Drama with Dave: How Fighting Made Me Feel Safe Again

-I know women who have been hurt in relationships.  I share this hoping that the restoration of my faith in marriage can lead to diminishing the hurt I know these women carry.-

I’ve decided that getting married (again) isn’t such a bad idea. For a long time I thought getting married again was a bad idea.  My first experience with marriage was, shall we say, not a stellar success.

I’ve heard it said that what one does with marriage after divorce indicates what one’s experience was of the marriage, regardless of it ending in divorce.  My ex got married again in 13 months while I have remained single for the past eight years.  In a backwards way I suppose it’s comforting that he found our marriage to be more enjoyable than I did.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that I didn’t want to get married again.  I ended the marriage fully expecting that I’d never find love again.  Over the years, despite saying I wanted to re-marry I’ve been told I don’t act toward men the way a woman does when she wants to settle down.  In recent months I told myself that I found the idea of being married distasteful and really not an endeavor in which I was interested.

Then God stepped in… again.  This is the second time He’s given me an experience that made me think, “You know, if marriage was like this- I might like it.”

The first time was several years ago.  I’d had a rotten day at work but gone to meet my dear friend at dance class regardless.  Knowing I was emotionally off kilter he offered to talk.  However, I had some idealistic notion that I should be able to emotionally right myself without help.  Additionally, (and this is the real point), my ex had been pejorative about my profession, my choice to be in it and my role in it when I’d brought up a bad day.  So I wasn’t about to incur the same rejection from my (male) friend.

After dance class, while sitting outside sipping our smoothies and chatting about life I worked up the courage to tell my friend about my bad day.  He sympathized and offered advice.  My emotions soothed, the conversation drifted on to other topics.  As we sat on the steps talking I found myself thinking that if marriage could be like this… help and support for my difficult times folded into the rest of the good, without resentment, bitterness or it derailing the day (yes, that was what marriage was like before my divorce)… then I would like it.  My anxiety diminished, I began to feel marriage was something desirable- regardless of if it was with that particular friend- the institution seemed palatable again.  My friend has never heard this story before, so he’s never known that his friendship with me restored my faith and erased much shell shock toward marriage.

Before all you romantics go off thinking this man and I will walk down the aisle, let me just say that will never happen.  Sometimes people are part of your life in intimate ways that have nothing to do with marriage.  That does not lessen the significance of the relationship. God gave me a precious gift when he brought that man into my life.

Years passed and I became fed up with the dating game.  I became worn by managing my own anxiety.  I became worn by managing other mens’ anxiety about romantic relationships.  I began to feel that marriage was all about fighting and I really detest fighting.  (I avoid it at almost all cost.  I only engage in it when it is very important and I cannot find a way around it.)  Increasingly paramount in my perspective was the love of my family, the acceptance of my friends and the richness of my profession and hobbies.  The idea that a husband could add enough to that love and richness to compensate for the difficulties of establishing and maintaining a relationship became laughable.

And so I lived my life until three weeks ago.  When I had one of the worst weeks in years.

Really it all started about three months ago when I agreed to go on vacation.  While I should have been looking forward to the trip, I was dreading it.  And the whole reason was because of a guy.  I was going because of him and I was dreading it because of him.  The not-so-secret-secret was that I’d had a thing for this guy for over a year, which he didn’t reciprocate (pathetic, I know).  In fact, he’d told me, just prior to talking me into the vacation, that he was pursuing another woman.  Despite knowing his emotions were engaged elsewhere, meaning we would go on vacation only as friends, I couldn’t help but say “yes” when he asked me to go.  The decision made I figured he’d do what any normal, male friend would do and leave me alone for the weeks leading up to the trip.  To my shock the ensuing weeks were filled with e-mails and texts.

Massive confusion entered my world.  The same world where I said I didn’t want to get married.  I even contemplated telling this guy that he could relax cause I would be one woman in the area who wasn’t considering “bedding and wedding” him.  Really my confusion was because of my own conflict, not what this sweet guy did.  I both wanted to be closer to him and was terrified of it.  I found him just what I wanted and also driven mad by him.  I wanted him to want a romance with me but wouldn’t let myself believe that he would and was very sad about my own hopelessness.

Being an ever logical gal, I came to realize that I could not both say I didn’t want to get married and feel hurt at the belief that he didn’t want to date me.  I couldn’t say I didn’t want to get married while kinda thinking this guy wasn’t so bad.  Now- I’m not crazy: I wasn’t ready to marry the dude… just pondering my own mental contradictions.  If I truly didn’t care about being married then I should not have cared how this guy acted toward me.

But I did care.  So with my heart in my throat I went on vacation.  And became an anxious mess.  Seriously, I was not me.  And that is lamentable because it caused some unnecessary friction, but not the point to this story.  What is the point is that I had both one of the worst and best experiences of my life.

This guy and I fought on and off during the trip.  Oh, not non-stop.  It felt like I’d barely started to re-gain my footing from one misunderstanding before another cropped up.  Despite neither one of us being into drama it felt like a whole lot of drama.  As I look back on it, that’s really all it seemed to amount to; a lot of nothing, like foam on the sea.  I’m really not sure what we were fighting about though I can re-count the conversations in detail.

My life would have been easier if this guy was a jerk.  But he wasn’t.  It would have been easier if he’d have told me to ‘deal’ and left me to cope on my own.  But he didn’t.  It would have been easier if he hadn’t been decent, kind, excellent at listening and working through the conflict.  It would have been easier if he didn’t seem to care about repairing the damage to the friendship.

Guys run around wondering what will make a woman happy. Really, it’s very simple: We want to feel safe.  Safe from physical harm.  Safe from the unpredictableness of the future.  Safe from relational isolation.  Make a woman feel “safe” and she will melt.  In human relationships safety is not about always being happy together.  Safety is knowing that misunderstandings, problems, threats to the relationship, and to the self, will be solved through collaboration with another, trusted person.  In children this is primal: Lack of safety leads to death through lack of care and protection.  In adults the threat is more mental… we can physically live without care of another but we emotionally wither without love and support.  This is why C.S. Lewis’ definition of love feels the most accurate to me, “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”

If this guy had left me to cope on my own, had not cared to fix the problems, had not taken care of me I would not have felt safe.  Paradoxically, every fight he worked through served to strengthen my feeling of being safe with him and decreased my anxiety at the vacation.  I came to feel that fights were annoying but I was confident that he would work it out with me.  Between fights he did little things that made me feel valued, made me sure that he still liked me and having me around.

This was in direct contrast to how I previously felt toward fights with men.  After all, fighting with my ex had led to the death of our relationship.  There had not been the relational repair, the fighting fair and caring between fights.  Couple this with my innate abhorrence of disharmony in relationships.  Then perhaps you will not be surprised to hear that the first fight I had with this guy during the vacation had me convinced that the friendship was over and I should just leave.

By the end of the trip this sweet man had healed one of my deepest wounds.  I had experienced fighting to resolve, not win.  I had experienced what it felt like to fight because I was cared for.  I had seen anger leveled at me as a way to heal, not destroy.  I had been called out for my own follies while being apologized to for his follies.

To someone who started out thinking that fighting made marriage worthless, who only remembered fighting as tearing down, who thought that a fight meant to give up and go home this vacation was a revelation.  What my mind knew logically from my professional work my heart learned to feel: Fighting can show love.

As before, marriage to this sweet guy is not likely and is not the point.  The point is that I now know what it feels like to be prized even in the midst of conflict with a guy.  All I have to do is look for that feeling again.  I am so grateful to the guy… he healed me without knowing it.  He will forever hold an important place in my life because of it and because he restored my hope for a happy marriage.  

Almosts

Almost: Slightly short of; not quite; very nearly but not exactly or entirely.

Some people are “Almosts”. They are almost what you want for the job. Almost what you want for a friend. Almost what you want in whom to date or marry. And out of all the people you meet only one (if you’re lucky) will be more than almost for this last category.

Q: Then are we doomed to meeting and disentangling ourselves from one almost-the-person-you-want-to-marry after another? A: Pretty much.

A friend and I recently had a conversation about Almosts where the term “deal breakers” was brought up. It quickly became apparent that deal breakers are not a categorical do/don’t do... they are a continuous range from very specific to all encompassing. For example, he suggested a deal breaker was not being married in the Church. As if that was one deal breaker. But really it was a whole lot of them all summed up (i.e. faithful religious observance, certain dress code, certain health code, etc.). The implication being that some poor person could find themselves disqualified from the “marriageable” list for any number of reasons… they could be an Almost for any number of reasons. And not necessarily the stated reason: “I can’t marry you in the Church,” would be vague to the point of meaninglessness. A true statement but not really anything that one could hang their hat on, so to speak… nothing they could address as a personal point of self-improvement or dismiss as nothing they needed to act upon.

I found myself wondering how many poor girls had been head over heels for this guy and found themselves quietly but firmly dropped without a real clue as to what just happened. The funny thing was that my friend had not thought of his one deal breaker as a summation of multiple deal breakers until that conversation. So I flipped my mental question on it’s ear and wondered how often my friend had set a girl aside because she was an Almost to him without really knowing why he’d just done that. A quick mental review found many friends who had a long list of Almosts in their history because of so called deal breakers that were vague, shifted with their mood or just dumb.

Seeing people as Almosts is a double edged sword: It’s a nice way to let people go without putting them down, getting angry at them or placing blame. It’s also a way to keep from exploring your own motivation and thought process behind labeling someone an Almost. A fine line exists between saying someone is an Almost so you can let them go without endless attempts to make a relationship work when it should be let go or using it as an excuse to avoid examining your own needs and motivations.

For example: I have a non-LDS friend who has been infatuated with at least a couple LDS women, two of them he can’t get enough of even though they won’t seriously date him. Yet he staunchly proclaims them Almosts… or rather, proclaims himself the Almost because even when asked to do so he is not willing to change those things about himself that make him clearly not LDS. Never once have I heard him stop and ask himself what he finds so dashing wonderful about these women that he wants them in his life and what he should do to get those qualities more intimately in his life.

Worse yet, you can use the category of Almosts to avoid truly coming to know yourself. For example: I was recently proclaimed an Almost. Mutual friends professed being mystified when the guy made his choice because they though I splendidly fit the bill of what this guy said he wanted. He tried to explain it to them. But in the end it came out muddled- presumably a representation of the muddled state of his thinking about what he actually wants out of a woman. This did not stop him from blithely going on in his self-contradictory state because in his mind I was the one who was not desirable and he was perfectly clear. With mutual friends all invested in his and my happiness and willing to help further those states (whether we got together or not) he could have used his rejection of me as a chance to come to know himself better, but he didn’t.

Robert Frost debated this very issue. “Good fences make good neighbors” (said the neighbor). But there was an important question before the neighbor’s answer: “Before I built a wall, I‘d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out”. It is not the use of proclaiming people Almosts that I suggest must be done with introspection, indeed I find the whole idea very helpful. Rather, as did Frost, I like to really understand whom I am including and excluding and most importantly: Why?

Human Billboard

We are billboards. Some things are artificial (clothes) some are natural (wrinkle lines). But they broadcast who are and who we wish other people to think we are.

I’ve been thinking a lot the last few months about what I broadcast. It is a painful fact of my life that, when introduced into a new group, I am well liked for the first month. By the third month, I am thought to be arrogant, holding out on the group and disapproving. By the sixth month I am back to being liked and that opinion then seems to hold steady.

Recently, I was temporarily reassigned to a new unit in my hospital. It’s a small hospital, people gossip, long time associates from different divisions see no problem with telling their friend about what they think of another staff member wholly unconnected with their friend. When I was assigned to the new unit I knew that I would be there long enough for people to start to think I’m arrogant but not long enough to convince them that I’m not. So began my campaign, carefully crafted as any General Patton plan for operation “Dr. JB insertion to CPAS”. Clothes were chosen to match the dress level and style of my co-workers. Humor was modified to suit their tastes. When relaxed my face looks like I’m frowning, so I constantly mentally reminded myself to turn the corners of my mouth up so it would look like I was smiling. Walk fast so people would know I’m working hard but stop to visit and check in on them so they know I see myself as part of their team. On and on and on.

Freud said that, in the absence of information of what another person is thinking or feeling, healthy people will project their own ideas of not only what someone thinks/feels but why the motivation for such. And they generally will project their worst fear, the idea that causes them the most anxiety. Thus, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, what one thinks of another person is his or her own worst fear come to life. Thankfully, we humans are social critters who thrive on getting to know other humans; a species protecting mechanism that helps us not become neurotic as we get to know what motivations another person truly has, as opposed to what we fear they have.

There is somewhat of a balance between what we think of someone else being 1) a statement of our own mental workings and 2) assumptions based on some little bit of evidence that person gives off (no one is truly a blank projector screen). I am well aware of the facets of my personality and temperament that lead to the mistaken assumption that I’m arrogant. Hence my steps to adjust my actions and demeanor to quickly feed information into the non-verbal interpersonal communication.

But if I look at myself from the ouside… as I sit in this moment… I see a human who is a billboard for the Gap jeans she’s wearing, the cotton top that’s fitted and flowing from Banana Republic, the cotton sweater with the plastic jewels all in muted natural colors. I see one wearing make-up (which is new- I didn’t start wearing make-up until I was 25) and with natural brown roots showing under the blond highlights. I have wrinkles on my forehead from raising my eyebrows and a faint wrinkle on one side of my mouth were I pull harder when I’m smiling because I’m supposed to be smiling even if I’m not actually feeling it. I have crinkles by my eyes when I smile, hinting at the winkles to come in the next decade. I know what I mean to communicate by all these details. But here is the real question: What do you understand by the signals I’m sending? Now look at yourself? What do you see?

Marrying Your Best Friend

As a child marriage ideals were guided by three points: 1) marriage at the right time in the right place, 2) marrying your best friend and 3) murder maybe divorce never.

My parents met at 14 and grew into each other’s lives to become best friends and then, because they couldn’t imagine wanting to be with anyone else, to marry each other. They remain the best example I have ever observed of what married couples are like. And coupled with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom and Del and MaryLou Ellsworth form the trifecta for my ideal for what marriage should be like and how married people should be in relation to one another.

What about this idea of marrying your best friend? If I’d have gotten married when I was 18 the competition would have been a lot less stiff. But I think about the BFF’s I have who have loved and supported me for (with the newest of them) at least six years, not to mention my family members, and I wonder, how can I insult the depth of those relationships by saying that someone I’ve known a year… maybe two… is on par, let alone past them, in the best friend hierarchy? I can’t do it.

Then I am doomed to a marriage of… what exactly? I would say “potential.” He has the “potential” to become my best friend, to be all the things that I enjoy in my closest friends. To know me as well as they do. To have as formative an influence in my life.

But that has taken me years to develop with each person. And, at 34, I gotta say I don’t want to wait even six years on the short end to develop the best friend thing. So then what? How can I tell in much less time if the dude has the ability to become a best friend?

This is where I laugh because I am a psychologist… and I analyze everyone. A friend recently pointed out that this is not an esoteric exercise for me, nor is it to prove my superiority. For me it is always about building the relationship, understanding the other’s likes and dislikes so that we may more comfortably be around one another. And, if I have any influence in the situation, to make the other person happier.

The fact still remains, without giving a Rorschach or IQ test I have to assess if some dude has the potential to become a best friend. Fact: when humans are “in love” their brains function very much as if they have OCD- they are obsessional in their thinking about the other person and can only be soothed by contact with the other person. Additionally, their normally rational ability to judge is inhibited (hence the impression that the other person is perfect). (There is a really great National Geographic article on this if you’re interested.) So, my pristine professional skills are, shall we say, somewhat weakened when I’m smitten.

How much does this pre-wedding personality assessment matter when we are talking about eons of future personal growth? My mother used to tell me that behavior is like geometry: One data point (one instance of a behavior) and the line can go in any direction. Two data points, now you have a line- a clear pattern that is predictable. Three data points and you have a ray (a line whose trajectory can be tracked out to infinity). So then, what I am looking for is the pattern. I’m looking for the process of how one solves problems, adapts behavior, makes plans, alters thinking. Because if I don’t agree with the process then the outcome will be suspect.

For example: Some people are guided by logic, the good of group and rational thinking in their value decisions. Some are guided by emotions, the good of the one and how they feel in making their value decisions (Jungian Type theory; MBTI's Thinking/Feeling dimension). Two different roads to Rome. Each with good and bad points. But I (being the emotional one) have learned to trust the more logical ones. But not if they are devoid of reasonable emotions… though their logic may be sound I will be suspect of their reasoning because I don’t trust their process.

Do you have to marry your best friend? I don’t think so. I think those who are lucky enough to do so have hit marital jackpot. I think the rest of us have to thoughtfully assess the potential of the other person to become our best friend. Boyd K. Packer said that some people marry soul mates. But most of us have to choose which kind of life we want based on the influence of who we marry. So, I will consider the potential impact of a person in my life and see if, like ripples in a pond, I like how my life alters with him around. And somewhere between being smitten, thinking he is the finest thing since sliced bread, feeling he meets the characteristics of a great friend (see 33 Shades of Awesome) and a whole lot of prayer I think my husband-as-best-friend will emerge.

33 Shades of Awesome

My Great-grandmother (Nana) used to say that if you had as many close friends as you could count on one hand, you were a rich person.

Now comes the critical issue: How to define a “close” friend. As a child, I defined people as a) family or b) friends. And- as a sub-clause- one day you met someone who became your best friend and you married that person. But what happens when you grow up and your family members become friends? Or your best friend gets married? So… already we have gone from my childish idea to a multivaried construct.

When I was 10, 16, 17 and 27 years old I met four people who have been pillars in my notions of what friendship means. They have enriched my life such that my imagination is incapable of conceptualizing what a different being with a different life I would currently lead without their influence. To define what the best of friends is I must talk a little about each relationship.

When I was 10 I met my oldest best friend. In many ways ours was a childish relationship based on what we did with a childish lack of self-protection: We had a tradition of making chocolate chip cookies during our sleepovers. She was always my first choice in which friend to spend time with. Disaster struck our childish friendship when she moved several states away when I was 12. This was the olden days, before the internet and e-mail, when long distance calls were expensive and sending a letter by the post cost 25 cents. We both put in the effort to write those letters, to get permission to make those long-distance phone calls and, in a couple golden opportunities, to fly to see each other. Every conversation began with a run down on how each other’s family was doing. As we have grown older we have talked over ideas, ideals and personhood development. Her counsel is like the obo sounding an A note for the orchestra to tune before a concert, a clear bell in the fog of my own thinking.

At 16 I met someone I spent hours talking over our mutual friends, history, religion, music, our life goals, our fears... pretty much everything. There was disagreement without ever feeling like the friendship was at stake. While I don’t think he has ever considered me one of his best friends, he has been one of mine. In many things he has been my standard of what ought to be, the ruler against which other people have been held. We lost contact and found each other again over a decade later. Did that laps of time make a difference? You bet your britches it did! We had missed each other terribly and were over the moon to be back in contact. We picked up right where we left off. When I have good news I want him to celebrate with me or it’s been a rotten week, his voice soothes the discombobulation without me ever having to tell him what I’m smarting over.

At 17 I met a mother of two, pregnant with a third. As families we would spend hours at one another’s homes visiting and playing. When I needed to talk over something serious, I knew I could count on her wisdom and goodness to provide a point of reference. There was no such thing as ‘not-interested’ between us. When I was a young graduate student weekends were spent at her home playing. When my life went through it's greatest problem she helped prove that my worst fear, that I was un-lovable outside my family, was unfounded and she and her children continued to love me the same as always. She takes what I say and hands me back the best, highest interpretation thereby giving me something to live up to in her seeing my better self… all without ever trying to do that.

At 27 I met my friend who very nearly didn’t want me as a friend. It took me a year after a late night munch-n-chat at Katz deli to realize that he’d decided to bump me up from friendly to friendship. He doesn’t let me get away with anything. I said, “I don’t like modern art.” He took every chance he got to point out when I said I liked something that it was, in fact, modern art. Our conversations are often about what we’re thinking, rarely about what we’ve been doing. There are many things he likes that I find quite boring or annoying. But, when I see those things through his eyes, they become fascinating.

So, when what does one of my Great-grandmother’s close friends look like? Well, someday we’ll be sitting in Heaven and I’m going to ask her. But in the mean time this is my working definition: Physical proximity is not important: the ability to communicate is the key. Lapses in time do not produce a distance in the closeness you feel for the other person or the ability to share thoughts and feelings. You’d rather share the minutes of your life with that person than just about anyone else. Jung said that “The most terrifying thing is to accept one’s self completely,” and I think friends can model that acceptance as we learn it for ourselves. Hence, you are able to take in each other’s thoughts and feelings and give back the better reflection of your mind without taking away the distinction of self and other. The world, it’s content, it’s processes, it’s ideas and events are interesting as they are seen through the eyes of the other person. You don’t just share each other, you share in each other’s families, school, work… even grocery shopping. You can be who you are even if that’s different from the other person. They bring light, clarity, and those ‘warm fuzzies’ in a way that you anticipate and feel no need to self-protect or hold at a distance. They make you happier, more sure of who you are, help you be a better version of who you are. They don’t let you get away with anything, unless you’re not ready to deal with ‘it’ and then they just shift focus to something else to not let you get away with. Being with them is the goal, and what you do is almost immaterial. They can decide what you’re going to do together without you feeling the need to control because they know you so well they won’t ask you to do anything you wouldn’t want to do and you might end up doing something novel you would not have thought up on your own. My mom says that part of friendship is being able to be embarrassed (bare assed) and be comfortable with it. CS Lewis said that “Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship will have naked personalities.” They make you feel happy, they leave you feeling more centered even after talking about painful topics and they leave you feeling life is richer and more precious. And they let you bring all of these things and be all of this in their life.

So, if you’ve been keeping count that gives me four biologically and four non-biologically related people who have carte blanche in my life. If five people is the criteria for rich, then I am incomprehensibly rich… or blessed… I’m going with blessed. And so I am grateful beyond what words I have for the people who love me, care for me or even just like me... the people who are 33 shades of awesome.

Relationships as Sunsets

Once upon a time I started a relationship eager to know who the other person was, delighted by the ideas and ways of thinking I came to understand. I didn't slow down to consider if behavior and statements matched and if convictions were lasting. I took what was professed as the finished thought or a long held trait. I didn’t know where the relationship was going, but I quickly figured out where I hoped it was going. Sure enough, end game; Marriage.

Correction: End game; Divorce.

That was the last relationship I started without examining, evaluating, judging. One of the glaring facts that everyone who was closely involved in the start and end of the marriage came to agree upon was that what the gentleman professed was not consistent. Not that he lied. Just that he meant something when he said it, and the belief that drove the statement he believed too: Until a new belief came and then he believed that just as much, and the attendant statement just as much. He was, to put it nicely, a weather vein clearly pointing one way until he, just as committedly as the little rooster weather vein shows the direction of the wind atop a roof, pointed another direction.

But I did not evaluate so I didn’t not understand the underlying flaw in him that led to this shifting in belief, thinking, emotion and action. And this I came to understand as my cardinal mistake. In fact, I can remember saying to my dear friend in graduate school, that the next guy I thought I wanted to marry would have to agree to take a full psychological battery (cognitive, personality… the works). If my naive acceptance of who he had professed to be had been my undoing, then my calculated assessment of the next Mr. He would be my salvation from ever having to go through hell again. (For what is Hell but the dissolution or absence of relationships… it’s enough to make fire and brimstone look appealing.

My mother says I go on tons of dates, all of them in my head. I know me pretty well. And I get to know a guy. And then I (mentally) match him and me up and voila; I take him off my list of potential Mr. He’s without him ever asking me out. My mental evaluation of potential partners has saved me many awkward dates, or worse, heartache when I get attached and then see the relationship end. Oh, I am sure that I have saved myself tons of pain.

And, I am coming to understand that I have missed out on so much that the weight of those missed experiences is starting feel painful. What experiences? The ones where I let someone teach me who he was rather than me figuring it out on my own. And it took a recent blind date to make me see it.

Enter Mr. Blind Date, or Mr. BD for short. For the record, I like blind dates; they have always been fun and enjoyable for me. I’ve never had a blind date turn into a second date. But, Mr. BD did make it to date two. And I was a mess going into that date. It took my wingman and mother combined to calm me down getting ready for that date. They both told me I needed to be in the moment, enjoy connecting with a nice fellow, and just see where the conversation, the situation, the relationship all went.

Very un-evaluative.

And I do it? Of course not. Every comment, every look, everything he didn’t say or do was stacked up and assessed in the moment or tagged and filed away to be analyzed later.

For the record, Mr. BD was a very nice guy. A thoughtful and considerate date. Aside from a snide remark about assuming he’d have to see a chick flick in letting me pick the movie we were going to see (I actually picked Captain America, which I had really been wanting to see), he was ok. But I’d pretty much decided that a romantic relationship was not likely.

My mother is great. She is Dr. No Pressure when it comes to dating and marriage. Her consistent comment is that when I tell her to pay attention to a guy, she will: Until then she’s not invested in the guy or where my relationship with him goes. (I love my mother!) So whether I went to date #3 with Mr. BD or not, she wasn’t invested.

Another reason I love my mother is that she doesn’t let me get away with anything. She doesn’t hit me with everything all at once, but when she sees a glaring problem she doesn’t avoid sharing the observation. And she had a whopper of one when I’d finished talking over Mr. BD to her.

She said I need (emphasis on neeeeeeeed) to quit evaluating. I need to quit viewing relationships as things to assess. I need to see them as sunsets. On the one hand, I analyze people… My mind doesn’t rest until I can name who they are (a la Madeline L'Engle’s idea of being able to “name” someone). And I do love sunsets… the sun setting over an ocean will hold my attention as much as any book or piece of music. And with sunsets I feel no anxiety about the colors I see, or how they fade one into the other in the moment… or in the next moment how they have faded into another shade of color. And I don’t mind when it ends: Like a Beethoven piece, I love the build up to the crescendo and then enjoy the fading of the piece because it all fits together. And the dark after the sunset or the silence after the music I enjoy too.

So I have a new thing I’m trying: To be a namer and to view relationships as sunsets. I’m not quite sure where this will bring me. But it’s ok to not see the end from the beginning. After all, do you ever see the end of the sunset… it’s colors, it’s changes from one minute to the next, it’s nature as a sunset… from it’s beginning?

Another Fish in the Pond

When we were undergrads my brother made the observation that one of the worst things about media and Hollywood is that it presents uber beautiful people as being typical. By default then, those of us who are typical appear less than average. As a brother with both an older and younger sister could sensitively observe, “How are the pretty girls supposed to get noticed if guys are taught to think that beautiful is normal?”

After a couple decades at this whole ‘romance’ thing, I have a thought: People are perpetually waiting for another fish… a more attractive, more compatible, more talented fish… to jump into their pond. I heard it most aptly expressed in a church I used to go to where, every summer, there was an influx of door-to-door sales men known affectionately as “the bug boys”. Women, upon finding the current dating pool lacking would take solace in observing, “The bug boys will be here soon.” It was a variation on a theme: “The new semester will start soon, maybe someone will show up then.” “Maybe someone new will be at the next Luau.”

Whatever the ‘new’ event that is supposed to bring your one true love into your orbit, it represents the underlying thought that there is no need to settle for the current options if you are the least bit dissatisfied with them. This is different from the old adage, “The grass is always greener somewhere else,” because I am not moving. I am simply, waiting for new fish to come into my pond.

In the past few years, I could have gotten married at any point and been very happy. There has always been at least one guy around who I am confident would have made the party of the 2nd part in a happy, successful, enriching Eternal marriage. (I could name names here, but I won’t… remember that bit about me being good at keeping my mouth shut?) In case it isn’t obvious, I didn’t marry any of those men. In fact, I would hazard to guess that none of them ever knew that I thought of them so highly. If I think a guy is looking through me, waiting for another, slightly better, fish to come into our pond then I figure he doesn’t want me and I will fade away.

In this I am not unique, most people will fade away when they are not wanted. That is the luxury of the waiting for another fish mind set: someone else will come along. You may be 40 before they do, you may have 40 years of life to try and fill them in on by the time they do, you may have lost being able to have children with them by the time they do… or, ‘someone’ may not come along and you opted your way right into not getting married by dint of always looking for another fish.

I’d like to propose an imaginary situation: What if you lived 500 years ago where people didn’t travel more than a few miles from home? Where the people in your town were the sum total of your social world… and of your dating pool? No waiting for someone new to move in. No waiting for you to move to a new place. Who you had was who you got. Period. My guess is that you would decide a) you didn’t like the options and live out your life single or (much more likely) b) make your pick from the options you had.

Back to reality; I know a growing number of singles who are opting for choice “a” by default by waiting for someone better to come along. They all say they want to get married, but year after year goes by and they are still single despite having met many attractive, talented, moral members of the opposite sex.

Without going into deep-seated psychological issues… no wait- this is me, of course I’m going to. Psychological math: unrealistic expectations about facial/body beauty + unrealistic expectations about what one ‘needs’ to be happy + fears about ‘failing’ at marriage/temple covenants + social/religious pressures to pick someone who is wonderful for you for all Eternity + whatever unresolved relationship baggage you have accumulated = refusing to find someone. Yes, refusing… active, willful, stubborn.

Here is what I propose: Mentally look around at your social world. Consider whom you know (church, hobby groups, work, clubs, people you currently are in contact with via your online dating website [NOT the people who are also on the site but you have not contacted]). Take inventory of the singles who are remotely potential, and I mean remotely, no fair ruling people out right at the start cause their hair is the wrong color or you had one mediocre date with them. Now imagine that this is the sum total of who your options will ever be… you will not meet anyone new. If anything, your options will only diminish as people marry off. Now imagine you had to choose life as a single person or marriage to one of the people you know. Which would you choose? (And if you said you’d wait till someone new showed up, or for one of the younger generation to grow up, you’ve missed the point and need to go back to step one.)

Now consider that your refusal to pick someone is the reason you are not blissfully married. If you don’t want to be married, then fine. It’s your life. But get off of the playing field so the rest of us can be focused on people who share a similar goal: getting married. If you do want to get married, sweet! I know some great people I can point out to you. But what ever you do, quit thinking that it is anything but your own mental attitude toward finding an Eternal mate that is getting in your way. And if you can’t figure out why you’re getting in your own way I know several excellent therapists around the world to whom I’d be happy to refer you. But first I’d start by considering that you’re just waiting for another fish to come into your pond.