Damozel: Love in the Time of the Internets.

Forget the Wedding Planner---Damozel’s Hints for a Unique and Truly Memorable Wedding.

More Help for Singles Who Don’t Want to Be: Why You’re Still Single and Some Reflections Prior to Reading It.

The “Princess Bride” Fallacy and an Eminently Practical Approach to Wedding Etiquette

Look, Look! A good relationship book! Why You’re Still Single by Evan Katz and Linda Holmes [book review; relationships]

The Princess Bride Fallacy

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 15:37:54 GMT

Hi! I've changed addresses. To see the updated version of this posting, please click on this link.

The "Princess Bride" Fallacy & an Eminently Practical Approach to Etiquette for Brides

I just had a conversation with a 23 year old bride-to-be who actually uttered the dreaded phrase: "It's my day, after all" with a perfectly straight face. I am not her mother, thank God, or even a relative or a family friend, so I didn't even hesitate about keeping my mouth shut and letting her carry on with her self-centered plans to put on a festival that is ALL ABOUT HER. I don't think I'll be attending that particular wedding.

How, please, did the phrase "It's your day" get introduced into the culture's views on marriage ceremonies? Who TELLS these young idiots that their wedding day is "their day." When did girls start thinking that a wedding day is only about her? Who is responsible? Whatever the cause, the actual experience is seldom enjoyed by the actual participants; instead, it's a painful rite of passage which can cost as much as a college education or the down payment on a house. Quite ridiculous and very much the reverse of romantic. Why do young girls put themselves and their loved ones through these silly charades?

Actually, it's probably not the belief of the bride that it's her day that causes the problem so much as a serious failure of some parents to teach their children the obligations that you incur when you throw an event in your own honor.

When I was very young, my parents used to give enormous birthday parties for me. We lived in a small town and in a neighborhood where there were a lot of young children. People put on lavish birthday parties and the birthday kid got to be the center of attention for a day. Everyone had to bring you presents and be nice to you. But---and this was important----the opportunity to be the center of attention came along with a host of obligations.

Along with the fun of being princess for a day comes the obligation of nobless oblige. Before 'celebrities' started setting standards for behavior, people understood a lot more than they do today about what it means to be real royalty as opposed to Hollywood royalty. Yes, people have to bow and scrape and be nice to you, and you get to dress up and be the center of attention, but all the homage comes with obligations. In fact, the more homage there is, the greater your obligations.

Yes, so when I had my 'princess for a day' moments as a child, I had NO CONTROL over: [1] the guest list; [2] the refreshments; and [3] the ceremonies. Making people envious was never the stated objective of a birthday party (or any similar rite, such as wedding), nor was making them give you presents. Those were at best considered side benefits. The people I lived among would not have been impressed at all over a mere spectacle of greed satisfied; to impress them, you had to be what we called 'gracious' (a word that I'm not hearing much lately) and we had to make sure everyone had a good time or at least be seen trying. If we at least tried, we got the credit for our intentions.

A party was a failure if the guests ended up feeling that they had been summoned to pay tribute without getting in exchange the expected 'good time.' To be successful, a party had to be FUN.

So my mother planned my birthday parties so that they would be fun for my guests. Getting to be the center of attention and getting presents was considered sufficient fun for the birthday child. "But it's my birthday!" I certainly whined on a couple of occasions. "That's why you need to be a good girl and be nice to everyone," was the reply. I can still remember my mother taking me aside at one birthday where I was being particularly cranky to my guests. "You need to straighten up right now and behave yourself," she said, "or we'll end the party and send everyone home. If you're too tired to behave, you're too tired to have a party." I was taken aback, but I did what she said. I knew she meant it.

When I got married, the same principles applied. By that time, I knew better than to say to my parents, "But it's my day," though I did say once or twice, "But it's my wedding!" After a certain amount of argument, they conceded that I should be able to pick out my dress and my music, though they reserved veto power over both. Other than that, everything was framed in terms of my duties as a bride. One of them was to like everything anyone chose to gave me (and subtly exchange it only if I needed to); another was to write thank you notes. The attitude was: "We're going to all this trouble and expense for you; the least you can do is behave as if you appreciate it!"

As for brides who pay for their weddings themselves, exactly the same thing applies, only more so. If you are going to be the guest of honor at your OWN party, you better make damn sure that you behave in a way that makes the people you've summoned to be your guests share your high opinion of yourself.

In other words, if you're bent on being princess for day, you had better make sure that you learn the rudiments of noblesse oblige. That requires making the peasantry think that you are amazed and delighted by the homage, that you love them in return, and that you are prepared to show that love by providing them with the best time you can. Otherwise they WILL turn on you.

Real royalty know that the joy, to the extent there is any, in a public celebration of 'your day', whatever it is, lies in the disposition of people to concede that you're entitled to special treatment and attention. Whether or not you actually end up enjoying it is pretty much beside the point. So are your feelings about what other people 'owe' you.

For valuable information about wedding conduct your guests will hate---and mock---I (once more) recommend that any bride-to-be spend some serious time perusing Etiquette Hell ("the internet's largest repository of bad behavior.") And even without reading (but I have ordered it and WILL read it), I would recommend the wedding etiquette book just published by one of the founders of the site, Jeanne Hamilton): Wedding Etiquette Hell : The Bride's Bible to Avoiding Everlasting Damnation. According to the blurb from the site's homepage,

[quote begins]

Eschewing the stuffy rules and traditions that typically gets labeled as "etiquette", this book focuses on the etiquette that really matters to those nearest and dearest to you. Jeanne Hamilton has compiled and condensed the most commonly committed faux pas thousands of her fans of www.EtiquetteHell.com have sent her over the years into a hilarious book which drives the points home with real-life stories.

[quote ends]

I can't think of a better way to learn the consequences of bad bridal behavior than to spend time finding out what people are really going to say about you and your 'dream' wedding if you don't practice the requisite noblesse oblige.

RELATED POSTINGS

It’s Just Not that Simple (review of He’s Just Not that Into You).

Toxic Love 101 and Sonnet 36: The Love that Dares You to Speak its Name.

Forget the Wedding Planner---Damozel’s Hints for a Unique and Truly Memorable Wedding.

More Help for Singles Who Don’t Want to Be: Why You’re Still Single and Some Reflections Prior to Reading It.

The “Princess Bride” Fallacy and an Eminently Practical Approach to Wedding Etiquette

Look, Look! A good relationship book! Why You’re Still Single by Evan Katz and Linda Holmes [book review; relationships]

Bonus Sonnet: 157

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:02:55 GMT

Besotted against your better judgment?

Sonnet 157.

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes

For they in thee a thousand errors note,

But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise

Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.

Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,

Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,

Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited

To any sensual feast with thee alone:

But my five wits, nor my five senses can

Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,

Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,

Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:

Only my plague thus far I count my gain

That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

THE BARD

RELATED POSTINGS

It’s Just Not that Simple (review of He’s Just Not that Into You).

Toxic Love 101 and Sonnet 36: The Love that Dares You to Speak its Name.

Advice for Brides Planning Big Weddings: Don’t.

Love in Midlife: How to Fail at Finding it

Key West Wedding Celebration

Forget the Wedding Planner---Damozel’s Hints for a Unique and Truly Memorable Wedding.

Toxic Love 101---The Perils of Present-Giving

More Help for Singles Who Don’t Want to Be: Why You’re Still Single and Some Reflections Prior to Reading It.

The “Princess Bride” Fallacy and an Eminently Practical Approach to Wedding Etiquette

Look, Look! A good relationship book! Why You’re Still Single by Evan Katz and Linda Holmes [book review; relationships]

But sometimes it really IS your ass

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 04:37:57 GMT

Hi! I've changed addresses. To jump to the updated version of this posting, please click on this link.

More Help for Singles! Why You're still Single; and some preliminary-to-reading-it reflections on the general subject

I've said what I think about He's Just Not That Into You. I enjoyed reading it and found it amusing, but Lord knows I don't think it should be taken as a guide for women who have it halfway together and want to "find someone." If I had followed that advice, I doubt I'd ever have married. Instead, I did every single thing that the book warns against and....yeah, I had no trouble getting married, ladies. Even in middle-age.

The immense success of the book has naturally spawned other relationship guides by people who wish to question the book's main premises or to cash in on the book's success.

[1] Why You're Still Single.

A book in the first category is Why You're Still Single: Things Your Friends Would Tell You if You Promised Not to Get Mad. The book is of particular interest to me because one of the coauthors is the author of the blog Frolic and Detour, which I often read, as well as other writings listed here. Some time ago, she wrote an impassioned response to He's Just Not That Into You. You can read it here. While in some respects this seems to be a stronger reaction than a book that is classified as "Humor" at my local Books A Million really warrants, her analysis of the book's main thesis strikes me as accurate and her objections as absolutely on point.

The 'manifesto,' so-called, for Why You're Still Single is printed here. And speaking as a very ordinary someone who hasn't had much trouble finding love, I don't see very much there that anyone could argue with. In fact, if the philosophy were printed on paper I'd get out my fountain pen expressly so I could write "how true!" in the margin. I would really like to see how this philosophy translates into actual advice to the single in search of a relationship. What I mean is: I am LOOKING FORWARD to seeing this, as I shall certainly buy a copy (because in any case I want to support the work of a writer whose writing I always enjoy).

[2] But sometimes it really IS your ass.

At the end of the day, though, I am bemused by the fact that people think it's possible to write an all-purpose relationship guide that is the same for everyone. Furthermore, it's quite clear to me that most of the relationship guides reach their conclusions about what behaviors are or are not productive in a relationship without delving much into the source.

For example, the Why You're Still Single "manifesto" states:

You do not need to obsess over the size of your ass. Walking around the mall will show you that love is not a privilege of the glamorous. What you do need to do is navigate the societal brambles about women's looks and make peace with the idea of physical attraction without developing a crippling neurosis about it.

For the above sentence to be true, as in generally true, it would have to be heavily qualified. E.g., "You do not need to obsess over the size of your ass if you are the sort of woman who is attracted to men who are not bothered by the size of your ass." The second sentence is true, assuming this qualification.

And this is exactly where all relationship books go wrong: in failing to recognize---and to require readers to recognize---that in searching for a relationship, most people are looking for love among other things. To know whether it's worth your while to pursue a relationship (or to remain in one) you need to understand what other things in addition to love your potential partner is looking for. If you can't provide them, it's best to move on----not to avoid 'chasing' someone but because you are going to be wasting your time if you do.

The 'obsessing about your ass' advice is right only if the man you've decided you're in love with doesn't care about the size of your ass (and many men could not care less).

But every man everywhere has some qualities he thinks are essential to the woman he falls in love with and feels entitled to require. Contestants on dating shows use the repulsive phrase "the whole package" to express the bundled set of attributes that they would require in a mate. If the guy on whom you have set your sights has very specific criteria for the loved one's ass size, and you can't meet them, you will either have to change your ass or show him an abundance of other qualities that are at least EQUALLY HIGH on his list of criteria----that is, if you still think it's worth it.

Women get very torqued about the shallowness of men in general but women also have criteria, though many of them don't seem to know it or know what their criteria are. The fact that women deny subjecting men to the same sort of scrutiny may simply mean that their criteria aren't being consciously applied---and in some cases, this may be because their criteria make even less sense than something along the lines of 'long blond hair, great rack').

"Why do so many nice women end up with assholes?" is a question so often asked that I have to believe that there are some women who simply don't have any requirements for men to have such qualities as, say, good character or rectitude. Qualities such as "wealthy", "drives a great car," or "has two second homes" (actual quote!) obviously are more important to quite a few women than "has a steady job" or "kind and sincere"; and none of those qualities is more or less shallow than "great rack. [The disproportionately attractive young wife of one of the world's wealthy men was recently asked on some talk show or other whether she'd have married said much older billionaire if he did not have all that money. "Do you think he'd have married me if I didn't look like this?" she replied.]

So sometimes, you know, it really IS your ass. The question is whether you are going to take that as your cue to do something about it.

The truth is that your degree of hottness marries to some men and at all to others. Furthermore, physical appearance matters MORE to some men who care about appearance than to others. Before you decide that your looks are the problem, you really need to know the guy.

And if you find out that your looks ARE the problem, your Aunti Damozel would recommend that you think twice before you attempt to fix it in order to please someone else's finicking standards. Sometimes the solution is to move on. I would submit that if the problem is that the person thinks you are not quite beautiful enough you should ALWAYS move on. Why should you allow yourself to be tweaked to fit someone else's image of what you should be?

Here is something I know is not true: that all mean have the same standards of attractiveness. No doubt many or most or all men would agree about the attractiveness of certain women; and doubtless a percentage of men would only find a woman attractive if she meets certain very specific requirements, but a host of men are much more flexible in their notion of what is attractive. A very good-looking young friend of mine recently told me that intelligence and good conversation make women attractive to him when he encounters them; while not averse to dating someone very beautiful, he doesn't stick around with the ones who bore him or who aren't interested in talking to him. More men think that way than is generally recognized.

[3] Should you get a makeover?

Based on experience, I do NOT think it is possible or rational for me to reconstruct myself to meet another person's specifications. I tried that too once. The man in question started out thinking, as he put it, that I had "potential"---a bad, bad sign in a personal as opposed to a professional context---but that I just needed a bit of tweaking to be worthy of him. After the tweaking turned into an overhaul---some of it painful, expensive, and inconvenient----he realized that I just couldn't make the grade. I felt really bad about it for awhile. Then I found someone who liked me the way I looked after I'd let the haircut grow out, dispensed with the fake nails, started eating regular meals, and taken to buying cosmetics at the drugstore again).

But that's just me. Suppose I were someone else much younger; suppose the object of my affection asked only that I have more of whatever physical qualities he values than anyone else; suppose that he was my absolute specific ideal and could offer me fame and money and all that goes with it; and suppose that all that stood between me and my goal was some major reconstruction and hair extensions. Would I invest the time and money in a 'makeover'? Well, no, I wouldn't, not at this stage of my life. But you might.

But only if you are right that the problem is your looks will your makeover fix the problem. And in my opinion, a woman's appearance may be a problem, but it is almost never the only problem. I remember a very critical boyfriend who didn't like my clothes, my make-up, or my hair, all of which I changed at his behest, only to have him tell me "I really don't know if I can put up with your epilepsy." Which is when I dumped him.

[4] Coping with rejection: how I became an expert.

I don't have any statistics to prove it, but I SUSPECT that it's self-defeating to allow yourself to become besotted with someone whose idea of an ideal mate is someone else. I've had more than one such experience. At one point and for several months, I developed an extreme crush on a charming man who was still fixated on his ex-wife. He was not in love with her, exactly, but somehow he couldn't envision being with someone who didn't look like her or act like her. We didn't look alike, and I didn't WANT to look like her, since he routinely referred to her as "that fat cow." She was also pretty much of a bitch toward him; and say what you like about me, I am almost always nice to people I like. Interestingly, the guy did have room in his bundle of specs for women who didn't look like his wife, but unfortunately these women didn't look like me either (and I was plenty cute then; shut up.)

I convinced myself that if I stuck around he would eventually see my MANY WONDERFUL QUALITIES; but the fact is, he could see them perfectly well to start with; they just did NOT register with him as "wonderful." The things that I have to offer were not the things this particular guy particularly wanted. He wanted SOMETHING ELSE. And honestly, if I could have worked out what to change to be the person he was looking for, I probably would have tried.

And it would have been futile; because---though he liked me and liked talking to me---he had already made up his mind.

Here is where He's Just Not That Into You book WOULD have helped me: the point at which he said, "I'll be honest with you; I really like you, Damozel, and if I lived nearer to you, I'd probably see you. But I just can't handle a two hour drive on the weekends."

I thought, "Hey, he said he really likes me!" and carried on trying to persuade him to come see me anyway, hoping against hope that he would have such a fantastic time (despite evidence to the contrary) that he would totally change his mind. Which didn't happen because he wasn't willing to do the driving and which wouldn't have happened even if he had been willing. He really just wasn't that into me----not because I did the running (or as Behrendt calls it, the 'chasing')--- but because he had worked out that I wasn't the one. He wasn't looking for evidence to the contrary. He had decided he needed to look elsdewhere.

Fortunately, though I tried for awhile to change his perception, I didn't give up trying to meet someone who would, you know, actually like me. In the end, I did find someone.

Mind you, to find him I had to spend time not only with Peter (the guy who wasn't interested in me) but also with a lot of other guys who were looking for someone who was not me. I also had to spend time with guys I knew from the start were not for me. It's just part of the process.

In othre words, the process took a lot of time and took a lot of work. It meant a lot of wasted evenings. But if you're starting from scratch, that's sometimes what it takes. I wanted companionship, and I was active and systematic in looking for it. In between, I dated a lot of guys I'd call 'losers' (if I really believed that the fact that a guy doesn't do it for me makes him a loser). I also dated a lot of guys who could have applied the same label to me (and probably did).

I had to put up with quite a lot of awkward hemming and hawing from men who needed to convey that it just wasn't on. A friend of mine asked me how I could stand all the rejection. Some rejections were more painful than others, of course. Rejection by that guy I had the crush on was disappointing. It was disappointing for someone I liked to decide that my "package" didn't contain anything of continuing interest to him---in fact, not enough to make him feel like making the effort to give things a chance.

On the whole, though, the worst feeling I had during this period was occasional disappointment. While I was as insecure as the next woman, I managed to force myself to be realistic. I had to be realistic about myself and what I had to offer. I knew, for example, that my degree of physical attractiveness was a point on which reasonable men could differ. Some men found me attractive; some did not. It helped (though not as much as you'd think) to remind myself that I'd been married; so at least one man had found me attractive enough. Other than that, I'd not received that much attention from men.

In other words, I alllowed myself to acknowledge that I was an acquired taste that not every guy might wish to acquire.

So it wasn't easy and it definitely wasn't fun. I remember a married friend saying to me, "I want to have YOUR life", meaning the continually meeting new men, which somehow I must have made sound exciting. I fell over laughing, because---and a lot of women who aren't good at being single can identify with this----I didn't want my life. That was sort of the point of the dating

But eventually---I reiterate---after a lot of trouble and a certain amount discomfort, I met someone. At which point things changed. Because here's the thing: if somebody is interested and sees potentail in you AND if he is looking for the same thing you are, then Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo are right: he WILL go to all sorts of trouble to make things happen.

For guys who were interested in me, a long drive was nothing. For about nine months I dated a guy who drove up every weekend from a city in the central part of the state. Don, the guy I eventually married, was also from another city. While I won't say they didn't mind driving, both of them did it on a regular basis. It was an inconvenience to them, but not a drawback.

One way that you will know the difference between someone who is seriously interested in getting closer to you is that he (or she) will be willing to take a certain amount of trouble to do it. Or even a LOT of trouble. (After Don died, when I remarried, Nick moved across the ocean to marry me.) So I agree with Behrendt and Tuccillo that guys who are part of the particular pool (however small) of guys who might be interested in a relationship WILL take trouble. I know this because the men I've been seriously involved with have taken trouble for me.

I realiize that this sounds a bit smug. I do not mean for it to. Here is my description at the time Nick married me: 43, ordinary looking, quirky, far from well off, and, as noted above, afflicted with an unfixable neurological disorder that some men found embarrassing.

The difference between me and women I know who are sitting home alone is that I wasn't afraid of rejection or of boring or awful dates---or at least was no more afraid of them then never having a partner at all. I made up my mind before I started that I could cope with the fact that a lot of the men I'd be meeting would have had requirements for their own potential partners that I couldn't fulfill. But I realized also the the reverse was also true. While I certainly didn't enjoy the many, many awkward dates, they didn't kill me or anything. And in the end, persistence paid off every time.

[5] Nuh-uh at first sight: that visceral "Nope."

It helped also that I'd had my heart broken pretty thoroughly a couple of times (not counting my divorce). I was very certain that I didn't want any more of the same, and so I was willing to hold back feeling anything too powerful till I met someone who seemed as if he wanted to feel the same way about me as I wanted to feel about him. For both partners to want to feel the same is key if you don't want to risk ending up in one of those relationships that He's Just Not that Into You is talking about.

But even if someone seems disposed to fall for you, you need to consider in your turn 'the whole package.' A couple of times I made the mistake of dating someone I didn't want to admit I didn't actually want to be around just because he seemed to like me, and dating someone who liked me was easier than continuing to search for someone about whom I'd feel the same way.

Just as other people have standards that they will apply to you, you have your own standards, and your own sense of what you want out of a relationship or your life. It's important to apply them and it's important to be honest with yourself.

Revulsion at the outset is a MAJOR red flag, people. Did you know that? I'm talking about whatever you'd call the opposite of "Love at first sight." It's that feeling of "Nuh-uh" at first sight, or as soon afterward as amounts to first sight. When you feel that happen, PAY ATTENTION. That's the part of yourself that knows and can't speak sending a message to the part that's driving the car: "Don't slow donw!"

Sometimes it's completely understandable: the person reminds you of your sixth grade teacher (happened to me), smells like dirty socks (happened to me), or dresses in a way you can't for whatever reason deal with (like the really handsome and intelligent guy who showed up for a date wearing all suede including a stupid suede hat with a freaking feather). Sometimes it can be something the person totally cannot help, like his voice (I am thinking of a nice Irishman I met who sounded like the Lucky Charms Leprechaun).

And sometimes the visceral "Nope" doesn't make any sort of conscious sense.. I felt that way instantly about one of the most physically attractive men I ever dated when he knocked on my door (it was a blind date). First, he was much better looking than my particular set of specifications actually required, or than I had come to expect as my due, and getting more of one thing than you expected to find often has the effect of diminishing the importance of some of the things that aren't there. He was wealthy and had a good car (two things that were not on my list at all, but see the preceding sentence). He brought me presents and spent money on me (and I am just not the sort of woman guys spend money on). Why, then, was I SO DAMN SURE in the first five minutes I met him that I didn't want to be with him or even know him? Why didn't I at least give him a chance? He was really likable and personable and in fact I really DID like him. He was perfect. Just not for me.

That was before we really even sat down to talk. It's true that his subsequent courting behavior was a bit strange. When he brought his well-dressed handsome blond haired self into my apartment, he also brought his guitar. At intervals---say every fifteen minutes or so during one VERY long evening---he would suddenly be provoked to burst into song. He had a very nice voice---he'd spent some of his younger years performing in clubs---and it was rather flattering to be serenaded, but it also seemed very weird. I was flattered, but I didn't know how to react. Plus I didn't know what to make of the songs---whether they related to something he was feeling and wanted to share or whether the choice was arbitrary----so I never knew what to say when he was done. Mostly I settled for "Very good!" and "Wonderful!" and the like, though my tone grew increasingly faint and my cries increasingly reluctant as the night wore on.

But there again, I'd already made up my mind BEFORE the singing started. Part of my deep embarrassment (though only part) was knowing that no amount of serenading was going to have an effect on a decision I'd already made.

After which he decided, for reasons best known to himself, that he wanted a relationship. He called me. He sent me roses. ( Here's how revolted I was: I left them on the floor for my flower-loving cats to eat. When he sent some to me at work, I let them sit there unwatered till they dried out.) I like getting flowers; I just didn't want any flowers that came from him. It didn't matter that I liked him and rather admired him for overcoming some really serious challenges. I just didn't like being around him.

After repeated conversations during which I repeated the words, "There's no point," we did meet one more time. . He showed up unexpectedly one evening a few days later (again with the guitar). I got through the evening only by getting drunk (bad idea, people). Though I thought I ended it definitively that evening, within a couple of days he was calling me again, begging me to 'give it a chance.' When he wouldn't stop calling, I asked a male friend around to answer the phone. After that, he went away.

Note that there was nothing at all about this guy to make me decide in the first five minutes "Nuh-uh". I would have LIKED to like him, which may be the reason that the visceral NOPE was so insistent and so powerful. I don't know what would have happened if I had ignored it, but judging by the speed with which he decided to have an attachment, it would have been an exceedingly 'addictive' sort of relationship once it got going and probably very difficult to escape. Perhaps I flatter myself. Whether I did or I didn't, it didn't matter. he was great, but not for me. I tried to remember this encounter during subsequent periods when I was dating.

Besides the ones I've described, there were plenty of OTHER dud encounters---blind dates, personal ad dates, whatever--- with men I thought were horrible (and who no doubt felt the same about me). Those were always extremely awkward. I got through them by staying detached and reminding myself that I didn't have anything invested in the relationship.

"I'm amazed that you never got killed or raped," said one of my friends recently, when we were reminiscing. Well, that is always a risk if a woman takes responsibility for her relationships. I was extremely careful, though. One specification in my bundle was that the man needed to give me very specific and verifiable personal information and that we needed to speak on the phone EXTENSIVELY and several times before arranging a meeting. I also made sure that my friends had all the information about the man in question that I had and knew exactly what our plans were for the evening. This was in pre-cell phone days, but somebody ALWAYS called me at home a couple of times to check up on me the first time I invited the guy home. (I made sure the guys knew this, too).

[6] Learning to tolerate risk.

The point is, one element of finding love is taking risks. The element of risk can't be eliminated, though some aspects can be mitigated by detachment and honesty. You have to be clear with yourself in advance about your own expectations and you have to be prepared to find out that other people have criteria that you can't meet or don't want to meet or don't feel you should have to meet.

Obviously, I couldn't agree LESS with Greg Behrendt that being what I'll call 'proactive' in looking for a relationship is off-putting to guys as in ALL GUYS. It may indeed be off-putting to Greg Behrendt or to some guys (e.g., who would all be guys who wouldn't care much for me anyway).

But I happen to believe that no matter what you do, the sort of person who is right for you will NEVER be put off by it. A guy who is repelled by being 'chased'---I use the word because it's used in He's Just Not that Into You--- is not a guy I want to be with because a guy who was disposed to be interested in me would by definition be a guy who wouldn't care who did the running. A guy who cares about that sort of thing is not going to get on well with me.

ANYWAY. I am looking forward to this book. Will it have anything new to add to the general understanding of the Sweet Mystery of Love? Will it propose any new techniques for dealing with love's big letdowns?

Now on your local bookstore's shelves: Why You're Still Single. Watch this space for a review.

RELATED POSTINGS

It’s Just Not that Simple (review of He’s Just Not that Into You).

Toxic Love 101 and Sonnet 36: The Love that Dares You to Speak its Name.

Forget the Wedding Planner---Damozel’s Hints for a Unique and Truly Memorable Wedding.

More Help for Singles Who Don’t Want to Be: Why You’re Still Single and Some Reflections Prior to Reading It.

The “Princess Bride” Fallacy and an Eminently Practical Approach to Wedding Etiquette

Look, Look! A good relationship book! Why You’re Still Single by Evan Katz and Linda Holmes [book review; relationships]

Perils of Present-Giving

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:02:53 GMT

Hi! I've changed addresses. To jump to the updated version of this post, please click this link.

Toxic Love 101---The Perils of Present-Giving.

1. Present-giving without pitfalls.

My husband and I coexist peacefully partly because we have made a practice of avoiding the rituals that produce so much grief between other couples we have known.

Specifically, I’m talking about the ritual exchange of gifts that seem to cause grief to so many other couples. We don’t do that. Though we don’t come from similar backgrounds (and in fact were brought up in different countries), we do come from families that don’t treat present-giving as some sort of anxiously-anticipated indicator of the state of the relationship or the other person's view of its significance. By mutual agreement, we seldom or never give each other presents on occasions such as birthdays or anniversaries.

If you think that sounds sort of joyless, read on.

It’s not that we don’t mark the days at all. The birthday boy or girl usually chooses a restaurant and we have a meal. If the birthday boy or girl has expressed some specific desire for some particular thing, the other will generally see to it that the thing in question is (eventually) forthcoming. But the thing/present thing is just not a big part of the occasion for us. It’s also not a matter of great suspense: since we both share our money and have equal access to it, it seems a little ridiculous to make the non-birthday-celebrating person try to guess what the other would like before investing our funds in a present that would be appropriate.

There’s also the financial angle. If I take a large sum out of my savings account to purchase for my husband some particularly pricey item I know he’d probably like, there is subsequently a large sum missing from my savings account (and in other words, from money which is otherwise available if we need it). It seems self-defeating for me to spend the money on the pricey item before checking with him to find out if it’s something he’d like more than having that amount of money available.

For this reason, we treat presents like other purchases, with this one difference. Before an upcoming birthday, one says to the other, “What would you like for your birthday this year?” We discuss it, decide together whether it is feasible, and if we decide that it is, we buy it. If we decide that it isn’t, we don’t.

I guess it might be a bigger issue for people with more money. I can see where if he had a great deal of discretionary income---and especially if we didn’t share what we have—it might hurt my feelings if he didn’t want to spend some of it on me.

So I can see where it’s a hot-button issue for some couples; and perhaps for them, the sort of present you get really does reflect something about where you stand in your loved one’s list of priorities.

2. Tokens of literal esteem.

If you’re not married and/or don’t share your funds, present-giving really can be fraught with symbolic meaning (How much do you love me?). When the two people who are in the couple don’t share the same assumptions about the importance of presents the outcome can be disastrous.

While visiting me years ago, my friend Fran spent a lot of time in antique stores and in shops specializing in imported gifts looking for just the right gifts---that’s gifts plural, armloads of them---for an exceptionally demanding partner. That particular partner came from a family who treated every birthday celebrant as Royalty-for-A-Day, so for each birthday that partner always expected everything she wanted.

Fran, on the other hand, grew up in a WASP-y Southern family where the tradition was to be sedately honored and to receive from other family members the small tokens they had selected. Money, never to be spoken of in a social context, was not to be considered a factor in assessing the merits of the gift.

Of course, the everything-you-want tradition sounds like more fun (at least when your turn comes round) but there are definite drawbacks, one of which is that you grow up to be an entitled brat who believes that there are occasions when the world should revolve around you. In a very young child, that can be endearing; in someone over, say, six, it starts to be obnoxious. It also becomes increasingly expensive as the recipient advances in years and in wants. For example, giving a 4 year old all she wants might mean you buy her a Barbie’s Dreamhouse; for a 16 year old, it’s more likely to be something like the most powerful laptop on the planet or an SUV.

In the case of Fran’s partner, each pending birthday became a land mine because she not only expected to get what she wanted, she went batshit crazy if she didn’t. ("You don't love me enough.") Of course, if you equate the amount and quality of the love you're getting with the value and number of presents you receive, nothing is ever going to be enough..

After spending a lot of her vacation anxiously shopping for Sophie (we’ll call her Sophie because that is not in fact her name), Fran returned home feeling radiantly happy with her armloads of tribute. Alas, none of it turned out to be what Sophie wanted. All of it, plus a dozen red roses, ended up being thrown into the back yard.

Most of the adults I know aren’t as open as that about disappointing gifts, but a lot of them have other ways of letting the partner know that they’ve failed. In some ways, it’s probably easier for the gift-giver if the recipient reacts with shrieks of fury and hurled roses because the failed gift-giver then has the right to get angry back and to accuse the person of being a greedy, mercenary, self-centered, etc., which doubtless feels better than being made to feel like a cheap, unobservant, insensitive, uncaring, etc. by the other’s more restrained display of disappointment and frustration.

3. Disproportionately inexpensive

And I totally understand how a disproportionately inexpensive present or no present can be deeply disappointing, humiliating, and hurtful. It sends a message; i.e.., “I can’t be bothered.” I don’t think for a minute that it is greed that makes certain people I know of both sexes set so much store by expensive presents (jewelry, expensive stereo equipment, vacations to the French Riviera). If you’re not entirely sure how someone feels about you, you might absolutely interpret the sort of gift he gives you as a literal token of esteem.

In that case, inexpensive or inappropriate token = no esteem, at least from the point of view of the recipient. This is something I understand and have, indeed, experienced myself.

Oh, how I cried when, at the age of 7, my younger brother (having spent his Christmas money on a lunch for himself and the teenager who took him shopping) presented me with a single pink (uninflated) balloon! It wasn’t a cool balloon like the ones they have now; it was just six inches of limp pink rubber (I know, okay?). I have never felt the same about balloons since then.

The thing is, it wasn’t just that he’d only spent 5 cents to the 10 I’d spent on his gift, but that---as the above-referenced teen gleefully reported to our youngest brother---Ben had waited to buy my gift till after he’d bought gifts for everyone else, including: our younger brother, the guy who helped my dad out in the yard, the babysitter, and (or especially) the little girl across the street. As the teenager reported, Ben had done this on the theory that my present didn’t matter as much because I didn't matter as much. In other words---the outrage!---he gave me a crap present because he didn’t like me as much as everyone else.

I didn’t like him either especially, but I’d spent a long time (without stopping for lunch) looking for his present and had eventually spent 10 cents to buy him a really unusual bank made from tin fashioned in the shape of a mailbox and with its own miniature key. The key was what really sold it. And it cost me double (in those days of the literal Dimestore) what his present had cost him---double.

My parents tried to sit down and reason with me, and my dad said he would personally escort Ben to the store and oversee the purchase of another present, but I refused. It was too late. It was also too late for the little fellow to make up with me (after pressure from the parents) by piping in his sweet little 7 year old voice, “I’m very sorry, [Sister]! I love you!”

I punched him in the stomach.

I also outed him and the little girl across the street to both sets of parents about a little game the two of them were playing they liked to call "Checking bottoms."

So I know from experience that even a small child can recognize a disproportionately cheap and inappropriate gift sends a message. The message is: “You’re not a priority.”

Though I was 9 when I had the falling out with my brother, and eventually even learned to love him again (he grew up and turned out to be pretty cool), the memory remains, which is probably why I spend so much time and energy searching for gifts for my in any case incredibly deserving nieces and nephews. I do not want any of them to be traumatized by a pink balloon episode.

4. Why it shouldn't matter to people and why it matters anyway

It’s not that I don’t understand the perils of present-giving; I just think adults in a relationship need to come to terms with the whole present thing. It’s stupid to have every birthday, Christmas, and anniversary be the occasion for the sort of tension that seems to erupt between many of my partnered friends.

In the days when men owned and controlled all the money, and the wife had to wait for what she got till he decided to let her have it, present-giving was very likely a truly big deal; in I Love Lucy, Lucy either had to wait till Ricky wanted her to have that mink stole she craved (I know) before she could have one; or else she had to find a way to get one for herself by sneaking behind his back to earn some extra money or through some sort of connivance.

Every anniversary and birthday was a big event because she might get something she really wanted without having to trick him into letting her have it. And because she didn’t have a right to use his money to buy those things herself, each expensive gift passed as an expression of how much he really cared.

But these days, women have their own money. Why, then, do my young friends still get into horrible dilemmas over presents? If the young female ones want, say, a big sparkly ring, why don’t they buy it themselves? Why are my young male friends perplexed about what to give their girlfriends----why don’t they know their girlfriends well enough to know?

Furthermore, why aren’t the recipients-elect seriously concerned about the financial burden on the giver-elect of purchasing a ring that costs, say, the same as a semester’s tuition at a decent law school? Why wouldn’t the recipient be really reluctant to be the source of that sort of financial burden? Isn’t that exactly the sort of thing that’s likely to put a strain on a relationship?

But on the other side of the issue, a disappointing present is disappointing not necessarily because of the price (I myself have---graciously, of course!---accepted many disappointing and expensive presents over the years) but because it shows that the giver of the gift doesn’t really know what you would like. In other words, doesn’t know you. Which is perhaps another reason why some people over-react when they get presents they don’t want. The subtext of their expressions of disappointment is probably “How could you not know that I didn’t want this?”

5. Great presents I've received (a partial list for the edification of the gifting-challenged)

My first husband bought me a bejewelled ceramic dragon that everyone else thought was quite ugly but which I loved. At the time, it was mall gift-store kitsch, but hell: I liked dragons. I've still got it; and I could sell if it I wanted (but I don't) for about seven or eight times what he spent on it. It's still mall gift-store kitsch, but it is "collector's item" mall gift-store kitsch.

My English mate, Rumcove, who never has a lot of extra cash, is an expert at giving great presents. For example,one Christmas, he gave me a snow-globe enclosing a very pretty couple of children dressed in white riding on a white horse to commemorate our favorite line from a British comedy we both used to quote. (For Brit-com fans, a hint: "He's touching the precious things of the shop!")

Another year, he bought me a plastic bottle of soap bubbles in the shape of the children's storybook character "Noddy," a plastic replica of Noddy's car, and two Noddy dishes---all children's things. He sent me "the Noddy swag" because his nickname for me was "Noddy" (for wooden-headedness, a certain chirpy disregard of reality, and epic klutziness). I still have and display these not-very-expensive items. He's also really good at finding music and books that I love. I will like him till I die for introducing me to Ian Dury, Billy Bragg, and Nick Hornby.

My friend Fran once gave me a small framed painting of Siamese cat that she'd picked up somewhere and an embroidered sunglasses case with a picture of a Siamese cat on it. Another time she sent me a wee drawing from France of a coffee cup sitting on a table. All these gifts referred to certain significant events in the course of our friendship.

Just once during my marriage I settled in advance on what I wanted and demanded a particular present. It was a ring in a design that struck me as unique--not very expensive, but not cheap either---and for reasons I can’t now explain even to myself it was important to me that it come nominally from him. So I circled its picture and serial number in a catalogue, drew arrows pointing to it, wrote "THIS ONE" next to it, and left it for him to find, along with the Visa card. Since receiving it, I've worn it every day and have received numerous compliments on it. Every time I get such a compliment, my husband announces, “I bought her that” in a tone of great self-satisfaction.

And that's another technique.

RELATED POSTINGS

It’s Just Not that Simple (review of He’s Just Not that Into You).

Toxic Love 101 and Sonnet 36: The Love that Dares You to Speak its Name.

Forget the Wedding Planner---Damozel’s Hints for a Unique and Truly Memorable Wedding.

More Help for Singles Who Don’t Want to Be: Why You’re Still Single and Some Reflections Prior to Reading It.

The “Princess Bride” Fallacy and an Eminently Practical Approach to Wedding Etiquette

Look, Look! A good relationship book! Why You’re Still Single by Evan Katz and Linda Holmes [book review; relationships]

Forget the Wedding Planner---Hints for Weddings

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:06:35 GMT

Hi! I've changed addresses. To see the updated version of this post, click this link.

Forget the "wedding planner"--Damozel's Infallible Hints for a UNIQUE & TRULY MEMORABLE wedding.

Before you plan your wedding, consider taking that same amount of money and using it for some other purpose. If you still want a wedding because it sounds like great fun, make sure that it is.

[1] None of the "spectators" (a/k/a "the people you invited to be present because they care enough about you to bother) care about or will notice details. Nobody cares whether the flowers tone perfectly with the bridesmaids' gowns. Your fiance is right. If there are a few self-appointed wedding critics in your roster of guests, concentrate on the goofy lovestruck expression you should be wearing before, after, and during your wedding, and sweetly say, "Oh, it didn't go off perfectly, I know, but at a moment like this, who cares?" The critic will be so ashamed that he/she will dissolve on the spot.

The young woman I recently saw married in Key West received the highest praise a bride can receive from one of her guests: "You made me believe in love again!" Even I shed a tiny crystal tear or two. I will never forget the expression on the face of the groom as he looked at her; or either of their faces during their wedding dance.

[2] The best weddings aren't pageants or set pieces, but a charming adaptation of tradition and convention to the circumstances. The bridesmaids don't even have to match. A bride who looks radiantly happy will be remembered forever afterward long after they have forgotten your dress. All the bridegoom needs is a suitable expression. Any of the following will do: radiant, adoring, stunned (with joy), delighted. "Deer in the headlights" or "severely hung over" are old standards and will amuse the guests much more, but for a truly beautiful occasion, the others are preferable.

[3] The people in the wedding party aren't your employees. They are presumably friends and family members.   You're actually not paying them to be there and in fact, they are likely to feel obligated to confer benefits on you. They may feel compelled to purchase clothes they will never wear again and travel to distant locations in order to be at your side. Lavish gratitude is in order---on your part.

Don't you want your wedding party and your guests to remember the occasion with enjoyment and affection?

If your wedding party look as if they are enjoying the day because in fact they are enjoying the day, they and your guests will remember your wedding forever afterward and your wedding will become a model for all the young unmarried girls who are present. If your wedding party look like a perfectly posed chorus line, they will look like every other wedding party everywhere in the history of weddings (except for the color scheme and the length/fullness of the dresses) and no one will remember a thing about them.  You're not going to remember much of it anyway, so concentrate on making sure the people who showed up to support you have fun.  You will have your fun afterward. (Shut up. I mean, you'll have your fun when you watch the videos; what did you think I meant? Though you'll only have fun if you're a good bride and not an entitled little princess who lives out her fantasy at the expense of everyone else).

[4] The purpose of a wedding is to celebrate a marriage. Keep your eye on the ball, girl. If your wedding is the best day of your life, then God help you.

[5] A delicious wedding cake is as rare as a star, whereas all wedding cakes are elaborately decorated and have a little thingajig on top. If you offer a really tasty cake, people will remember it for the rest of their lives. The best wedding cake I ever tasted was homemade. It was cream (real-cream) filled and flavored with real lemon peel. It had plain white icing and a tiny Christmas tree on top. I can still taste it today.

[6] A perfect wedding that people "will remember forever" is designed for the guests. If you want yours to stand out, think about how to give your guests a great time. You can spend much less money and people will love you for it. Put your money into delicious-tasting (as opposed to elegant-looking) refreshments that you can afford. Asking your guests to pay for their own is a social solecism that should make you hide your head in shame. If you can't afford liquor, give them wine or beer with appropriate food. A selection of incredibly tasty tidbits or sandwiches is better than a mediocre sit-down dinner featuring rubber cuisine, cardboard rolls, and air pie.

[7] If you want your wedding to be memorable to your guests and your wedding party, bear in mind that it really isn't all about you, no matter what you've heard. It isn't "your day" in the sense of "you get to have whatever you want the whole time", but in the sense of "people are taking a lot of trouble for you, so put your best foot forward."

[8] Even if you're the bride, your guests are your guests.   Remember that. Keep reminding yourself that you're also a hostess as well as the guest of honor. Focus on spreading happiness and fun, not on getting people to do your royal bidding. Isn't it enough that everyone is going to stand up when you enter the room?

[9] After the wedding, no one will remember your wedding dress unless it actually consists of pants or has a seriously plunging neckline or is wildly inappropriate for the setting (e.g., a seriously plunging neckline in church). They won't remember whether it was white, ivory, or "candlelight." They won't remember whether you wore a veil or no veil or the color of your flowers. They will just remember that your dress was whit[ish] and that you looked radiant.

[10] It's not all about you. And even after you're married, you'll need his continuing endorsement. Treat the groom, his friends, and most of all, his family, with utmost care and consideration, even if you secretly hate them all.

[11]  See this site: Etiquette Hell. Read liberally from all of the sections dealing with weddings. Making your future spouse, in-laws, your wedding party and your guests hate your guts is not an auspicious beginning to your marriage.

[12] It's NOT all about YOU. I don't care what you mother or your favorite Bride-serving magazine told you. Listen to your Aunt Damozel.

RELATED POSTINGS

Forget the Wedding Planner---Damozel’s Hints for a Unique and Truly Memorable Wedding.

The “Princess Bride” Fallacy and an Eminently Practical Approach to Wedding Etiquette

Fandom

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 07:00:58 GMT

What is this thing called fandom?

Thanks to the internet, we have access to new and improved ways to feed our private obsessions. Probably the manufacture of cults of obsession is the most harmless of these---but is it completely harmless? I thought about creating a list of posts from various internet boards and then I thought, "No....That would be wrong." Instead, I created a parody. Each and every post is literally modelled on a real one posted somewhere.

JAYDREAMING BELIEVER'S FIRST POST EVA! She loves pure & chaste from afar.... In The Church of the Over-Invested Fangirl. A parody. Except exactly like the real thing.

Key West Wedding

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:04:27 GMT

Hi! I've relocated to a new address. To jump to the current version of this post, click here.

An Ideal Ceremony.

I am about as anti-wedding as it is possible to be. My usual advice to brides planning weddings is: don’t.

Don’t these dewy-eyed young brides realize that most of the spectacles on which they or their parents are spending thousands (or hundreds of thousands of dollars) are going to result in (at best) a wedding DVD and an album of photographs no one else on the planet is ever going to be really interested in looking at? (Even your children, if you have them together, are just going to look at the book for a laugh).

Haven’t they heard of ‘starter marriages’? Wouldn’t they rather have a house or an investment portfolio or even a really interesting honeymoon?

And is there any event on earth more likely to cause otherwise charming and likable young people to forget everything they ought to know about getting through life with dignity and the respect of one’s peers and elders? Judging by one of my new favorite websites, Etiquette Hell, the answer is no.

That said, I did recently attend a very beautiful wedding in Key West over the past weekend. The bride, a young friend of mine, is a former student. Because she and the groom paid their own way (a precedent I’d like to recommend), they planned it carefully and kept their guest list pared down so that only close friends and family would attend. They spent their money where it would give their guests maximum enjoyment: on a lavish rehearsal dinner in an elegant setting; a lovely (but simple) spectacle, and a reception where the guests were given a delicious sit-down dinner and a fun party afterwards.

The bride did invest a well-spent sum on a most beautiful wedding gown (the spectacle part). The wedding took place on a dock or terrace over the gulf. It was late afternoon, so there was a pleasant breeze. When the bride appeared, the sun (in an amazing bit of stage-management) burst out from behind the clouds. It was an extremely satisfying occasion.

More to the point, the young couple (who met on the internet) have been a couple for over five years, so their starry-eyed promises to one another didn’t evoke the usual cynicism I can’t help feeling when I see young people exchanging vows of eternal love and fidelity.

There was something particularly moving in the fact that the bride and groom themselves planned and paid for the delightful occasion that this wedding turned out to be. In other words, it wasn’t the usual scenario where a spoiled twenty-something indulges her red carpet fantasies at the expense of others. The flowers weren’t the color the bride had asked for, but not a soul noticed, and in the end, they toned perfectly with the deepening indigo tints of the Gulf just before sunset.

RELATED POSTINGS

Forget the Wedding Planner---Damozel’s Hints for a Unique and Truly Memorable Wedding.

The “Princess Bride” Fallacy and an Eminently Practical Approach to Wedding Etiquette

Friendly and Unfriendly Ghosts

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 06:43:37 GMT

Hi! I've changed my address! To jump to the current version of this post, click on this link.

Friendly and Unfriendly Ghosts

My husband Don claimed to be able to see or sense both sorts. And since his death, I get the impression sometimes that he's pretty persistent himself. Yes, I know. Absurd, yes?

My husband Don was a strange man. As time goes by, I understand him less. Everything I thought I knew about him is disappearing into his enigmatic last few days and all of the things I learned about him after..

On December 26, 2000 he collapsed at home. It was about 9:00 in the morning, I think. It was a beautiful, balmy Florida day; he’d had a lot to drink the night before, so when we woke up, I wasn’t surprised to hear him say he had a headache. At the time, I lived down the street from my workplace, and for some reason I no longer recall, I woke up worried about something I’d left or failed to bring home. I was also worried about our Siamese cat, Sam, who had escaped a few days before and hadn’t---uncharacteristically---returned home since.

“I’m so worried about Sam,” I told him tearfully, as I was preparing to leave. He was sort of half-awake and was sort of groggy. But the grogginess wasn’t different from his average morning grogginess. He was never a morning person and---as I mentioned---he’d had a lot to drink the night before..

“He’s all right,” Don said vaguely. “He’ll be back. When you get back, I’ll get up and we’ll have a walk. I’ll find him.”

“You think he’s okay?”

“He’s okay. I’m sure of it. I’ve got ESP, you know.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Head aches,” he mumbled. “I just need to take a nap. I’ll get up later.”

“Is it all right if I stay at work for a bit? I’d probably get more done if I stayed at work for a couple of hours.”

“See you later,” he said. Which was absolutely the last thing he ever said to me.

I don’t remember my reason for wanting to go to work, but I remember---and this is true---that as I was just sitting down to go through whatever it was, I felt a sudden and very intense surge of anxiety. I gathered up my papers and left immediately. I was already running when I saw my house and my 16 year old stepdaughter standing out on the porch with the phone in her hand. As soon as she saw me, she started screaming my name. She was not, and never has been, the screaming type. I went cold---not because I thought that Don was in any sort of trouble, but because I thought our cat had been killed.

“What?” I said, “What? Did something happen to Sam? Jessie? Is it Sam?”

“It’s Daddy!” she yelled in that same high-pitched squeal. “Please come in! Hurry! Please, hurry!”

Inside the house, my 7 year old stepson was sobbing. “I was asleep,” he said, in between the sobs, “And Daddy came and woke me up. At first I thought he was playing with me because he was going “Unnnnnhhhhh” and then he stumbled in the kitchen and fell down. Now he won’t get up! I don’t know what happened to him!”

Don was sprawled on the floor of the kitchen, making loud snoring sounds. He had a bottle of aspirin in his hand, and he’d got one of them into his mouth; I could see the white residue on his chin. I couldn’t make him hear me. I felt a great and rising panic---I assumed he’d had a stroke----but I sat there talking to him, telling him that the ambulance was on the way and that I’d be there for him. I don’t know what I said, actually.

It was an aneurysm, a definitive cerebral hemorrhage that flooded his brain and ensured, almost from the start that he was going to end up dead or dead for all practical purposes. But the neurosurgeon in the ER said that they could operate, but that I had to decide right away. While he was telling me my options, he was just perceptibly shaking his head. “It’s unlikely he’ll ever be fully functional again,” he said. “This isn’t like an ordinary stroke.”

If we operated, was there a chance that he might have the use of his faculties? Would he be able to walk or to speak? Was that even possible? They wouldn’t say yes or no. Strong likelihood that he would be completely inert, capable of feeling pain perhaps, but not of much else. I couldn’t decide. “You have to decide now,” said the doctor. Fortunately, my friends John and Lee were with me. “I have never heard a doctor be clearer,” Lee told me. “You have to let him go. You know Don. He wouldn’t like those chances.”

My brother is a pathologist and used to be an ER doc. After appropriate authorization, he made a couple of telephone calls. “I don’t think surgery is a realistic option,” he told me gently. And, “Amy and I are on the way down there. Hang on.”

After that, there was just the interval during which we were waiting for him to die. The organ donor people were all over it before the day was over (and I think their work is vital and I know that Don would have wanted it, but they should have told me that keeping him alive in the ICU for the remaining five days that he continued to live would be completely at my expense.) So I had him hooked up to a respirator. By the end of the day, he was effectively gone. The doctor scraped the sole of his foot with a comb and his toes fanned out---the last thing he ever did on his own. “That’s not good,” said the doctor. “That’s a reflex you in infants. The higher brain centers are gone now. If we operated, he might go on living, but he’d be a plant.”

He said this because I wanted to know if it would be comforting to Don in any way if I were to sit with him. “Nothing there,” he said. He wasn’t the tactful sort. But it’s the same thing my brother told me when he arrived.

“Don’t sit there,” my sister-in-law urged me. “He doesn't know. You don’t want to remember him this way.”

“It may take him a couple of days to die,” said my brother. The idea was that we would keep him hooked up to the respirator till he died on his own. If we took him off it, he would have a heart attack and his heart wouldn’t be available to the organ donor people. “Don’t sit here,” my brother said. “He’s not there. By now---" This was late the following day--- "the receptors are all gone. He’s only breathing because of the respirator. He can't hear you or know you're there----nothing's left.”

He didn’t look at that stage as if he were effectively dead. He looked as if he were very peacefully asleep. When I touched his hands, they remained inert, but they were warm. After I'd been there awhile though, the lack of any connection began to tear at me. His insensibility seemed like an affront. I felt abandoned, forgotten, cancelled out. It was that more than anything that made me decide I couldn't sit in that room watching his body die. The part of him that mattered had disappeared from that room the first day.

It was only away from that room that I started to feel re-connected. I think a lot of people who have lost a spouse or a family member will know what I am talking about. There's a period of time---it doesn't go on forever---when you have the sense that the 'departed' is anything but that. During that intial time, it's as if the person is still somewhere close by, out of sight, but not out of hearing. It's a profound sense of concentrated presence. Is it wishful thinking? I personally think not, but I also don't think it matters.

A few days before, he had said to me---apropos of nothing---“If something happened to me, I don’t know what you’d do. I don’t know who’d look after you. Rumcove wouldn’t be any use to you; I know you’re good friends but I don’t think you could count on him if something happened to me.”

Alarmed, I said, “What do you mean? Is something going to happen to you?”

He went on looking serious, but then he laughed and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

But did he know differently at some level? He and I always had a very weird psychic bond; during our seven years of marriage, we had a lot of trivial but very strange shared perceptions. Don believed that he had ESP and he believed in ghosts and visions, though he didn’t talk about it much. I didn’t believe in any of it, but I had a few odd experiences all the same.

One of them was the next day. I woke up with a gasp of terror; I had suddenly had the strongest feeling that I was being watched. Avidly watched. When I opened my eyes, I thought for one confused second that three hooded figures were leaning over the bed looking down at me before they resolved themselves into three bathrobes hanging on hooks on the bedroom door. Three robes that were always there.

“What’s the matter?” Don said. He was already awake. I laughed sheepishly. “The robes on the door---“ I said, gesturing. “I know,” said Don calmly. “I saw them too. They woke me up too. It gave me a bad feeling.”

I laughed about it then, and it is too ridiculous to take seriously, but it still bothers me to remember it. Could he have known something and could I somehow have picked up on his knowledge or fear? The doctor told me afterward that the brain can start to bleed very slowly and that the seepage can definitely affect the person’s mood. Could he have known at some level?

In his own way, Don was a very spiritual person. He believed in a spirit realm. He claimed (not more than a dozen times in our lives, but at least that many times) that he could sense the presence of spirits and he said that he received messages from them. During one of our conversations, he said, “For example, there’s a spirit here now,” and instantly, all the flames of all the candles in the room---we’d had a candlelight dinner and we both found candlelight relaxing---started to waver. Why? We were indoors; there weren’t any drafts. “Don’t say that,” I said, shivering. “Why not? It’s quite harmless,” he said matter of factly. “Some are malevolent, but this one isn’t."

When I accused him of trying to frighten me, he clammed up and when I pressed him, he said rather angrily that he didn't want to talk about it anymore. People who can sense these things aren’t supposed to talk about them, he said.

For awhile we lived in an apartment where everyone in the family was always uneasy. Why? It was just an apartment---and in fact, the nicest one I’d ever had. But nobody slept well there and we all at various times would get up in the night to see who was in the living room, walking back and forth. There was never anyone there and when you got up to look, there was never any noise either. Weird.

I had one (but only one) terrible, restless night in that apartment. All night long, I was tossing and turning because of an absolutely unshakeable feeling that there was someone standing in the room, directly across from the bed. It was just a feeling; I can’t explain it. When I looked, there was no one there. The next morning, when Don woke up, I said, “I couldn’t sleep at all last night.”

“I know,” he said soberly. “There was somebody in the room all night long, standing there—“ pointing to the exact spot. Of course I questioned him about this---I was frightened; I don’t mind admitting it----but he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer my questions and he wasn’t even particularly interested or bothered. “I don’t know; whatever it was, it’s gone now anyway,” was all he’d say. “It’s better not to get involved.”

But it’s not exactly surprising to me that after he was dead, he seemed (and seems) to have persisted. Immediately afterward, I had a number of experiences that I might, if I weren’t afraid of sounding insane, attribute to his having found some way to make his presence felt. I think a lot of widows have similar experiences and maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but there was something particularly pointed and tangible (that’s not the right word) about mine.

While he was still engaged in dying, my brother took me to see a friend who was a professional bereavement counselor. I couldn’t focus; I could barely speak. She had a candle in her office; I was staring at it because it was there; I’d had a lot of Ativan and was feeling hazy and numb. Suddenly, as I watched, the flame started wavering madly. It was actually flickering. “Look,” I said. They all stopped talking and looked at me. “No,” I said, “at the candle.” They looked at it. “That’s Don,” I announced. I didn’t believe it myself; I still don’t really, in the sense of intellectual belief, but at the time I wanted to believe it. “Stop doing that for a minute, Don,” I said. The candle stopped flickering. “Do it again,” I said and it started again. “See?” I said. “He’s here now. He’s not back there in the hospital. He’s right here.”

Sure, sure, sure, they assured me, looking at me compassionately. Yes, they could see it too. I don’t know if they did or didn’t. I think if they had they’d have been more frightened or at least more taken aback than they seemed. I don’t even know anymore what I saw or told myself I was seeing. I was tranquilized, numb, stunned. I was also unhinged---though tranquilly at that point---by grief. I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.

But then a few days later, I was alone in my house for the very first weekend without him, I wandered around aimlessly, looking at things. I mean I was making myself look at things. You have to do that. Here is his wallet, here are his shoes; here is the last shirt he wore the last time he ever dressed----all that. I went to his closet and opened the door. He had a lot of clothes. I stood there looking at them, thinking that I couldn’t deal with them any time soon. I knew he’d want his things to go to charity---he was always very generous to the homeless and people down on their luck----but I just didn’t feel I could deal with them at that moment.

And at that moment the whole rack went crashing to the floor, scattering shirts, ties, trousers, and shoes in a tangled heap at my feet. I stared down at them, open-mouthed, and then slowly began pikcing them up, shivering. I couldn’t leave the things lying there on the floor because I couldn't close the door and, try as I might, I couldn’t get the rack to go back where it had been before. I gathered the clothes up, except for the things I particularly wanted to keep----certain of his neckties and some things I thought his kids might like---and called up a charity shop where a family acquaintance volunteered. I could tell he thought I was being precipitate about getting rid of Don’s things, but I didn’t feel like explaining. I just felt very sure that that’s what Don wanted. And I was pretty sure he wanted it, for whatever reason, right then. And I had the strongest and most terrifying and yet at the same time most comforting feeling that he was right there watching me.

A friend of mine---someone who can be madly matter of fact--came to stay with me after his memorial service. The next day she said, in that very matter of fact tone of voice, “Don woke me up last night. I’m sure he was there. He was looking for you, I think---he didn’t expect to find me sleeping in his bed instead. But he asked me if I wanted a drink. Well, that’s Don, right?”

So I don’t know. Is there a part of a human being that can be disconnected from the body? Do some people get the option of hanging about for awhile after the body is gone to take care of their unfinished business? If so, I am pretty sure he would do that---he left a lot undone.

And I have to say, absurd as it sounds, I hope it is true. I don’t think it’s wrong to want to believe, even if it isn’t quite credible, that love lasts and that death is just the dash between one incomplete thought and the next.

RELATED POSTINGS

Friendly and Unfriendly Ghosts.

The False Nostalgia Syndrome.

How Donne Missed the Point.

The Ghost in the Image: Photography and Memory.

Thanatology 101---The Need for an Etiquette of Dying.

The Ghost in the Image

Wed, 07 Sep 2005 22:19:52 GMT

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The Ghost in the Image: Photography & Memory

Photography recaptures the past more effectively than a videocamera ever can or will. It's a sort of magical recapturing, not only of the moment, but of what preceded and followed it. And if the photographer is long gone, of the world as it presented itself to that person.

I have a lot of photographs of my late husband Don and my first husband, whom I divorced when I was 30. I was going through a trunk and ended up looking through a pile of them.

I contend---and I know most people would disagree with me----that a photograph is a far more evocative and powerful aid to memory than a videotape. To me, a videotape is as puzzling and unrevealing as reality itself as it unscrolls before you. It’s also equally random. Here, a beloved and usually cheerful sister-in-law sits in a porch swing, wearing a brooding expression and looking pointedly away from the inquisitive lens. There my mother---a natural star----plays to the camera, waving, calling out, smiling. The children, always eager to be the center of things, dress up in costumes, chatter, and perform. My brother, never what you’d call the social type, scowls and moves out of range. The lens moves over and away from things. It’s always on the move. And like Heisenberg’s observer, it alters the reality into which it intrudes. People become conscious of themselves and stay conscious.

But a photograph that I’ve taken myself is a sort of node or gateway back into the layers of my own memory. There was a moment before and after. There were events that surrounded those moments. It happened quickly, before people could arrange their faces, their clothing, their posture.

It’s true that most of them aren’t of people looking sad. I was always a polite photographer. But there are photographs of people shortly after they looked that way. There are a couple of photographs of people taken days or weeks before they died. In the pictures, their image stays with me and it stays still. Why did I not notice how old my late husband (only 55) had suddenly started to look before the aneurysm? In the photographs, you can see a change in him, as if his body had got the message weeks before the event. This irrepressible and charismatic man who in earlier photographs was invariably joyous and smiling, suddenly looks haggard, unsure, bereft. Why? By which I mean, why did I not see this? In the photographs of a family party shortly before the event, he’s smiling, but the smile doesn’t go all the way to his eyes. His eyes are remote. In all the photographs, he’s already not quite there with the rest of us.

When I look into the pictures of the past, I can remember every single thing that preceded and followed it---not how things looked so much as how they felt. Many of the memories are ambivalent, mixing up happiness and the reverse in the way life will. Here, for example, is the photograph of my stepson (five or six at the time) laughing and---egged on by the irrepressible father---sitting in a British taxicab that some local ‘pub’ had parked outside as an inducement to tourists, naughtily giving the camera the English two-fingered finger. Five minutes later he was throwing one of the worst tantrums ever because his dad decided we wouldn't have time to play miniature golf after all. And the picture makes me really sad because where is that little boy now? I mean this literally; his mom, who walked out on his dad when he was two, never liked me, never stopped resenting me, and never allowed me to see him or speak to him again after Don died.

In the photographs of my first husband, you can also see a transition. I never thought about it, but in my younger days I must have had a weakness for irrepressible guys, because thought they had little else in common, they had that. The first was literally ‘full of fun,’ looking for fun, expecting it. “He always has that twinkle in his eyes,” my mother said. But in the later photographs, before we broke up, you can see how fed up he was. Again, the look has changed; the twinkle is gone; the twitched-up smile put on for the camera is clearly exactly that.

I’m looking now at a photograph of myself, years ago now, dancing at a tourist bar, with my arms are full of small stuffed animals that Don won from one of those vending machine games where you pay for the chance to ‘win’ one of them by picking it up with a hook or claw and dropping it through a chute. He went through a period when due to some quirk in his chronically wavering luck he could clear out any of those machines anywhere in a single night. He used to do that on a regular basis (much to the disgust of the owners). We gave away an enormous sack of them to a children’s cancer ward, but I kept back a couple of them. They were only cheap little things, not worth as much as the price of your chances, but lots of people try for them and fail. During that period, Don never failed. It seemed like some sort of trivial magic.

Anyway, in this picture I am laughing, but even someone who didn't know me would see the anxiety in my expression. He was on the point of losing another job---he was in a very high turn-over industry----and he was dealing with it by spending his time in bars drinking and winning little stuffed animals from vending machines. He thought it was a sign of something, I think. I wanted to believe it was.

There's an earlier one of Don, me, and the kids at the Sandford zoo. Everyone's smiling, but even in the ones my stepdaughter took you can sense a certain distance and opposition between Don and me. Even in the ones where we are sitting together, we aren't really in synch. That picture was taken after the very first time I really saw him lose his temper and---in his parlance---'throw a wobbler.' It ended with him picking up the cordless phone and hurling it against the wall, where it smashed into a thousand pieces. The only thing I can't remember is why. I am sure I was implicated.

Later, after his father died and things began to go seriously against him---he took it personally; he'd always believed himself to be fortune's favored; and, applying the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, he blamed me for it----the outbursts became more frequent. On that particular day, though, I was shocked into placating him so we could go ahead with our zoo plans. So here I am, smiling qualifiedly into the camera, holding up my stepson so he can feed the emus, sitting perched on a bench with the stepson on my lap and my stepdaughter on the other side of me. It was a nice little zoo down in the south central part of the state; I don't suppose I'll ever get the chancee to go back now. The pictures remind me not only of the fun I had feeding the animals but also of the misery that preceded them. It was all transitory and it all feels the same now.

Photographs hold still. They show you beyond any possibility of dispute how it looked. A videotape is always moving and the faces often go by hastily as the person being filmed waves it away. More often than not, the person being filmed looks irritable, frowns, holds up a hand to cover the camera, and looks away till it’s gone. People are easier to capture in a flash or the blink of a shutter; or they don’t have time to react till it’s gone.

Looking back at my old photographs, the most evocative aren't the ones I took of them, but the ones they took themselves. For example, the first husband, from whom I was divorced: if I ever doubted that there was a time when he loved me, I can look back and see the proof in the sheer number of photographs there are of me, studying, eating, sleeping, playing with my cats, playing on a kid’s swingset, hiking, drinking wine out of the bottle, etc., etc. The pictures have that irrevocable, bygone feel: the young person in them could be a stranger; I’m nothing like the person she was and I don’t like her or want to remember what it was like to be her or to feel her feelings. But the person on the other side of the camera was someone whose unfailing affection and generosity and trust I had to grow up to understand, and whose value I didn’t recognize until well after the fact. It’s odd how much of that comes through when I look back at him looking at me.

As for Don, the strongest and most evocative and least ambivalent memories I have are the ones that surface when I look at the many landscape photographs he took when we were pursuing that hobby. It seems extraordinary to realize it, but when I look at one of my all-time favorites, a photograph of a canal in the charming town of Cedar Key, I’m literally seeing what he saw during a period of our life that is not only gone but that can never be recovered or resurrected. And the same holds true for the photograph he took the first time we went to a certain quiet family beach where his sadness and anxiety was temporarily alleviated by the intense colors and especially the amazing yellow tint of the rocks they'd dug up from the sea against the very blue water.

Looking through those photographs isn’t like looking through a window into my own past but like looking through his eyes into his. Extraordinary.

RELATED POSTINGS

Friendly and Unfriendly Ghosts.

The False Nostalgia Syndrome.

How Donne Missed the Point.

The Ghost in the Image: Photography and Memory.

Thanatology 101---The Need for an Etiquette of Dying.

Image drawn by Mr. Tenniel; painted by Damozel!

Love in Midlife

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 02:22:07 GMT

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Love in Midlife---How to Fail at Finding It.

bonus sonnet for the day: 57

“I came to you because you’re the expert in relationships,” said my friend. “You know--in finding them. You’ve been so lucky that way. How do you do it? Seriously, I need to know.”

Wait. I'm an expert in relationships? I was taken aback so I didn’t answer right away. Then I realized that what she says is true in a way---though only in a way. I have been married three times and I’m still in my forties. The first ended in divorce; the second in my spouse’s death due to an aneurysm. But I’ve been very happily remarried now for going on for four years. And I was never alone for long during the interim periods. How do I do it? There’s nothing about me which on the surface would explain it. As I considered the point, I became slightly intrigued myself. Perhaps I really am an expert! There must be some explanation, surely, why I’d been repeatedly successful in finding companionship while others, more endowed with the assets which the media would have you believe are essential for success, spent their evenings having dinner on a tray in front of the television?

My friend was sad because after being alone for several years following her divorce, she’d decided that an extreme makeover was the only solution to her continuing failure to find a companion. She’s a charming person, but charming persons often do end up alone. We live in a small community where there are many single women, many young and beautiful single women. My friend had occasional dates, but they weren't going anywhere. The men she'd really liked weren't following through.

We were having our talk over lunch in a quite good local restaurant, but my friend was having a green salad instead of the curried chicken salad sandwich they do so well and that she really wanted because, well, I don’t need to say it do I? She was thinner than I’d ever seen her, but in that peaked, scraggy way that happens when it’s a woman of a certain age whose only concern is thinness as opposed to good health, energy, fitness, etc. She’d also had breast implants---which were hurting her---and had her face peeled. She looked like a really badly lighted photograph of herself as she’d been 10 years before. But she’s still a pretty woman. She always was.

She had recently invested a substantial sum in having the work done. She was upset that she wasn’t seeing the dividends. According to her, she now was attracting more men in places like singles bars, a sort of man who hadn’t been much interested before, and in whom she wasn’t interested now. Those men were not the men she wanted to attract. The men she considers to be of her own rank in life didn’t pay any more attention to her than before and do I have to explain it? The next bit of our conversation is such a tedious cliché that I almost hate to relate it. But I sort of have to make my point.

“You know what men are like,” she said morosely. “All of the ones our age seem to want younger women. You’d think that by the time they reach a certain age the demands of seeing to a 28 year old would start to seem daunting to them. But they’re all scared that life is passing them by and they all want a second chance. I can’t compete. I was an idiot to think I could. I might as well have that sandwich; there’s no use starving myself. Excuse me, miss, I’d like to order something else.”

And she told me about the men she’d gone out with. There was a partner in a local law firm (my friend is also an attorney) that she’d been mooning over for about 10 years. He was a sort of iconic successful trial lawyer, silver-haired, chiseled, and with an unending flow of conversation. My friend didn’t care that all of it was about himself. She was very willing to listen to someone go on at length about his brilliant closing argument or the utter imbecility of the judge respecting the correct interpretation of a close point under the Rules of Civil Procedure. The problem with Fred---for that is his name---from her standpoint wasn’t that he was arrogant or a bore, but that he distinctly preferred the company of younger women during the intervals between giving her a whirl for a few days. He wasn’t even particularly reticent about the fact that he was looking for the right woman to marry, which for him meant someone young who didn’t already have children of her own. My friend didn’t qualify.

Richard was a surgeon. He liked talking to her and took her out often enough to keep her hoping but he couldn’t resist temptation and he was surrounded by it. Malcolm, a college professor, was still obsessed with his ex-wife. Chuck was an alcoholic. Danny---well, Danny was sweet, and he really seemed to like her for herself, “but you know, Danny isn’t the kind of person I could actually be with. He’s really kind of clingy and he graduated from [small nonprestigious college]. He’s younger than me and shorter. I really enjoy his company, but that’s clearly not happening. I mean he isn’t someone I’d actually marry. He’s not---‘ Here, I’m glad to say, she paused reluctantly and did some air quotes, “’husband material.’”

No? I thought of Danny, his kind face and translucent blue eyes. He was one of the sweetest men I’d ever known. But it’s true that he’s younger, shorter, less educated, and doesn’t make as much money as my friend. Maybe he is clingy; I don’t know. He calls her up a lot during the times when they’re ‘on’ (the dry spells between the lawyers and doctors she considers to be her due). He lets her cry to him when she is depressed over the latest failure. He tried to talk her out of her cosmetic surgeries, but he was there for her when they happened. I think he was the only person she allowed to see her during the period when her peeled face was healing.

With Danny, she had fun. They did crazy things she wouldn’t have done on her own---hired a boat and toured the islands off Cedar Key for some butt-nekkid swimming in the Gulf, spent Christmas touring the nature reserves off southwestern Florida, went to a water park (I forget what it’s called) way down south for the scuba diving, went tubing with a rowdy party down the Itchetucknee, and did some sort of ‘photography safari’ down in the ‘Glades. They even went to Daytona for a couple of days of Bike Week. She returned wearing a sheepish but reminiscent grin. “It was… crazy,” was all she said.

And though he makes much less money than she does, he’s financially responsible. He pays his share and he’s never asked for the use of any of hers.

In short, Danny is what I---speaking as an expert!--- would call ideal husband material.

America is not of course a classless society (“Oh, yes, it is,” said my mate Rumcove, chortling as if he’d been very original indeed) but some of the worst victims of our unacknowledged social pecking orders are educated middle aged women. In a world where their male peers have a range of sexual choices, theirs are severely restricted. Or rather, the women themselves restrict them.

Perhaps men do the same. A middle-aged man who is not especially rich or especially successful or good-looking does not have his pick of 25 year olds. He’s going to be in the same position of my friend---limited in the number of woman within his community who are realistically (as opposed to theoretically available to him).

Danny is just such a man. Nice-looking, intelligent, well-spoken, but not—speaking strictly from a socioeconomic standpoint---in my friend’s league. Meaning that being with him is not going to enhance her social status. If she marries him, she won’t be able to afford the sort of ‘life-style’ to which her so-called peers occasionally treat her.

And this one reason why this charming, funny, pretty woman was lonely: the man she really liked best and who cared about her most wasn’t good enough for her.

It’s interesting that so many people want to be in relationships where the other partner is certain to have all the power. If you get your status or your sense of self-worth from the prestige of the person you’re with, if you’ve got to be with an alpha male or woman, then you’re always going to be in the position of the vulnerable person in the relationship.

I’ve been in a couple of relationships like that, actually, when I was much younger. There was a certain sort of exquisite misery in being with someone I had to constantly work to please, but however exquisite, the misery was misery.

But that’s not a very good prospect for a marriage. Marriage ought to free both partners to be themselves. It shouldn’t be constant work---there’s enough stress in the world without your having to spend all the hours there are meeting standards your spouse imposes out of fear of being left, being criticized or ridiculed, or being ignored.

“You were lucky,” said my friend, when I conveyed some of this to her. You never had to settle.”

She doesn’t know me well enough to know it, but by her standards I did. My second husband did not have my level of education, wasn’t wealthy, and was in an industry that some of my friends viewed with disdain---tolerant disdain, but disdain nevertheless. I married him because he was extremely engaging and fun to be with. He was another one of those people who could generate fun. He wasn’t precisely good-looking---he looked like the younger version of the actor David Jason, in fact---and he wasn’t a sterling character, but he could turn the charisma on and off like a water faucet (and there were drawbacks to this but---again---she knows only what she saw).

But in any case, when I married Don, I was in a different ‘place’ from my friend. At the time we married, I was sick to death of men ‘in my own league.’ I wanted fun. I guess she doesn’t.

One of the great loves of my life was chronically morose and chronically also short of money due to his absolutely rigorous allocation of almost all of his income to his daughter’s education. He was well-educated, but not in an occupation my friend would have viewed as a ‘profession.’ In his own estimation, he was certainly not a success. He was still one of the most interesting and funniest men I’ve ever known, and one of the most attentive.

Ah yes, attentiveness. Attentive to who you are---actually interested in what sort of person. That’s another thing you only get from someone who is more interested in you than he is in himself.

“You were so lucky to find Nick,” she said. “I still don’t understand how you did it.”

Okay (1) Ouch; and (2) again, she doesn’t know me well enough to know more than what she can see. Nick is very tall and good-looking. He is quite posh by English standards and I suppose he manages to convey this to Americans. This is what she sees.

But he’s not wealthy---quite the reverse. He went to public school and did his A-levels, but instead of going on to University in England he went to a Canadian University and then ran out of funds before he finished. And he had to give up the job he had in England to come be here with me so now he’s in school here. Nope, no financial enhancements for me there. We aren’t going to be summering on the French Riviera in the foreseeable future unless he sells his novel and it becomes a runaway bestseller.

She got quite angry with me, actually. I’m not sure what I said---I suppose I implied, if I didn’t say straight out, that perhaps she ought to try to appreciate Danny. I still remember her tear-filled eyes shining like green tropical fish in the (very, very fine and delicate) netting of lines around her eyes. “I deserve more,” she said. “I deserve a husband who is someone in my league.”

Ah, the lonely league of middle-aged single professional women. It’s a big league. If she were of lower rank socially, she’d be working out her angst in a karaoke bar with regular rounds of , ‘I Will Survive” the stock anthem of desperately brave lonely and feisty women. So cue the karaoke! (What? I used to have a great time at the karaoke bars that my Don took me too. Like I said, he was all about fun.)

Anyway, as to my friend’s dilemma and the dilemma of women like her: sad. Also? Kind of stupid, at least if the woman is in fact successful in finding someone and lets him go because he’s just not good enough. In her place, I’d totally have been dating Danny---‘settling’ as she calls it. I enjoy being with people who love me and value me and I guess I have a high enough opinion of myself that finding someone who appreciates me automatically makes me disposed to value him. And if you develop a reciprocal fondness for someone who thinks very highly of you, it very definitely can quite easily evolve into more.

But never mind: it has sort of a happy ending. My friend is currently dating a man from another city she met at friends wedding. Apparently, she considers him a worthy candidate. She’s told me what he does several times but I keep forgetting; I believe he is Vice President of a bank or an insurance company. He is good looking in that banker sort of way, I guess. He’s stodgy and controlling, but she confided in me that she thinks he might be ‘marriage material.’ I suppose he is. I don’t like him much, but I’m not the one who has to be with him.

As for Danny, he’s moved on. I think he is engaged. My friend devoted a day or two two sitting on my sofa sobbing over his disloyalty when he told her, and for the space of 24 hours, I really thought she was going to throw her new man over and beg Danny to come back. She didn’t, though she is surprisingly bitter about losing him.

She’s waiting now for her to make up his mind to give her a ring. She thinks it’s going to happen, though they have a lot of fights. He gets pissed off because she’s not in the mood to go out for a drink or because she forgot to record the football game he wanted to see and storms out the door. But he always comes back. And at least my friend is never bored----because, you know, ‘relationships take work.’ When I asked her if she was in love and, you know, happy, she smiled and shrugged...but nodded. Yay?

So anyway, the sonnet for today is Sonnet 57:

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the houres and times of your desire?

I have no precious time at all to spende,

Nor services to do, till you require.

Nor dare I chide the world-without-ende houre

Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,

Nor think the bitterness of absence soure

When you have bid your servant once adieu.

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought

Where you may be, or your affaires suppose,

But like a sad slave stay and think of nought

Save, where you are, how happy you make those.

So true a fool in love that in your will,

Though you do anything, [s]he thinkes no ill.

--The bard.

RELATED POSTINGS

It’s Just Not that Simple (review of He’s Just Not that Into You).

Toxic Love 101 and Sonnet 36: The Love that Dares You to Speak its Name.

More Help for Singles Who Don’t Want to Be: Why You’re Still Single and Some Reflections Prior to Reading It.

Look, Look! A good relationship book! Why You’re Still Single by Evan Katz and Linda Holmes [book review; relationships]

Advice for Brides

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 08:34:14 GMT

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Advice for Brides Planning Dream Weddings: Don't.

Selena was in tears. She had been in tears from the moment her fiance got off the plane. The wedding was the next day and every single thing was going wrong.

David, 26 years old and in his third year of law school, had boarded the plane after his law school examination for the semester wearing the white dinner jacket she had made him acquire for the occasion and was met at the airport by Selena and her distraught mother. One of the six ushers who were supposed to have David’s back had called from Oregon to say that he’d missed his flight and didn’t think he’d be able to make it, so Selena’s youngest cousin was going to have to walk up the aisle on her own, unescorted. Selena and the maid of honor wanted to ask her politely to sit the wedding out because she’d paid $200 for her unwearable-ever-again-traditionally-hideous-dress and more than that for the matching shoes, so they felt that leaving her out might be a bit, you know, tactless. The florist had made a mistake about the flowers---Selena’s ‘colors’ were green and yellow and the bouquets had pink in them, and the bridal bouquet didn’t have the yellow roses in it she’d envisioned, more of a sort of cream. One of the bridesmaids wasn’t speaking to the maid of honor because of something one had said to the other. It was clearly gearing up to be a disaster instead of the happiest day of her life.

“What about my life?” David said miserably, when we were talking later. “Why isn’t it supposed to be the happiest day of my life? Why’s it just the bride who gets to have the whole day to herself and make everyone do everything she wants them to? I hate it. I thought it would be fun but instead of a big party it’s like some sort of Broadway production. It’s like she and her mom think if they don’t get every single nuance exactly right they’ll end up with bad reviews. And it’s costing her parents” (he named an improbable sum which I, being childless, refuse to believe, “for all this crap! Can you believe that? Can you believe people would spend that much money on a party for a wedding? It’s not like it’s that unusual---or special--- to get married. Practically everyone does it.”

The hysteria at the airport had completely unnerved him. He had stepped onto the plane, he confided, absolutely convinced that he had failed his Administrative Law examination because he’d been preoccupied on the critical preparation day with some crisis about the usher’s uniforms (David called them uniforms, and I thought it was sweet and also quite on point, so I will as well). He’d had to call up all his friends all over the country and tell them to go back and exchange something or other that had been ordered in taupe for something in dark blue. When he sat down to study, he couldn’t concentrate because he kept thinking about the cost of the wedding, the expectations of Selena and her parents, and the possibility that he would do or say the wrong thing and ruin it for everyone. It wasn’t completely illogical for him to worry---after all, if the wrong shade of flower in the bouquet could ruin everything, then what would happen if he forgot the ring, dropped the ring, stepped on her train, looked too visibly panicked, or---and this was his biggest fear---didn’t look exactly like the perfect Ken doll she’d been imagining.

“I’d do anything if I could get out of it,” he said. “Man, I thought I loved Selena---I was sure I did. I was scared when we finally made the decision, but I went along with what she wanted, bought her the ring she wanted and so on, and then I thought it would just be a matter of doing the same thing everyone else does---go to church, dress up, and then a big party afterward with all our friends. But it isn’t like that. I couldn’t ask a lot of people in my family because her parents want to have a big sit-down dinner afterward and there wasn’t room in the country club banquet hall. I asked if we could move it to a local hotel where there was plenty of room and just have finger food and cake like the weddings we’ve had in my family and they went ballistic---that would have been ‘tacky’ and the place was ‘ugly’ and it would look ‘cheap’, as if it doesn’t look tacky and ugly and cheap for us to leave out family members so we can have a sit down meal. And all the crap over her dress, and her shoes, and the flowers….Doesn’t she know I don’t care? Seriously, I can’t tell one white dress from another. I hate this. I hate it. But it’s too late to get out of it. Right?”

So why do young women carry on this way? How do they turn their weddings into self-referential pageants that are exclusively about them and why do their parents and society generally encourage them to think this is a good thing, a healthy thing, or an appropriate thing?

Selena wasn’t by any means the worst I’ve seen. She really handled things fairly reasonably right up until things started to go wrong on the day itself. Then she---like so many young women before her---completely forgot the purpose of the ceremony and got completely caught up in the stupid, pointless embellishments that somehow have been perpetrated on the public as part of the ceremony.

The bridesmaid having to walk unescorted up the aisle at the end of the ceremony, for example. Why was that even a problem? (A) So what, unless she herself objected; and (B) If she did, why not have the first usher to leave come back and walk her out? It’s not perfectly choreographed---so what? But what would have been wrong, what would have been inexcusable, what was inexcusable, was to so much as suggest to a cousin who had invested $300 in an ugly yellow and green organdie dress that she couldn’t return that she sit the wedding out. If the outcome had been blood on the grass, it wouldn’t have surprised me a bit. In the event, it was tears on the pillow---Susan, the cousin, was rightly offended at the clear implication that she was the lowest in status of the bridesmaids present and her aunt’s offer to reimburse her for her dress couldn’t assuage her wounded pride. In the end, they had her pour punch (wearing the bridesmaid dress), which necessitated knocking another relative out of the post of honor….

And it was all so stupid.

The flowers----did it really matter? Selena actually called up the florist and threatened to sue if her bridesmaids had to carry pink flowers up the aisle with their green and yellow dresses, so that a compromise was eventually effectuated (orange flowers).

And I admit that pink flowers would have clashed but again, so what? Did they have to carry flowers? If they had to carry something couldn’t it be something else?

I was silly planning my wedding many, many years ago, but not that silly. For one thing, my parents were old-fashioned and made it clear that the wedding wasn’t only about me and possibly not even primarily so. I had to beg to be allowed to have dark green ink for my Christmas wedding invitations instead of the traditional grey or black and my dad---‘we’re paying for this wedding, so we’re going to make the final decisions’---was never entirely happy about the green. I also had to beg for my choice of music. I hate the traditional wedding marches. I wanted to use the “Sanctus” and “In Nomine Patri” from Bernstein’s mass (pretentious, moi?) and I finally got my way, but only because my parents really liked them when they heard them. I wanted to carry red roses (No! No! No! Not done! Not done! Not done! Oh, all right.) My mother rejected out of hand my first choice of bridesmaid dresses in favor of a truly hideous (sorry Mom, I still think so) velvet long-sleeved wine-colored gown that was worse than it sounds and that suited no one. She also had final approval of my wedding dress and forced me to buy a Spanish style veil that I really hated. At the same time, while keeping me busy with these trivial details, she and my dad quietly planned and administered everything else. They handled all the details, for example, related to the comfort of their guests---which for them was (as it should be) paramount.

Weddings today cost five or six times as much, are three times more rigidly planned and orchestrated, and are ten times more likely to be designed to leave the bridegroom and his personal feelings completely out of the picture. David, for example, really was miserable throughout the whole rehearsal dinner. Selena, normally a kindly, sensitive young woman, was too busy stressing over the fight with the bridesmaid to pay attention to him, and everyone else was preoccupied with the champagne and the catering, but since I knew the inside story, I was conscious the whole evening of the worried, shadowed look in his eyes and the mechanical way he nodded and smiled all through the speeches.

I wish I could say that it all ended perfectly, with everything going like a dream, but it didn’t. Selena sat up half the night crying into her hands---not over David, to whose state of mind she was oblivious---but over the fight with her cousin. Her maid of honor stood staunchly by, hissing anathema and loudly censuring the ‘selfishness’ of Susan for ruining ‘Selena’s day’ by daring to show she was offended when she was, you know, insulted. Before the wedding, everything went fairly smoothly, and the ceremony itself went along all right (David looked calm, if not exactly radiant). Selena had that look on her way back up the aisle that you actually see on many bride’s faces if you look---relief and happiness, but also a definite shade of anticlimax. All that for this? Your big day and you plan and plan and pay and pay and in the end, nobody noticed that you were carrying orange flowers or that you were carrying flowers at all. Because nobody but the bride cares.

And then the wedding was absolutely ruined because of some sort of disaster with the photographer. I’m not certain of the details in the particular case, but this sort of thing seems to happen with frightening frequency, judging by what I’ve seen of court TV. According to David’s mom---Selena spent the first several days of her honeymoon feeling depressed and dispirited because after all they’d done there was nothing to show for it. (And I’ve seen and heard other women, older women than Selena behave the same way---as if the wedding was some sort of end in itself rather than a ceremony to celebrate a milestone. It’s awful and funny and sad because…if you married the one you love, how can anything ‘ruin’ the day on which it happened?

I thought about this again when David and Selena divorced. Their divorce was nothing to do with the wedding---they lasted seven years, pretty good I suppose for what David’s mother referred to sardonically as a ‘starter marriage’. On the other hand, all of that time, money, misery and for what?

It hit home with me because my ‘white wedding’ like so many others these days also ended in divorce. I have the book of photographs my parents bought me---100 photographs, $5 each, of ‘the best day of my life’ (and though it was pretty good, thank God it wasn’t the best because I was only 20) when I was surrounded by people I thought were going to be part of my life forever and who I haven’t seen or spoken to in more years than I care to count.

So why are people carrying on with this ridiculous tradition of excess and pageantry? Why do girls still convince themselves that the white dress is going to be more satisfying than, say, a substantial cash present, a down payment on a home, or simply the satisfaction of knowing that the parents will have sufficient money to live on when they retire? Why this conventional, standardized, really quite vulgar persistence in a ceremony which since my day has become increasingly objectified and choreographed?

It’s time to stop the craziness. You can have a wedding that’s fun and pretty without getting caught up in a lot of stupid conventions. The prettiest wedding I ever saw was on the shores of Clearwater Beach. I was sitting at a beach bar and they were having the wedding on the beach. All the guests were wearing khaki pants (this was a few years ago, in the heyday of the Gap) with a certain sort of untucked white shirt over them, except for the bridesmaids, who had long straight khaki skirts. The bride wore a completely plain white sheath. They had the ceremony right next to the water, at my favorite time of day, just before the sun starts to set. The sky was faintly pink, there were golden clouds overhead, everyone looked gorgeous against the backdrop of the Gulf of Mexico, and afterwards, they all walked back to a private room at the beach bar and had a hell of a party.

That's the sort of wedding your guests will remember and that you'll look back on fondly (instead of with incredulous shame/regret) when the starter marriage ends or when you're trying to scrape up the money for a downpayment on a home.

RELATED POSTINGS

Forget the Wedding Planner---Damozel’s Hints for a Unique and Truly Memorable Wedding.

The “Princess Bride” Fallacy and an Eminently Practical Approach to Wedding Etiquette

Toxic Love 101: Sonnet 36

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 00:26:24 GMT

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Advice from the Bard: Sonnet 36

Let me confess that we two must be twaine, [1]

Although our undivided loves are one: [2]

So shal those blots that do with me remaine, [3]

Without thy help, by me be borne alone. [4]

In our two loves there is but one respect, [5]

Though in our lives a separable spite, [6]

Which though it alters not love’s sole effect, [7]

Yet doth it steal sweet houres from love’s delight. [8]

I may not evermore acknowledge thee, [9]

Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, [10]

Nor thou with public kindness honour me, [11]

Unless thou take that honour from thy name. [12]

But do not so: I love thee in such sort [13]

As thou, being mine, mine is thy good report [14]

--The Bard

I do know the story behind this sonnet, or at least I know what I’ve been told by scholars. As a reflection of Shakespeare’s actual experience with his patron, it’s pathetic enough. If taken at face value----as a love sonnet--- it’s a whole different type of pathetic.

In the counseling work I’ve done, and in my personal life, I’ve talked to many women (it’s almost always a woman in these times but it could just as easily be a man) who use very similar reasoning to explain to themselves why they are willing to be in relationships where not only does the balance of power fall completely on the other side of the scales so that their needs weigh nothing and their partner’s, everything, but the partner----being aware of the inequality----is also ashamed of it. Ashamed, in other words, of the relationship.

And the person on the wrong side of the balance of power not only understands the other's shame, but actually endorses it---it proves the love is true love, an irresistible force for which the other will risk everything.

Sonnet 36 exemplifies a certain ‘romantic’ disposition of mind that not only accepts the inequality in the relationship and the other person’s shame, but at some level rejoices in both as evidence of the overpoweringness of the connection between the partners. It applies in situations in which the partner is much wealthier, better educated, or otherwise is of significantly higher status; or say that the relationship itself is one that is actually prohibited by the prevailing standards of the relevant community (e.g., your partner is your employer, your teacher, a prominent citizen, a married politician or married judge, or is of a different race or religion).

Concealment as a condition of love strikes a number of people as romantic and rather thrilling in the early stages of an unabalanced relationship. After all, if your partner is willing to risk everything for your love, despite the drawbacks of it or you----! Early on, you might focus more on the strength of the bond (lines 1-2, 5-6) which of course couldn’t exist against all the odds if you didn’t have something very, very special.

Some very eager lovers I’ve known have been quite ready at the outset to acknowledge their own inferiority to the loved one. He (or she, okay?) is wealthy, important, and an important person in the community; you’re a lowly nurse, secretary, paralegal, or personal assistant or a complete outsider who would never be acceptable to the people who (this part isn’t really acknowledged at this stage) really matter to the partner. You know that at best a public revelation of the affair would cause embarrassment and inconvenience to the partner. Do you take it personally? Not at all; you know you’re less important (lines 9-12)---i.e, not only your feelings are less important, but you are.

But it’s all good! It may be painful to know that your partner can’t (won’t) acknowledge the relationship; you may feel---and be---spurned, but you wouldn’t change anything. Really! The reason is that your own identity is totally merged in your partner’s (lines 1-2, 5-6) so that his (or her) interests are your interests and first in your mind before anything else (lines 13-14). You know it would wreck the partner’s life to acknowledge your great love publicly (lines 9-12), so you wouldn’t dream of asking him (or her) to do so. In fact, you insist that he (or she) do nothing of the kind. (lines 13-14) His comfort and standing are everything; yours weighs nothing. You love him (or her) to much to put his (or her) reputation, career, peace of mind, etc. at risk.

As for the other partner, he (or she) may genuinely buy into the notion that the mere fact that he or she is willing to carry on a secret relationship with the other is proof of the indivisibility of the bond (lines 1-2, 5-6) and proof of how very, very special the love between them is. After all, he (or she) is risking everything. And by ‘everything’, of course, I mean ‘everything that really matters to him (or her).’

Aye, as our boy would say, there’s the rub. In this sort of relationship, both partners focus, at least initially, on the intensity of the attraction that drags them into this ‘forbidden’ or, as I prefer to call it, ‘crazy-ass’ love. They do that to keep from noticing that the prudence which makes concealment a condition (imposed, tacitly or otherwise, by the more powerful partner) reflects a scale of values in which the happiness or peace of mind of the less powerful partner is ranked very low in relation to other values. Other values such as the more powerful partner’s spouse, children, job, career, standing or credibility in the community, parents’ feelings, or whatever it is that he (or she) is anxiously protecting.

How do people manage to convince themselves that this is going to change? The old story of the man who is going to leave his wife and his life eventually to be with the other woman applies to any relationship conducted under the rose. It doesn’t matter whether the reason he (or she) won’t acknowledge you is because of something in his or her life , something about the nature of the relationship, or something about you. If you are accepting a situation in which you only meet secretly and at such times as the other finds convenient, you can be absolutely certain that this is one aspect of the relationship that is never going to change.

If at the beginning of the relationship, when passion is running high the other person doesn’t think you are more valuable and more special and just generally more compelling than anything else, why on earth do you think this is going to change as time passes, passions cool, and he (or she) begins to take it for granted that you can carry on comfortably under the initial conditions.

And if the other person has already made it clear that the opinion or happiness of other people who are not you matter more than yours or that a job, money, or community or professional standing are more important than being with you, what do you think is going to happen to cause a shift in that value system? If someone who is swept away by passion still conducts himself/herself with really exemplary caution, that tells you that the interests that he or she is protecting are really important to him/her.

A friend of mine, acknowledging this, said, “But that’s exactly what I mean. He has so much more at stake than I do. He puts it at risk every time he sees me. He risks much more to be with me than I do to be with him. That’s how I know he loves me.”

Oh really? It looks from where I’m standing too as if she isn’t risking anything----but not because she has nothing to risk, but because she is willingly giving it all up right now. One thing she has given up is her freedom to find anything else, because the man in question, besides being chronically absent is also madly possessive. Another thing she has given up is career advancement. They work for the same company; and in fact, he was (though no longer is) her boss. Another thing she has given up is the three years she’s been sitting alone at home waiting for him to call/come by/email/send flowers/make her day by some other little reminder that he remembers her.

At work, he is distant but barely acknowledges her existence. Since he isn’t her boss, it isn’t a sure bet that he’d lose his job if the affair were known, but as he is very important and highly paid, neither one of them is willing to risk that. As to his marriage, his wife has evidently forgiven him for past affairs, so that’s not a sure bet either. In any case, they are right to behave professionally in the workplace---I’m not saying they shouldn’t. As for social contact, there isn’t any. She’s a well-educated college graduate, an ex-teacher, but she simply doesn’t move in the same circles as the Vice President. She doesn’t have the money or the clothes.

“Why can’t you just be happy for me?” she asked me heatedly when I didn’t show enough enthusiasm for the ‘cocktail’ ring he gave her for her birthday. I responded by showing more enthusiasm; I don’t want to make her feel worse. But I think a diamond cocktail ring is a poor exchange indeed for this woman (who is charming, intelligent, and one of the funniest people I know) dying slowly on the vine while congratulating herself on having ‘real’ love---as opposed, I guess, to the unreal and comparatively dull sort that’s at home with you all the time and forgets your birthday.

I know, just reading between the lines of this sonnet (and one of the things that makes the sonnet so great is that the latent content is always right there, only slightly behind the surface meaning) that Shakespeare knew perfectly well when he wrote this what it means if your friend or loved one acquiesces when you suggest that it's in his best interests to meet you where no one else can see and when no one else is looking. He knew without ever having read the book what it means if the other accepts this state of affairs: it means---as the authors of the book would have said---that he's just not that into you. Shakespeare was Shakespeare, after all, and on balance, if this pain produced this sonnet, it was pain spun into the world's greatest poetry. I'm really grateful to them both, Southampton and Shakespeare.

But what about my friend? She's not a poet or an artist; she spends her nights at home watching TV and obsessing about her ovaries. And she actually quoted this sonnet to me once when I asked her if she didn't feel dissed or at least dismissed when the other party to The Greatest Romance in the History of the World walked right past her in the corridor with nothing more than a pleasant nod.

She doesn't mind because she knows how he really feels. And I mind on her behalf because I know too.

RELATED POSTINGS

Toxic Love 101 and Sonnet 36: The Love that Dares You to Speak its Name.