Sunday Strip: Just the Facts Ma'am.
Just the facts…
liberal women report lower levels of happiness and life satisfaction compared to conservative and moderate women. According to the 2024 American Family Survey, only 12% of liberal women aged 18–40 said they were “completely satisfied” with their lives, compared to 37% of conservative women.
Similar disparities were found in mental health and feelings of loneliness, with liberal women being the least happy and loneliest group in the survey.
A 2020 Pew Research Center study found that 56% of white liberal women aged 18–29 had been diagnosed with a mental health condition by a medical professional, more than double the rate among conservative women (27%) in the same age group.
A true COVID hero!
My Friend Brad - in 2023.
My Opinion on Relationships
& Marraige
My wife has a nephew who at the young age of 17 came to live with us. Stephan was a different boy, with very different goals and motivations. When he was in his senior year of high school his father packed up and left for Tennessee, leaving Stephan alone at their house that the bank would soon take. When he began to work with me he said he didn’t want to be paid, he hated money. Of coarse I told him he had to be paid.
Stephan did everything he could to not grow up. He wanted to keep those childhood ways of life. Some days at work I would be deep into work, trying to get the job moving and thinking of the best way to make things go more efficiently, Stephan would be daydreaming, I had an image of him in a big field smelling a wild flower, certainly not thinking about his job. Stephan was much different than myself, in a way it made me sad having to teach a person who wanted to stay a child how to move forward and learn responsibility. It had felt like 100 years had gone by since I had that mindset, I didn’t want to take it from him. To this day Stephan in many ways hasn’t changed, I now accept him just the way he is.
We sometimes have to accept people for who they are. When we get into a relationship with someone it’s easy to think we have to make them into who we want them to be, especially our spouse, our children or the people that are close to us. One of the best lessons I’ve learned is people haven’t come into our life so I can make them just like me. God made us different on purpose. Different personalities, different strengths, different looks, we’re all at different maturity levels. The mistake we can make is we try to fit them into our mold. It’s like we have them on our potters wheel, we’re trying to work out the lumps get rid of what we don’t like and get them all fixed up. The problem with this is we’re not the potter, God is. God is the one making and molding people. Really we can’t change anyone. We can encourage them, we can pray for them, we can lead by example, but only God can truly change people. When someone doesn’t have our same strengths and we’re working overtime trying to make them just like us, all that does is frustrate us. It brings stress and tension into the relationship. You’ve got to give people room to be who God made them to be. God likes variety.
When I got married I first tried to make my wife just like me. I thought what greater gift could I give her than that😇. I was very naive. The ironic thing is we are drawn to people that have strengths different from ours. My wife has different strengths than I do. She is outgoing, likes to talk to people, she’s straight forward. One day at a wedding an older lady asked her if she was hired as a party starter. I’m much more quiet, I keep to myself, I never ask for help. I learned pretty quickly trying to make my strengths her strengths just causes problems. It dawned on me she doesn’t want to be just like me. I learned I was the one that needed to change.
Sometimes we get into relationships with someone and say wow I love your good qualities now I want you to have mine as well. The truth is no person has it all. The scripture talks about how we have to make allowances for peoples weaknesses. What would happen if we all would start accepting the people God put in our life and stop trying to change them. First we would have better relationships and second we wouldn’t live frustrated trying to make them into something that they’re not. Give people the room to not be perfect. Instead of complaining about what we don’t like about a person try a different approach, start telling a person what you do like about them. People respond to praise a lot better than they respond to criticism.
It’s amazing what people will do when you see the best in them, when you honor them, when you respect them, it not only strengthens the relationship but it will help that other person to rise higher. As you give encouragement, show honor, show respect they will continue to rise to the level that you pour into them. If you want to make your spouse, your children, your loved one a better person honor them in a greater way. Accept them for who they are. Give them your approval even if they don’t fit into your mold. You have tremendous power and influence into their lives. You can push them further with you honor your acceptance, your approval or you can withhold it and keep them back.
Too many people end a relationship because there’s one main thing they don’t like about the person. They focus on what annoys them and magnify that they have too much of this or not enough of that. They’ll go find somebody else that has a strength where that other person had a weakness. The problem is this new person has a weakness where the other person had a strength. You see we’re just moving things around. It’s always going to come down to overlooking the weaknesses, seeing the best in them, accepting people for who they are. No one person can give you everything that you need. You’ve got to focus on their good qualities and not get frustrated on what they can’t give you.
God is the potter. Don’t love them only if they meet your standard. Pour on the honor and you will not only find your relationship strengthened you will see the person rise to a new level.
Happy Sunday, J.Goodrich
The Liberal white woman cartoon is totally unrealistic; she is depicted as much too slender.