After last week’s insanity of putting on a radio show and campaigning for Mother of All Bloggers, we decided that this week we wanted to get back to the roots of what this blog is all about. This is CoupleDumb. The word dumb is right in the name. So, this week we are going to look at the stupid things that people do to screw up their relationship, their families, their children and themselves.

Paul says: Since Lee and I write a relationship blog, I’ve made it a point to look at other relationship sites as a form of market analysis. Recently, I made the mistake of joining a bulletin board where the general public can give relationship advice. My first indication that joining this group might have been a step down a path that makes Dante’s trip look like a European vacation was that I began to receive upwards of fifty emails a day full of problems from cheating spouse to hypnoporn. (As a side note, we will need to get back to the topic of hypnoporn in future posts because I had never heard of it and was fascinated on a Fossi watching primates level.) When I started reading the answers to these already messed up questions, I almost fell off the sofa.

Let me give you an example:

Question: My husband has a horrible temper and has even hit me in the past but I still love him… (You don’t need the rest of the story. You get the idea.)

Advice: It’s better that he shows his passion that way then you being alone. Maybe he will change if you… (You don’t want the rest of the story because it will give you an aneurism and those are never fun.)

At this point, I am requesting that you pick yourself up, sit back down on the sofa, and pay attention because this is important. We all make decisions in our lives. Some are because we are committed to being healthy and some are because we are committed to being unhealthy. Some of the things we believe are grossly bad for us but we still hold on to them with the grip of an acrophobic trapeze artist.

Lee and I have coined the phrase Dysaffirmation to describe these mantras from hell that we say to ourselves and others over and over again. They are dysfunctional affirmations of our commitment to being screwed up.  From the  simple like, ‘I am too fat’ to the profound like ‘there’s only one God and He doesn’t like me’, we say our own customized Dysaffirmations so many times and with such conviction that they have become part of what we are made of and ultimately our society.

Lee says: It is amazing the crap people believe. We laugh at the simplicity of a child who believes in magic and yet we hold beliefs like ‘Toxic Relationships are better than loneliness’. We somehow create the idea that abuse and mistreatment is better than living alone. You have individuals who are convinced they are stupid, overweight, unlovable and the bane of human existence. We underestimate the power of our words when we make simple mistakes and berate ourselves to the point of brainwashing.

          Please don’t read this and think you are immune. Yes, I am talking to you. The Dysaffirmations we write are mostly humorous but there will be one or two that will resonate with you. Those are the words you say to yourself subconsciously. These are beliefs you have created from messed up decisions you made after traumatic events you endured. These are the pearls of wisdom your mother or sister passed down from you either in their communication or their own dysfunctional behavior.

          In my life, I have been blessed with loving parents and great siblings. I grew up not wanting for much and always had a place to lay my head at night. I have the best husband in the world that has treated me like a goddess for 20+ years and we have the best kids in the world. I have an incredible resource of family and friends who are there whenever I need them. And yet, I was able to co-write all those fucked up Dysaffirmations. Some of them were taken straight from my subconscious. Some I have recited to myself in the past few days.

          Denial is not just a river in Egypt but it is what stops us from living healthier lives. But then again, ‘Magic, like happiness, is just another lie we tell our children’.