Category Archives: marriage advice
Attendants throw in-flight 'wedding' for Newberg newlyweds
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – It took a year for Jasmine and Brandon Fast to plan their dream wedding: a summer, blue-skied celebration in front of family and friends on a farm in Estacada.
It took a Southwest Airlines crew only hours to add their own spin on Jasmine and Brandon’s wedding tale, 10 days after the high school sweethearts tied the knot.
On Wednesday, with about 30 minutes left until they touched down at PDX, a flight attendant came over the plane’s speakers and called the Fasts to the front. Jasmine was working a Sudoku puzzle; Brandon was asleep, awoken by the “ding, ding” of the intercom.
Confused, the newlyweds joined the attendant at the front of the plane. Passengers closed their windows and turned on their personal headlights as the crew dimmed the plane’s lights, creating an ambiance required for a once-in-a-lifetime moment like this.
When they got to the front, flight attendants handed Brandon and Jasmine red crowns made up of pretzel bags, a free snack for passengers. They also wrapped a toilet-paper sash around Jasmine which read “just married.” And then, in front of complete strangers, on a return flight from their Orlando honeymoon, Jasmine and Brandon had their second “wedding ceremony” in as many weeks. A love song played over the speakers as they processed down the lighted aisle.
“It was absolutely insane and unexpected,” Brandon said over Facetime, days after their wedding in the sky happened. “To me, it’s so easy for people to get caught up in a life of negativity, and I think what happens is our brains start hiding in protection mode. If people can transform their mindset from being avoidant to inclusive, I think amazing things can happen — and they should happen like this every day.”
The young couple, who met each other at Gresham High School and had their first date at their senior prom, have shown a flare for the big moment. When Brandon proposed to Jasmine, a well-known Disney fanatic, he took her to Disneyland and hired a videographer. they got dressed in ballroom costumes from “Beauty and the Beast” as they recreated the scene. He told her it was part of a Disney commercial, but when the movie’s main song finished, he dropped to a knee and asked for her hand.
That was planned. A reenacted wedding ceremony on their flight’s descent was unexpected.
The tell came from the Fasts’ Disney honeymoon shirts. Immediately, a flight attendant asked if they had just married. When the two confirmed it the flight attendants sent back two bottles of champagne.
“We were like, ‘That’s so nice,'” Jasmine said. “We were totally OK with that being it.”
But the crew had more in store. Hours later, on their flight from Austin to Portland, the crew unveiled their spur of the moment wedding.
Along with the ceremony, the crew also gave the Fasts a bag filled with napkins. On each one, passengers from flight #2303 wrote marriage advice. One couple, who Brandon estimated had been together for about 50 years, used their napkin to list 26 items of marriage advice. The notes were real, Jasmine said, and she and Brandon took them to heart. They plan to frame all the napkins.
The flight back to Portland was supposed to be the end of the Newberg couple’s honeymoon. Instead, thanks to complete strangers, it was another boost toward a lifetime of commitment.
“Marriage is a lot more than a honeymoon and a wedding,” Jasmine said. “We’re building a life together. (We’re) holding onto how we feel now and bringing that throughout the years we spend together.”
For Brandon, the whole experience reminded him how much love and support — from friends, family and even strangers — he and Jasmine have.
“The wedding was perfect in all aspects: the dancing, the ceremony, the food was all great, but nothing beats having everyone getting on stage and dancing with us; nothing beats having everyone crying and sobbing their eyes out for us,” Brandon said. “And then going on the plane and having everyone write love napkins for us — it’s astounding to me that people are willing to do that…It’s amazing.”
Wife verbally abuses his family of origin. Does he have to defend her?
Adapted from a recent online discussion.
Dear Carolyn: My wife occasionally picks fights with members of my family of origin, especially my sister. What am I supposed to do about that? The general guidance is that protecting my spouse from my family of origin is my responsibility – they’re my family, not hers – but it was my wife that started the whole mess.
My mother died last year; she was cremated. Her ashes are in a box on my sister’s mantle. She will eventually be buried with my father, but he’s in a National Cemetery and there’s a long lead time before that can happen.
When we visited my sister, my wife went on at length about how my sister is disrespecting our mother by having her ashes in a plain wooden box on the mantel, rather than in some fancy urn. Sister did not take wife’s opinions well. She’s furious. Wife is demanding I step in and defend her. My selfish view is, you started this, it’s on you to finish it. What should I be doing?
– Anonymous
Agh! Yes your “You started this, it’s on you to finish it” view is selfish. Please reconsider. Immediately.
You’re halfway to doing the right thing in not defending your wife for her awful – awful – remark about the ashes.
The other half you need to cover is the reverse of your “general guidance”: You need to protect your family of origin from your wife. Preferably in the moment, not after the fact. Wow. If I could, I’d demand that you “step in and defend” your sister, with your wife in the room.
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So. How’s your marriage otherwise? Is your wife as abusive to you as she is to your family? “Taking a hard look at the person you married” is the most important answer to your “What should I be doing?” question. People who think it’s their place to dish out unsolicited criticisms “at length” and to demand loyalty when challenged are rarely healthy themselves, and they’re almost never pleasant companions. Don’t fall in line with miserable expectations just because you got the idea somewhere that it’s what marriage is “supposed to” mean.
If what you describe as “occasionally picks fights” is just a nice way of saying that you are routinely in the position of having to clean up a mess your wife made with people you care about – heck, even if it just has happened enough that it’s all familiar to you – then it’s time to ask yourself whether it’s healthy to stay in this marriage. A good therapist can help you answer this question, or ask it, in case you’re not ready to. Go alone, though; couple’s counseling with someone abusive merely opens a new front for the abuse.
Re: Plain wood box: If I ever find out my kids are keeping my ashes in a fancy urn, I’ll be p–-ed. They know I’d rather be in a plain box or, hell, a coffee can. Cuz, you know, I’ll be dead at that point. Wife is out of bounds in this situation.
– P–-ed
Chock Full o’ Nuts? Please?
I’m with you.
Figuratively – not literally in the coffee can. I at least want one to myself.
Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com.
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Advice On How To Make Your Marriage Last
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — For many married couples, falling in love and saying “I do” was the easy part.
Living happily ever after is the real challenge.
Manhattan divorce attorney and author of “If You’re In My Office It’s Already Too Late” James Sexton stopped by with a little advice on how to make your marriage work.
A sex therapist's best advice for making a marriage more passionate is decidedly unsexy
- Ashley Madison is a website for married people seeking affairs. Sex therapist Tammy Nelson is its resident relationship expert.
- Nelson said many people wind up cheating on their partners because they lack passion in their marriage.
- That’s why Nelson recommends having an “affair” with your spouse, meaning you put in the effort to add something forbidden or exciting into your romantic life.
- However: You have to plan it.
Here’s the fantasy.
You come home to your partner, “sweep the dishes off the kitchen table, and say, ‘Oh my god, take me now.'”
But Tammy Nelson isn’t buying it. “Twenty years later, and with three kids and a dog, that’s not going to happen.”
Nelson is a sex and relationship therapist; after about 30 years in practice, she recently joined Ashley Madison, a website for married people seeing affairs, as an outside consultant.
The fact that the scenario described above is so unlikely to occur in a long-term relationship is what drives some people to stray, Nelson said.
“That’s the fantasy of an affair, that you’ll have that impulsive excitement.”
Nelson isn’t explicitly “for” or “against” cheating. In fact, she suspects that people will always have affairs.
But she did propose a workaround for anyone who feels like they can’t tolerate the lack of passion in their marriage, and need to look elsewhere for it.
Of that “impulsive excitement” she mentioned, Nelson said, “You can have that in your marriage — if you plan it.”
This is, admittedly, not a very sexy idea. But according to Nelson, it works.
“What bores people in their sex life is that it’s all acceptable. Like, this is great sex, but it’s all vanilla sex. It’s all fine and good and acceptable and we’re not doing anything naughty.”
The solution? “You have to have an affair with your spouse. You have to make something about your marital sex feel dangerous.”
Passion doesn’t just materialise out of thin air
Other relationship experts agree on the benefits of “feigning an affair” with your spouse.
As sex therapist Moushumi Ghose told HuffPost, “Role-playing is a great way for couples to reignite that which may have been lost, by stepping out of their role as dutiful wife, husband and caregiver and getting back to that place where they can throw caution to the wind and embrace that raw, lewd side of themselves.”
Even if you don’t go so far as to meet like strangers in a bar, the key thing to remember is that you’ll need to put in some effort.
Relationship expert and marriage counselor Rachel Sussman previously told Business Insider, “People think, ‘Oh, [passion] should just be there,'” Sussman said. “No! It shouldn’t just be there. You have to create it.”
Bat Sheva Marcus, the sexual dysfunction specialist and clinical director of The Medical Centre for Female Sexuality, even recommends scheduling sex on the calendar.
All this means you’ll need to have some frank discussions with your partner about intimacy. “If you can have those conversations,” Nelson said, “then it can be just as hot as affair sex — without the risk.”
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