Civility is Hard

A friend, whom we’ll call Andrea, posted a political graphic on Facebook yesterday with a rhetorical question. A friend of hers (“Debbie”) posted a comment mildly but politely disagreeing with her. Andrea and her husband both politely responded to explain their shared position. Debbie was highly offended and told her husband, who felt the need to jump in and fire back. A comment war ensued along with a few private messages between the ladies. When the dust settled, Debbie, her husband, and another of Andrea’s friends had unfriended Andrea on Facebook, and I’m not sure how much contact they will have in the future. Andrea and Debbie had been in a home group together previously and been fairly good friends until yesterday.

Three relationships were broken by one side’s inability to disagree with civility. What a waste.

Secrets Come Out

One of the blessings and curses of the Internet is its profound ability to connect us to others, particularly through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogging. As many others have found, I both learn things about others and share things with others that would probably never occur without the Internet. In person, we’re not supposed to discuss the Forbidden Topics of religion and politics, but it seems to be more acceptable online. Without Facebook, I would have no idea that my friend Susanna is a libertarian, Amber is a tree-hugger, Geri and Michelle are staunch conservatives, or Brad is a universalist. Most of you probably wouldn’t know that I’m a pacifist left-leaning Democrat without reading my blog. Knowing people’s perspectives on various issues tends to draw you toward people you agree with and to put up walls between you and people you disagree with. That’s not necessarily good, but it’s human nature, and our polarized American culture seems to amplify that basic tendency.

For example, Patrick and I were acquaintances at Baylor and hadn’t been in touch for many years. But when I saw he was a Christian leftie like me, I suddenly felt a connection with him, perhaps because very few of my people fit that description and I was thrilled to find a kindred spirit. (It can be a bit lonely being a liberal Christian Democrat surrounded by conservative Republicans here in north Texas.) So reconnecting with him was a pleasant surprise and benefit of my Facebook account. But on the flip side, when I got a negative comment from an old friend who turned out to be a pretty critical conservative Republican, I couldn’t help but feel defensive and a bit hurt. I restrained myself from responding in anger, but from that point on, I looked at her differently. I hated to change my perspective on her based on something so inconsequential, but I couldn’t help it. She was now Other, one of Them. Blame me, blame MSNBC and Fox News, blame whomever you like, but things changed a bit between us. I didn’t like it. Perhaps when it comes to the Forbidden Topics, ignorance is bliss?

The Filter is Off

Since online interaction involves more distant clicking and typing rather than more intimate voice conversations, it also gives us the courage to say things to each other that we would never say out loud. It’s worst when people can comment anonymously. Check the comments section of any online video, blog, photo, or article for a quick lesson in how ugly people can be when they hide behind a screen name.

Even when using our own names, it’s scarily easy to turn off our filters and say whatever is on our mind without worrying about how other people will take it. That’s actually one reason I blog. I can say things here that I would never volunteer in person, things I really want to say but lack the courage, initiative, or opportunity to share face-to-face, such as “Hi, I’m Andy, and I believe in climate change and an old earth, question a literal hell, and voted for Obama! Nice to meet you!”

That freedom is tremendously liberating, but it can be dangerous as well. It’s so easy to type venom to someone and hit Send when the same words would catch in my throat if spoken aloud. I try not to say hurtful things online, especially to my friends. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cooked up a juicy response to someone, probably rehearsed a few times in my head or even out loud, and then chosen to cool down instead. Most of the time, the temporary satisfaction couldn’t possibly be worth the aftermath.

Do You Understand the Words That Are Coming Out of My Mouth?

Saying what we want online can also cause unintentional problems when people misunderstand what we’re saying. Text communication eliminates many important elements of our interactions that convey meaning, such as the tone of our voice, body language, and inflection. I suspect that part of the problem in the Andrea-Debbie situation was a misunderstanding. Debbie and her husband “heard” things from Andrea and her husband that offended them, even though no offense was intended. Andrea and her husband wanted to have a mature, logical discussion on a serious topic. Debbie and her husband felt attacked when faced with a differing opinion, picked up their ball, and went home.

Agreeing to Disagree

Unless we want to live without the Internet, or we only post the blandest possible status updates or pictures that have no possibility of offending anyone in any way, we must figure out a way to interact online with some degree of civility. Common courtesy isn’t just for face-to-face conversations. We must treat each other with respect whether the other person reciprocates or not. We must also think about how our text-based message comes across to other people, particularly when many different people are reading what we write and some are less familiar with our writing style and maybe don’t detect our sarcasm. Finally, we must find a way to disagree without being disagreeable, as Bernard Meltzer said so elegantly.

It’s tempting in our culture to label and demonize the other side. You’ve no doubt heard and maybe done this yourself. Obama is a socialist. Bush is an idiot. Climate change scientists are frauds. Social conservatives are fascists. Feminists who think birth control should be covered by insurance are sluts. Creationists are narrowminded fools. Journalists are liberals. A guy with a white-sounding name named Zimmerman who shoots a black teenager is a racist. Such labels are convenient, pervasive, and make for good soundbites, but they rarely lead to productive dialog and serve primarily to boost ratings and cultivate hatred. I struggle with this issue myself, but I’m trying to fight it. We all must fight it if we’re going to get along.

Yes, being civil is hard, especially online when it’s so easy to be rude or mean. But I know it’s possible. I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised at how civil people have been with me here and on Facebook, even when they’ve disagreed with me on various issues. Many thanks to all of you for your kindness. I wish that our society overall could be as gracious with each other as you have been with me.

If you don’t like what someone has to say, either respond politely or ignore it. If you’re not mature enough to let people disagree with you without defriending them, spouting off in anger, or trying to bully them into submission, stay off the Internet. (please!)

The Following Movie is Rated R

In the 2006 documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated, a filmmaker explores the mysterious and frustrating work of the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board. Its members are the ones who assign films a rating of G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17 based on their suitability for minors. The film itself was just OK. My favorite parts involved analyzing and comparing clips from various films and hearing from directors who fought with the MPAA over ratings. While he made some valid points about several different aspects of the rating system and process, the filmmaker focused too heavily on the anonymity of the board, devoting a large chunk of the movie to the private investigators he hired to follow and identify its members. To me, the more interesting questions involve the actual content that produces each rating and what the ratings system says about American values and culture.

The Ratings

If you’ve seen many movies, you probably have a decent idea of how the ratings work even if you haven’t thought much about it. The MPAA claims that its ratings board is made of ordinary parents who make decisions based on how they think a majority of American parents would rate each film. The MPAA website offers a decent explanation of the standards it claims to apply when rating a film. Here’s a brief summary:

  • G – Nothing offensive, safe for all ages
  • PG – Mild language, violence, maternal or tribal nudity, situations that might produce some awkward questions from children
  • PG-13 – More colorful language (including one F-bomb in a certain context), non-gory violence, more extensive nudity in a nonsexual context, some sexual situations, some alcohol and drug use
  • R – More than 1 F-bomb, pervasive profanity, extensive and/or bloody violence, sexual nudity, any full-frontal nudity, hardcore drug use
  • NC-17 – Anything “appropriate only for an adult audience”, but in practice, mainly extreme violence or explicit sex

The higher a film is rated, the smaller its potential audience becomes. Obviously, an R-rated film severely limits the under-17 audience, although it might also attract a somewhat larger adult audience who finds the adult content appealing. On the other hand, an NC-17 is the kiss of death from a revenue perspective. Very few theaters, rental companies, or retailers are willing to carry such films, so an NC-17 must be low-budget or is almost guaranteed to lose money. Filmmakers seeking to reach their audience must walk a difficult line between expressing themselves and paying the bills.

What Does It Mean?!?

Although the ratings system does give parents a general idea of a film’s content, I’m sure you can see from the descriptions how subjective the ratings must be. For instance, how much blood and gore does it take to push a film from PG-13 to R, or from R to NC-17? Is there a body count threshold? Does a character smoking a joint demand an R for the film, or would a PG-13 suffice if the scene is short? What about a line of cocaine? How many curse words that don’t start with F can the director include while maintaining a PG-13? How explicit can a sex scene be in an R-rated film?

The documentary featured interviews with several directors whose films had been slapped with NC-17 ratings initially. Some edited their films down to an R rating, while others refused and released their films with the NC-17 or unrated. This segment made some fascinating points about how the ratings board treats certain types of sex, nudity, and violence differently from others. I won’t explore those in detail here. (you’re welcome, Lisa!) They were highly frustrated with the lack of firm standards and clear guidance from the ratings board, subjectivity of the rating, and seemingly unfair treatment their films received compared to other films.

I wholeheartedly agree with the directors on these issues. As someone who considered screenwriting as a profession, I think filmmakers need much clearer standards for what constitutes each rating so they’ll know what to expect. As a parent, I want more specific information regarding what’s in a PG film or an R film. In recent years, we’ve seen details included with the rating box, which is helpful. But we’re still a long way from having clear standards regarding content.

American vs. European Ratings

For me, the most interesting point involved the differences between the American perspective and the European perspective on film content. In America, we tolerate huge amounts of violence and gore and hardly blink an eye. They are in our movies, video games, TV shows, and music. Primetime hit show CSI regularly shows graphic crime scenes and re-enactments. The documentary pointed out that James Bond, through his dozens of movies, had killed countless people, yet no Bond film had ever exceeded a PG-13 rating. Killing people is OK from a ratings perspective as long as the deaths aren’t too bloody. Except in very extreme cases, even gory death, dismemberment, war, torture, and other horrible sights only warrant an R in America. Even in many PG movies, violence is perfectly acceptable in film, even though in reality most of us rarely experience violence. However, sex and nudity quickly escalate a film’s rating even though both are completely normal and natural parts of life. A killer can hack people apart with a machete and spray blood over the camera in an R-rated horror film, but show too many private parts or a too-steamy sex scene and the film will get the dreaded NC-17 and go straight to video unless it’s edited.

In Europe and Australia, the perspective is flipped, according to the documentary. Sex and nudity in films and TV are considered less offensive and less “scary” for children because they are seen as normal parts of life. It’s graphic violence that gets their raters worked up because they seen it as harmful to society. They consider us prudes regarding sex and the human body and uncivilized brutes regarding violence. I haven’t been able to verify the filmmaker’s claims on the topic, but they seem reasonable to me given my understanding of the cultures involved. I’m also not surprised to find a greater incidence of violence in an American culture that glorifies violence, nor a greater incidence of teenage pregnancy, STDs, and body image disorders in an American culture that both stigmatizes and obsesses over sex and nudity.

Parenting After Sesame Street

As a parent of young boys, I don’t need to think about film ratings much…yet, but I can certainly see their value. I don’t necessarily want to screen everything they watch before they can see it, so a rating gives me a decent place to start when deciding whether something is appropriate. However, I don’t want to blindly trust the ratings board, either, as I don’t agree with all of its decisions. Receiving a PG or PG-13 doesn’t guarantee that my kids are ready to handle the content of a given film or that it sends the messages that I want them to hear. I’m not advocating censorship by any means, merely wanting to make an informed decision. Plus, I have an annoying little voice that reminds me how much I whined to my mom as a kid when she sometimes limited what I could watch or listen to. (how dare she!!) The voice says I’m a hypocrite for planning to limit what my kids can see. The voice is right, and I’m not very comfortable playing the role of censor for my kids. Bottom line, I’m happy to postpone those types of decisions because I’m not sure how to make them quite yet. When I am forced to make them, I’ll seek out better information than what we find from the MPAA ratings board.

What are your thoughts on our current film rating system? If you’re a parent, how much do you rely on content ratings when deciding what films, TV shows, and video games your children can see?

Boys Who Watch My Little Pony

I came downstairs the other day and found my boys watching My Little Pony on Netflix. Instantly, I felt an internal struggle brewing, much like the one I felt a few weeks prior when I found them watching Strawberry Shortcake.

One internal voice told me to encourage my sons to watch something more boy-oriented. Bob the Builder? How It’s Made? Diego? Cars? Anything with strong male characters and/or large machines. The competing voice told me to keep my mouth shut and quit trying to impose artificial gender roles. They asked for My Little Pony. Mom set it up for them. They were happy. Why was this a problem?

Voice #2 won.

So, you’re a…dancer?

A similar struggle occurs sometimes at my mom’s house, where she has collected an assortment of costumes for them and my niece to play with. I wasn’t a big costume person as a preschooler, so for a while most of her costumes were my sister’s old dance uniforms and other dresses. Despite my efforts to be openminded and enlightened and all that, it was a tiny bit disturbing to see my 3 1/2 year old son walk out in my sister’s pink and gray mouse leotard from her first dance recital. But I didn’t say anything. Apparently, Grampy was a bit more disturbed. Grammy saved the day and bought the boys an assortment of superhero costumes, which they seem to prefer most of the time.

Will boys be boys?

Part of my quiet discomfort springs from the gender roles I’ve been taught and seen modeled throughout my life. You know the traditional mold. Boys are supposed to be active and rough-and-tumble, to like destroying things and making noise, to play with cars and superheros and army dudes. Girls are supposed to be sweet and quiet, to like reading and dancing and tea parties, to play with Barbie and My Little Pony and jewelry.

As a general rule, my boys and my niece fit those molds very well with minimal conscious direction from any of their parents. My boys are loud, love to run and climb and wrestle, and are fascinated by fire trucks and cars and airplanes. Reagan speaks softly, dances, loves dresses and purses and princesses, and wears as many bracelets as her little arms will hold.

Interestingly, on a few occasions, Brenden has turned down a cup of yogurt or a movie because it had princesses, saying it was “for girls”. So he has some rudimentary concept of gender roles and the idea that certain things are designed for one gender or the other. But in general, my boys they like what they like, which in their case also happens to include some “girly” things like My Little Pony and leotards. I’m not sure anyone’s ever told Brenden that he’s not “supposed” to like those things because he’s a boy. And I don’t plan to. There are certain elements of being a man that I want to teach them, but they involve qualities and actions, not likes and dislikes. Standing up for what’s right, treating people with love and respect, taking responsibility for one’s actions and the people who depend on you…those things are part of being a man. Liking cars or violence or sports is not a requirement. Neither is disliking tea parties or shoes or My Little Pony. When we buy them toys, we lean toward boy-oriented or neutral ones. We’re certainly not pushing them to cross genders. But neither do we freak out if they pick up a doll.

Born This Way?

Mixed in with the issue of gender roles is the issue of sexual orientation. They might not be as blatant or obnoxious as Homer, but I think some parents still wonder how their actions might influence their children’s sexuality and sexual orientation. Will watching My Little Pony and wearing dance leotards turn my sons gay? For some, that’s a stupid question. For others, it’s a perfectly legitimate one. Your answer depends mainly on whether you think sexual orientation is based primarily on nature, nurture, or personal choice.

In an Emmy-winning 1997 episode of The Simpsons called “Homer’s Phobia“, the Simpson family gets to know the local antiques dealer, a nice man named John. Everyone gets along great, and Bart starts emulating John’s crazy taste in shirts and dance moves. But when Homer figures out that John is gay and fears his “gayness” might be rubbing off on Bart, he starts a crusade to keep Bart on the straight and narrow, so to speak. He shows Bart “manly” cigarette ads, takes him to visit a steel mill, and takes him on a hunting trip. Surely shooting some unarmed animals will keep Bart straight. Finally, after John saves Homer and crew from the reindeer they were hunting, Homer reluctantly accepts John and then realizes that Bart still has no interest in either gender.

I’m certainly no expert, and I know some of you disagree, but I fall in the nature camp. I didn’t choose to be attracted to women; I just am. I can’t just make myself like guys. I can’t explain why I like girls. That’s just the way I am. And I find it ridiculous to assume that so many gay people, especially in past decades when society was less accepting, would willingly choose to “be gay” and invite so much abuse, hatred, and death from the straight community. People more knowledgeable than I have said that certain circumstances, such as abuse, can affect one’s sexual orientation, so I doubt nature is the only factor. But for most of us, I am convinced it’s the primary one.

Because of that view, I feel no obligation to “train” my boys to like girls. That’s the other reason I’m not freaking out like a “good American dad” when I see them watching a show aimed toward girls or trying to forcefeed them “manly” pursuits like fishing or hunting or football.

I want them to pursue their interests. Some might be more personally appealing to me than others, but part of my job as a parent is to help them discover their interests and talents, explore them, and possibly do something with them, whether they involve sports, drama, rock music, politics, science, religion, writing, or whatever else might grab their attention.

So I’m not stressing out whether they watch Bob the Builder or My Little Pony, dress like Superman or a pink mouse, or play with Lightning McQueen or Barbie. Brenden and Jonathan are who they are. I want them to become the young men God created them to be. And no matter how they turn out, I will love them with all my heart for as long as I have breath.

Random Observations from This Weekend

For Jenny’s birthday weekend, we stayed at a hotel in Addison, enjoyed some great food, slept a lot, and enjoyed getting to talk for long periods. Here are a few observations/factoids/highlights/whatevers:

  1. Tokyo One makes really, really good sushi. It’s a sushi buffet in Addison. Although a bit expensive for dinner, the service is good and the quality and variety of the buffet are outstanding. On their website, you can print a coupon for 10 percent off and a free piece of birthday cake if you eat there within a week of your birthday.
  2. At Tokyo One, I tried several new and weird items: blue marlin (very tender and mild in flavor, although I’m not sure whether it’s a very sustainable food source), jellyfish (looks like grilled onions, tastes like generic seafood when doused in soy sauce like this was), lychee (a strange, brown, tropical fruit with hairlike projections on the outside and sweet white meat inside), and luo han guo or monkfruit (a light brown tropical fruit with sweet white meat inside much like lychee). I seem to have outgrown the picky phase from my younger years in which I would only eat toast and french fries.
  3. Marriott beds are very, very comfortable, almost Tempur-Pedic comfy. Overall, we were very impressed with the Marriott and would stay there again.
  4. I still think it’s cheap and lame to charge hotel guests to park at your hotel. I understand charging non-guests, especially in an urban environment with lots of business people and limited parking spaces, but a parking spot should be included in the price of my room. Both the Marriott and the Anatole charge for parking. The Omni Mandalay in Irving, however, does not.
  5. I continue to be amazed that guys in the men’s locker room at King Spa feel the need to cover their bits with a towel when they walk around, as if their bits are somehow different or special compared to ours. One guy used his hand. Really, dude? That’s what toddlers do when they have to pee.
  6. I saw a guy with a black tramp stamp. Is that weird, or is it just me?
  7. Male…um…grooming habits vary widely from man to man.
  8. I performed a simple heart rate experiment in the spa area. The main hot tubs were 106-108 degrees. The steam room was about 118, the dry sauna maybe 170. While my resting heart rate stays around 60, it rose to maybe 100 or more in those hot areas as my body tried to cool off. Then, after a few minutes in the 65-degree cold plunge, it dropped to around 50 as my body tried to preserve its heat.
  9. We had breakfast Sunday morning at Einstein Brothers, one of our favorite breakfast places. A man and his sevenish-year-old son were in line ahead of us. First, the dad yelled at him not to touch anything. Next, he criticized him in front of the cashier for putting his pants on backwards, something about being “incapable of seeing the tag in the back”. Finally, they sat down and ate breakfast together. I chose to sit on the other side of the room so I didn’t hear any more, snap, and go off on the guy. I’m not sure they said a word to each other as they ate. As a father myself, I certainly understand getting frustrated and impatient with one’s children and being less kind at times than one should, but tearing a kid down constantly doesn’t do either of you a bit of good.
  10. We walked into 300, an upscale bowling alley (ever heard of that?) in Addison. The furnishings are plush, the menu offers a much broader variety of food and drinks than a typical bowling alley, and giant screens above the pins were showing a Beyonce video and the Final Four game. We would’ve stayed for dinner and a couple of games, but it was really loud and ruined our Zen from King Spa. Maybe some other time. It would be fun with a group of friends.
  11. BJ’s Brewhouse makes a tasty berry cider, great crispy fries, and a really good club sandwich.

Colorblind?

It’s 2012. The naive side of me wants to think that we live in a colorblind society that views and treats “red and yellow, black and white” equally. But you and I both know that’s not true. Regardless of what actually happened the night of his death, the Trayvon Martin case and our nation’s reaction to it demonstrates otherwise. Perhaps his death was racially motivated, perhaps not. But any time a member of one race kills someone of another, the racial motivation question comes to mind, doesn’t it? A colorblind society wouldn’t view racism as a possible motivation.

Why is race still a consideration? Slavery was abolished over a century ago. Schools were integrated and discrimination against blacks became illegal decades ago. Our current president is half black and half white. Why aren’t we past all this nonsense by now? Despite all our progress in so many areas, we still have racists. Some are open about it. Some are subtle, only revealing their true feelings around like-minded or like-skinned people. Some are mildly racist and don’t even realize it. Even those who try hard not to be racist, like me, still struggle with hidden prejudices and stereotypes that are difficult to shake.

I have a theory. Yes, some people are racist because they’ve actually had bad experiences with members of another race and assume the same for all members of that race. However, more people carry around various forms of racism mainly due to lack of exposure to members of other races.

For example, suppose you’re a 70-year-old white woman who’s grown up surrounded by white people. Your schools were segregated during your education. Blacks drank from different water fountains and swam in separate pools until you were a grown woman. You grew up in West Texas where black people are rare. Your only real impression of black people came from TV or movies in which blacks were either dangerous or inferior. Perhaps your parents and friends gave you a bad impression of them as well. Most likely, lacking any contradictory information, you’ll tend to have a negative opinion of blacks as well.

As an example more specific to DFW, for the last 10-20 years, people of Middle Eastern and Indian (from the nation of India) descent have suffered from the same ignorance. Since these groups were tiny minorities until recently, many people have had very little direct contact with them. It’s easy to assume that all Muslims are a certain way or all Indians are a certain way if you have no reason to believe otherwise and you keep hearing negative things about them from various sources in the media or your friends and family. I once heard an older man badmouthing Arabs (he pronounced the term “A-Rabs”) at length. Based on where and how he lived, I’m not sure he ever met an single “A-Rab” during his entire lifetime. But he had plenty of opinions about them.

Like I said, I’m certainly not perfect in this area, but I try hard to keep an open mind and not rush to conclusions based solely on a person’s race. Why? Partly because that’s what Jesus did during his time on earth. Partly because I’ve been blessed to know a wide variety of people from an assortment of race and nations, giving me firsthand information to combat the negative stereotypes. Here are a few of my non-white friends who I’m proud to know:

High School Tennis

  • Shihab, a Muslim from Bangladesh
  • Biran, a Hindu from Pakistan
  • Reza, a halfhearted Muslim from Iran (I think)
  • Jimmy, a Buddhist from Southeast Asia
  • Nabeel, a Muslim from somewhere in the Middle East

High School Gospel Choir

  • Ebonye, a black soprano singer who also served as class president
  • Steve, a black tenor who helped lead our group
  • Rest of the crew (I was one of a handful of white guys), great singers and great people who didn’t look down on us for having different colored skin

Baylor

  • Ali and Akbar, both Muslim computer science majors
  • Elle, a black woman from my interdisciplinary program who is an authentic African princess but never let on or expected special treatment

Work

  • Marvin, Doug, Chris, and Chris, all black men
  • Miguel and Stephanie, both Hispanic
  • Ashvina, an Indian woman
  • Lin and Gene, both Asian men

I’m sure you get the point by now. When I hear someone say Muslims are evil terrorists, I think of Ali, who couldn’t blow someone up if his salvation depended on it. When I hear people say black people are lazy, I think of Chris, who works two jobs and put himself through school while helping to support his wife and three kids. While stereotypes might apply to some people within a group, I personally know people who break many of those stereotypes, enough to know it’s foolish to assume all people of a certain race (or religion, gender, sexual orientation, occupation, nationality, etc.) are the same.

I’m a bit concerned about my children, though. Although Jenny and I will teach our boys not to judge people based on their race, and I haven’t heard them even mention the different colors of skin, the public schools in our district are overwhelmingly white. Perhaps we have ourselves to blame; we chose to live here partly for the well-regarded schools. But they won’t receive the benefit of a highly multiracial school like I did. They could fall into the common trap of making racial judgments about people due to simple ignorance. We may need to work hard to counteract that tendency and make sure they don’t spend their entire lives surrounded only by people who look like they do.

We cannot be blind to the colors of our skin. Perhaps we shouldn’t, since true colorblindness would prevent us from recognizing and benefiting from the differences in our heritage, culture, and other gifts. But we can fight the urge to make assumptions based upon a person’s skin color. If we can blind ourselves to preconceived notions about what someone of a certain race is like, we’ll take a big step toward eliminating some of the nastiness that still simmers beneath the surface of our society.

Socializing as a Married Couple

I am a hermit.

As I’ve described in another post, I am both introverted (I draw my energy from within and need alone time to recharge) and shy (hesitant to speak up and reach out to others). A night alone in a quiet house with a movie or video game sounds great to me the vast majority of the time. Being around people adds a host of pressures to say the right thing, impress and entertain people, be polite and responsible, etc. As a younger man, I viewed my shyness as a liability. As an adult, at some point I decided to put on my Lady Gaga meat dress and accept that I was Born This Way.

However, I married a non-hermit.

Jenny isn’t one of those people who can’t stand to be alone and need to be out partying with someone whenever possible. However, she’s a slight extrovert, enjoys spontaneous social activities, and needs regular interaction with other adults besides me. The boys can be lots of fun and very loving, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to discuss something other than poop, Pop-Tarts, and Phineas and Ferb.

So we are a mismatched couple in terms of socializing. Now what?

We’ve worked out a pretty good compromise. She tries not to surprise me at 4:00pm by booking us for a 6:00pm dinner date. She doesn’t host parties every night or drag me out to do stuff with people constantly. We’re already fairly busy in the evening with church Sunday nights, class for her on Mondays and Wednesdays, and home group every other Tuesday. It’s nice to have some nights free to spend time together with the boys and just the two of us. These days you’ll often find me playing Skyrim and Jenny happily buried in a book on her Kindle after the boys are in bed.

In return, we try to plan time in advance to spend with other people so that I have time to mentally prepare. One or both of us go out to dinner and/or coffee with our crew on Sundays after church. Every other week we host home group with the same people, some of our closest friends. We try to plan other excursions as well, such as having people over for dinner, going to sporting events or shows, and various parties for birthdays and other celebrations. It’s cool with me as long as I know in advance and get some recharge time soon before or after. With the boys and school, we aren’t quite as socially active as Jenny probably wants to be, but we’re doing OK and both happy with the balance we’ve found.

Some couples are both extroverts or both introverts. Others are opposite from us with an outgoing guy and an introverted girl. What’s the situation for you and your significant other? How do you handle socializing in a way that makes both sides feel respected, happy, and comfortable?