I try to be a happy person, and I’m becoming more and more aware of the fact that to be truly happy, you have to look beyond yourself. (This seems particularly true when you consider recent events.) So I decided to pose the question “what role should things like “volunteerism, charity and giving back” play in […]
Susan Campbell: You Don’t Know Squat
When I first met my husband, I nearly dismissed him. He was the most handsome man in the room, and handsome men (in my experience) don’t have personalities. They don’t need them. They only have to walk into a room, and someone pulls them out a chair, lights their cigar, and then watches raptly as […]
Episode 65: Getting Along
The holiday season has me thinking about parties, decorations and family togetherness… and the way people freak out when things don’t live up to their expectations. So, in honor of this “emotional minefield” of a time of year, I decided to convene a group of the usual suspects for a conversation about the broader subject of […]
Modern Love
This may sound oxymoronic but one of marriages greatest problems is that it has been overly romanticized. Simply put, people go in expecting way too much. Marriage has been overhyped by movies and television and crammed down people’s throats by advertising mad men for generations. It’s not important to have a good marriage, it’s important […]
Ticker – On Losing Heart in Our Marriages and Finding it Again
Heart failure in marriage isn’t at all uncommon these days. Almost fifty percent of couples divorce. Plenty more—to twist Thoreau’s words a bit—live quiet marriages of desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. There is a very good chance that at some point, we married couples will fall out of […]
Susan Jacobs on Collaborative Law
I enjoyed spending time with Bruce and his guests, Laura, Erika and John on the Real Life Survival Guide this past week at The New Haven Meatball House. That’s the good news. The bad news is that a large part of the topic was devoted to divorce, and divorce is generally not a fun topic […]
Episode 61: Dating, Divorce and Marriage
We’ve been focusing on the specifics of some of our “chapters” lately, and in the area of relationships, based on the fact that there are many difficulties associated with the process of coupling – and uncoupling – in 21st century life, it seemed ike a natural topic for the Guide. We invited Susan Jacobs, a divorce mediation […]
Episode 60: Civic and Social Responsibility
With the election season bearing down on us, we thought it appropriate to feature a conversation about our what our civic and social responsibilities should entail in what has turned out to be a pretty contentious time. I invited Ed Sabatino, Suzanne Cahill, Christopher Korenowsky and Justin Gill to talk over chicken wings and a […]
Summer-Loved and Lost
Friends we’ve lost: What about the ones we’ve fallen out of touch with, the ones we’ve let go? This conversation came up on Real Life Survival Guide’s Episode 52: “Redefining Friendship.” Some friends were particularly important, inspired us, listened, consoled, brought insight to our lives just when we needed awakening, stole our hearts, broke our […]
“Friend”ship
Word abuse is a disturbing consequence of instant universal communication (them Interwebs) – icky in that it takes what should be genuine and makes it, well, weird. “Like” has now become a grade applied to other words. “Unlike” is now a word (what happened to dislike?). “Message” and “Text” are now verbs… But the worst […]
Episode 52: Redefining Friendship
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about which chapters to include in this “guide to modern living”, and one of the obvious choices is – and always has been – a chapter on ‘Relationships’. With this in mind, I convened our weekly brainstorming session at Zinc Restaurant on Chapel Street in New Haven. (Thanks to […]
Mary Elliott: Are You There? Narciss-stalkers, Echo-talkers and Love in the High-Tech Void
Looking for some straight stalk talk? Episode 48’s guest editors and hosts offered practical suggestions for setting boundaries when another’s desire to connect with you plunges into the pathological deep end: Don’t give out your number to creeps and weirdoes. Alert the gendarmes when obsessive texts persist. Hire my all-muscle and highly-employable college son as your bodyguard. Along […]
Mary Elliott: Real Life Survival Guide and the Frenemization of American Culture
Guys, grab a prosecco, have a seat and let’s talk about your feelings. Studies on male versus female relationships prove you’ll live longer. This show is Real Life Survival Guide, after all, and if the information it provides listeners helps you add a few years to your life, all the better. Face it, survival these […]
(How) did your marriage change you?
This one touched off some quite interesting back and forth during a recent RLSG recording session. (Duo was amazed that I went from an OCD-ey neat freak to a… well, slightly less OCD-ey neat freak.) (How) did your marriage change you?
When is it okay to correct a friend?
Mary Scanlon wants to know! If one friend says Ne-veah-dah and the other “Ne-vah-dah” (Duo’s a toe-mah-toe guy), when is it okay to correct the other person? Our editorial board seemed to agree that the intent provides an important piece of the puzzle. What do you think – when is it okay to correct a […]
How do you make mutually satisfactory compromises?
This question arose from Sarah Kyrcz’ story about going to a NASCAR race her husband wanted to attend… and how she ended up actually enjoying herself! (One of her secrets – just go with it.) Compromise is an issue we all have to deal with, and the ability to “give a little to get a […]
How should you deal with someone who is snarky with you?
I had the good fortune of meeting guest editor Christine Ohlman (aka “The Beehive Queen”) when I was doing mornings with Brian Smith on WPLR in New Haven. She was smart , funny… and I was sitting in the studio with the vocalist for the Saturday Night Live Band! In Episode 3, Christine posed the question of “how to […]