Category Archives: Relationships
Moms' advice: Sometimes wise, sometimes witty
There’s no doubt it takes a lot of energy, patience, humor, and a bottomless well of love to be a mother. Cooking meals, shuttling the kids around to school, sports, lessons, shopping, kids’ birthday parties and other events are pretty much on every mom’s weekly to-do list.
Celebrating when their kids do well, doling out pep talks when things don’t work out and being there for those really awful times are just a sampling of the ways moms are expected to know just the right thing to say at just the right time.
I was fortunate to have a mother who was wise in understated ways, who did a stellar job of walking that fine mom line between friend, disciplinarian, and 24-hour therapist to a family of five kids with a 12-year age range — all dealing with different stages of growing pains all at the same time.
When I was in high school and got caught trying out pot with my friends, my mother’s response was unexpected, to say the least. She took me to the bakery for an after-school snack and simply said, “Wouldn’t you rather spend that money on clothes?” (My father’s response was a bit more along the lines of the world is coming to an end, I might add.) While it was more of a question, than traditional advice, it showed that she realized I, like most kids, was going to try things and she had confidence that I’d figure it out.
She was right, and I saved up to buy my first pair of Joan and David boots at Ann Taylor. Of course, that started my boot addiction….
As we celebrate mothers today, I asked friends and family on Facebook what was the best, worst or funniest advice your mother ever gave you? Here are some of their responses, edited for clarity:
Colin Furze: I’m gonna say, “Don’t put that in your mouth.”
Sharon Jussaume: “Someday you’re going to have a child just like you.” And I did.
Linda Viveiros: “’I don’t know’ never gets you in trouble.”
Jo Goode: “Don’t get married, you don’t have the personality for it.” She would deny she said that, but she did.
Deborah Allard Dion: “Never sit on a public toilet, you’ll get crabs!!”
Emely Varosky: When I’ve been stuck deciding if I should go out of my way for someone who might not even appreciate it, she says, “You’ll never regret being kind to someone.”
Kathy Singleton: When I would say to her that I can’t wait for life to get back to normal, her comment was, “The sooner you realize there is no normal in life, the happier your life would be!”
Cheryl Furze: “Always have more than one best friend.” I’m blessed with eight; four of them since kindergarten; met the other four at junior high school. Still get together frequently. Might I add, the gang of eight will be 72 this year.
Rose Carvalho: “Always make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you get into an accident.”
Stacy Silva-Boutwell: My mother always said, “It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor man.” (I didn’t listen.)
Martha Ellen: “If you really want someone to listen and hear you, just whisper.”
Anne Sirois: “Pray with your heart, not with your lips.”
Susan Pawlak-Seaman: “Stay out of the sun. It will give you wrinkles.” I hated being the palest kid around but mostly I listened … and decades later, I’m glad I did.
Kathy Castro: “ALWAYS keep your friends! Don’t give them up when you get married.” Very good advice for me!!!!!!
Amy Marie Blanchette: An older mom friend of mine that I worked with at St. Anne’s told me after getting married, “Just smile and say ‘Yes, Dear,’ they’ll get the point.” And whenever I want to react in a hasty manner, that’s what I say — works like a charm.
Joyce Faria Brennan: Dating advice: “Don’t eat blueberry pie on a date, it makes your teeth blue.”
Joan L’Homme: “Do your very best in school and get all A’s, you’ll be able to get scholarships.” Education was of the utmost importance to our parents of Lebanese descent. Good advice.
Jackie Kifer: My mom wanted me to go far in life, so her advice was, “Wherever you go, there you are.” I’ve always followed that advice, and find it to be true.
Email Linda Murphy at lmurphy@heraldnews.com.
'The Bold Type' EP Joanna Coles Talks Dating Apps, Royal Wedding at DC Book Launch
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle show the value of real-life relationships over technological connections, said the author and Hearst content chief at her Washington soiree, where Sen. Amy Klobuchar and media doyenne Sally Quinn were among guests toasting her tome.
Joanna Coles knows plenty about why your love life is flagging, and she’s going to tell you how to make it a whole lot better. On tour for her new book, Love Rules: How to Find a Real Relationship in a Digital World, the former Cosmopolitan editor, Hearst chief content officer and executive producer of (and inspiration behind) Freeform’s The Bold Type argues that one of the first rules of dating in a swipe-happy world is to stop depending on technology. “You can’t use only dating apps,” she said at her May 9 event in Washington, D.C. “You also need to join sports teams, join the choir, get involved in a community activity that allows you to expand your social circles and have a bigger life. You need to use social apps to try to expand your whole life — not just to find one person who can save you from the rest of your life.”
The D.C. stop on Coles’ tour was an intimate gathering at one of the city’s buzziest new restaurants, Del Mar (the Obamas are fans, as is their longtime advisor Valerie Jarrett), hosted by a handful of local influencers and recognizable faces, including MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle and media guru Tammy Haddad. Among a small but power-packed crowd on Wednesday evening, U.S. senators (Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar) mingled with media moguls (Sally Quinn) and well-heeled businessmen (Mark Ein) clinked glasses with journalists-du-jour (Michael Wolff). In a sleeveless, tuxedo-style jumpsuit, Coles glided among them, dispensing dating advice to single partygoers and toasting the opportunity to gather IRL. “Imagine how boring and dull and depressing this would be if we were doing this all on a Google Hangout,” Coles said, raising her glass to the intimate crowd gathered on the waterfront perch.
“Dating apps are fantastic tools, but they can’t actually do the work for you of having a relationship,” she told THR. “I worry that people spend too much time online as voyeurs of other people’s lives and stop becoming participants in their own lives. Participating in your own life is fraught with peril — there are ups and downs, you make mistakes, but what you get out of it is incredible excitement, joy, connection.”
Coles wrote her book as an antidote to the distance created by the convenience and impersonality of online connections. “I think we sold people a false bill of goods about digital connections being the same or as valuable as real-life connections,” she said. “Even the way Facebook has co-opted the word friend … a Facebook friend is not the same as a friend you went to high school with, or the friend whose hand you hold as they’re going through chemo, or the friend who asks you to be in their wedding party.”
While characters on The Bold Type — which was renewed for two more 10-episode seasons on Freeform in January, with season 2 launching June 12, had some adventures with Tinder in the first season — Coles, if she must, would choose another app: “Bumble, because it empowers women. Women have to make the first move, and they have to do it within 24 hours. So you can’t virtual-shop on Bumble the way I virtual-shop on Net-a-Porter — which is to say I put a Gucci jacket in my cart and I never commit to purchase.”
However, real-life social circles are where the best matches happen, Coles insists. Take the latest royal pairing: “Meghan and Harry were set up on an old-fashioned blind date by friends. Your friends have a sense of who you are, of your character, and can put you together with someone in ways that algorithms can’t.” As for whether the British-born Coles is looking forward to the royal nuptials, “It’s a rather wonderful love story, isn’t it? The fact that [Meghan] has a rather unusual background for the royal family is great. They seem very welcoming of her, very excited. I’m sure it will be hard for her to live within the confines of the royal family in Britain, but clearly they’re trying to modernize and remain relevant.”
Coles remains realistic about the prevalence of dating apps and acknowledges that social media has its place: “If you’re gay growing up in rural Louisiana, how wonderful to be able to reach out to other gay people and have your life choices validated by a group of people,” she said. “But friendship in real life is the most valuable thing we have. Relationships are the connective tissue that binds us together. We cannot contract that out to digital.”
Rosanna Arquette Talks Finding Love in Her 50s and Why Dating Apps Scare her
Rosanna Arquette is not a fan of the modern dating scene.
The actress, 58, who is married to businessman Todd Morgan, tells PEOPLE that even if she were single, she’d steer clear of online romance.
“There’s no way,” she says. “I’m happily married, but even if I wasn’t, I have absolutely no desire to do that. It scares me. You hear some horror stories. So no, no thanks.”
In her new film Born Guilty, Arquette’s character finds love in a very unconventional way. She stars as an overbearing single mom whose son secretly sets her up with his college buddy in an attempt to deflect some of her attention. While the relationship starts out as a ruse, the plan eventually backfires on her son when she and the friend actually fall for one another.
“It was a fun character to play, an older woman who’s lonely and obsessed,” she says. “I’ve never played anybody like that so it was fun. And then she finds love – or what she thought was love – later in life and that allows her to be a better mother and not be so codependent.”
In real life, Arquette is enjoying life with her investment banker husband, whom she married in 2013. “I had been single for like 2 and a half years and not dating at all,” she says. “He’s 12 years older than I am and he’s just a good, solid, wonderful human being. Not a musician, not an artist, he’s a businessman and we have the same values.”
When they’re not working, she says, “We spend most of the time hanging out with our dog, cooking and going out, going to open air markets … Some people think it sounds boring but it’s a great way for us to just reach our arch and chill out because things are more stressful than ever in this world. We work hard on our relationship to keep it centered and communicative.”
Arquette also opened up about her daughter, Zoë Bleu whom she shares with ex-husband John Sidel. The 23-year-old has appeared in a handful of films, including Lifetime’s Mother May I Sleep with Danger alongside James Franco, but Arquette isn’t sure Bleu will end up in the family business.
“Right now she’s doing a fashion line and she’s been living in London,” she says of her daughter. “Her clothes are really amazing and beautiful … I don’t know if she’ll be acting again, I’m not sure. I hope so. She’s really talented and very gifted.”
Unlike her character in Born Guilty, Arquette doesn’t smother Bleu with career advice. “She is not in to taking any advice from her mom,” Arquette. “The truth is she’s quite the little wise owl and I could use taking advice from her sometimes. She’s quite a character and I love her very much. She’s a good kid.”
Born Guilty hits theaters May 11.
