I cannot believe you went to a Lifehouse concert with your ex-girlfriend, but you won’t come to just one of my yoga classes!

I tease my boyfriend Jed for about the hundredth time. To change it up, I’ll place emphasis on different words within the same statement: Sometimes I cannot believe, other times I cannot believe. You get the idea.

What’s Jed have against yoga anyways?

Nothing, really. He’s done it a few times and it’s just not for him. I get it — I don’t expect him to love yoga or to do it regularly, I just really, really, really want him to come to one of my classes.

Nothing says yoga or healthy relationship like making someone do something they don’t want to do, right? Right?! Of course not. So why am I so bent out of shape about this? (Get it? Bent out of shape! Ha, bad yoga joke!)

Growing up as “the smart one” in a working class family, I was supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer…something professional and successful. But the truth is that I was miserable in my “grown-up job” post college. There had to be something more to life than employer-sponsored health insurance, paid vacation and matching 401(k). So I gave it up, and I’ve never been more content (although it would be nice to have health insurance). I know that my friends and family love and support me no matter what I do, but I can’t help but feel that some of them think I’m “just” a yoga teacher, that I should be doing something better with my life.

But berating Jed into coming to my yoga class isn’t going to show the people I love that the work I do makes a positive impact in the lives of others. Yesterday, one of my new students, two weeks into his practice, told me that yoga is changing his life. The feedback from students — you know, those who practice willingly — is the kind that matters. Jed doesn’t need to come to class to know that I love what I do. And I certainly don’t want to have the kind of relationship where I goad my partner into doing something he just doesn’t want to do, the way that his ex dragged him kicking and screaming to the Lifehouse concert (or so he says). So I’m going to let it go.

You’re safe for now, Jed.

Lindsay Jean Thomson’s boyfriend wants you to know that he is in no way a fan of Lifehouse. The light in Lindsay bows to the light in all other beings, including Lifehouse, although she clearly has much better taste in music than Jed’s ex. Seriously. She posts playlists and other things on her blog and would love to share yoga with the willing in her classes at International Orange and yoga mayu.