Excuse Him, Her, Yourself

Excuses. Why the heck do people always make excuses? I am so sick of it!

You know what an excuse is? It's freaking DENIAL! Denial of the reality that is before you. Denial of the lie that you are living. Denial that you are unhappy. Denial that something is not quite right. Denying the real reasons for doing or not doing something.

People making excuses for their behavior or their husband's, wife's, or child's behavior is more denial. They make excuses so that they don't have to do anything about it.They want to ignore it and not deal with it.

We all know the one where the wife makes excuses for her husband's neglectful behavior. "He's really a good man. I have to be thankful  because at least he doesn't beat me or the kids, and he's not a drug addict or alcoholic." What? So, it's okay if he "works late" all the time, ignores you when he is home, talks down to you, criticizes you, just comes home long enough to sh*t, shower and shave? Yeah, you are so right. That "not beating and not abusing drugs and alcohol" is a great excuse for putting up with his other crap behavior. 

If you are in a marriage and your husband says he's not sure he wants to be married to you or not sure if he wants to work on your marriage, don't make excuses for him! Don't tell me he's just going through something! The dude is obviously cheating on you! It's that simple! Either that or he's in the closet. And if he's in the closet, he's also probably cheating on you, just not with someone who shares with you similar physical attributes.  I've seen and heard this scenario so many times, it's become a joke. I can tell you step by step the process you will go through before you either give in to the truth and decide to move on, or give up and carry on with the charade and be miserable for the rest of your life.

If you have any self respect. If you love your self just the tiniest bit, you will come to your senses and move on. You WILL recover and you will be triumphant. You've got enough problems just being a citizen on this planet. You don't have to make it even worse for yourself. 

One basic truth to always remember: If you find yourself making excuses for him, her, or yourself, stop what you doing and regroup because something is most definitely rotten in the state of Denmark. 

Tiger Woods Beat

Tiger Woods is a poor role model, particularly for kids. (If you are an adult you should be fully conversant in the do's and don’ts of life, and if you haven’t figured it out by now, I can’t help you.)

I have a problem with all the comments I’ve read on this situation and I felt compelled to write about it. My problem is the constant use of the word "perfect", meaning "none of us are perfect", "no one is perfect" and the most common, "give him a break, he is not perfect" followed by "he's still a good role model for his sport". What?

Why do people keep pointing out that Tiger is not perfect? If I don't murder anyone, am I considered perfect and therefore a good role model? No. Do we say about murderers, "Hey, man, nobody's perfect." Yeah, I didn't think so. Since when is refraining from cheating on your spouse equated with perfection? Are all faithful spouses perfect? No. Okay, so now that most of us agree on the “no one is perfect” statement then why do I keep hearing it used as the excuse, “Give the guy a break. No one is perfect” for Tiger's infidelity(-ies)? To me that sounds like: “not faithful”= “not perfect” and “faithful”=“perfect”, therefore, everyone who is married is not faithful because we know that “no one is perfect”. Well, we sure know that's not true.

There are many brilliant individuals who would be good role models in their field of expertise who have also beaten, molested and even killed. So, are they still good role models if they’ve committed any of those acts? For adults, we can differentiate, but kids? It's like you are telling them, it’s okay for Mike Vick to have dogs fight to the death because he is a superior athlete, and that makes him a good role model. No, that just doesn’t cut it for me. I guess my standards are just a bit higher for my role models because being faithful is one of them. You know, don’t physically, psychologically or sexually abuse me, don’t murder me, don’t lie to me, don’t cheat on me. Understand, though, that if you don’t do those crappy things, I still know full well that you are not perfect.

If Tiger beat his wife, would you take him off your list of good role models? Would he still be a role model to his supporters? Would you want your kid to emulate him? And what exactly is the cut off for going from “a good role model” to “not a good role model”? Where do we draw the line? Surely, I would think cheating on ones wife would be way up there in the “not a good role model” category.

If you are going to be on my list of good role models, you should be one in all areas of your life. That’s not asking for perfection. That’s asking for your best, which is completely different.