Text, Love, and Marriage

Dear EFR:

I’ve been with my husband for nine years. He lost his job and took one as a security guard out of town for one month. Five months later, I picked up his phone one day and saw a text from someone saying, “Hi love, how are you?”

Then I found two photos of an ugly redheaded woman saved on his cell phone. I took his phone and messaged this girl, pretending to be my husband. At one point she asked if this was really him. I said it was. I told the girl that ‘my wife’ found her message and wants a divorce, and that I didn’t know what to tell her. Her advice was, “Well she’s p*ssed off already, so tell her everything or tell her nothing. It’s up to you. Why didn’t you delete my sh*t, did you want to get caught?”

I confronted my husband and asked him who this woman was. He told me he met her while doing that security job, but that they were just friends. My husband denied sleeping with her, but in later conversations I was having with this girl while she was still thinking I was my husband, she sure knew enough about me, the wife. My husband is usually a quiet, closed person, and I can’t believe he didn’t sleep with her, with the knowledge she has about me. But my husband says she’s just a drunk and he won’t talk about it anymore.

For the last two years of our marriage, I haven’t paid much attention to him, due to working on growing my own business. I know that’s not an excuse, but I think he slept with her, and don’t know how to get the truth from him. Now he is all lovey-dovey and wants our marriage to work.
How should I handle this?

Signed,

Security Guard Impersonator

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Shallow Hallie

Dear EFR:

I am a 36-year-old woman who has never married, because I could never seem to find a man who was up to my standards. By that I mean I exercise daily, am in great shape and — not to brag — am very beautiful. I recently started dating a man who measures up to all of that — he seemed my ideal physically, actually, until we had sex for the first time. It was then that I saw he has what looks like a third nipple, right next to his real left nipple. I have to say I was horrified. I can’t help it— it really grossed me out. We did have sex, because I didn’t want to be rude, but needless to say, I didn’t really enjoy it. He was good at it and all, in fact, he was really very sweet, but my mind mostly was focused on that third nipple looming over me. Now he wants to know why I keep making excuses not to see him, and I don’t know what to tell him. As I said, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. What should I do?

Signed,

No Nipple Nookie

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Just in time for summer, representatives from 88 nations gathered in Agadir, Morocco, for the 62nd annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission on June 21st. The high ratings of Animal Planet’s “Whale Wars” and national newspaper headlines showing a giant Louisiana oil platform burning, sinking and spilling—on Earth Day—are among the telltale signs suggesting that this was the most contentious IWC meeting ever.

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After the birth of my son in 2007, I felt an incredible energy and drive to make art. Contrary to the popular belief that art-making is one of the things that fall to the wayside after the birth of children, I felt not just inspired but compelled by my experience of childbirth and motherhood. The creative act of making another human being awoke a creative drive in me. I also found that the time limitations involved in caring for an infant forced me to be more disciplined, eking out an hour here and there when my son was sleeping to continue my portraits. After my daughter’s birth in 2008, I embarked on a series of mother and child portraits accompanied by birth stories written by each subject. I wanted to simultaneously express the imperfection and fallibility of the mothers and capture an element of the divine in the mother/child bond. Each mother in the series shares her birth story—life-changing, beautiful, or harrowing—and these experiences unify a very diverse group with a common theme: love, self sacrifice and transcendence. The inspiration for this project is my children: their beauty, their challenges and the unique and universal bond of motherhood.

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by Barbara Santos

John Robbins (Healthy at 100, Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution) and Dan Millman of the ever popular Peaceful Warrior books will be the keynoters when the 2010 San Francisco Writing for Change conference returns this November 13 and 14.

This will be John Robbins first appearance at the SFW4C Conference. Robbins wrote the groundbreaking and Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Diet for a New America, exposing connections between diet, physical health, animal cruelty, and environmentalism. Robbins’ first book really did change the world when he founded EarthSave, an international, non-profit organization which came out of the reader response to his Diet for a New America. The son of the Baskin-Robbins co-founder, John has been awarded the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, and the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award.

As previously announced, Dan Millman, a longtime friend of San Francisco Writers Conference and San Francisco Writing for Change Conference, will also be a keynote speaker. In addition to Way of the Peaceful Warrior and a dozen other spiritual books for adults, he’s also written children’s books. His keynote promises to be full of inspiration and motivation for writers who want to bring positive change to the world.

There will be many other publishing experts at this year’s SFW4C. A highlight will be a panel session featuring the trio that made the bestseller 29 Gifts a reality ─ author Cami Walker, her agent whom she met at the 2008 SFW4C, Rita Rosenkranz, and executive editor Katie McHugh of Da Capo Press. They can all tell you San Francisco Writing for Change conference really helps to get a good writer published!

The theme of this conference is “Changing the World One Book at a Time” and there is no reason one of those books can’t be yours! So get ready to be published. As always, attendees will have the chance to pitch their book to agents and editors, and to get feedback on their work from freelance editors at the SFW4C. This event is limited to 150 attendees. Go to the website to find out more and register today! (Founders of San Francisco Writers Conference and San Francisco Writing for Change Conference are Michael Larson and Elizabeth Pomada, of Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency, the oldest literary agency in San Francisco. Listen to HS Radio’s podcast interview with this dynamic couple here.

Join us at the 2010 San Francisco Writing for Change — November 13 and 14, 2010
Hilton Hotel (Financial District/Chinatown)
www.SFWritingforChange.org