Parallel Universe

Last night I was supposed to pick up K at the train station. That's what happened in the alternate universe where plans don't go all to hell because of stupid snowstorms at the end of fuckmunch February.

Instead, at about the same time, I was picking up a calzone at a nearby pizza place.

That universe: K.

This universe: calzone.

It was a pretty good calzone, but I would have preferred K.

All weekend I've been thinking about the things that K and I would be doing in that other universe. Some of this stuff we might still do, in two weeks, when she's rescheduled to visit. But it won't be the same weekend.

As predicted, I've adjusted to the schedule change and made alternate plans. This might be the busiest broken-plan weekend I've ever had.

Yesterday I made two attempts to do something with people on Friday night. Both were busy, but I felt I'd made enough of an effort that I'd earned a quiet night in. I picked up a calzone and watched a Netflix with the cats. It was a nice evening.

This morning I played tennis, then made plans for more tennis this afternoon. Right after I got home from the workout, my friend who was booked last night called to ask if I wanted to play. I struggled for a second, since I'd already played once today, and still wanted to schedule a phone call with K, but I chose being social and building local relationships instead.

I had lunch with family, and tonight I have plans to have drinks with friends. Originally, it was drinks with me and K, but there's no reason to cancel just because she can't make it. Although this does add to the conspiracy that K is just my made-up girlfriend from Canada. "No, really, her flight was canceled! She's totally coming in two weeks, though! She's real!" I realized that I haven't been drunk in a long time, probably not since last October-- the night I kinda met Dimple. So I might get drunk tonight. If the drinking doesn't work out, there's also a party I could go to.

I've also been texting with K trying to figure out a time when we can get a phone date in. It looks like we're both good at filling up our schedules at the last minute.

Yesterday I scheduled an emergency meeting with my shrink. This was mostly to head off any possible depression, since I was so profoundly disappointed by the canceled plans.

But it turns out that things are not as bad as I thought. Sure, I'd love to be in that other universe, but this universe isn't so bad. We'll see how I feel tomorrow morning, though. (See above: drinks, drunk, drinking.)

Suck It, Winter

I always know things are really bad when I can't think of a clever or tidy way to introduce and organize all the thoughts that have been strewn about my brain. So, as Joe Friday would prefer, I'll start with just the facts.

Another goddam snowstorm hit the East Coast.

K's flight today has been canceled.

She's rescheduled to come in two weeks.

All the plans I made for this weekend are bunk.

Six weeks of waiting to see her will have to be postponed for another two. Damn you, Winter! [Shaking my fist at sky.]

I'm tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I'm tired of winter. Of February. Of my job. Of this roller coaster of emotions I live on. Of waiting for my life to begin. Of everything. I'm even tired of K.

I've been teetering on the edge of depression all month, and this might just push me over the edge. This couldn't have come at a worse time for me and K. Lately I've been feeling like our relationship is strained. I know there's an ebb and flow to things, but I was counting on this weekend to turn the tide. It seems that we need face-to-face contact to recharge things. The last time we saw each other, things were tense just before I visited her. But after spending a few days together, we felt closer than ever.

I feel like we sorely need that right now. Live contact. Touch. Recharge. Despite my recent attitude adjustment, which lasted about two days, I've been insecure again this week. It turns out you can't just wish away insecurity and be done with it. But I kept reassuring myself that everything would be good again once we saw each other this weekend. We would recharge. Now, that's not gonna happen.

Nothing brings me joy or comfort right now. I don't even look forward to her visit in two weeks. I've been waiting for this for so long, and with such anticipation, that two weeks feels like a life sentence. I cleaned my bathroom! I vacuumed! I arranged for her to meet people! I was ready for this weekend. I'm not ready for two weeks from now. In my distorted state, two weeks might as well be two years.

Actually, there are some practical advantages to her visiting in two weeks instead of this weekend. I'm not so totally a downer that I can't see some silver lining. And I'm sure that once I get over my disappointment, I'll get excited again. Maybe even before I'm done with this post. After I vent and fume, I'm usually pretty good at adjusting. Maybe, in the end, this small setback will lead to even better things.

But I'm writing about right now. And right now, I may be able to count my blessings, but I'm not feeling them. Talking to her on the phone last night, trying to decide on alternate plans, it felt like something was missing. It didn't feel like it did in December, when I had such a hard time getting to her place during a snow storm. Back then, when we talked on the phone (six times in one day, as I hopped from airport to airport to train station, etc.) it felt like an exciting adventure that brought us closer together. Now it just feels like a pain in the ass. I don't know if that's how she feels, too. But I feel like the magic is gone. Winter has beaten the joy right out of me.

She said we could talk this weekend, and any other time that would excite me. But not this weekend. I had other plans. Besides, we're in a fragile place, and I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Dammit, February, you had to get one last swipe at me before you left, didn't you? Well, fuck off! Don't come back for another 11 months!

One Half of All Marriages...

Part Five of my mini-series: Discussions on Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Page 122:

Then there is the business of that infamous 50 percent divorce rate in America. We all know the classic statistic, don't we? It gets tossed around constantly, and man, does it ever sound grim. As the anthropologist Lionel Tiger [Snark here: seriously, that's his name?] wrote trenchantly on this topic: "It is astonishing that, under the circumstances, marriage is still legally allowed. If nearly half of anything else ended so disastrously, the government would surely ban it immediately. If half the tacos served in restaurants caused dysentery, if half the people learning karate broke their palms, if only 6 percent of people who went on roller coaster rides damaged their middle ears, the public would be clamoring for action. Yet the most intimate of disasters... happens over and over again."

Gilbert points out, however, that demographics play a huge role in how you break down that famous 50%. The most obvious factor is age.

...eighteen-year-old newlyweds do not have a 50 percent divorce rate; they have something closer to a 75 percent divorce rate, which totally blows the curve for everyone else. Age twenty-five seems to be the magic cutoff point. Couples who marry before that age are exceptionally more divorce-prone than couples who wait until they are twenty-six or older. And the statistics only get more reassuring as the couple in question ages. Hold off on getting married until you're in your fifties, and the odds of you ever ending up in a divorce court become statistically almost invisible.

Of course, these are merely statistics. Not hard and fast rules. SnarkEx and I were 29 and 34, respectively, when we got married, and we didn't last. Another factor that appears to influence, or correspond with, divorce, is whether your parents were divorced. "...people whose parents were divorced are more likely to someday divorce themselves..."

Surprisingly (and reassuringly), people who have divorced once are not "statistically more likely to fail in their second marriage." Second marriages usually fail when "people carry unresolved destructive behaviors with them from one marriage to the next-- such as alcoholism, compulsive gambling, mental illness, violence, or philandering."

Gilbert mentions seven other factors of "marital resilience" based on a University of Rutgers study:

1. Education. More educated couples have a better chance of staying together. More specifically, the education of the woman is a larger factor. This is interesting to me because among all four of my siblings (and even with me and SnarkEx), the women have more education than the men.
   
2. Children. Couples with young children are more likely to suffer stress in their relationship. No surprise here, but as Gilbert says, "I don't know what this means for the future of the world at large, but for Felipe and me [who don't plan to have children] it was more good news."
3. Cohabitation. Couples who live together before getting married have a slightly higher divorce rate. "The sociologists can't quite figure this one out, except to wager a guess that perhaps premarital cohabitation indicates a more casual view in general toward sincere commitment."
   
4. Heterogamy. "The less similar you and your partner are in terms of race, age, religion, ethnicity, cultural background, and career, the more likely you are to someday divorce. Opposites do attract, but they don't always endure."
   
5. Social Integration. "The more tightly woven a couple is within a community of friends and family, the stronger their marriage will be."
   
6. Religiousness. "The more religious a couple is, the more likely they are to stay married, though faith offers only a slight edge [2%]."
7. Gender Fairness. "Marriages based on a traditional, restrictive sense about a woman's place in the home tend to be less strong and less happy than marriages where the man and woman regard each other as equals, and where the husband participates in more traditionally female and thankless household chores."

Again, none of these factors alone are guarantees or dealbreakers. We're talking about statistical trends here. As I like to tell my students when I'm teaching how to evaluate sources, not having one of these characteristics doesn't necesarily make a source "bad." They're just things to think about.

I could look at each of these factors and analyze them within my own marriage, but in the end, we got divorced. Maybe some of the above factors played a part. Certainly many of them didn't. Personally, I wonder if dating experience plays a role: how many serious relationships someone has had before they get married. Most of the women I've dated have not had much experience before me. I don't know what that means.

It's an interesting read, and maybe food for thought if I'm ever in a position to remarry.

Wasted Time

My job is not very inspiring. I do pretty decent work on the things that need to get done, but since I'm the only person who does what I do here, I have a pretty free reign. I don't work much with other people and no one checks up on me. It's isolating. So I spend a lot of time on Facebook, writing emails, blogging, and surfing the web. It's nice to have all this time to amuse myself, and I love the income and ample vacation time of the academic schedule, but it leaves me with lots of time to fret about things. And boy, do I love to fret.

I really think that a lot of my relationship problems stem from having an uninspiring job. If I had something that I was really passionate about, or something that engaged me for eight hours a day (or even four hours a day), I wouldn't spend so much time thinking about my relationship with K. I would be distracted. And I wouldn't spend so much time compulsively checking my email to see if she's responded.

K visits in two days. I can't wait. It scares me how much I'm looking forward to this, as if I'm setting myself up for disappointment. It's been six weeks since we've seen each other, so I've been waiting a long time for this. I woke up this morning and felt a slight tickle in my sinuses. Like maybe I might be on the verge of coming down with something. I haven't had a cold or flu in over a year, so this would be horrible timing if it struck now. I'm hoping it turns out to be nothing, but if I could negotiate with the Universe, I would be willing to exchange a two-week flu starting on Monday for a healthy weekend.

I'm realizing the challenge of a long-distance relationship. With our incomes and vacation time, we can't really afford to see each other more than once every 4 weeks. Let's be generous and say that we're together for 48 hours every four weeks. That's 7.14 % of my life. The rest of that time, the time between visits, is spent wishing I could be with her. I don't want to spent 93% of my life waiting for the other 7%. I already spend too much of my life waiting for lunch time or quittin' time or the weekend or my next vacation. (Or tennis, which takes up another 2-3% of my life.)

I'm not sure what the solution is. I guess I should just enjoy my life as it happens, and take the time with K as a bonus. Our time together shouldn't be my whole life, but a nice supplement to it.

Attitude Adjustment

Last week was shittastic-- full of bad luck, fear, anxiety, anger, worry, depression, and winter blahs. My sewer line broke, I was insecure about K (which led to our first fight), I was angry at friends and family, I pissed off people, and the weather hadn't been above freezing for two weeks.

This week is much better. I decided that I needed an attitude adjustment. My attitude gets misaligned a lot, and then I realize that it needs to be reset. So I made a decision that K is not going to suddenly dump me for no good reason. And even if she did, it does me no good to fret about it before it happens. Why not wait until it actually happens to fall apart? Why torture myself just because it might happen? So my new attitude is that she likes me, she wants to be with me, and if that changes, she'll let me know.

It's not a revolutionary idea, but it works. At least for now.

Some lessons need to be learned multiple times before they sink in, so I have to cut myself some slack if I repeat a mistake. If I show my insecurity and then regret it, it's not the end of the world. Some of the things I keep telling myself are that mistakes are not fatal. I can make mistakes and still get past them. I also need to stop overanalyzing every little action as a sign that something bad has happened. Every relationship has an ebb and flow to it, and I need to respect that. Some days she's going to like me more than others. Some days I'm going to like her more than others. Ebb and flow.

If this thing with K has any chance of working, I have to be confident. I have to give her enough time and space to sort out her feelings for me, and she can't do that if I'm clingy and insecure and constantly asking for reassurance. So in this new relationship, my personal goal is to be strong. Don't let the demons of doubt and insecurity get to me. I'm not going to fuck this up. I'm not going to freak out if she goes a day without writing me. If she doesn't sound as enthusiastic or affectionate one day. Because she's proven again and again that she likes me. There's a mountain of evidence. She really likes me. So until she definitively lets me know otherwise, that's the attitude I'm going to have.

Good things about this week: My sewer line is fixed and my house has gone a whole week without breaking down. I'm confident about K. She's visiting in four days- woohoo! I feel better about my other relationships. It's finally above freezing and we haven't had a snow storm yet this week. I'm having a good hair week. I'm excited about tennis again. In general, I feel calm and confident again.

The challenge will be to see how I handle the next crisis. Because, believe you me, there will be another crisis.

Ebb and flow.

Ebb and flow.

Ebb and flow.

Loyalty?

Part Four of my mini-series: Discussions on Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert.

One of the things that I really liked about SnarkEx when I first met her was that she appeared to be loyal. She came across as the type of person who was committed to her friends and family, and hence, would be committed to her partner.

I was wrong.

What made me so angry when she left was that I had married her precisely for her loyalty. We weren't perfect for each other, but once I make a commitment to something I can look past a lot of the negatives. Relationships are always about compromise, and I was willing to look past some things about SnarkEx because her loyalty was so valuable to me. I thought she would never leave me. I knew I would never leave her. So when she left, or even threatened to leave, my perception of her as a loyal partner was blown out of the water. She wasn't who I thought she was.

But am I loyal? Do I have a right to complain about SnarkEx leaving? After all, I didn't do much to stop her from going. If I had really been committed to the marriage, I would have fought more for it. Maybe I let it die because I knew, deep in my subconscious, we weren't right for each other?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gilbert writes about her fiance, Felipe, who is "meant to mate for life. He's loyal on a cellular level. I mean that, perhaps, quite literally."

She goes on to explain a theory in evolutionary biology, called "Dads or Cads," that separates men into two groups:

Apparently, there is this critical little chemical variation in the male of the species called the "vasopressin receptor gene." Men who have the vasopressin receptor gene tend to be trustworthy and reliable sexual partners, sticking with one spouse for decades, raising children and running stable households. (Let's call such guys "Harry Trumans.") Men who lack the vasopressin receptor gene, on the other hand, are prone to dalliance and disloyalty, always needing to seek sexual variety elsewhere. (Let's call such men "John F. Kennedys.")

The joke among female evolutionary biologists is that there's only one part of a man's anatomy that any potential mate should worry about measuring, and that is the length of his vasopressin receptor gene.

I'm inclined to think of myself as a Harry Truman, but does the data bear that out? I haven't exactly stuck with the women I've loved. I suppose I could use the old cliche that I just haven't found the right person, but as my sister once pointed out, sometimes you need to be the right person. It's probably no coincidence that most of my siblings settled down and married by their early/mid-20's. I'm in my late 30's and have yet to find my life partner. If she even exists.

The trend of my life so far shows that of a serial monogamist. Where do we serial monogamists fit in with this theory? Guys who go from relationship to relationship, but are loyal within each one? How long is my vasopressin receptor gene?

Seeing Red Flags

Disclaimer: The post may piss off some people. I apologize in advance. I've had a crappy week and am in a crappy mood and something triggered a bunch of resentment that has been building up. This blog is my vent, and some readers may feel an uncomfortable rush of hot air. I'm not addressing one single person here, but a composite of several different people and incidents that have collectively taken their toll on me. I love you all, even when I'm pissy.

"That's a big red flag," my friend's wife told me. Her comment made me see red. I'm so fucking tired of having to justify my relationship with K to people.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't even have mentioned the lesbian thing, but this was the first time I'd seen J's wife in four months, and I guess J had filled her in.

Look, it's not like K's married, or a drug addict, or an alcoholic, or has a gambling problem, or a history of cheating on her partners, or has been married six times, or has three kids from five different fathers, or was raised by a cult, or collects Star Trek memorabilia.

She likes girls. And, for some odd reason, likes me. Even though she's never liked a guy before. (Which happens to be a huge ego boost, I must say.) No, she's not going to say she's bi. One interest in one man doesn't change someone's sexual orientation. But there are situations, and I have plenty of anecdotal evidence, that sometimes people fall in love with the person rather than the gender. Frankly, I don't care what she calls herself, as long as she continues to want to be with me.

Not to be a dick about this, but I would like to remind people that I was getting this same kind of flak about K when I was trying to decide whether I should reveal my crush to her. I DID reveal my crush to her, she WAS receptive, and now we're dating. So she's already exceeded my expectations beyond my wildest dreams. But now that we're dating, the doubters keep moving the target. Maybe she'll fool around with you, but she won't get serious... Well, maybe she'll get serious, but it won't last... Maybe it will last, but you won't be happy.

I think it's ironic that a lot of the people who have the biggest problem with this are the most liberal, tolerant, gay-friendly people I know. And yet they seem to be really closed-minded when it comes to this particular situation.

So why does this negative feedback bother me so much? Why aren't I confident enough in our relationship to just shrug off these misguided comments? Why am I so angry? Good questions. One obvious answer is that I agree with them and don't want to admit it.

But even if that's true, these well-meaning people are just adding to my anxiety. I don't need extra anxiety in my life. Anxiety for me is like salt in the typical American diet. People don't need to take salt supplements-- they get plenty of it just by eating normal food. I get plenty of anxiety every day just by living in my own skin. When I'm dating someone, ANYONE, the dosage is tripled. When I'm dating someone and keep having to defend her, well, I don't know what the ordinal word is for six-times (sestupaled?), but you get idea.

I don't know why people who claim to want what's best for me are so intent on increasing my anxiety. And counsel me to get rid of one of the bright spots in my life. If you really cared about my happiness, why are you trying to take away one of the biggest sources of that happiness?

Another thing that bothers me is all these objections set up a case of Us Versus The World Syndrome. "Me and her are gettin' hitched, and we're gonna live on love, and there ain't nothing you can do about it!!!!" I spend so much time fending off objections, I'm not able to evaluate the relationship on its own merits. I want to be able to see and think clearly, but I keep having to get defensive. And if/when this relationship does end (because, let's face it, most of my relationships fail), having to deal with the smug I-Told-You-It-Wouldn't-Works will make the breakup that much worse.

Here again, if you really care about me and worry about my welfare (I'm not convinced that this is what it's about, but I'm going with that premise), then you wouldn't increase my unhappiness by setting up a breakup scenario where I will never want to talk to you again.

Some people have encouraged me to not be exclusive with K; to continue to date other people. I could hear the disapproval in J's wife's voice when she asked me if I still had my dating profiles up. (Answer: No.) Such advice really shows no understanding of who I am. And makes me think that people don't take my relationship with K seriously. I don't date like that. I can't date like that. I don't multitask my relationships. Even if I could, the opportunity is not there. It's hard enough to find one person I want to date who's interested in me.

I didn't go out looking to date a gay. All other things being equal, I would have chosen a straight girl. But that's not what happened. I fell in love with K. And I'd like to enjoy the freedom of seeing how this plays out. Without the added pressure of people waving a bunch of red flags in my face. Maybe that's too much to ask.

First Fight?

I was telling a friend of mine about my rather complicated, unnecessary, and overly dramatic thought process and he asked me, rhetorically, "This roller coaster, do you EVER get off it?"

"Well," I said, "at least I don't ever have to wait in line."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Speaking of roller coasters, it's been about two weeks since my last K-related panic attack, so I was due. I guess I was getting too comfortable. This one was a doozy.

I think we had our first fight today. I won't go into the details, but I was totally wrong. I let my paranoid insecurities get the best of me, and this time I was stupid enough to share them with her. She was annoyed. But after I apologized and begged for forgiveness, the episode ended with her giving me a virtual hug, so I think we're good.

Who Do I Tell?

Something happened during my phone date with K last weekend that I think might have been significant. It happened so quickly, and without much warning, that I'm not sure I heard her correctly. Did she really just say what I thought she did? Did it mean as much to her as it did to me (if, in fact, I did hear what I thought I heard)?

For two days I've been wanting to tell someone about it. But it's personal and there are only a handful of people I would tell about it. And I don't know that they would even care to hear about it. People are busy, no one cares, blah blah blah.

I need a BFF. A best friend who I can call up when things like this happens and tell them all about it. The extrovert part of me needs to process this relationship stuff with a trusted confidante. I have a handful of good friends and family members, but no one who I really feel is a "best friend." Maybe I'm at that age where the idea of a "best friend" is silly or unrealistic. Even when I was married, I felt like I needed more, or closer, good friends.

Up to now, that confidante has been this blog. But despite how much I overshare here, there's a limit to what I want to reveal. I worry about violating K's privacy. I try not to, but sometimes the line between her privacy and my online therapy gets blurred. She knows I have this blog-- it's such a big part of my life that it's hard to hide its existence from her. Every time I mention my divorce blogging community to her, she asks what kind of things I write about on my divorce blog. I'm usually evasive and say things like, "I've been writing reviews of the new Liz Gilbert book." I haven't told her yet that I write about dating, and hence, her. It's one of the last secrets I have from her, and I don't like it. She probably already knows, or can suspect as much.

Most of the stuff I write about, she already knows. There aren't any secrets on this blog that would shock or annoy her. This is not like the personal handwritten journal I kept when I first started dating GF#2. She discovered the journal, read it, and was furious with me. (She violates my privacy and then gets angry at me. Fun gal.) I haven't written anything negative about K here. (Because I haven't felt anything negative about her. At least not yet.) I just worry that she would be upset or uncomfortable knowing some of the things I reveal about her or our courtship.

Soon I plan to at least tell her that I've written about her on my blog. As for actually letting her read the blog, I'm definitely not ready for that yet. A few months ago I joked that the only time I'll ever let her see this blog is after we've been married for ten years and have three kids. If we keep dating and things continue to progress, I'm sure at some point I'll let her read it. (Hi, future K!)

For now, I want to keep this blog for myself. I like having a world that she's not a part of. Where I can process my shit and not mix her up in all my crazy panick attacks.

SIGH. She's so great. And I think she likes me. Like, like likes me.

Holy Crap

I was literally five minutes away from leaving for church yesterday morning when a glurging sound came from the bathroom. At first, it sounded like a cat about to yack up a hairball. I walked in to the bathroom, and sure enough, my cat was in there.

How I wish this had just been a case of cat vomit!

The toilet was backing up, filling up with water and detritus.

Then I noticed that the drain in my utility room was spewing water up onto the floor. I'm no plumber, but I do know that water's supposed to go down the drain, not come up from it. I was doing laundry at the time, and the washer was in the cycle where it unloads a lot of water all at once, and that put too much stress on the clogged sewer pipe.

After a brief moment of panic, I realized that going to church was out of the question. This was the third time in the past month that I'd had to cancel plans to go to church. If I believed in a God who interferes in human events, I'd have to conclude the God does not want me to go to church.

I changed out of my nice-ish clothes and put on some Get Dirty clothes. Moments later I was clearing a path through a pile of sewage that had collected in my back yard, my arm thrust into a pipe of brownish water.

I had no idea what to do. The water was obviously not moving through the pipe. I tried calling some family members for advice, but of course, they were all at their own church. It is at times like these when I wonder whether I am qualified to be a homeowner. I like owning a home, but I'm not sure the home likes me. I'm so clueless.

I know that I pay money to the city for sewer services, so I called the number on my last bill. Of course, it was Sunday morning and they were closed. But their recording gave me the number of the city's public works department, who was also closed but referred me to the police in cases of "emergency." Was this an emergency? Well, it couldn't hurt to ask.

So I called the police, who said that they try to respond to "sewer complaints" that same day. "Complaints?" I wasn't really complaining, I just wanted to know what to do about my backed up sewer.

To make a long story a little shorter: The problem was not with the city sewer system, but with my sewer lines. I paid a guy $155 to come out and clean out my lines, only to be told that somewhere under my property the sewer pipe is broken. He couldn't fix it, or clean it out, or drain it, today. When he used the word "excavation" my heart sank. That sounds expensive and disruptive.

The hardest part about all this is having to deal with it by myself. As I've said before, I don't know what I'm doing. And getting repairs of this magnitude done, while trying to work full-time with an hour commute, is a pain. The sewer cleaning guy seemed to assume I wasn't alone in the house. He'd ask things like, "How long have you guys lived here?" There was no evidence whatsoever that someone else lived in the house with me, and you'd think he'd get the hint when I said things like, "Do I need to be here for that? I have to work during the day." So I'm not sure why he assumed I was with someone, but it was annoying. It reinforced how different I am from everyone else. I live alone and my sewer is complicated. Sigh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I got a lot done yesterday, but it didn't feel like it. I was preoccupied with the sewer problem, which was so mentally draining (no pun intended), and by the end of the day nothing was resolved. I still have a second load of laundry waiting to go, but I don't know how long it will be til I can do it. I can still use the sinks and toilet and shower, but now that I know there's a problem I'm using them as sparingly as possible. (From the looks of the mess in the backyard, the sewer line had been backed up for quite some time, I just didn't notice it.)

At one point, while I was waiting for the sewer guys to show up, I shoveled my driveway. There was still some residual snow left over from last week, even though most of it had been packed down by me driving on it. I probably didn't need to shovel the driveway, but I felt like I had to do something. It was an easy house-related task that I had some control over. And when I was done, I had something to show for it: a clear driveway. Why couldn't all house problems have such a simple solution?

Today the sewer guys are coming back to give my pipes a colonoscopy. They have a hose with a camera on it that they stick down there to see where the break is. Then the real fun begins. Having my cold frozen yard dug up to fix a sewer pipe buried under it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Despite all the worry and heartache my house is causing me (I'd just paid for an $800 furnace problem I had last month), I still can't bring myself to say I don't want to be a homeowner. I still love my house. ([SnarkyComment] I guess some members of my family would recommend that I just dump the house, since it's causing me some stress. [/SnarkyComment]) For example, I especially love having a garage in the winter.

I'm supposed to be getting my first-time homebuyer tax credit back soon. That was an $8,000 credit from the federal government to buy a house last year. After paying back family members for help with my down payment, and my furnace repair, and this "excavation" job, I fear that I'm not going to see much of my homebuyer credit.

Oh, Homebuyer Credit, I hardly knew you.

Infat-head

Part Three of my mini-series: Discussions on Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Some members of my family think I am crazy. Especially when it comes to dating, they believe my behavior is scary and irrational and bipolar and impulsive.

Well, at least I'm not alone.

According to Gilbert's book, infatuation affects your brain as strongly as cocaine:

...infatuation is the most perilous aspect of human desire. Infatuation leads to what psychologists call "intrusive thinking"-- that famously distracted state in which you cannot concentrate on anything other than the object of your obsession... Infatuation alters your brain chemistry, as though you were dousing yourself with opiates and stimulants. The brain scans and mood swings of an infatuated lover, scientists have recently discovered, look remarkably similar to the brain scans and mood swings of a cocaine addict... infatuation is an addiction, with measurable chemical effects on the brain.

The thing is, I don't like being infatuated. I don't like the loss of control, the mood swings, the obsessing, the fretting. Lately I've been proud of myself when I can go a few hours without thinking about K. Not thinking about her gives my life balance, and reduces the chances that I will concoct some panicky scenario where she has suddenly lost interest in me (despite all evidence against it.)

But infatuation is a necessary step in the dating process. You have to go through it if you want to see whether something substantial is waiting on the other side. I guess the alternative would be to date people you're not attracted to, but I don't see the point of that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Love is a crap shoot. Once the infatuation wears off, you never know what you're going to get. (With all due respect to Forrest Gump.) Love is also a terrible mixed metaphor.

In an attempt to look past the infatuation, I keep looking back at all my past relationships and trying to see if there's any evidence that K and I have something different. A lot of the thoughts and feelings I have for her, I had with the others at first, too. At this point there's no logical reason to believe this relationship will work out better than the others. Except that maybe I'm more experienced and have learned how to be a better partner. Whatever that's worth.

Despite all that, here are some things with K that seem different than the other times:

• I'm intimidated by how hot she is. When I look at pictures of her on FB, I can't believe she would want to date me. I feel like she's out of my league. Objectively speaking, we're probably a pretty good match in the looks department, so this is mostly just my own insecurities.
  
• She talks as much as I do. She's even better at keeping the conversation going than I am.
  
• She's mature, happy, and in control of her life. She has her shit together.
• I've never dated a woman who wasn't looking to be in a relationship. I don't know how to relate to a girl who's not desperate! It makes me insecure, but on the other hand, if she chooses to be with me, I'll know it's because of me and not because she's just looking for anyone.
  

These are not arguments or justification or anything. I haven't quite figured out the significance of these observations yet.

I still have no idea how this is all going to shake down after the buzz of infatuation wears off.

Purpose of Marriage

Part Two of my mini-series: Discussions on Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert.

When I was in high school, I may have been the only teenage boy who talked about how I looked forward to getting married. One time, when I mentioned this, my dad's new wife said, "You don't want a wife, you want a whore and a maid."

Wow! Where did that come from? Project much?

Clearly, she and I had a completely different understanding of what a wife was. Although having a regular sex partner was definitely a selling point, I'm not sure why that would make my hypothetical wife a "whore." And the maid part baffled me, since I had been doing my own laundry since I was 15, and was mostly on my own for meals in high school. I never asked, or expected, anyone to clean up after me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In her book, Gilbert writes about how the purpose of marriage has changed considerably over the centuries. The idea that people would marry for love is a relatively new one, and would be completely alien to most humans throughout history. She illustrates this by talking about her relationship with her fiance:

I do not need this man in almost any of the ways that women have needed men over the centuries. I do not need him to protect me physically, because I live in one of the safest societies on earth. I do not need him to provide for me financially, because I have always been the winner of my own bread. I do not need him to extend my circle of kinship, because I have a rich community of friends and neighbors and family all on my own. I do not need him to give me the critical social status of "married woman," because my culture offers respect to unmarried women. I do not need him to father my children, because I have chosen not to become a mother...

So where does that leave us? Why do I need this man at all? I need him only because I happen to adore him, because his company brings me gladness and comfort...

Reverse the gender roles, but yeah, what she said.

I don't need a partner to keep my house. I'm not looking for someone to have my babies. I don't need her money or her social connections or her manual labor. I'm not even looking, necessarily, for a regular sex partner, since I've been married before and I know what a myth that is. (And I've been single long enough to know how to take care of that myself.)

Despite my experience with divorce, I'm not bitter toward marriage. I'm still looking for my life partner, or soul mate, or snugglebunny, or whatever you want to call it.

It doesn't have to be today, or this month, or even this year. But someday, I will want another partner. Because, as Gilbert quotes in her book,

"Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone."

So How Did You Meet?

Part One of my new mini-series: Discussions on Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.

Elizabeth Gilbert's latest book is a great read that brings up so many ideas, one right after the other, that I'm not sure how to break it all down. I keep reading stuff that I want to share with someone, and then I'll get distracted by real life, and then read something else that I want to share. I've been putting little sticker flags on the pages I want to write about, but I'm not halfway done with the book yet and I've already flagged seven different pages. I want to flag so many pages that I'm tempted to just copy whole chapters into my blog, and then write, "What she said."

Summary: At the end of Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert falls in love with Felipe, a Brazilian man with Australian citizenship living in Indonesia. The new book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, continues with that relationship. Although Liz and Felipe have every intention of staying together indefinitely, they have both been through horrible divorces and vow never to marry again. Until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security steps in. During a routine trip back into the U.S., they deny Felipe the ninety-day visa that he'd been using to live in the country between business trips. In order to be allowed back into the country, he and Gilbert must get married.

With no choice but to marry or never return to her own country with her soul mate, Gilbert reluctantly agrees to marry the man she loves. The book is an investigation into the institution of marriage as she struggles to come to terms with her own unique version of a shotgun wedding.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gilbert has a discussion with a group of Hmong women in rural Vietnam about their husbands and marriages. The Hmong have very different attitudes toward these concepts, as Gilbert discovers when she asks them two questions: 1.) what's the secret to a happy marriage? and 2.) is your man a good husband? These questions are nonsensical to the Hmong women. Phrases like "happy marriage" and "good husband" are as alien to them as asking them if a turtle in a pond is good at being a turtle. It's just a turtle-- it's not good or bad at it.

Gilbert compares this with women in the industrialized Western world, who place their marriage at the "center of [their] emotional biography:"

...if you ask any typical modern Western woman how she met her husband, when she met her husband, and why she fell in love with her husband, you can be sure you will be told a complete, complex, and deeply personal narrative which that woman has not only spun carefully around the entire experience, but which she has memorized, internalized, and scrutinized for clues as to her own selfhood.

...her story will concern two people-- herself and her spouse-- who, like characters in a novel or movie, are presumed to have been on some kind of personal life's journeys before meeting each other, and whose journeys then intersect at a fateful moment.

Hmong women, Gilbert concludes, don't do that. They give her the impression that each marriage, or husband, is pretty much the same as the other.

I'm not a modern Western woman, but I'm probably more like one than a nomadic Hmong husband living in rural Vietnam. I totally buy into the "emotional biography." In general, I like people's stories, and I like romance, so I'm a huge fan of hearing "How We Met" stories. Gilbert is spot on that Western couples usually have an interesting tale that they have cultivated throughout the years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've done my share of cultivating such stories myself. I have a story for each woman I've dated (and for many of them I didn't date.) I once made a joke about GF #2 that we stayed together way longer than we should have just because we liked telling our How We Met story so much.

With SnarkEx, we both wrote separate versions of the story of How We Met (one from her perspective, one from his) and put them side-by-side on our wedding website. Although we met through online personals, there were still plenty of details to make the story interesting and exciting.

But I was never fully comfortable with the short answer to the question, "How did you guys meet?" (Answer: "Online.") Meeting your soul mate through online personals doesn't have that powerful feeling of fate that fuels the romance narrative. Essentially, we went online shopping for a partner and found one. It's too contrived. Not that there's anything wrong with that. If it weren't for online dating, I wouldn't have met my last three girlfriends. I know some couples are embarrassed by meeting online, but that wasn't the case with us. It just doesn't make for a very interesting story.

Last fall I decided to take a break from online dating. My aim was to meet someone naturally and organically, as I went about my life, rather than actively seeking someone out on a dating website. But in essence, I think I was searching for a better story.

I found one.

It remains to be seen how significant a figure K will be in my the Story of My Life, but even if things ended today, we have a great story. I'm not going to tell the entire story here and now, but what I think is interesting is how our story involves a hybrid of organic and online meetings.

We first met organically eight years ago in grad school. Went out a couple of times, but she wasn't interested. We lost touch, and I met SnarkEx, got married, then divorced. Then last spring K and I got back in touch through Facebook. That's where our online relationship started. We slowly, very slowly, got to know each other again. Six months later we started an email correspondence. Both the original live organic meeting and the online communication were necessary to us getting together.

But most of that is chronicled elsewhere on this blog. And the story continues...

Spirals

The events of last February (2009) keep coming back to my lately, showing me how my life runs in cycles. It was an active month. In the two years I've had this blog, February 2009 had the record for the most number of posts (23) in a single month. I wrote about:

• writing
• asking out TennisGirl (TG)
• going on to, and off of, antidepressants
• meeting Homebuyer
• discussions on Eat, Pray, Love
  
• meeting TGTBT, who later became AwesomeGirlfriend (AG)
  
• tennis victories
• dating after divorce
  

The cycles of my life are more like spirals. I go around a circle, but each time it's a slightly different experience, as I move up or down the spiral. For example:

• Just yesterday I wrote an update about my writing life, which I had originally posted exactly a year ago.
• I'm currently reading the follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love, which I first read a year ago.
  
• I played a league match against TG on Monday. Last year, exactly one year ago today, I was all stressed out about asking her out. When we played our league match back then, she kicked my butt. This week, I squeaked by her in a long, exciting match (5-7, 6-4, 6-4.) It was the first time I've ever beat her in a league. Incidentally, TG has a boyfriend now, and I'm dating K, who is a much better match for me.
  
• Speaking of K, dating her is bringing some of the same panicky issues I had last February when I first started dating AG.
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's funny when I read how panicky I was having to wait five days between my first and second date with AG. I'm waiting 4-6 weeks between dates with K! Actually, that's not really a fair comparison, since K and I have frequent email, Facebook, and phone contact.

Which is why I'm going through another panicky moment right now. This week I pushed the envelope a little, calling her spontaneously on Sunday. That seemed to work well, and she sent me a spontaneous text the next day. Both good things.

But then I fear I might have pushed it too far. On Monday I sent her a long email where I shared some of my insecurities about us. Yesterday I left two FB comments on her page and sent an ecard (in honor of Groundhog Day.) She has not yet responded to any of it. She usually writes me on Tuesday evenings, but this morning there was nothing.

Often, when I panic like this, it turns out to be nothing. My panicky moment over AG last year turned out to be ridiculous. I'm hoping that by writing out my anxiety now, I'll look like a fool later. But there have been times when my instincts have been correct-- that I came on too strong, I knew I came on too strong, and she confirmed it. So I'm worried that this is one of those times.

The more I think about it, and the longer I go without a response, the more I panic. I need a distraction. Hello, blog.

Here's a great ecards site that K introduced me to:

Writing to Win Friends and Lovers, Part II

When you've been blogging for as long as I have, sooner or later you start recycling your topics. Lately it feels like everything I want to write about is a follow-up of things I've already written.

It's been exactly one year (as of yesterday) since I wrote about the role that writing has played in my life. To summarize, I said that all my life, my writing has won me friends and lovers. I gave several examples, including the letter I wrote to my first serious girlfriend after she broke my heart. The letter inspired us to get back together and we dated for another year and a half.

Here's an excerpt of my main point:

But I don't need to be a famous writer for my writing to be worthwhile. Besides the compulsion to express myself, my writing has won me many valuable things in my life: friends and lovers.

If I can just write my stupid little books or my stupid little blog posts, and have friends and family read and enjoy them, and maybe once in a while make a new friend or lover through my writing, well, what more could I ask for?

I ended with these lines:

So all my writing, and blogging, and Facebooking, is like sowing seeds. If TG isn't into me, my stuff will still be out there, waiting to impress the next one to come along.

I wrote that in February, and it turned out to be prophetic. A month later, K friended me on Facebook. She had missed the old website I used to have in grad school, and was happy to see that I had a blog. (My public one.) Later she told me that she went back and read every single post on that blog, over a year's worth.

K and I got to know each other better over email. Last November, I wrote her a confession that I had a huge crush on her. She told me that it was "the nicest email ever written" and that it made her feel very special. More recently, she told me that she had printed out that letter and saved it with all the other significant mementos from her life.

Once again, my writing has won me a morethanfriend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of K, here's the latest update: she's booked a flight to visit me at the end of the month. So I've made it to the next "date." Woo-hoo.

On Saturday we talked on the phone for three hours. Sunday evening I pushed the envelope and tried something new and daring: a spontaneous, unplanned call. She said she could talk for 20 minutes-- we ended up talking for 50. On Monday, she sent me an unsolicited text that said she missed me. Another first. [GRIN]

She continues to surprise and exceed expectations. So things are going well. For now.