't feel pleasure is because they don't give it enough time. We think we should respond just like men do, but that's not the way we're made. If you do this exercise, then you don't need to feel guilty or freakish if you need time to become aroused. And when he sees what you're really like when you're aroused, he'll want to keep doing it!

I know not having intercourse is a stretch. But here's why it's important: if you don't set a time schedule, you could agree you want a reset, but then you may easily fall into other patterns. By saying "we won't have sex, but we will just be intimate and touch each other and explore" you dedicate yourself to more foreplay, and you make a definitive break.

One word of warning: if you need the reset because your husband has been insisting on "shortcuts" for sex, then this may not be the best plan for you. For instance, I've had numerous emails from women saying that their husband likes oral sex during the week because they're always rushed, and he finds that easier. And the women are tired of it. In that case, touching but not making love may not be the best idea. So here's another way of phrasing it: whatever you're not comfortable doing, then stop doing that for a week or so.

7. Put This Into Practice

Now have some honest discussions about how you can keep this reset going. Do you need to agree that you come to bed at 10:00 each night together–even if one of you gets up at 11 when the other is ready for sleep to go watch a movie? Do you pray more together? Do you take more baths together? Do you get a baby-sitter more often so you spend time together? Talk about what new habits you need to develop to keep sex fresh.

8. Embark on Some Fun Education!

Learn together! How about some specifics in the sex department. When you want a reset, you likely need to figure out how to make sex feel good. Here are a few posts from my 29 Days to Great Sex series that can help:

1. How to Orgasm

2. The Pleasure Centre (how to make intercourse feel better)

3. Why Foreplay Matters

4. How to Help HIM enjoy Foreplay

5. Reawaken Your Body (about how to take some time to just explore your bodies)

6. How to Connect Spiritually When Making Love

Still 30% off at Amazon!

Of course, a wonderful reset is to work through the whole 29 Days to Great Sex together! But if that's too much, even taking a week to read through these articles and have fun exploring can do wonders. Just dedicate it to God, approach the week as a fun research project, rather than a "corrective lesson" for him, and I hope you find that sex becomes something you can eagerly anticipate again!

I also highly recommend The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex. If sex has just never felt very good, or you've never really felt intimate, then this book will help you so much. It explains how things are supposed to work physically, goes over all the problems you can run into, and talks about how to make it stupendous! But it also talks at length about how to spiritually connect during sex. So do check out the book!



If you liked this post, please hit the share buttons on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter below! So many of us need practical marriage advice!

Now it's your turn! Do you have marriage thoughts for us today? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!

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Related posts:

Wifey Wednesday: Be Part of Your Husband's Whole Life
Wifey Wednesday: When Sex Doesn't Feel That Great
Wifey Wednesday: Recovery from the Guilt of Your Sexual Past

Why God Wants us to Wait Until Marriage for Sex

"Wait until marriage". If you grew up in the church, you heard that ad infinitum. At every youth retreat. At every youth group activity. It was drilled into us.

Yet few of us did it. In the surveys I took for The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex, I found that only about 40% of Christians were virgins on their wedding night. That means that 60% weren't. And from their responses to the surveys, and from emails I get, it can have profound consequences on your sex life within marriage.

I've written before on why people should wait until they're married, and I don't want to rehash all of that again today. But I do want to deal with just one aspect of it: what are the repercussions, once you are married, if you had sex before? Now, I'm not trying to make any of you feel guilty. It's just that I know a lot of you are dealing with very specific problems, and I want to try to help you with some suggestions on how to overcome this.

So let's start with what those problems may be.

1. Sex Has A Different Meaning

Here's the central issue: sex within marriage and sex outside of marriage are two very different things. Within marriage, sex is the combination of a spiritual, emotional, and physical union. It's everything we are, because we're committed to one another, and it's expressing the sum total of that commitment. Outside of marriage, though, sex is primarily physical. It isn't a spiritual union in the same way because there isn't real commitment present–even if you are engaged. And so sex takes on a flavor that it really wasn't intended to have.

When you do get married, then, you could still be stuck in that mindset (or your husband could be stuck in that mindset). I received an email recently, for instance, that said,

Before we were married, we had sex a lot. Now, it feels like just the same thing. My husband always wants to rush through it. He feels great, but I never feel like it's a truly intimate experience the way you talk about in your book.

Very common. The husband rushing through is an issue often even for people who have waited for marriage, so you're certainly not alone! But it is very common in this situation. You're married, and you want sex to take on a deeper meaning. You want it to feel sacred. But it's hard, because that's not what it was in the beginning.

2. Sex Feels Dirty

The other extremely common problem is that sex feels like it's somehow wrong. When you have sex before you're married, you know you're not really supposed to. And so it's something forbidden. Then, when you do get married, you feel as if you're always getting second best. It would be so much better if we had waited. And, if you have any sexual problems or sexual issues, you start to feel like it's all because you had sex beforehand.  It would be bliss and we wouldn't have all these problems if we had waited.

Let's try to unpack that. First, let me assure you that many people who wait until they're married still have sexual problems (I certainly did). The tendency, when you have problems, is to try to blame yourself, or your husband. But sometimes it's far more complicated than just "we had sex before we were married". So please, take that burden off of you.

But the only way to remove that burden is also to forgive yourself. God does not intend for you to beat yourself up in perpetuity for sin. This being Easter Week, it's a beautiful reminder that Jesus already paid for what you did. If you keep feeling guilty, it's as if you're saying that His death didn't do a good enough job. Would you really like Him to climb back up on the cross again? Of course not. And so maybe this week God is calling you to really examine what the cross means in your marriage.

It means that no matter what you did before your marriage, if you have accepted Christ, before God you are pure.

It means that you have a new start:

If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has passed away, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

And it means that even if you did sleep with your husband before you were married when you were already a Christian, Christ's blood still covers you. (1 John 1:9). You honestly do have a new start. Take it!

If you can forgive yourself, then ask God to let you see that sex is not something dirty. It may have felt dirty if you did it before the wedding, but it is blessed and sacred now–even if it doesn't always feel that way. That is an objective truth, not just a subjective one. It is true regardless of your feelings. And if you can tell yourself that truth, then it's more likely that your feelings will eventually jump on board!

3. Sex Just Isn't Good

When you have sex before you're married, chances are it wasn't a long, drawn out affair. There likely weren't candles and flowers and lots of romance, the way you may picture your honeymoon or romantic interludes after you're married. It was likely rather quick.  It wasn't necessarily something planned; it was something that "just happened".

But if you both have experienced sex primarily in that way–when it is rushed, and hurried, then it likely became far more for him than it is for you. After all, for women to feel good, we tend to need a lot more time and care. It doesn't really go well with the whole "getting carried away in the moment" thing.

When that's how sex starts, though, that tends to become your "routine". And to him, it works, because he gets his release. To you, it often doesn't. And so sex feels empty, rushed, and not for you. How do you change that?

That's a big issue, and so we're going to tackle that tomorrow. It will be a "How to Push the Reset Button on Your Sex Life", and I hope you'll come back and join me!

4. Sex is No Longer Exciting

One last problem that many people encounter: sex is no longer exciting. I received an email from a man recently who said this:

Before we were married, my wife (then fiancee) had sex with me all the time. She loved sex! We had a great physical life. Then we got married and it slowly stopped, to the point now where she has completely shut off. I feel as if she sucked me in under false pretences. She was saying, "look how great it's going to be", and then she turned into a cold fish. She lied to me!

I understand the man's comment, but I have to admit that I was a little perturbed. The man was a Christian, and he was saying that all of this was his wife's fault, because she advertised something to him that she didn't then follow through with.

However, sin is exciting. The forbidden has an allure. And so before you're married, sometimes sex is very exciting. Then you get married, and it's no longer forbidden. And you start to feel guilty for what you did. So you can begin to shut down.

What this man needed to do, I believe, was to honestly see that what they did before marriage was wrong. His wife saw that; he did not. If he could see that he shouldn't be pining away for something that was wrong, I think they could have made headway in their relationship. It's very common for people to enjoy sex more before they're married (the opposite is also common; that's the weird thing about humans. We don't all react the same way). But that doesn't mean that if you're having a lousy sex life now it would have been better if you had had sex earlier. What it means is that the act of making love first can mess you up later. If you don't get messed up in the first place, everybody is better off.

So if you found sex better before you were married, the steps are the same. Understand that you're forgiven. Understand that God sees you as a new person, and that your relationship now is sacred.

Still 30% off at Amazon!

And finally, perhaps it's time for a reset. That's what we're going to tackle tomorrow for Wifey Wednesday!

And if you want to dig deeper into this subject, or if you want to see more about what my surveys showed about what happens when you wait vs. you don't wait, pick up The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex! It's getting some wonderful reviews at Amazon, and I know that it will enhance your marriage!

 

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Related posts:

Should We Really Wait for Marriage to Make Love?
Wifey Wednesday: Why Wait?
Wifey Wednesday: Do I Have to Wait To Be in the Mood?

Some Books, Some Links, and a RoundUp

Good Monday morning, everyone!

I hope you had a good weekend. I thought this morning I'd include some quick things I wanted to share with you.

Let's start with books. As my faithful readers know, I don't allow myself to read novels during the week, in general, because if I start a book I can't stop, and then I don't get anything done. I'm not one of these people who can read 15 minutes at a time. But over the last two weekends I've read one book each, which were sent to me for review.

The Messenger by Siri Mitchell takes us on a journey back in time to the Revolutionary War. Hannah Sunderland is the oldest daughter of a Quaker family, who does not believe in taking sides. However, after her twin brother becomes outraged at some of the British atrocities and joins the war, Hannah finds herself sucked in. He's taken prisoner in a dangerous and inhumane place, and Hannah visits him, even though the Quaker community forbids it, to try to keep him alive. In the meantime, she's asked to be a spy for the American forces, since she can pass into the prison easily.

There is a romantic angle to this book, but it's not actually as important to the plot as the dilemmas that Hannah faces, which are actually far more interesting. When is it okay to lie? Hannah has grown up believing that lying is always wrong, but then is it wrong to spy? Is it wrong to try to help her brother? And what does she tell her parents and the Quakers, since she knows she will be kicked out of the community if they find out that she is aiding her brother.

And then, when the conflict inevitably comes, she's faced with another important question: what remains of your faith when the trappings of it are gone? When you have to leave your religious community, does that mean you've left God?

I actually found these questions very interesting to ponder, and the lying one especially kept me going for quite a few days after I finished the book. I've never had a problem with the concept of spying or lying in wartime or to help others, and it bothers me a little that my conscience is NOT more bothered by this. Sometimes I worry that I have too much of an ends-versus-means faith, and not a "I do what's right, and leave the rest to God". So it was a good thing to wrestle through. I don't have any answers, but the wrestling, in and of itself, is worth something.

I'd give this book a 4 1/2 stars out of 5, mostly because it shed light on two aspects of the War (Quaker views and prison camps) that I hadn't been familiar with, and both were very interesting to read about.

The second book I read recently was Chasing the Sun by Tracie Peterson, about another Hannah who is stuck on a Texan ranch caring for her younger siblings when her father fails to return to a trip to Vicksburg, all during the Civil War. Shortly thereafter she's joined by William, a young man who ran off to join the Northern side with his father and brother. When he returns, he finds that his ranch has been confiscated since he joined up with the North and given to Hannah's family. The two make an uneasy truce, and spend the rest of the book trying to figure out who owns the ranch (I'm sure you can figure out how that turns out).

The romance in this book is more overt, but also more interesting. The plot's also great; there's a scoundrel you just love to hate who gets his just desserts in the end, and the side plots with the war and the Comanche are intriguing. But one of the issues that was really interesting, to me, is how Hannah makes her faith such a simple and central part of her life. She ends up sharing her faith naturally, in conversation, with Indians and soldiers alike. It is not that these people become Christians (it always bothers me when authors make people accept Christ too easily; that's not realistic.) It's just that she talks about it anyway. I've always wanted to be like that; not to be obnoxious, but just to be natural. It made me think more about why I don't have conversations like that.

The second theme which intrigued me after some of the conversations around here was: what really attracts a woman? Back last weekend when we were talking to frustrated husbands whose wives refused sex, in the comments some people were saying that the problem could be that husbands had become too "nice", or too Beta, as others say. Women end up wanting "Alpha" men; men who are confident, and who won't let women walk all over them.

This book helped me explore that theme a little more, because what really ended up attracting Hannah was that William would get mad and call her on things when he thought Hannah was acting recklessly or stupidly. Several times Hannah did things because she felt like she should help the Comanche, and William felt that she was putting herself in danger. Now, both ended up being right, but by challenging Hannah, William became more attractive in her eyes. Yet he wasn't a tyrant, and he wasn't mean. He simply felt he should protect her, and that meant not standing idly by while she did stupid things.

Hannah was a strong and independent woman, and he encouraged her in this, except when he felt she was endangering herself. And she liked this about him. I think most women would like this. We don't want a man who says, "whatever you want, dear." That's not what we're aiming for. We often don't know what's best, and we don't want to be put in the position where we call all the shots. We'd like men to be engaged in the process. That doesn't mean we want to be ordered around, but we certainly, I think, want a man who thinks about the direction of the family and who watches us and sees if we're doing something stupid.

Now, in most of our daily lives "stupid" won't endanger the family, as it did with Hannah, living on the frontier. But "stupid" could endanger our relationships with our kids, or endanger our peace of mind by taking too much on our plate, or endanger our jobs, or whatever it might be. And one thing I like about my husband is that he calls me on things when he thinks I'm being silly with the kids, or with church, or whatever.

So I do think that women like some aspects of the "Alpha" male. I enjoyed that aspect of the book particularly, and I'd give this book 4 1/2 stars, too.

Okay, a few other things. Great post on respect and Ephesians 5. What happens when your husband yells, "I can't take it anymore!", and you didn't even know there was anything wrong? Deep thoughts from Rena, one of our faithful readers, at Insert Grace Here.

And have you seen my friend Carla Anne Coroy's blog? I don't think it gets enough notice. Carla is the author of Married Mom, Solo Parent, a book for moms whose husbands work away from home for extended periods of time (or are in the military). It's a very thoughtful and practical book, and her blog has lots of interesting stuff in it for marriage!

I think that's it for this Monday. I'll have more marriage posts this week, and a brand new contest related to The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex that I'll be announcing tomorrow! It's going to be a good one for your church, so stay tuned!

Books were provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available at your favourite bookseller from Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. I was not compensated for this review.

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Related posts:

Book Review: Nothing But Trouble

Reader Question of the Week: I'm Not Attracted to My Husband Anymore

Every Thursday, I'm going to try to answer a reader question in video format, and do a "vLog". On the weekends, though, I'd like to throw up a question someone sends in and let you readers have a go at it. Last week we had a great discussion (over 100 comments!) trying to help a frustrated husband whose wife refused sex.

Today I want to turn the tables a little bit and help this woman. She writes:

I just don't feel attracted to my husband anymore. Would it help if he lost weight? Or if he helped around the house? All he does is sit on the couch. He never wants to do anything. I do all the work around here. I find myself getting more resentful, and I don't know what to do.

What would you say to her? And please be kind; I've only published part of the email, and I believe she's really hurting and really frustrated.

What would you advise her?

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Related posts:

Reader Question of the Week: What Should This Frustrated Husband Do?
Reader Question of the Week: What About Menopause?
Wifey Wednesday: When You Aren't Attracted to Your Husband Anymore

Not Your Grandmother's Math

Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario and Saskatchewan. And–gasp!–sometimes I actually write about stuff other than sex. Lately I've been preoccupied with The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex, but here's this week's column for something different. If you have children in elementary school, and you've tried to help them with math lately, you may be able to relate:

When I was in grade two, I distinctly remember breaking out in a cold sweat when my teacher divided us into pairs to drill our subtraction facts. I could not for the life of me remember what 13-7 was. Nevertheless, I ended that year being able to recite all my math facts backwards and forwards, because that's how we were taught.

Maclean's magazine ran an interesting article recently detailing how math drills are passé. Not just that, but public schools often don't teach long division anymore, or reinforce the other algorithms we grew up with (like add up the column and carry the 1). Today they do something more visual and more complicated.

A few years ago, our family went on a trip to a Kenyan orphanage, and our local Board of education graciously donated a complete set of grade 3 textbooks to ship over. When we showed the principal of the school those textbooks, he smiled sheepishly and said, "no, thanks." I asked him to elaborate. Uncomfortably, he finally admitted, "They don't teach things systematically. They spend too much time teaching about calculators. And they don't teach the proper addition and subtraction techniques."

As I flipped through the book to see what he was talking about, I recalled a story my nephew had told me about scoring 0 on a question on a math test. The question asked, "what is 6 times 6? Explain your answer three ways." All he wrote was 36. That wasn't good enough, apparently.

According to our education superiors in the government ministries, we face a math crisis because children were taught the "facts" but not the reason behind them. So today they use math manipulatives, like base 10 blocks. They use different algorithms to add things up, instead of memorizing and perfecting just one. They have lattices and grids and paper strips instead of just columns of numbers.

Through these methods, we're supposed to produce children who can think creatively, rather than children who can just recite their times tables. And the benefit of North American education over Kenyan education, supposedly, is that our children will excel in this kind of creative thinking.

I understand. But the vast majority of our students will not be software developers or engineers. They will be interior designers, who have to calculate the surface area of a room to know how much paint to order. They will be cashiers who have to make change. Or they will install flooring, and need to know how many boards to order. That's why I would prefer we educate people to actually know what 6 x 7 is.

In Kenya, kids who had missed out on years of formal education, and who were using scratch pads with broken pencils, sitting two to a desk, could do math in grade 5 that we in Canada don't do until grade 8. And they don't use calculators, either.

Look, I can drive a car. I can sit in the driver's seat, turn the key, and steer the wheel. I don't understand why a car works, but I can get from point A to point B.

Similarly, by teaching and reinforcing the basics, at least kids could use math, and with that practice often came understanding. Now we're trying to teach them to understand it first, but they're not able to use it. We're attempting to teach kids how to build an engine, but they still don't know how to steer a car. And how well, ultimately, will someone do if they haven't mastered the fundamentals? Perhaps it's time to get back to basics. That's what our grandparents did, and they knew how to make change.

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Marriage VLog: Help! I Can't be Naked in Front of My Husband

Every Thursday I'm going to try to post a video response to a reader question. I'm still getting used to the whole "making a VLog" thing, and I really need to get a better place to film these so they look a bit better. And I have to do my hair better. So have mercy on me when you watch them!

Today's question is from a reader who is just too embarrassed to let her husband see her naked. So I took about three minutes and tried to give some quick thoughts (I'm trying to keep these vLogs to three minutes). But there's probably a lot more that could be said!  So why don't you watch it, and then chime in with your own comments? I know she's reading, so be nice, but if you have something helpful to say, I'm sure she'd appreciate it.

Let me know what you think!

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Reader Question of the Week: What Should This Frustrated Husband Do?