Being Married

I read an interesting article by a therapist about five things that can cause friction in relationships that often lead to separation or divorce.  Here's a brief rundown:

1.  Believing that your aliveness is your partner's responsibility.
2.  Believing that relationships should be easy.
3.  Failing to understand that secrets are lies.
4.  Failing to understand that broken trust can be repaired.
5.  Failing to carve out quality time for your relationship.

This is an excellent list of attitudes to be wary of in a relationship, and points to ways to make a relationship stronger, by avoiding them.  I recognize that many people in so-called mixed-orientation-marriages can have trouble in their relationships.  What bothers me is when the trouble is blamed on orientation, when one of the five above is much more likely the culprit.

Also of interest to me is people who argue against a gay oriented man marrying a woman because the woman could never be fulfilled, never complete with such a man -- which sounds like attitude number 1 above.  It sounds like a dangerous attitude in a traditionally oriented marriage, let alone a mixed one.

New Title and Layout

When I first made this blog, I got the name gayoriented because I though of gay as an orientation rather than an identity.  I liked the idea that orientation was like eye color -- not something you chose, just an attribute.  I think of identity as having more to do with our choices.  So I used the blog title "My eyes are blue, but I'm not" to represent that idea.  But I was never clear about it, and I often wondered if most people understood, or just thought I had a weird way of naming my blog.  So I'm changing the name of my blog to match it's URL.  I am also messing a little with the layout.  I'm including a couple static pages linked at the top.  Let me know what you think.

Regular Posts

Wow, things have been crazy this year.  I usually write a bunch of blog posts at once and schedule them to be released over time.  But I've been so busy, this hasn't happened often enough, and my buffer of written posts has run dry.  Family stuff and work stuff and church stuff has all conspired to take up lots of time lately.  This blog has taken a back seat.  I'll eventually get everything up and running again, but it may take some time.  We'll see.  I haven't forgotten.  I've just been busy.  Eventually I hope to be back to regular posts.