May 10, 2012 | 12:28 pm

Am I Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Bitch?

Posted by Tamara Shayne Kagel

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I really didn’t like when you were mean to that girl on Saturday, my boyfriend mentioned in his sweet adorable soft spoken voice out of nowhere two days later when I saw him Monday night at the spectacular DCFC concert at Walt Disney Hall.

I had totally forgotten about the whole “incident” but apparently it was bothering him so much that he brought it up again two days later to tell me that it bothered him, even though he had already told me as much right after it happened.

I asked him if the tomato soup incident to which he was referring was really as bad as all that.

I just like it when you’re nice, he said.  Can you get more diplomatic than that?  And yet for him, this felt like a stinging rebuke.

Was I really that awful?  I suppose I was rude, but if someone’s rude to you first, how nice are you supposed to be back?  Perhaps he was shocked because I’m usually a stickler when it comes to being courteous and well-mannered.

Let me explain the circumstances regarding the incident.  Saturday evening, we were at a wedding reception, where the food was provided by a food truck.  The reception was only from 5 to 7 and contrary to my usual modus operandi, we were perfectly on time.  However, from the moment we arrived, there was a long line of guests waiting to order dinner from the truck.  Because of the timing of the wedding, I had unintentionally skipped lunch, so although I was starving when we arrived, I hate waiting in line even more, so we chatted with friends for an hour and a half.  By 6:30, most everyone had eaten, there was absolutely no line at the truck, and my diplomatic boyfriend and I made our way to the driveway.  By the time we got to the window, it was just after 6:35 and I knew just what I wanted.

The gourmet truck had many indulgent foodie options, but being a vegetarian, my options were very limited.  There was a vegetable option, which looked like a lot of cucumber but there was also a grilled cheese and tomato soup option.  What are weekends for if not to indulge?  I ordered my grilled cheese.

That’s just for the children.  We have to wait to make sure there’s enough for all the kids.

I checked my watch again.  About twenty minutes left for the whole wedding.  I looked around.  It seemed most everyone had eaten or was at the dessert bar.  I looked back at the girl inside the food truck.  She looked about my age.  Maybe I wouldn’t have been so offended if she hadn’t take so much obvious pleasure in saying no to me.  But there was a clear power play going on.  I could understand if this was an hour ago and there was a huge line, but the party was over.  Either she had enough left to feed me or she didn’t.

Ok, when will you know? I inquired.  And I’m not going to lie.  I said this like a bitchy sorority girl replying to a guy who just told her he doesn’t know if he can go with her to the Greek formal or not.

I don’t know, she shot back, like she was Queen of Grilled Cheese Land and she could deny any subject she didn’t like the looks of a yummy sandwich at her whim.  Well, I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.

Ok, I’ll come back, fake smile plastered onto my face.  I was going to beat her at her own game.

Do you want something else for now?  Here’s the thing, having been a waitress earlier on my life, I have an incredible amount of sympathy for people in the service industry.  It’s a hard job and no matter where I am or what kind of mood I’m in, I make it a priority to be polite to servers and bussers at restaurants, bellman at hotels, even people who answer calls from 800 numbers.  I hang up the clothes I leave in dressing rooms.  If I have terrible service at a restaurant which is pretty rare these days, I would never tip less than 15%.  In fact, if this girl had taken my order in a restaurant, I still would have tipped her 15% because I don’t like to mess with people’s wages.  However, if she starts it, how nice do I really have to be back?

No, thank you, I’ll just wait, I’m a vegetarian.  I added this because I thought it might elicit some sympathy.  It wasn’t like I had the option of having the pulled pork everyone was raving about or the jerk chicken or the other meaty things people were salivating over. 

We have the vegetarian dish. I again weighed my options of vegan vegetables with bread or delicious hot grilled cheese dipped in creamy tomato soup.  She was still shooting death-rays at me with her eyes. 

No, I’ll just wait.  My hunger wasn’t helping the situation and I knew everything I was saying came out in a tone that can only be defined at its very best as snarky. 

The potatoes are vegetarian.  I knew what she was doing and it was sneaky.  See, if she could get me to order the veggie dish or sides, then I’d eat it and I’d be too full to come back, so she would win.  But I couldn’t let that happen.  Plus, as good as the fried potatoes with aioli looked, I couldn’t have that and grilled cheese for dinner.  Some restraint was required.

When should I come back?  At this point, she seemed surprised my determination.

I don’t know, ten minutes, she said with equal measure of bitch inflection.

Ok, I’ll come back.

My boyfriend had been behind me the whole time.  We walked away and he told me as sweetly as he could that I was mean.  But she had started it, hadn’t she?

I didn’t wait the full ten minutes.  From the table we sat at, I could still see the truck.  No one was ordering anything.  I looked around for all the poor hungry children who I would practically be forcing to starve if I got what I wanted.  It appeared that all the kids had already eaten or gone home.  The dessert bar had been demolished.  How was it not obvious, THE CHILDREN HAD EATEN!  About five minutes later, I got up and marched in my high heels right over to the window. 

Hi, do you have enough now? 

She gave me half a fake smile and said she had to check.  Apparently, I had worn her down.  She came back and said it was fine.  Of course it was fine!  You had fed almost everyone already, I thought.  I didn’t see why she couldn’t have just done that five minutes ago. 

I came back to the table with delicious hot melty grilled cheese, which was so rich I could only finish half of it.

I kind of forgot about it after that.  But apparently, it had so disturbed my Mr., he had been thinking about it for two days.  I thought back on my behavior.  Had I really been that bad?  The thing was, it really felt personal.  Like this girl looked me up and down and was getting a kick out of saying no to me.  I had seen her take orders from other people and she used a sweet voice that she did not use with me.

But still, do we as women reserve the right to answer bitchiness with more bitchiness?  I know there’s a lot to be said for being the bigger person and in many situations I firmly believe in that.  But are there ever situations where it’s simply ok to be a bitch?  Was there any harm in me using a tone I usually reserve for impressions of my sister as a teenager?  I didn’t want to start anything, but I don’t believe in being a push-over either. 

Can one simultaneously argue for confronting the world with politeness and still feel a bitchy girl deserves to be bitched at back?  I like to think so.  But then again, it was disheartening to feel like I had embarrassed the man I love.  All over a tone of voice.  My birthday is tomorrow and perhaps I’m reaching the age, where it’s time to put my inner-brat in my back-pocket.  Or at least, I’m going to make an honest attempt to from now on.  Perhaps, it’s not a terrible thing if I let him make me a kinder person.  Plus, I can always make fun of her behind her back…

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PS – Monday May 14th at 11am, I’ll be on the Dennis Prager radio show live to discuss my earlier political columns on dating a Republican.  You can stream it live from KRLA AM 870 or download it from his website after it airs. 

Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit www.tamarashaynekagel.com and follow her on twitter @tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2012.

 

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May 4, 2012 | 8:44 am

Why Privileged White Girls Need Real Jobs

Posted by Tamara Shayne Kagel

Ann Romney raised five boys.  I’m sure that was hard.  So hard that to be honest, I’d prefer not to find out myself.  But at the same time, it doesn’t give her the same experience as having a job that gives you a paycheck.  There’s nothing wrong with her choice.  I actually happen to like Ann Romney.  I’ve had a special place in my heart for well-coiffed well-coutured women who speak French ever since I fell in love with Jackie Kennedy.  And like Jackie, Ann seems charming and classy and whether I like it or not, I’m sure she’ll be a huge asset to Mitt.  But can we just stop pretending that her “job” is just like everyone else’s.  As hard as being a mother may be, I just don’t see how only ever being a wife or mother while being supported by a husband qualifies you to give counsel on economic issues.

There are some things that you can only learn from supporting yourself on a paycheck.  I know because I had to learn the hard way.

Growing up, I labored under the misapprehension that I knew what it was to work hard because I worked hard at school, my extracurriculars, or internships.  I grew up wanting to go to a good college so I worked really hard.  All the time.  I thought that was tough.  I told everyone how tough it was to go from ice-skating to ballet and to keep my grades up and study for the SATS and intern for a Congressman.  And don’t forget, I had essays for college to write and volunteer work to do and summer programs to apply for.  And every once in a while I would work for my Dad to make some money but I didn’t get any special treatment just because I was the boss’s daughter I swear.  It was not easy to have so many things to I had to work hard at.

Then I got to college and I thought that was really really hard.  Man, not only was I doing twice as much as I felt like I was doing in high school, but on top of that, my parents gave me a budget.  Every quarter, they deposited a fixed amount into my bank account and that was all I was going to get.  I noticed the price on things for the first time in my life.  Who knew conditioner could cost $40?  I would get annoyed with my parents on the phone because they didn’t seem to show much sympathy when I tried to explain how stressed I was.  I never had enough time to sleep or exercise.  When people with jobs told me they wished they could go back to school again, I told them it wasn’t like back in their day when all kids did was party.  Sometimes, I had early classes that started at 10:00 cause I wanted to double major.  And Student Government was a really big deal at my school and took up a lot of time.  And everyone goes out Thursday nights and to the football games on the weekends.  And I had to learn if I liked Midori Sours or wanted to join a sorority or if the guy I liked hung out at the Deuce.  There was no coasting for me through college.

Right after college, I moved back home to finish my novel or screenplay or whichever one I decided to start first.  It was really tough to decide which to write first so I had to spend most of the time exercising and tanning and “dealing” with college being over and luckily both my parents worked so I had the house to myself to get all my work done.  But my parents didn’t understand how hard my work was.  One day my mom came home and found me tanning topless outside by the pool, reading the New Yorker.  She started screaming at me about how she and my father didn’t spend their entire lives working hard so that I could come home and lounge around tanning.  I told her I was working but nonetheless essentially out of spite I scoured Los Angeles job till I finally got hired as a waitress and moved out. 

And thus, for the very first time in my life, I was supporting myself with a job.  I had had jobs a few times before, but they had always been for supplemental income.  At first, I was really angry with my parents for not supporting my “art.”  Didn’t they work that hard so that I could have opportunities they didn’t have?  But then, I looked around at my apartment and felt proud of what I was providing myself.  Unfortunately, then I went to work and hated my life.  And then I found out what working hard really meant.

I quickly realized I hated waitressing and it hated me.  In the beginning, I lived in fear of losing my job.  Early on, I got a bad “shopper report,” as in a mystery shopper came in and gave me a bad score.  As I sat in my boss’s office listening to him tell me why I was a bad waitress, I nervously ran through all the scenarios that were likely to erupt if I got fired that would eventually lead to me being evicted, living on the streets, and tap dancing on the sidewalk for money.  I remember getting stiffed on a table for the first time and sneaking off to the bathroom where I cried because I didn’t know if I was going to make enough money for my car payment that month.  Then there was just the general rudeness I had to take all day long.  When you work in any service industry job, there will always be some people who will be complete jerks but worse than that, you have to fall all over yourself obsequiously apologizing for your stupidity to them, just praying to God that karma exists.  (And although contrary to popular opinion, I never once saw a server ever spit into anyone’s food, I can’t say we never “accidentally” might have kicked a chair every once in a while.)  When you go to an elite university, they do a great job teaching you many things.  In fact, they even do a good job teaching you some valuable life lessons.  But learning how to keep your mouth shut when people at your job treat you like an idiot is not one of them.

So even though, I had worked hard all my life up till that moment, “working” took on a very different meaning for me when I realized that if I lost my job, I might lose everything.  My whole life up till that point, my parents had been trying to teach me the value of money.  But in retrospect, there’s nothing they could have done.  There was nothing they could have said that would have taught me what it all meant.  All they could do, was what they did do.  Kick me out with a college degree in hand, offer to keep me on the cell phone family plan, and hope for the best.

And I think we can all agree, thank god they did.  I’m not saying any of this is any better than motherhood in any way.  All I am saying is that from one privileged white girl to another, it’s hard to truly learn the value of money, until you have to earn it yourself.  And that’s an experience that I just don’t think you learn automatically by being a mother with no financial troubles.  And while being a mother may be the most important and valuable job a woman can have, it’s a different type of job from the one that ends every two weeks with a paycheck.  And I don’t understand why we have to pretend that one automatically gives you an authoritative position on the other.

Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit www.tamarashaynekagel.com and follow her on twitter @tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2012.

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April 27, 2012 | 7:59 am

Ten Tweets to Avoid That Will Ruin Relationships

Posted by Tamara Shayne Kagel

I just read this New York Times article about people causing strife in relationships because of their twitter or status updates about situations that should probably be private.  All I can think is how stupid are these people?  Yes, we’ve all had the urge, but keep yourself in check people.  To help you all, I’m in the process of compiling a list – a list of the worst things you could tweet and below is the start of it.  If you ever feel like tweeting the following or some variation thereof, stop - Call someone up, write in a diary, or confess to a stranger but why must we shout from the rooftops when our boyfriends are napping on the job?

Ten Tweets to Avoid That Will Ruin Relationships

1. #DontYouHateWhen I just texted my boyfriend a naked pic of myself.  He texts back we need to talk.

2. #SomewhereRightNow A man is listening to his girlfriend.  It’s not here.

3. He just blamed autocorrect for spelling my name as Veronica. #TextsIHate #ThingsCheatersSay

4. #LiesIveToldMyParents We’re waiting. We’re not living together. He has a job.

5. #LiesIveToldMyBoss Feeling super sick today!  My boyfriend came down with the same thing – Viva La Mexico!

6. I keep telling him it happens to every guy and that it’s not a big deal. #whiskeydick #DontYouHateWhen

7. #YouKnowItsLoveWhen He doesn’t mind that you told him you were thinking of someone else the whole time.

8. I didn’t know some straight men watch gay porn. #IDontUnderstandWhy he thought he had to hide it from me. #ItsAllGood

9. #ImProudToSay It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.

10.  My boyfriend just asked how twitter works. #DeleteYourTwitterIf

Feel free to comment with some of your own!

Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit www.tamarashaynekagel.com and follow her on twitter @tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2012.

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April 19, 2012 | 1:58 pm

To Live Together or Not To Live Together. That Is the Question

Posted by Tamara Shayne Kagel

The New York Times had a thoughtful article in it last week on co-habitation and about five different people emailed it to me, as just a few days earlier my boyfriend had officially popped the question.  No, not that passé question of marriage that all Baby Boomer parents are waiting for.  The Gen-Y question that is much more difficult for us to answer: Will I move in with him?  We had talked about it abstractly before; a few months ago we prevaricated around a hazy outline of what might happen with our relationship in the Spring in terms of his lease being up and wanting to find a bigger place for us. 

But this was different.  The question was formally asked which necessitated an answer.  I always imagined that I would be bugging my boyfriend about moving our relationship along while he was dragging his feet, not that I would silently freak out over nothing while he declared he was officially ready. 

The thought of moving into a nicer placer with a man I love (perhaps with my own washer/dryer), where we would cook dinner together in a big kitchen makes me excited about the prospect of this step.  But I also felt nervous which really surprised me.

I told him that I was excited but that there were a few logistical things I was concerned with like money for instance.  He already pays three times what I pay in rent and he wants to move in to a nicer place.  Of course, to him, this isn’t an issue.  I never expected you to pay half of the rent, he said at brunch.  But I want to pay half! I lamented.  He joked that it could be a very long time before I’m able to do that and he’s probably right. 

So I’ve spent the last few days doing what girls do when we have relationship decisions to make: haranguing all my girlfriends and getting their opinions on the subject.  To each girlfriend I list my excuse, the finances, our differences in respect for the toothpaste cap, his Republican tendencies.  I analyze the pros and cons.  I try to separate each emotion I feel into a question that I must ponder.  Till finally the other night on the phone, my friend Beth shoots them all down.  Who cares about this stuff?  Do you want to live with him? she pressed me.

When she said that, I realized I was scared.  I’ve written before about my hesitation when it comes to moving in together and why it may not be the best recipe for a successful marriage.  In fact, I wrote a law school paper on why women should avoid co-habitation if they want to get married which you can see here.

This recent New York Times article though offers new insight into co-habitation.  It argues that there are two problems associated with co-habitation before marriage which lead to more divorce than for people who wait to live together till married.  But the author proffers that the problems have solutions that seem to lessen the effect.  Firstly, it acknowledges the sliding effect where a couple moves “from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to cohabitation [on a] gradual slope, one not marked by rings or ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean.”  I’ve seen this effect with a lot of my friends who just end up living with different guys.  This however, will not be my problem.  I’ve never lived with a boy before.  On top of that, I analyze relationships and dating to obliteration for a living so I’m very concerned with what all this means.  If we do this, it will be a big decision and I already feel bad for the talks my boyfriend will have to endure.

Unfortunately, the other disadvantage co-habitation causes according to this new research is very worrisome.  Men and women seem to view moving in together differently.  Women are more likely to see it as a step toward marriage and men are more likely to see it as a “test run” for marriage.  This is precisely what I’m bogged down in.  My boyfriend and my guess is that more and more of my generation view moving in together as a good test for marriage.  Literally he has used the word “test” in discussing the philosophical value of living together.  I however don’t see it as a test.  In fact, I’d prefer to wait till I’m engaged not because he needs motivation to move on, but because living together is always hard and I think if you’re more committed to working things out, your relationship will fare better.  And I don’t want to be tested out for the role of some wifey image he has in his mind. 

Plus, I know that living together means so much more to me than it does to him.  I always assumed that a guy I was living with is the guy I’d marry, not that I would try out a bunch of different guys until I found a good fit and apartment I liked.  This creates a huge problem for us because to him, getting a place together is not a big deal.  To me, it’s a huge deal.  He’s only asked himself Do I want to live with her? I’m asking Is this the person I’m supposed to marry?  Is this the man I want to have children with?  Can I accept that for the rest of my life he may never put the cap back on the toothpaste?

Of course, the article suggests that perils of co-habitation might be avoided by steering clear of the sliding factor and discussing your expectations for co-habitation.  But what am I supposed to say to him?  The fact is, moving in together is forcing me to ask myself the big questions right now and yet, he’s not.  He doesn’t want to ask himself those questions until he’s put our relationship through a test.  He is a child of divorce so I understand his apprehension about moving too quickly, but I truly am worried that this step could damage our relationship.  I’m not gong to be able to make this mean less and he probably won’t be able to make it mean more at this point, so maybe that means that our relationship is not at the stage where moving in is right.  But I really am so sick of finding quarters for my washer/dryer. I really feel torn about this whole thing.  All I can say at this point is guess who’s having a relationship talk this weekend?  I’ll let you know how it goes…

Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit www.tamarashaynekagel.com and follow her on twitter @tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2012.

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April 12, 2012 | 6:00 pm

Is There Such a Thing As a Liberal Republican-Lover?

Posted by Tamara Shayne Kagel

I was in New York for most of last week with my family.  We had a great time visiting friends, catching up on the art scene, sampling new restaurants and celebrating Pesach at Sammy’s on the lower east side, to which all I can say is one of the Real Housewives of New York sat at the table next to us.

In any case, I was there when I read the response to my last blog post I Don’t Want to Date a Republican! from Dennis Prager, who I have the utmost respect for.  In addition to his column on the subject which I’ve linked to here, he spoke about it on his popular radio show last Wednesday which resulted in flooding my inbox with comments from both sides on the subject.  Not that I didn’t also appreciate the less restrained responses from the blogosphere as on the Jane Dough or elsewhere, where tongue in cheek writing does not seem to be readily understood.

In any case, Mr. Prager has very graciously allowed me to come on his show in the near future to discuss the subject more seriously and in more depth and once I have the date on that, I will certainly let you know.  (Although I’m having a hard time believing that I’m going to be speaking on the same station that a few hours later will play Glenn Beck.)

In the meantime, I wanted to give you all a little more background on the subject.  Firstly, I want to challenge one specific notion Mr. Prager makes, that en mass all liberals are taught disdain and contempt for all conservatives as illustrated by my personal experience.

My personal introduction to Mr. Prager was at a very young age.  I went to a conservative Jewish elementary school and I remember very distinctly in our ethics class being presented with a “Denis Prager” question.  If memory serves, I believe the question went if you were in the ocean and on your right, your own beloved dog was drowning and on your left a stranger’s child was drowning, and you could only save one, which should you save?  Of course, being very young at the time, too young in fact for you to judge me, I was one of the few who vocally asserted that saving your own dog was justified and I made an emotional plea for my cherished dog, Snookie.  After being allowed to discuss and discuss as all good Jewish education requires, in the end we were given Mr. Prager’s answer and taught how valuable each individual life is.  So I must disagree with him at the outset and contradict the assertion that we liberals were taught to dismiss all conservatives.

However, I believe Mr. Prager’s notion that liberals do perhaps live in an insular world that could benefit from a broadened discussion may be appropriate.  Again by way of illustration, at this same school that extolled a very religious life, the constituency was mainly made up of Democrats.  This I can attest to because, in 1992, the year President Clinton was elected for his first term, my Jewish school set up a “mock election.”  In order to learn about the process of elections and secret ballot, every student in elementary school could vote for a Presidential candidate on a ballot that listed Clinton, Bush Sr., and Ross Perot.  I remember the results very clearly because when we found out the final numbers were Clinton 300 and something, Bush about 60 something, and Perot less than 10, instead of thinking how odd it is to have such a one-sided result, my only thought at ten years old was “who were those 60 something people who voted for Bush.”  I truly expected the number to be 0 and realized literally for the first time that I might be interacting with some Republicans only because of that result. 

This I believe does lend some weight to his assertion that I may live in a liberal enclave with an at-times myopic world-view.  However, I also feel that part of the reason for this lays at the feet of the Republican Party specifically.  Democrats have completely excised far-left liberals from our party, case in point – our contentious primary was between two moderates Clinton vs. Obama (that’s why when Gingrich wants to align Obama with a liberal, he has to name Saul Alinsky who nobody has heard of.  Liberal extremists don’t have a place in the Democratic party, at least not any more.)  Contrast that with the contentious Republican primary of Romney vs. Santorum.  The far-right racist extremists not only have a place in the Republican party, but they dominate it to the point that Romney has to spend months trying to appeal to them and become more conservative.  If only the Republican primary would also excommunicate their extremists, I believe we could all be compromising all over the place and watching our country improve.

And yet, Mr. Prager is very correct that this view is precisely why I’m so shocked to find myself in a great relationship with someone who might vote for Mitt Romney.  Because of the extremists in the Republican party which I spend way too much time focusing on and not enough time reading David Brooks and Tony Blankley, I’ve allowed my image of conservatives to be shaped by caricatures like Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, and Michelle Bachman.  And now that I spend most nights saying I love you to a man who doesn’t like the word liberal, I’m forced to admit that some conservatives aren’t all that bad and can actually be scrupulous generous people who I want to be with all the time.

Thus, I’m looking forward to fleshing this all out with him in the future.  Are my boyfriend and I star-crossed lovers simply because of our politics?  If you have specific questions or comments you’d like me to mention to him, I welcome your thoughts below.  Stay tuned for the details.

With that, I’m off to Coachella for the music festival tomorrow, which I doubt is a bastion of Republicans but if I run into any, I promise to keep an open mind and will work to keep an open heart.

Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit www.tamarashaynekagel.com and follow her on twitter @tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2012.

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March 23, 2012 | 8:15 am

I Don’t Want to Date a Republican!

Posted by Tamara Shayne Kagel

As a lifelong Democrat, I never thought I would be in this place.  I never thought I would have to confront this dreaded unforeseen fear - the terror that is for me, dating a Republican.  I don’t even know very many Republicans.  But it turns out, I’m not alone.  Outside of Washington D.C., the entire country is pretty segregated when it comes to political parties.  According to dating website, seven out of ten people are in a relationship with someone of the same political persuasion.  I grew up knowing very few Republicans and the rare ones I did know got made fun behind their backs, be it children or adults.  I know there were some Republicans at my college because there was a “College Republicans” group on campus but this was the Bushy era and the conservatives who were smart enough to get into my university were too smart to be vocal defenders of the Dick Cheney puppet show that was the aughts.  I’ve been living in Los Angeles ever since in the type of place where at the moment President Obama was pronounced the winner of his race, we threw open our windows and whooped and shrieked out into the streets till an impromptu parade erupted and bars served free drinks.  I cried.  I’ve worked for the Democratic Party, interned for a Democratic Congressman and Senator.  And even though I went to a more conservative law school, there were enough liberals on campus that if you included the faculty, we could flock together so that I rarely interacted with those others who met with our derision.

So when I tell you I never thought I would date a Republican, it’s not because I really contemplated it and made a specific decision.  It’s because as long as I didn’t drive to Orange County, my chances of actually running into one felt slim to none.  We live in a birds-of-a-feather type of country.  So how did I get to here?  How did I come to date a man who told me he “liked a lot of Mitt Romney’s ideas” and that he thought John Kerry wasn’t really a war hero and that cap and trade is a terrible system.  At first I didn’t think it would be a big issue.  I fell in love with someone who has many similar interests and a big generous heart and when he told me he was an Independent I thought that was just something moderate Democrats said when being pretentious about how non-conformist they are.  I didn’t realize I was dating someone who would spend every single Tuesday night glued to Wolf Blitzer’s analysis of another Republican primary.  And to be frank, at this point, it’s making me freak out.  I get mad at him just thinking about our past political discussions.  I can’t date a Republican!  What was I thinking?  What if I have little Republican babies?

Naturally, he doesn’t think it’s a big deal.  He keeps saying we can always find common ground.  But I find myself angry with him for things that I expect to take for granted.  He admitted to me that the word “liberal” for him had a bad connotation and that the word “conservative” did not.  It’s hard to blame him when this is a common phenomena in our country now so that only 20% of the population identifies as liberal while 40% is willing to identify as conservative.  I tell him this is a direct result of the vitriol that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have injected into our discourse and he shouldn’t buy into their demonizing of the left.  But for my boyfriend, “liberal” means big government inefficiency.  I’m normally a calm person, but when he said this, I was close to flipping out.  How could he buy into all that?  He’s a smart person, he reads reputable news sources.  And yet, I continually find myself mad at him for buying into conservative propaganda.

Everyone always points to Mary Matalin and James Carville as shining examples of a couple with different political beliefs and a stable marriage.  But honestly, have you seen them bicker on tv?  I love watching them but I don’t want to fight like that in my home.  I want my home to be a place of tranquility and calm and little social justice fighters playing pin your favorite president on the blue donkey.

Another burgeoning concern is that I’m starting to feel like I always have to watch what I say.  Yes, I know there are many intelligent Republicans out there and if the party was made up of just David Frums and Christopher Buckleys or even Mitt Romneys, they’d be a reasonable moderate party that I have an intellectual disagreement with and there wouldn’t be anything to make fun of.  But for now, there are a lot of crazy extremist kooks running the Republican party and when you get into Santorum territory and Palin country, I want the freedom to openly mock and deride in a forum where I don’t have to worry about offending someone.  Is that so wrong?  I’m sick of back-peddling every time I accidentally call them teabaggers.

Months ago, we got to talking about Ron Paul, or rather, my boyfriend got to telling me all about him.  Although, we don’t disagree that much on social issues, we disagree quite a bit about how influential social issues should be when it comes to casting a ballot, so we started to really get into it.  At one point, I said that certain individual rights and liberties should be the most important issue and I was disappointed in my boyfriend because he was willing to forgo those liberties in order to “make a buck.”  He was offended.  Admittedly, I went too far and I believe he is compassionate for those less fortunate and I know he doesn’t think he’s sacrificing civil rights for money.  But I was making an impassioned argument and this is how liberals talk when we’re amongst friends.  To stay in my relationship, I must resolve myself somewhat to being more careful in my language now when talking about fiscal conservatives but in so doing, is that the best decision for a healthy relationship?  No one wants to have to walk on eggshells around their partner.

Last week, I went over to my boyfriend’s to watch the HBO docudrama Game Change about Palin’s Vice Presidential bid over some wine and take-out.  When it was over, I felt bad for John McCain, but outraged at all the doltish hicks who were venerating this ignorant backwards woman who reveled in her lack of knowledge.  My boyfriend on the other hand, said he felt bad for her. 

How can you feel bad for her?  I was shocked.  Why is it always the Republican party that nominates idiots?  Joe the Plumber, Christine O’Donnell.  Democrats would never allow someone who didn’t understand what the “fed” was to run for city councilman let alone the Vice-Presidency.

How much do you really know about what the Fed does?  He shot back.

I almost lost it.  In that moment, he was impugning my knowledge and at the same time defending Sarah Palin.  I was livid.  How can I build my life with someone who defends Sarah Palin and thinks “liberal” is a dirty word?  We went back and forth for a while with me spouting off economic knowledge and him keeping my rhetoric in check.  But I went to bed angry that night. 

I know we’re not supposed to try to change our significant others, but I can’t help but hope that I might be able to make a tried and true blue Democrat out of him.  It’s worked somewhat so far, as I’ve been able to convince him that John Kerry really was a war hero and that Mitt Romney has backtracked on climate change.  And maybe I am better off calling them teapartyers and aside from adjusting interest rates I don’t really know that much about the Fed.  Congress recently passed the first Bi-partisan piece of legislation in years so if they can do it, surely two people who love each other and share many of the same values can find common ground as well.  Now, if I could only get him to start watching Bill Maher with me…

Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit www.tamarashaynekagel.com and follow her on twitter @tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2012.

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March 15, 2012 | 9:08 am

What You Need to Ask Yourself Before Snooping

Posted by Tamara Shayne Kagel

Relationship experts always want to tell you that snooping is one hundred percent without fail invariably wrong. It’s a violation of your partner’s privacy, it breaks trust and if you want a healthy relationship you should never do it. And they’re always so self-righteous about it. Like, if you were really in a good relationship, you wouldn’t even want to snoop.

But that’s just not true. Every woman I know has done it. At some point during your dating career, you will either glance at his texts, read his emails, look in his sock drawer, check his browser history or read his Facebook messages. The proliferation of snooping in relationships doesn’t make it okay, but it doesn’t make you a terrible person, either. And the reason you want to snoop isn’t always because your relationship is unhealthy. We’ve become an informal society where we don’t keep that much private anymore, especially with our partners. This isn’t the “Mad Men” era where men keep their social lives separate from women and women never asked men to share their feelings. We get used to telling our boyfriend everything and we’re proud of them when they finally open up to us and let us see them cry. We exchange keys and passwords and salary information. When he’s driving, he asks you to send a text from his phone and read him his email, and you easily get in the habit of assuming that there is nothing private between the two of you. So when he’s in the shower and you glance at his vibrating phone and can’t help but read a text message—or ten—it doesn’t feel like an invasion of privacy because he was practically asking you to do the same thing yesterday. Couple that with the fact that you assume there is nothing you don’t know anyway, snooping suddenly doesn’t feel like a moral crime, but more like a common relationship side effect of sharing your life with someone. So how bad is it really?

According to a study published in the summer of 2011, forty-one percent of women of all ages admit to having snooped in the past. The number increases drastically as the age drops, making it more and more prevalent in the below forty age group. And the number has jumped almost ten percent since just one year ago. Women snoop much more often than men and men feel much more violated than women when their partner admits snooping. So if you’re a woman under forty years old, some estimates say that sixty to eighty percent of your friends are snoopers at least once in their dating careers and this prevalence is gradually leading to a normalizing of the behavior. If all of your friends do it, is it still wrong?

One of the myths regarding snooping is that most people assume snooping is intricately linked with cheating. While some women do snoop because they have a reasonable belief of infidelity and are looking for evidence, many women are merely guilty of benign curiosity. We want to know if he remembered our anniversary or if he’s really thinking of buying a ring or if he described us as a girlfriend to his mother yet. But whatever the motivation, the biggest problem with snooping isn’t that women are finding smoking gun evidence of bad behavior, the problem is they’re finding small half-truths, white lies, or omissions. Information that’s not inappropriate enough to admit snooping over, but that they can’t stop obsessing over and which can make them resentful in their relationships.

In the last few years, I’ve had one girlfriend find out her boyfriend was telling an ex her breasts looked great on Facebook. Another friend found out from his email that her boyfriend had hooked up with a mutual friend years earlier. Another friend read her boyfriend’s texts from a guy friend who was complaining about never getting to hang out with him alone. In none of these cases did my friends find evidence of cheating. But in all of these cases, my friends found out information that upset them a little and which became an issue in the relationship. Most of the girls eventually confessed and most of the guys felt completely betrayed because their girlfriends snooped.

How much of this information is really worth snooping for? One of the reasons snooping is problematic in relationships is men feel much more violated by it than women. It’s so prevalent among women that women forget how invasive it can actually be. One man told me he felt like he was dating “Big Brother” after his girlfriend confessed to snooping. She found some flirty texts from another girl and although she easily forgave him for the texts, he couldn’t forgive her for the invasion of privacy.

I, of course, am guilty of snooping myself in the past, but in my current relationship I haven’t done it all. Not because I have the perfect relationship and don’t have the desire to, but because I expect I would only find a few minor infractions which aren’t worth the trouble they could cause. Men don’t just need their privacy because women should trust them. Men need their privacy so that they can screw up a little. It’s been said that if we continue to hold up every politician’s life to a microscope, no one is going to want to run anymore. Similarly, if every move our boyfriend needs to pass our scrutiny, no boyfriend will pass our test. We shouldn’t snoop so that we don’t make a big deal when he sends an email to an old girlfriend congratulating her on her new baby or when he watches porn that he’s too embarrassed to tell you about. Because women aren’t perfect, either. When a bartender gives you a free drink, do you give it back and say sorry I’m in a relationship so I can’t accept this? Because although I smile and thank him, I know that it’s also meaningless. But how comfortable would I feel if I knew my boyfriend was watching me do this?

Obviously, there is a limit to what should be tolerated and if the guy is arranging dates with women from Craigslist, there’s bigger issues than snooping. Some statistics say that eighty percent of all women who have a hunch that their husbands are cheating are right. The government uses a simple test to invade people’s privacy: They can only get a warrant to search your house if they have probable cause for believing that there’s evidence of a crime. So if you have probable cause to believe he’s cheating (i.e.—long blonde hairs on the bed when you’re a brunette, you find out he didn’t have a “business dinner” on Saturday night), then snoop to your heart’s content. But if you’re just curious or you just think he has nothing to hide, ask yourself if you would pass a snooping test with a hundred percent score. And if you wouldn’t pass perfectly, why would you expect him to? When did we start expecting men to be perfect? Because that’s what most of us find out after snooping: a slight that was only sort of wrong. So instead of trying to sneakily find information that we can confront them with, shouldn’t we just make peace with the fact that they aren’t perfect and stop trying to prove it?

In a society where we are constantly emphasizing communication and sharing and openness, we never pause to say, maybe some secrets are ok. We like to believe that in a good relationship, we have no secrets. After all, you’re his emergency contact, you know his social security number by heart, you renew his car registration for him and you organize holidays with his mother. You even know whom he lost his virginity to, where he stole liquor from in high school and what his deepest fear is. What could he possibly have to hide? And that’s the thing—probably nothing that matters. So let him hide a few infractions.

I have been completely faithful in my relationship and yet, I don’t know that I have acted with perfection as a girlfriend at all times. Especially in the beginning, maybe I was a little too flirty with the guy at the cafe who gives me free muffins—not because I don’t have a healthy relationship, but because I wanted the free muffins. But the thing is, we all fall short of being the perfect girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife. Even when we love our partners and respect our relationship we all do things that are a bit disrespectful. So while I’m tempted to read through my boyfriend’s texts when he leaves it on the table next to the bed, I firmly believe that if I found anything, it would be a tiny little infraction. And I’ve finally decided that knowing about something so slight isn’t worth the invasion of privacy he might feel. I’ve accepted that my boyfriend might not always act perfectly all the time but, I’m completely happy accepting that he might score an A and not an A+.

Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit www.tamarashaynekagel.com and follow her on twitter @tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2011.

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March 13, 2012 | 4:12 pm

Meet the Friends

Posted by Tamara Shayne Kagel

When your boyfriend meets your friends for the first time, it can be almost as nerve-wracking as meeting the parents.  Although my boyfriend of a year knows and has built relationships with all my friends in LA, I have a lot of friends in other places.  This past weekend we went to New York together where a ton of my college girlfriends live.  It was his first time meeting them and the same was true for me and a few of his friends so the pressure was on. .

Unlike your local friends, your long-distance friends get many less chances to build relationships with your boyfriend.  If he makes a bad first impression on a local friend, he has plenty of weekends up coming for him to win them over.  But this past weekend, he had one or two chances at the most to get along with some of the people who are most important to me.  He probably won’t see them again till the next wedding and that doesn’t look like it’s happening for a while, so naturally I was stressed about things going well.

Based on our trip this weekend, here are some suggestions the next time you’re bringing your significant other along to meet your long-distance friends.

1. Don’t Have the First Big Fight of Your Relationship the Day Before Because You Don’t Get Exactly What You Want.

2. Don’t Get More Drunk Than He Has Ever Seen You in Your Entire Relationship.

3. Don’t Get Sick From Drinking For the First Time in Three Years and Have to Cancel Brunch With His Friends.

4. Don’t Spill Red Wine All Over Yourself at Your Friends Apartment So That You Have to Borrow Her Clothes and Then Spill Water Again Later on Her Floor.

5. Ask Your Friends Ahead of Time Not to Tell the Most Embarrassing Story From College About You On New Year’s Eve 2004.

6. Don’t Make Him Listen to a Trivia Game Your Friends Wrote in the Summer of 2003 That Has Questions About Who Lost Their Virginity To Whom.

7. Don’t Cry the Day You Identify A Potential First Grey Hair and Beg Him to Pull It Out.

8. Don’t See the Masterful Cindy Sherman Exhibit on Female Aging at Moma the Day After You Identify A Potential First Grey Hair.

9. Don’t Correct Him When He Says Blogger Instead of Writer to His Friends.

10. Don’t Spend A Long Time Singing Different Sorority Songs to Each Other.

But if all of that happens, and your friends still tell you they really like him, perhaps you’ll calm down about it all the next time he’s meeting the friends.

Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit www.tamarashaynekagel.com and follow her on twitter @tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2011.

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