Once, a collegue in Vietnam information, Manuel Leguineche, told me this was a job for bachelors. Now I'm a freelance in "ARDI BELTZA", spanish investigation magazine. 20 years with a wife that doesn't understand that there are no weekends for us, that sometimes dates are on Sunday or never. Just like for farm forestries, physicians, policemen. So, what can be done to duck this surplus of stress in our life? castleman

-- Rafael Maria Castellano (castleman11@netscape.net), October 10, 2000

Answers

Rafael I have been living 15 years with a wife that doesn't understand and I have realized that the day she doesn't want to understand and no longer cares to understand is the day she no longer loves me. My outlook on life, better to have someone who has a funny way of showing that they care rather than have no one that cares or worse cares as long as they can use you; and I will give you a 100% guarantee, your particular wife isn't using you. Ask any person who has been used in a relationship and you will realize what a wonderful woman it is that you actually married.

There are three things that one has to establish,

1. Acknowledgement that family is the place where you are going to be told things you don't want to hear but is still the best place to hear them

2. Creating space for yourself

3. Realize that stress is a normal part of life and that when we start seeing a surplus of stress, question what we are really stressing over. At that point we may realize that we are not young anymore or we may realize something far more important - that we have always been young but in our thinking we have made ourselves unnecessaryily old.

The western view of the world isn't working for you, pick up a book on Buddhism. I am not asking you to change your religion, but challenge your perspective on life. You could probably do all the things you are doing right now but those thoughts that have become so heavy, maybe bags that you need to put down.

All I am saying about is how I found make my sun rise, now its time for you to find a way to make your view of life to shine.

-- Mark Zorro (zorromark@consultant.com), October 10, 2000.

I agree with Mark and, by the way, reading Zen (a variation of Buddhism) certainly changed my life many years ago to what it is now. One key principle is accepting contradictions... for instance, that we want to be busy and successful, but we also want to have time to ourselves and families. Recognizing that the challenge is to have BOTH is a good first step to figuring out how to find balance.

The answer will differ in each person's life... and depends on the family members. If weekends are often disrupted, then when would you be able to fit in time. Do you get vacations? If so, how do you use them, spread out or all at once? Do you take time to be alone with family or do extended family things take up all that time? Etc., There are a lot of questions to ask, with a view to getting away from looking only at "traditional" time together (like weekends). Also affecting the answer will be things like whether your wife (or other family members) work also, which may make scheduling together a bigger issue than if the other people have flexibility.

Many people consciously try to book times into their schedule for "themselves" which includes familiy time, reading time, or whatever... and treat those "appointments" just like work appointments. Of course, occasionally you bump an appointment to fit in something more urgent... but if you do that all the time, you have to face the fact that self is just not a priority. Good luck.

-- Dave Crisp (dcrisp62@home.com), October 15, 2000.