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" I was talking to my mom today, and she asked The Question. &amp;quot;Do you think you and Ben will get married?&amp;quot; I froze, not sure how much I wanted to tell her, worried that if I told her anything, I&amp;#039;d jinx myself, and wondering just how loudly she would scream if I told her the whole truth. &amp;quot;Yes, I do.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Oh K., that&amp;#039;s wonderful! Have you talked about it?&amp;quot; I hesitated before answering. &amp;quot;Yes, we have.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Ben said he wants to marry you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Mom, do you think I&amp;#039;m just making up the idea that Ben wants to marry me in my head? Yes, he&amp;#039;s said it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t have to get snippy with me, K.,&amp;quot; she said firmly. I sighed.  &amp;quot;And don&amp;#039;t sigh at me, either,&amp;quot; she snapped.  We sat in silence, neither one of us knowing how to get back to the happy conversation about Ben and I getting married. Instead, I got off the phone. Here&amp;#039;s the thing with my mother and me. We&amp;#039;ve made a ton of progress over the past couple of years, but sometimes we can&amp;#039;t help but resort to our old ways \u2013 her being critical, and me getting defensive whether she&amp;#039;s being critical or not because I perceive everything she says that way. I know it will be better the next time we talk, and that&amp;#039;s one of the main differences between the past and the present.  Instead of being angry for days, and obsessing over why my mother thinks my boyfriend doesn&amp;#039;t want to marry me (yes, I know she didn&amp;#039;t actually say that), I just say to myself, &amp;quot;Okay, we struck out that time. We&amp;#039;ll give it another go in a week or two.&amp;quot; And while I have no evidence of this, I think (hope?) my mother feels the same way. An hour later, Little Brother called. &amp;quot;Congratulations,&amp;quot; he began. &amp;quot;For?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Aren&amp;#039;t you engaged?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Um, no.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Mom told me you and Ben were getting married.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Someday. We&amp;#039;re getting married someday.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Then you aren&amp;#039;t engaged?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Then how do you know you&amp;#039;re getting married?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Because we talked about it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s dumb. If you&amp;#039;re going to talk about it, you might as well just get engaged.&amp;quot; LB&amp;#039;s zero-nonsense approach to all situations is both hilarious and maddening. I&amp;#039;ve gotten to this place where, even if I don&amp;#039;t like all of the things that my family members do, i.e. LB&amp;#039;s inappropriate relationship with Sarah, I can still accept them for who they are. I&amp;#039;m not sure I&amp;#039;m at the place where I feel like they fully accept me, and it&amp;#039;s not that they don&amp;#039;t \u2013 it&amp;#039;s my perception of it. But I&amp;#039;m making progress. Baby steps, right? Posted at 2:14 PM "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a9407/bedroom-blog-061811/>