SOLO dot MOM-Featured Blog of the Week

Our Featured Blog this week is SOLO dot Mom. Kathrine is a single mom with great articles on parenting, dating and personal development. Kathrine has started a webazine titled Single Parenting 101 providing inspiration, encouragement as well as practical tips on parenting. She would like to invite other single parents to jump on board with her. We have really enjoyed getting to know Katherine better this week. Visit her blog and tell her thanks for sharing with our mom-stuff community. We want to share a post with you from her blog. Make sure you click on the links for part1 and part 2.
Well the list continues from my previous posts on what I wish I had been told before I got married. I hope you are gleaning from these tips. Please feel free to comment and add your own, or provide feedback about these ideas. I would love to hear from you!

5. BECOME PLAYMATES:

(Remember the blog post about Boys and their Toys?) A book was written about this very idea titled, Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets by Bill Adler. It is intended to help women understand men by understanding their need for toys and gadgets.

I have skimmed this book, but plan to read it because it has some great parallels that can open your eyes to understanding personality traits of your man based on what ‘toys’ or gadgets intrigue him and why. Since they need this outlet of “playtime,” playing with your guy can nurture your relationship.

Try taking time out and getting involved with your guy’s favorite toys. Does he like to play video games, for example? Take some time to play the games with him – then he may be more responsive to compromise by giving you some time to communicate with each other.

6. KEEP YOUR IDENTITY:

Even though you are a couple you should continually work on becoming a whole person. It’s true you aren’t single anymore – but you need to keep your identity and continue the process of becoming the person you want to be with.

Don’t say “I have arrived: I am in a relationship so I don’t need to work on knowing who I am as a person anymore,” nor fall into thinking “I have this issue, but my spouse offsets it – he or she completes me.” You should continue to improve upon the person you have become. Continue learning about who you are.

We all have stuff to deal with – owning it (acknowledging it exists) and working through it are still our jobs as individuals. Besides, if you don’t keep your own personal identity in tact – you may be prone to extreme co-dependency which can cause problems for your marriage.

Don’t take that to mean I am advocating self-centeredness or selfish acts. Quite contrary to that notion, I am simply warning you against becoming so dependent upon your spouse that you cannot even go shopping or to do an outing by yourself because your self-worth relies upon that spouse, outside of your control.

In my own experience I was in a marriage with a man who had become not only possessive of me but also obsessed with me. He would not let me go anywhere by myself or have activities with friends on my own; in turn, I became less and less confident that I could do anything alone or have friends. It was a vicious cycle and it took effort to break that cycle in order to be released from it’s grasp.

Please check out the other posts in this series of things I wish I had known when I got married:

List for Newlyweds, Part 1

List for Newlyweds, Part 2

Find yourself… keeping it real.

Katherine at SOLO dot MOM

Photo Credit: http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2184797/relationship-main_Full.jpg

love, love, love these post. Follow SOLO dot Mom to get the rest of the relationship scoop. Watch for post 4 and 5 in this series. Thanks to everyone following our Mom-Stuff Blog Tour. Make comments, make tweets, invite friends, tell your friends about how much fun we are having. So far the blogs we have visited on our tour have doubled their traffic. Not bad? If you have a blog and want us to visit, let me know at dianne@mom-stuff.com