Privacy - CoupleDumb » CoupleDumb

funny pictures the toilet trooper KMX 233x300 The Privacy Striptease

          Privacy hits a solid wall when we start discussing dating and marriage. How are you supposed to develop intimacy if we want to maintain privacy? How are we supposed to deepen relationships if we are unwilling to open up and be vulnerable? Because you know what happens if people find out who we really are, don’t you?

          Lee says: When we were first married, right about the time the ice caps melted after the big asteroid crashed on earth and killed the dinosaurs, Paul was very private. Paul would even lock the door when he showered. Since we lived in a little apartment, having a locked bathroom door meant that I would be doing the pee pee dance until he came out. I had no such issues since my entire life it was verboten to ever lock a door. Something about earthquakes, door jams, entombed by our own ridiculous need for solitude. Needless to say, I fixed him of that little quirkiness. I mean, come on, you expect me to perform all sorts of acrobatics for you, near you and on you but I can’t see you pee? That’s just silliness.

          Couples often complain of a lack of privacy from their partner. I find the whole concept odd. I do respect someone’s desire to keep things to themselves and it is always your right to share what you want. However, the mere withholding ultimately is detrimental to you. Keeping it hidden just creates this nasty lump in your psyche that you will often trip over. Not sharing things with your partner is even more injurious since it drives a wedge between the two of you.

          Think of secrets, privacy and shame as articles of clothing. As we begin to shed our secrets with our partner, we get a little closer. As we shed our shame, we can open ourselves to feeling loved and accepted. As we relax our rigid boundaries of privacy, we can engage in true intimacy and share deeply with our partner. Think of it like getting really naked. Now, I am not an advocate of having no boundaries. All I’m saying is privacy, as defined by society, or secrecy within an intimate relationship is an anathema.

          Now alone time is very different. Taking a moment for yourself or, as I like to think, an adult time-out, is a necessary activity. Whether you put on the ear phones and work out or sneak off to bed a little early to read or even taking a mini vacation without your partner, the ultimate goal needs to be to regroup and be more accessible and available to your partner and other significant people in your life (I suppose your kids, if you have them.) Paul takes time reading or we switch off doing things sans kids. In fact, one father’s day was celebrated by taking the kids and heading off to my parent’s house without Paul. Paul was left alone to write, sleep and pine without me.

          Now, most of you won’t consider this privacy but some quiet time is the only form of privacy that is conducive to deep intimacy. I’m not a big secret keeper especially since I’m already a little accident-prone and tripping over my own tongue is just one of those misfortunes I prefer to avoid. This is probably why I can never cheat on my husband. That would involve too much privacy and then there’s the publicity and then there’s the paparazzi and then Gloria Allred would be all up in my business….

          Paul says: I think that Orwell made privacy synonymous with freedom. Unfortunately, if you take the kind of authoritarian socialist point of view, the people that did not like Big Brother were trying to do something wrong. That’s the limit of my smarts for the day. With the exception of locking the door when Lee and I are makin’ bacon (tee-hee) I do not require privacy because I have nothing that can’t be seen. No shame in my game.

          As far as the kids are concerned, I could care less if they see what I am doing as long as they are quiet. Another option to taking them elsewhere was to build a big, soundproof Plexiglas box but that got all messy with the glue and the air holes.

uncle sam watching u 250x300 Celebrity Smackdown: Most of the US

          Remember the days of yore when we would smack down a celebrity at least once a week? Remember when we were allowed to rant and literarily assault pseudo famous people if they fell within the parameters of our chosen weekly theme? We do. But we’re different now. We are a kinder gentler CoupleDumb. It also doesn’t help the situation that the same celebrity douches keep doing the same things thus making the smacking quite redundant. This week though, we are trying something new. Today we are returning to smacking with one exception.

          Lee says: This week we are discussing the topic of ‘privacy’ and no one group is more deserving of a smack than the very population of this great United States of America. Yeah, that’s right! Imma be smacking the U.S.! You ask, ‘But Lee, do we all deserve to be roasted without the underlying respect?’ My answer is a simple yes.

          Since I was a child, I have heard our citizen’s harp about the privacy of each individual American and how we are special and how we are the best country in the world and how we are endowed with certain inalienable rights and how we are all super heroes and how we all have super powers… Well, you know what I’ve realized U.S.? We are all the same. We are all unique like everybody else and no we are not more special or deserve something that no one else gets and no we are not super-heroes with super-powers. We are just residents of this big mud-ball hurling through the universe like everybody else on the mud-ball.

          This being said, how do we deal with privacy in this country? Like everything else in this wonderful land, we treat privacy with the same schizo-dissociative- bi-polar personalities that we treat every other security issue. In other words, don’t mess with mine but violate everybody else’s. After 9/11, we were all stunned into submission and were willing to do whatever it would take to regain some semblance of normalcy and safety in this country. We were violated to our core when some bad people took advantage of our lackadaisical airport security, even though, throughout the world, the issue of terrorism was always ever-present. We were raped when these same bad men took over our skies and started raining airplanes on landmarks, even though in other countries they had been living with their countries air force pulling domestic duty for decades. After the new day that will live in infamy, we were willing to join the world and work together. We were humbled.

          With our newfound humility, we also suffered from post-traumatic stress. We were twitchy and reactive which is perfectly normal. We wanted to fight back. We wanted to protect ourselves and didn’t care about the cost. We all wanted to carry mace and brass knuckles. We all wanted to take self-defense classes and let pilots carry weaponry (yeah, just like cowboys of the tailwinds). How about we teach the flight attendance krav maga and how to use ice tongs to take out a terrorist? We also agreed as a country that all this respect for one another’s privacy is what caused a complete breakdown in government communication.

          One agency knew something. One agency knew something else. When all this info was put together, it became really fucking obvious something was going to happen. But we didn’t do anything because we don’t suspect and we don’t want to go back to that McCarthy era and we don’t want the CIA or FBI or Homeland Security or the po-po or the Feds or the Pentagon or the NSA or the Secret Service or the kid across the street who seems a little fucking paranoid and walks around with a notepad and a safety helmet on taking note as to our behavior and our strange ways. Because my privacy is important and don’t you dare check on me because I’m an American and I have rights and who the fuck are you Big Brother to be checking on me and my coming and goings and so what if I bought 100 pounds of fertilizer and what’s it to you that I have three bottles of clear liquid and tweezers in my carryon luggage Mr. TSA fuckwad and why do you care if I transferred money to this company that also supports small training facilities all over the world. I’m an American God Damn it. Don’t tread on me. And thus the humility is gone the way of the dodo.

sharebookmarx Celebrity Smackdown: Most of the US

keep out 300x300 Do You Dare

          The topic of the week is privacy and if you are a parent, you are probably reading this and laughing really hard. ‘Sure CoupleDumb, I have all the privacy in the world!’ You don’t have to be sarcastic. We hear you. CoupleDumb understands what it feels like to never be able to go to the bathroom alone. We understand the pleasures of shutting a door only to have that bliss shattered by rapid banging and repetitive shouts of ‘Mommy, Daddy!’ We feel you when the only reason you want to have alone time with your spouse/significant other is really to get away from the kids. But this isn’t about your privacy here. We’re going to talk about the kids’ privacy. Now, quickly while they aren’t watching, read the following without interruptions.

          Lee says: Karma is a bitch. I know this because, as we just said, we don’t know what it’s like to go to the bathroom without an audience. My mini-hell stems from the childhood tradition of perching myself on the bathroom counter while my Mom relieved herself. I remember these times very fondly and had some great discussions with my Mom and sister, all while my mother sat on the throne probably wishing that we would leave. So for me to wish for any parental privacy is really hypocrisy.

          However, I in no way want to give the impression that my home was a private sanctuary for us minors. Oh, no. Privacy was the thing of legends and myths and something only Americans talked about (even though I was born in this country, my parents, Cuban immigrants, kept the casa very old school and forgot that I was not born on the island). One thing I did understand was that Cubans and Americans raised their kids differently. What I saw on TV was that kids were treated like humans and we, me and my siblings, were treated like indentured servants. Sounds harsh but seeing locks and even doors closed on the Brady Bunch or even a parent knocking on a door was so foreign to me.

          But privacy is a double-edged sword. Yes, I believe a child should be allowed independence to grow and flourish or make mistakes on their own. It builds character, resilience and their own persona outside of the parental units. However, where I draw the line is the idea that they need complete autonomy. We, as parents, are here to protect them and nurture them. That becomes increasingly difficult if we allow them to keep secrets in the form of locked doors or rooms that are declared off limits.

          I have seen friends create these situations and all I can say is ‘sucks to be you!’ Seriously people, in this age of precociousness, internet crimes, sexting and God knows what other disgusting pastime these kids can think of, do you really feel that impinging on a ‘child’s privacy’ is more damaging than that? We know, as former children ourselves, that a child will do what they want to. Like a duck or crap, a child will find a way to float out of their miserable Gulag we call home. Clamping down on phone time and setting up internet protections and placing locks on the cable TV is just the tip of the iceberg. At some point, you need to check the locks and make sure they held and if need be, rattle them around a little and do some recon.

          This is war, if you haven’t figured that out already. Those of you with little ones are cute with your self-righteous ‘I respect my child as an individual’ bullshit. Wait until they hit puberty. You’ll be taking their doors off the hinges before I can say, ‘I am the fucking Cyber Nanny!’

          Paul says: My bedroom as a youth had 14 windows in it. It was a covered patio that was first converted to a large laundry room then into my bedroom. I still had the washer and dryer as my roommates. The windows ringed the room. I lived in the proverbial glass house or, at least, a glass room in an otherwise normal house. Whether right or wrong, I had no privacy. I had no opportunity to get into trouble. Hell, quietly masturbating at 2 in the morning was a chore.

The Privacy Striptease

Celebrity Smackdown: Most of the US

Do You Dare

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