20 YEARS OF MARRIAGE, 20 YEARS OF THIS NEWSLETTER
by Terrence Shulman
Wow, has it really been 20 years since my wife Tina and I married each other on August 8, 2002?
And has it really been 20 years since I started this newsletter in August 2002?
On the one hand, it all seems like just yesterday. But it also seems like an eternity ago… a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
I feel proud that I’ve stuck with both endeavors even when it’s been challenging to find the time, energy, and passion for both.
Some months I’ve been prouder of my newsletter than others. And some months I’ve been prouder of my marriage and the way I’ve showed up in it.
I’ve yet to master work-life balance but I’m still open to learning.
And I’ve yet to master the art of marriage either… but still I’m trying.
As some of you know, my wife Tina and I have been going through some relational challenges over the last several years, especially the last two. I’m not going to get into the details but I’ll just say that it’s not an affair, it’s not domestic abuse, and it’s not specifically addiction-related… unless you count my workaholic and TV/Internet addictions as contributing factors. And they have been contributing factors.
There’s a bad joke that’s been going around: Almost every couple these days are having threesomes (or are “thruples”). It’s just that the third-party in their relationships is the smartphone and/or computer.
I’ll just report that Tina and I are still together and she’s still the Creative Director for The Shulman Center.
I’ll also say that we had a very powerful (and needed) three and a half-hour in-person “couple’s session” this past Friday with a dear friend of ours who was our Kabbalah teacher and has helped “coach” us here and there in the past. Coincidentally, I believe she’s been in our lives for about 20 years.
I strongly believe that enlisting a skilled “third person” to facilitate a conversation, discussion, clearing, and/or heartshare between parties who are stuck in conflict/communication breakdown has a better chance of being productive than not. And, I think it’s safe to say, that my wife and I feel it was productive. But whether it’s enough to save our marriage, well, only a little more time will tell.
The process our friend/facilitator used was simple but powerful and may not work for each “couple.” But here it is:
Part 1: Take turns without interrupting and share what you love and/or loved about your partner from the time you met to the current moment but it doesn’t have to be chronological. (Take some time to think about and share this one person at a time).
Part 2: What is your sense (or story) of what happened over the course of time (specifically and generally) that led to where you’ve arrived as a couple in conflict / communication breakdown. (Be honest and avoid name-calling, use “I” statements (“I feel he/she…”) and also own your part if you can (“I see how I contributed to…”). It’s very important to not interrupt while the other is talking, to have at least some eye contact, and to not make sounds or movements or expressions that disrupt each person’s sharing).
Part 3: What do you think you’ve learned about yourself, your partner, and about your relationship from what has been shared in Parts 1 and 2 and do you think/feel this could be helpful now or in time in possibly resolving your conflict / communication breakdown and how so?
Sounds easy, huh? Well, it isn’t. But it may be helpful. They say “the truth will set you free.” But speaking our truths and hearing another’s truths may first rock our worlds.
(To be continued…)
THE GOLDEN AGE OF THRIFTING IS OVER Thrift Stores Ain’t What They Used To Ве! by Isabella Grullon Paz (New York Times, July 2022)
Tina Koeppe grew up thrifting. When she was younger, she would spend weekends going to thrift stores with her mother, hunting for unique trinkets and garments but mostly looking for quality items to fit into her family’s tight budget. Now in her 40s and with a daughter of her own, Koeppe has carried the thriftiness of her youth into adulthood. Most of the furniture and décor in her home came from thrift stores. All of her clothes, except for her socks and underwear, were purchased second-hand.
But lately, “there’s just less and less desirable items,” Koeppe said in an interview. Early in the coronavirus pandemic, she began to notice that her local thrift stores in Lincoln, Nebraska, were filling up with items from Shein, LuLaRoe, Fashion Nova and other fast-fashion brands, whose garments tend to be relatively inexpensive, often adapting designs from small shops and high-end labels.
At the time, she assumed it was because people were cleaning out their closets while stuck at home.
I’d go into thrift stores thinking I could find a new things for my family and it would just be absolute, you know, garbage on the racks,” Koeppe said. “Like stained fast-fashion clothes that nobody wants.” But even now, she has still been finding fast-fashion items, sometimes with tags still on them, hanging on the racks.
The rise of fast fashion has changed the way younger women shop for clothes, according to Megan McSherry, 25, a sustainable fashion educator. It is “nearly impossible,” she said, to scroll on social media without running into so-called haul videos showing hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars’ worth of garments from Zara or
Shein.
“Those hauls just encourage overconsumption,” McSherry said. “And there’s no way that all of those items are going to be constantly worn.”
Because of the rise of thrifting, what isn’t worn ends up getting donated, McSherry said. Although it’s a better option than sending clothes straight to a landfill, she said, thoughtless donating can direct lower- quality items to people who really need them, while also driving up thrift stores’ operating costs.
“If you donate trash to a thrift store, it doesn’t just disappear,” Adam Minter, the author of “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale,” said in an interview. He added that smaller stores in particular could easily become overwhelmed by incoming garments, making it “much harder to do the business of running a thrift store.”
He said his research had shown that thrift stores have no shortage of donations, especially in recent years. But an increase in donations has led to increased business costs. Stores need more employees and more time to sort through the clothes. Inventory and space issues mean more clothes need to get either sold into the export market for a lower cost or disposed of, which has a financial cost, he said. That means that what does get sold on the store’s floor cost of running the store. which is usually 20% of donations is priced higher to make up the But more choices do not necessarily mean higher quality. Last year, the online consignment store ThredUp received more clothing than any other year since its founding in 2009, with many of those items coming from fast-fashion retailers, the company said. Compared with 2020, there was a 186% increase in the number of items listed from Shein and a 75% increase in pieces from Pretty Little Thing, a ThredUp spokeswoman said in an email.
“There’s all these clothes out there, but it’s just that they may not be as durable as you would like,” Minter said. Because of fast fashion, more than 60% of fabric fibers are now synthetics, derived from fossil fuels. This is alarming for the generations of women who have been thrifting for decades as a way of filling their closets affordably with garments made of high-quality materials.
“I’d say that the golden age of thrifting is over,” Megan Miller, 65, said in an interview. “The ability to find high-quality, well-made things is definitely on the wane.”
She said the predominance of fast-fashion items in stores where she lives in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, on the banks of the Colorado River, has become hard to ignore. Encountering so many fast-fashion items while browsing frustrated her, she said, because probably “they were made by somebody making pennies on the dollar in terrible conditions” to feed the “rapid turnover of seasons or trends.”
Despite the less desirable options, Miller still ventures out to thrift.
“There is something ingrained in me about not paying outrageous prices for something that I know that I could – if I’m just patient – find at the thrift store for a fraction of the price,” Miller said.
Angela Petraline, 52, owner of Dorothea’s Closet Vintage, an online boutique operated out of Des Moines, Iowa, has been thrifting since the 1980s. “It would take minutes to find something cool,” she said of the old days. “Now I’m lucky to find anything cool at all.”
“You used to be able to find high-quality vintage items: silk, cashmere,” she said. “That’s rarer now.”
Petraline said that although she rarely found items in thrift stores for herself anymore, she had begun visiting them to find garments for her teenage son. During summers they went to nearby towns to avoid the cheaply made clothing clogging their local stores.
“But even then, it becomes almost all fast fashion,” she said. “Which is incredibly depressing: You drive 60 miles and you’re like, ‘Well, why did I do this?”
For Koeppe, the glut of fast fashion recently became more inconvenient. Early this year, she began hunting for work clothes in preparation for her reentry into the workforce. (In May, she received her master’s degree in instructional design and technology.)
She said that even though it was considerably more difficult to find the items that she needed this year than it had been when she last had to look for work clothes, she wasn’t interested in the other affordable options in her area, like Target or Old Navy. Unimpressed by pieces from big-box stores that are made out synthetic fibers and sometimes begin to fray after a couple of washes, she craved the linen, wool and cashmere that she used to find.
“I like my clothes to last, and I understand how clothes are made,” Koeppe said. “I want clothes that will still look good after I’ve worn them multiple times.”
“It shouldn’t be harder to find good stuff,” she added.
Dear Penny:
My Boyfriend Can’t Afford My Lavish Lifestyle.
Should I Dump Him?
Dear Penny,
I am debating my relationship because of materialistic things: My boyfriend is not drop-dead handsome, and he is not financially lavish.
However, he is very determined and has started a good healthy lifestyle, exercises regularly and eats healthily since I’ve asked him to take care of himself. He is very generous when I am with him and will always take care of the bills. He first ensures that I am satisfied before he spends on himself.
But he can’t enjoy life lavishly by traveling a few times a year or living in a bigger apartment. He explained those to me from day one before COVID-19, and it seemed that I accepted it. But now I feel that his long
working hours don’t suit my lifestyle, given what he earns. I am finding it hard that we can’t travel in the summer. However, he isn’t stopping me from traveling and
encourages me to go. But I don’t feel like going without him, and I hate the feeling that I am deprived because he can’t enjoy what I can enjoy.
I need to decide: Is he the right one in my life, or am I making a mistake? He is in his early 40s and is just a year older than me.
-F.
Dear F.,
If you dump this guy for not being strikingly rich or GQ material, you’ll do both of yourselves a favor. You’ll free your boyfriend to find someone who appreciates the good qualities you describe, like the fact that he’s hard-working and generous. And you’ll be able to seek out someone who meets your standards, which may automatically dismiss your concerns, because I’m not sure they’re materialistic. Sometimes, two people have be impossibly high.
But I don’t want to clashing priorities. How you spend your money reflects those priorities. It’s not materialistic to end a relationship because your priorities are a complete mismatch. I’ll admit I cringed a bit at your description of your boyfriend’s appearance and inability to “enjoy life lavishly.” But I don’t think it’s wrong that you want to travel with your boyfriend.
It isn’t surprising that this problem is surfacing now. A couple of years ago, when we were smack in the middle of COVID-19 lockdowns, human companionship was what so many people craved. So it makes sense that you accepted your boyfriend’s lifestyle back then. Now that restrictions have eased, a lot of us are itching to go back out and explore the world.
Context matters so much here. Specifically, I wonder just how lavish these vacations you are planning are.
Most people don’t have the time or money to travel first-class for multiple weeks on end several times a
year. That’s great if you can afford to do so, but it’s going to be hard to find someone who can keep up. On
the other hand, if your boyfriend works 90-hour weeks yet still won’t budget the time and money for a vacation, I can’t fault you for being disappointed. I’m curious about whether this is a money issue or a problem with your attitudes about money. It’s a money problem if you want to travel together but can’t foot the bill for two people. But if you can’t stand the idea of footing part of the bill for a man you’re dating, then it’s a money attitude problem. One thing that strikes me is the fact that he takes care of the bills (presumably when you go out), even though it sounds like you’re
better off financially. If you split things equally at home, would your boyfriend be able to travel more?
Make sure you’ve communicated to your boyfriend just how important traveling is to you. For example, if
you frequently go to restaurants or concerts, maybe you could compromise by scaling back on those
expenses so you’ll both have more money for travel.
Obviously, I’m not going to tell you whether this is the right man for you based on a 200-word letter. But before you decide what to do, make sure you’re clear with yourself about what you’re looking for. No one person can check every single box. If you find someone you’re compatible with, the odds that your budgets will be identical are slim. So consider the likelihood of actually finding someone who meets your criteria.
It doesn’t sound like your boyfriend’s lifestyle or finances are going to change any time soon. It’s OK if you decide to end this relationship because your priorities are out of sync. But it’s not OK to weigh your boyfriend down with expectations you know he’ll never be able to afford.
HAVE A SAFE MONTH & NEW YEAR, AND REMEMBER: LIFE IS WHAT WE MAKE OF IT!