How to Have a Relationship With Wanting

You can also find this at the Good Men Project:
For Singles, How to Have a Relationship with Wanting
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/for-singles-how-to-have-a-relationship-with-wanting-dg/

If I am waiting, should I be waiting? If am wanting, should I be wanting?— The Decemberists

Me: Yes, yes, be waiting! Be wanting!

I am afraid that us singles have been left fearful of wanting, so we climb on our little flying carpets and hover just above it. It’s a mind trick that ultimately leaves us sad but uncertain of why. We tell ourselves we aren’t wanting, we’re above wanting, but we have a pervasive loneliness that we can’t assuage. 

I went to a divorce recovery group of sorts a couple of years ago. It made me so uncomfortable I could hardly keep my mouth shut. The leaders—two passive, soft spoken, doughy guys in their early 50s (I’ll call them Little and Big, because they came in two sizes), had a lot of catch phrases they would return to, as if you kept pulling the little string attached to Little and Big’s backs. These were the words of recovery, I suppose. Everyone in the group was clinging to them so fiercely they all stared me down with accusing eyes when I dared to dissent. And I could tell they were all thinking I was just a poor outsider who didn’t yet know the way. The way to happiness, for them, lay in the pull string phrases from Little and Big. We’ve all heard them: Be happy alone first; You don’t need someone else to be happy; Needing someone is weak; Needing someone is codependent. 

Respectfully speaking, I think that is a little pile of bullshit. This is what happens to us when we have been burned by love, crashed in romance, beached on a deserted island with no one to come yank us back into the water. Sometimes, sadly, it’s happened to us over and over again. It seems easier and less painful to decide we don’t need anyone else and can be perfectly happy alone, ballroom dancing by ourselves in the kitchen or knitting a onesie for the chimney. Once we decide this, and convince ourselves of it, we might just be temporarily elated for five minutes or five days. And then the unrest sets in. We can’t identify the unrest because We are happy alone! We don’t need anyone else!  But the unrest is there because we drank the potion, a little bit, and convinced ourselves of something untrue.  

It is okay, people, to be wanting. It is okay to want a buddy, companion, compadre, and to even, Gasp! think you could be happier with a dance partner. The trouble lies, I suppose, if you wait for that person to initiate a happy life. Yes, be happy anyway, in spite of your loneliness. But, be lonely also. Because it informs you that you are wanting. And things come to those who want.  

It is really painful to engage in this relationship with wanting. I’m not honestly sure how to do it. A couple of years ago a friend who happens to be a therapist challenged me to be alone for 6 months— no dating, no searching, just resting in my singleness. So I did it, just to check it out, because I am a student of life like that. (And I wanted to prove him wrong.) It was amazing! I had a million revelations. I noticed all of the ways I was waiting for the right person before I was willing to really dig deep and live in the way I wanted to live. Stop that at once! I decided, and became more invested in the life I had as a single mom of two girls. “I am going to be the one person carrying all the shit to the school ice cream social and not feel sorry for myself,” I decided. And I did, instead of thinking, “When am I going to have someone to help me carry all of this shit!?” “I am going to love my house as if I could live in it forever,” I decided, instead of “Someday I will meet someone and leave, so why get invested here?” It was transformative and intoxicating in a way, to be shamelessly my single self. My married friends act as if they have chosen the lives they are leading, so why shouldn’t I? Why should I act as if this life just landed upon me? When in fact none of us are the masters of our destiny just as much as we all are. It is completely relative. 

Anyway, I made a mistake. My friend’s dare temporarily lifted some of the pain I had been feeling about being alone, and made me decide “I do not want!” I threw a tiny temper tantrum in my own mind and became fiercely committed to not wanting. Because it was such a relief! If I did not want, I didn’t have to be heartbroken that I did not have. If I did not want, I didn’t have to be vulnerable, or try to trust, or really, try at all. If I did not want, I didn’t have to reflect much on myself or my practices in getting. Because I was going to be happy alone, god damn it. I wasn’t going to get anything, and that was fine, because I did not want!

Except for that I did. I just buried it deeply in the defenses of radical, empowered aloneness. There is a middle road. It is the road of happy-ish wanting. How do we get into relation with happy wanting? I don’t know exactly, but I’m pretty sure the first step is getting honest. I am pretty damn happy, a decent amount of the time. I am also having a human experience on planet earth— that leaves for some trials of the heart. I am also cognizant that I am living a middle class life in the USA and that makes me pretty damn privileged and lucky. Anyway, in spite of all the bounty I have, I want. I’m going to be okay with that. 

Why do I give a care? I guess because my friends in their 30s and 40s are deciding that life didn’t give them what they wanted, and they are becoming complacent in that. My friend said yesterday, “I always wanted a family and I’m starting to realize I’m not going to get that.” He’s 40. I’m worried that we are setting ourselves up for failure with our absurd expectations of what a modern romance should be, and when it does fail we throw up our hands completely and decide not only that our life does’t hold that for us, but that it won’t. 

Love is in crisis. Because we have made it into something nearly impossible. Any given year, 50 percent of us are suffering from a broken heart. But because love as we know it is flawed, let’s not throw it out the window. Let’s not discard it by saying “Not in this lifetime.” Let’s desire it still. Even through our pain and disappointment. Let’s want it. Let’s keep it energetically alive so that it will continue to evolve. Let’s hold it in mind, and imagine the impossible, possible.    

How (and Why) to Come Clean with Your Cheating Heart

You can also find this article at:
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/how-and-why-to-come-clean-with-your-cheating-heart-dg/

In the infamous words of Hank Williams, (though I prefer Patsy Cline’s pleading delivery), Your cheatin’ heart/Will make you weep/You’ll cry and cry/And try to sleep/But sleep won’t come/The whole night through/Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you…

And friend, ’tis true. Someone knows you are cheating. That someone is you. (And hopefully the person you are cheating with.) The reality is you. just. can’t. stop. Or, maybe you don’t want to. Either way, cheating is as powerful as a drug, and we know this now because of nifty brain science. The neurotransmitters you get from the thrill of 1. having illicit sex and 2. keeping it from your partner (even if you wish you weren’t) are way more intoxicating, and therefore addictive, than, say, a day of Frappuccinos and vodka. Hank was right on about the weeping and lack of sleeping, and that is why this needs to stop. It will reek havoc on your mental and physical well being, to live in a state of discongruity (a word which, Mr. dictionary.com, is not obsolete for therapists!) 

The self you put forth into the world, as you step into your wingtips or loafers or flip flops in the morning, and then out your front door into the bright of day, needs to be a somewhat harmonious, unspilt self. So that you can function at work, be a contender in your racquet ball game, be a good dad, a decent partner, and feel like a stand-up-guy. If you are cheating, and you already know this of course, this isn’t possible. You defend that you really are a stand-up-guy who is forced to behave in such a way because your life is such a miserable wreck, or maybe your wife is such a miserable wreck, and cheating is bringing joy, or release, or relief, or something. It is bringing something. Sooner rather than later it is bringing a wrecking ball to the rest of your life, and that is why coming clean now may preempt some of the damage. 

How do you do it? First, you come clean to yourself. Cheating is not simple—you aren’t possessed by a demon that can be eradicated with a saging ceremony. You are going to need some help. To come clean to yourself that you are cheating means that you get real that you are doing something destructive to your life as you know it. That’s it. You don’t need to heap yourself in shame or judgement or put a scarlet letter on your face. You are doing something destructive, perhaps because something needs to be destroyed and you don’t know a better way to destroy it, perhaps because you became weak in the face of temptation. Perhaps it is something more serious and you have a sex addiction. This is murky water and this is where you need to take step two, which is to come clean to someone else. (Very obviously, I hope, the person to support you through this is absolutely not the person you are cheating with.) A good someone else is the person in your life who is a locked down vault for secrets. If you aren’t sure, don’t share. This person also needs to be on your side and willing to help you through, but not judgmental. I don’t recommend a priest, but that’s just my slant.    This person also needs to be strong enough to challenge your perceptions. Because like any addict, you are going to justify the addiction and you need to be pushed a little. This might be your brother, your best friend, or a therapist. I like therapists, because I am one, they get paid to do this, and they are probably, hopefully, trained. They have no strings attached. They can shine a light on a dark gloopy monster hiding in the shadow of your heart and help you stare straight at it. Sometimes. 

Last is the super ugly hard one. You have to come clean to your partner. And I don’t mean if you were drunk and kissed someone at the office party five years ago. I’m talking about “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!” when, you know damn well what the definition of is is. (Sorry, Bill, I do love you.) This is also where some coaching and role play with a therapist ahead of time can help. Coming clean is going to be very hard. You need to be very brave. I really recommend you do this with a third party present, because people feel completely threatened and like their life is utterly upended when they find out their partner is cheating. Chances are, your partner knows, but she is keeping it in the back of her mind and naming it something else (“Work is really getting to him/He’s depressed/He’s having a hard time turning 40/ He just loves the gym!/ Is he doing coke?”) Your partner will likely be devastated. Hopefully, you are devastated too and you can communicate that. If a therapist can be a part of this conversation, awesome. A huge mistake that is often made when coming clean is giving too much detail about the affair— who it was with, their physical description, their contact info (under no circumstance do this!), what exactly took place, where, when, how frequently, etc. Try, try, try not to deliver these details. They unleash something even more destructive to your relationship— the wild, threatened, imagination of your partner. Decide, before this conversation, what you want from this relationship. You may very well not get it, but you may. If you can clearly say that you are still in love with your partner and are willing to get help for cheating, because your partner means the world to you, go there. Or, maybe your affair illuminated that your relationship is deficient and the two of you need help— then ask gently for that. This conversation is not the time to place blame on your partner. That is a very destructive move that will probably lead to the end of your relationship. Blame belongs to you, ultimately, for choosing to cheat. You need to be ready to take that on. It doesn’t mean that other dynamics didn’t contribute to this breaking point, but your taking responsibility for cheating could lead to saving the relationship, if that is your ultimate goal. 

Don’t ask for forgiveness, yet. It is too great a request initially. You can say that you hope for it in time. That you will work for it. That you would like to earn it, if that is the case. After the initial shock wears off (which could be days or weeks), ask what your partner might need from you so that he or she is willing to offer you forgiveness. It could be a little unreasonable, initially. She might need to check your texts. He might want you to not go alone to business conferences. It will depend very much on the circumstances surrounding the affair. Some advice: indulge these requests IF they don’t build resentment in you (resentment leads to… guess what?) and you agree that together you are working towards forgiveness. Ultimately, you also will need to forgive yourself. Sometimes that is the hardest piece. Not feeling forgiven can be a projection and an indication that you haven’t offered this to yourself. This is a process that also takes work and you will benefit from a coach of sorts. 

Remember if the affair has been more than a couple of encounters, it may be truly difficult to extract yourself. I wasn’t being glib when I said it was like an addiction: it is. You need to arm yourself with resources and strategies from experts— there is ample help out there if you look under the right rocks. If you work with the person you've been cheating with, you need a hiatus or to leave your job. You need defenses against temptation, and oftentimes you need to acknowledge that your own will is faulty. That’s part of our humanness. Again, a therapist can help you figure this out. 

An authentic life requires extraordinary courage. We all have that courage within us and there are great rewards to accessing it and using it wisely. This sounds hokey— but if you are cheating you already realize this— more than anyone, you are cheating yourself. Out of something honest and real. It is not illusive, though. When you come clean to your partner, it will change your life, probably forever. It might not be in the way you anticipate. But. You changed your life when you started an affair. In a strange way, that was the beginning of the work that you now have to finish. Finish the work. Ultimately, you will be better for it.  

Dear Men, How To (and How Not To) Write an Online Dating Profile

You can also find this article at The Good Men Project:
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/how-to-and-how-not-to-write-an-online-dating-profile-in-10-fabulous-steps-dg/

Dear Men, 

I know, it’s not easy, putting yourself out there. Maybe it’s been a while. Maybe you think you are an old pro at this. Whether you are first dipping that big man toe in the proverbial waters of online dating, or you are already swimming circles around the pool, to get inside the female brain, read this. I promise, you will be editing your profile before you even finish reading number one. 

1. Do not shame online dating! Everyone you are trying to appeal to (at least in this virtual format) is online dating too. Women don’t want to feel like we are the only ones in our fuzzy socks and bathrobes on a Friday night, trolling the internet for hotties. So you, and we, are online dating like the rest of the country. We want to feel hip and wanted, and we want you to have just a little bit of swagger. So, don’t say, “We can lie about how we met,” or “Nothing else has worked for me.” Reframe! This is an adventure, you’re happy to be here, now go. 
2. Do not explain why you are online dating.  Nobody wants to hear why you can’t meet someone at the office (we know you tried), and the bar scene isn’t for you (this is code for “I am old”), blah, blah, blah. We get it. We are here, too, remember? Do not explain us to ourselves. Hi, nice to meet ya, is a great start. 
3. Say NOTHING about a glass. Do not say you are a “glass half full” kinda guy because every dating profile on the face of the internet says that. And what kind of dork would say “glass half empty?” (That would actually be refreshing, no pun intended, just for originality’s sake). In fact, avoid cliches all together. Be original! Instead of “glass half full”, say that you know how to make your own silver linings, or you have learned through adversity, or you once saw the actual end of a rainbow, pulled over the car, and sat right under it with your kids (but don’t lie! Only if this is true of course.) 
4. And on that note, don’t tell us you are an “all-around good guy.” We don’t know what that means anymore. If we did, we would be dating him and not on this site. (Smile). Instead, say something interesting and original. Do you own your own bonsai forest? Did you groom your dog last night and then stroll down at the U just to let her show off? Did your dad teach you to make sushi? Do you always roll your little girls socks down for her so the lace shows? Say that.  
5. Don’t flex. Don’t drop hints about your PhD or your car or your 600 thread-count sheets, for Chrissakes. If you are a doctor, mum is the word! BE HUMBLE. Don’t include a picture of your Mercedes, your diploma, or God forbid, your bed! Holy moses. Do NOT, (and I am screaming this) take a picture of your naked upper body in your bathroom mirror. We can see your bathroom! And the toilet seat is up. And in the background, we can see your bed! And it’s a mess. And there’s a picture of your wedding hanging above it. If you have lovely pecs, get a great shot of them in action while you are water skiing or fly fishing or saving a hedgehog from a burning palm tree. That would be a deal maker. 
6. Don’t whine. Good grief, stop whining! Dating sites are not matchmaking services. Understand this. Reread that sentence. I’ll help: Dating sites are not matchmaking services. Dating sites are just virtual bars. Today, in 2015, it’s easier for us to wink at someone virtually instead of in person, because in person would make us feel creepy. Understand that the online dating site you are using is just a bar, just a safe place to wink or say “how you doin?” It doesn’t owe you anything, just like the bar you used to go to didn’t owe you anything (other than the beer you paid for). Especially important, is the women on the site don’t owe you anything at all. They don’t owe you a wink back or an email or to follow through on the date they set up. It’s not very nice, but it’s true, and I think if you understand this, and understand that the service you are subscribing too is just a way to access single people to see if they would like to receive that wink, or not, you will be a happier online dater. There are a lot of whiney, upset, venting online daters. Stop that. If it’s making you angry, stop doing it. 
7. Which brings me to what I’ll call “getting personal.” If you want to get personal on your profile do it like this: “I’m looking specifically for that tall, leggy, witty brunette who was playing Scrabble with her son at Coffee-a-go-go last Saturday, or someone who would do exactly that.” But not like this, “I actually met a woman from this site who weighed 30 pounds more than what her photos showed, drank too much wine and proceeded to tell me TMI about her divorce.” Don’t make us afraid that we will end up as a story on your blog. And your profile is not your blog, by the way.  
8. Care. Women are totally drawn to caring. Care genuinely, about something, and show it. Everyone is a “family man” or “passionate about my kids.” That’s sweet and fine to say but just know that it doesn’t make you stand out. But what else do you care about? Deeply about making your community safer? Passionately about tiny rare cacti? Extraordinarily about the research you are doing on breakthrough alternative to liposuction? Ok, not that one. But something. Show us something matters to you. More than your ATV. Which you might want to take the photos down of.
9. Your dog is cute. We like her. Put yourself in the photo with her. Do not wear her in a front pack in the photo. Or have her tongue in your mouth. Ew.
10. Be you! There is something that makes you a snowflake. Ask around to see what it is. Maybe you sculpt your mustache into a different topiary shape in the shower. Keep that one to yourself. Maybe you teach kundalini yoga to prisoners, maybe you wrote a song for your mom last Christmas and you wouldn’t mind singing it at a karaoke bar, maybe you know how to do the Texas two-step blindfolded, maybe you make a mean Coq-au-Vin, maybe you have seen every Wes Anderson movie ten times, maybe you host an annual trampoline-a-thon to raise awareness for bladder dysfunction. Ok not the last one. You are you are you and the more you are you and not everyone else, the more we will see you and know if we want to wink back, or not.
11. Good luck!

The Black and White and Gray of Emotional Abuse

I have been tuned in to what the virtual zeitgeist has to say lately about emotional abuse and I’m concerned  that emotional abuse, and abusers in particular, are being portrayed in a way that is far too black and white. In actuality emotional abuse isn’t black and white at all, which is why it can be so difficult to spot when you are in the intense attraction phase of a relationship, and why it can be so difficult to extract yourself from once you are already entrenched in the relationship. 

I know both professionally and personally about emotional abusers. Emotional abusers are foremost two things: human and hurting. While I am not condoning emotional abuse, I think demonizing emotional abusers does not bring anyone closer to understanding or healing— not the abusers nor the victims.  

Emotional abusers DO NOT KNOW they are being emotionally abusive, usually. They are not like the Wizard of Oz, sitting behind a mental curtain orchestrating how they will hurt their victim. Their behavior happens as an organic reaction to feeling threatened— usually the threat is that they will lose their partner. This doesn’t mean the abuse is okay by any means, but when we paint them as contriving, manipulative masterminds, it doesn’t engender true understanding. They are people in pain, they don’t know where the hurt comes from or how long it’s been there, and they want it mirrored. And so, they create pain in others.

One key reason healthy people can feel trapped in a relationship that is emotionally abusive, is that often the abuse enters the relationship gradually and is reflexive in nature. Abusers start small. Just like we all give “trust tests” early in a relationship to determine if a potential partner is really going to be there for us, (a term coined by the modern couplehood and relationship guru John Gottman), emotional abusers give what I think of as abuse tests, to see if you are going to stick through the damage they cause. They start small and see how much you will take. They learn how much you can bear and push just over that threshold until next time, when they push a little farther. But by “reflexive” I mean that they are actually reacting to their own pain and trying to direct the pain they feel inside themselves— the distrust, anxiety, and discomfort of being intimate with someone — outward, which ends up causing them more pain. It creates for them a self fulfilling prophecy: some deep part of them feels worthless and so they attempt to make you feel worthless too, almost ensuring that intimacy will be destroyed and they will continue to feel worthless. This does not mean the victim should draw on his or her compassion and remain in the emotionally abusive relationship. I believe most people on earth are deserving of compassion and love. That doesn’t mean that they are deserving of intimate love when they cannot receive it and must hurt the person who delivers it. 

An emotionally abusive relationship does not change in all the ways the victim tricks herself into thinking it will change. It does not change because her partner finally sees how much he is hurting her, it does not change because through test after test he finally begins to trust her, it does not change because she proves to him she is not like the women from his past and this time is going to be different. The primary way it changes is that one person exits, and the emotional abuser goes on to abuse another victim.  The secondary way it changes is that the emotional abuser has such a string of failed relationships that he has a stroke of insight and decides that he wants to be different and he seeks help— but this is rare. It’s rare because emotional abuse often comes from people with disorganized attachment, mental health issues, addiction, or personality disorders. Insight can be slow to come to people coping with these issues.  

Emotional abusers are not villains and they come from all walks of life— all socioeconomic statuses, genders, and sexual persuasions. They are humans and as humans, lovable, and that is why you might find yourself in a relationship, or even in love with, someone who is emotionally abusive. They are complex people and will have utterly adorable and worthy qualities, just like the rest of us. The worst part of being in an emotionally abusive relationship is that your intuition gets thrown out of whack and you stop trusting yourself. Through a technique called “gaslamping”, abusers can make you question if it isn’t yourself who is the abuser, or if this isn’t all some exaggerated reality you created. If, while in a relationship, you remember a time when you were more in touch with your gut feelings and your intuitive self, and that self has felt wayward as of late, it is time to step away and gain perspective. Even a weekend alone can be the beginning of a window to a healthier version of yourself. 

What, specifically, does emotional abuse look like? It can look like horrible name calling but it is often far worse. Emotional abusers have an uncanny ability for taking note of our vulnerabilities, our tender places and the shame we carry. They have an excellent radar for shame because they carry so much of it themselves. So emotional abuse looks like we are being shown our own worst flaws under a giant magnifying glass. Blaming and shaming are the name of the game in emotional abuse. If the abuser is skilled at it and the victim isn’t trained to spot it, the victim will probably find himself believing and owning and being made small from the accusations. Emotional abuse is serious. People in emotionally abusive relationships are at higher risk for anxiety and depression. Emotional abuse can turn into physical abuse. 

The worst thing to tell a friend seemingly stuck in an emotionally abusive relationship is that it “is not love.” Who gets to say what is and is not love? Love is completely personal. If love is abusive for someone, that is their own journey to walk and burden to carry, but it is not anyone else’s to name. If the love you find yourself in is emotionally abusive, it is important to recognize the thinking traps you may have lain for yourself. “She will change when….” (fill in the blank with “she starts to trust me/I commit to her/I take her on that trip/I marry her/I have babies with her, etc, etc). It is a hard long road to go down because chances are she will never change. The jewel in it for you, the victim, is to understand the pull of the relationship. Don’t worry too much that you were somehow duped or trapped by the abuse. It is easy and normal to feel shame about that. Understand the good qualities your relationship had or has, and how strongly they pull you. Realize that those positive things are the qualities you need to look for in the next best thing, without the abuse, because the abuse is not going to change.   

The All True Story of Going Stag to a Wedding Right After a Divorce

First of all let me say this happened in the way distant past. And if time doesn’t heal all wounds, at least it allows us to laugh at those wounds. Hard. 

The divorced among us know that nobody likes hearing news of your divorce. And it’s not at the forefront of your mind which friends you may have neglected to call to let them know about your divorce. The inner inner circle already knows because they saw the whole thing go down. But the outer inner circle, the ones who don’t know but would be truly hurt if they didn’t hear it from you yourself, are a little more tricky. You call, you need to catch up for a half hour on how they’re doing, by then it’s just awkward to say “Hey, so I’m getting a divorce,” so you let it go for another month. It is a bummer of a conversation that is very draining, and for that reason I put it off again and again. 

I recently heard of a joint Facebook post to announce a divorce, and I kinda like that idea.  It spares you from having to say the same awful news over and over again: while pushing the swing on the playground, while checking out which canned cat food has the most protein, while wishing I hadn’t brought my lunch because my co-worker’s Indian food looks so much better. Sometimes, during my divorce, I wished I was famous. Like Gywneth—everyone knew about her conscious uncoupling as soon as she came up with it, and she only had to say it once. 

With my dear friend JJ, I had to respond to her wedding invite with a phone call about my own divorce. “T and I are getting a divorce?” I said, as if I wasn’t sure of it, but I was. It is the worst news to tell a newly engaged friend. I felt like vomiting on her would have been kinder. “So, bring a date,” she said. Her wedding was two months away. “I’m not going to be dating by then!” I said. “So, bring a friend,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. It was silly of me, I realized, to think my divorce was going to dampen her engagement. I wasn’t THAT important. If I was, my conscious uncoupling would have been on the nightly news.  

By the time the wedding rolled around, it was 8 months into my divorce proceedings and I was casually dating two guys. I actually did invite one of them to the wedding. I’m shy anyway and the thought of going stag to my high school friend’s wedding paralyzed me with fear. And I couldn’t NOT go to the wedding. This friend was also my college roommate and it would’ve been plain rude not to go. The guy I invited was named Bradley. We had been on a handful of dates and I knew the relationship had no potential because his fridge was stocked to the gills with water bottles and he didn’t recycle. In this day and age! But he was good hearted (when it came to people, not the environment), cute, and we laughed a lot.  

On the afternoon of the wedding Bradley called me from his car, crying. “My mom just had a heart attack,” he said. “I’m on the road to Phoenix,” he said between sobs. “Don’t worry, she’s going to be okay,” he said. To me! Poor guy. (For the record, she was okay.) 

Looking back, I could have, and should have, just faked the stomach flu and not gone to the wedding. It was a giant beautiful wedding and nobody would’ve even noticed my absence, I’m positive. But at the time, I overestimated my importance and decided I had no choice but to go alone. It would be a good challenge for my shy self, I decided. It would be an opportunity to say to all those high school people “Yes, I made it! I’m divorced and I’m not ashamed!” 

I wore a black spaghetti strapped sundress and felt actually pretty for the first time in a year. Divorce has a way of making you feel not very pretty. The wedding itself was darling. I got there in the nick of time so didn’t have to say hello to anyone before sneaking into a seat. The bride had the rabi read the book, “I Like You,” to the groom, and I’ve loved that little gem of a book ever since. 

At the cocktail hour, I realized that going recently divorced to a wedding is like attending grossly underdressed, or maybe like arriving in just your underwear. Everyone, everyone, reacts as if you are doing something inappropriate. In my next life, I will bring my therapist and have her wait in the bathroom for my frequent visits. The first person I ran into was my high school boyfriend, who I’ll just call Slim. Slim was now joyfully married to one of my sorority sisters, and they were all sweet and touchy feely with each other. It would have been cute, but when you’re going though a divorce, that stuff is just not. “Where is T?” Slim asked. “We’re divorced,” I said. He made puppy dog eyes at me and rubbed my arm. “I’m going to get you a drink,” he said and walked away, leaving me with his wife. “What happened?” she asked, her brow deeply knit in concern. This from a person who never knew my ex husband, whom I hadn’t spoken to since before I had gotten married 9 years ago! “Oh, the regular,” I said and smiled. As soon as my drink came I traipsed across the hotel grounds to find a bathroom where I could sit undiscovered and text the two guys I was dating. One to say, “I’m so sorry about your mom, is she okay?” and the other to say, “HELP! I am dying at a wedding. I am a pariah. Send paratroopers in a very tiny discrete helicopter. AT ONCE!!!” 

During the dinner I was thoughtfully placed at a table of people I attended high school with but hadn’t spoken to since high school. And, I forgot to mention this, I had married my high school English teacher’s son. When I did that I never thought how awkward it would be to divorce him and then attend a wedding where everyone from high school was sitting at dinner with me. The things we don’t think about. And, there was an empty seat next to me, for my date, who was absent because of his poor mother. Everyone assumed the seat was for my husband and my husband was taking too long in the bathroom. Everyone, in turn, because the table was big and people were having their own conversations, asked me, “Where is T?” So five times at least, I had to say, “We are divorced.” 

Slim, who was sitting to my right, kept supplying me with drinks and making sad eyes at me. I thought at any moment he was going to reach across the table and cut my meat for me. A sweet overbearing woman, Big Eyes, who married her high school boyfriend of course, who was sitting right next to her, said, “It’s just a shame the two of you didn’t get counseling. I mean, considering what you’re doing to your children.”  So I said, “We did get counseling. Funny how it doesn’t work.” And then cracked up to the empty chair next to me. Big Eyes said, “Too bad is wasn’t Christian counseling.”  I gagged on the meat that Slim had failed to cut up for me.  

When Slim had returned with my third drink people were starting to dance and I knew he would come for me out of pity, that his sweet prying wife would even encourage him to dance with the pathetic divorcee. And so, I pretended I had to use the restroom, I said goodbye to no one, I thanked no one, and I snuck myself out of there feeling awful and judged from a group of people who barely knew me.

All dressed up with no one to give a damn, my kids at their dad’s house for the night, I decided to drive by A’s house. A was the one I asked for the paratroopers from, but he didn’t come through. I thought, maybe he would appreciate the first night I looked pretty in a year. When he opened the door to his house, he smiled hugely at me and said, “You look so cute with your wrinkles and your grey hair.” He really did say this. I didn’t even KNOW I had grey hair! I wanted to cry but more than cry I needed to be hugged and so I let him hug me. “Never say that to me again, please, I’m 34 for Chrissakes,” I said.  “Never again,” he said. 

Let this be a cautionary tale to you, dear reader. Don’t go stag to your old friend’s wedding when everyone there doesn’t know you are divorced. I would have been far happier eating popcorn on my couch watching Mad Men, pretending they were just about to cast me opposite Don Draper, in my black spaghetti strap dress, wrinkles, grey hair and all.  

Mistaking My Heart for a Heart Shaped Box

When I was six I came down with a case of second degree chicken pox. It was so bad that I had pox inside my throat and under my eyelids. My hippie mom, who made our own yogurt and bread and would never let me watch Three’s Company because it was sexist, took great pity on me and bought me the Malibu Skipper doll I had always wanted. Okay so she had no boobs like Barbie, but she had lovely cornsilk hair and a great tan line from her tiny bikini. And one super cool thing about her was that she came in a carrying case, with a spot that she snugged into just perfectly. It was a Skipper-shaped-box, so to speak.

I hate to say it but Skipper aged. Her bendable feet got a little wonky and her tan peeled, like a bad, off color sunburn. I got older too and got other Barbies as gifts. But never, NEVER, would I put another Barbie in Skipper’s carrying case. That was frankly just wrong. It was for Skipper and nobody else could fill it, never ever. She would go to the landfill in that box after my death, as far as I was concerned. 

I came to realize the world of romance worked like this too. When I got my first long awaited boyfriend at the ripe age of 17, my heart molded to his shape and I was positive there could be no other to ever fill that space. After he exited, no one else got in, not for a long time. My heart had to soften into a flexible rubberiness first before someone else could fill it. And they did, monogamously, serially, until I started dating my ex-husband at the age of 22. 

There was a pretty big thinking flaw in all of this— this idea was fatal to my marriage and it afflicts much of modern romance. This idea that I clung to—of the carrying case for my childhood idol— does not in reality work when applied to true love. This is a sweet, childish, ultimately destructive fantasy. Your heart is not space limited. Neither is his nor hers. And love and sex, companionship, friendship, desire, and lust—those are all intersecting concepts that coexist in a network between our hearts and brains. We are not limited to love and desire one person at a time. Unfortunate? Maybe. 

More unfortunate I think is the delusion that this is so. This thinking limited me to a belief that my “monogamous” love was indestructible. The betrayal of an affair in a marriage cuts no matter which way you twist it, but when you thought your husband had a heart molded to fit only you and you only forever, the betrayal cuts to the foundation of your beliefs. 

So call me jaded. Let’s be jaded together! Not because misery loves company (it does— but I am not miserable). Far from it! I am wiser now and I want us all to be a little of that. A little wiser. If we know we have hearts rather than heart-shaped boxes, we know that our relationship can be vulnerable and we work to protect it. What does that mean? It depends on the relationship and what is desired within it. 

It also means, for myself, as a single person, that I don’t try to shove another peg in the space left by a breakup. In Spanish there is an idiom: “Clavo que saca otro clavo.” Or, loosely, one nail pulls out another. Trust me, it doesn’t. Our dreams inform us that sometimes, the heart holds on. Some stay, some go, some loves change into fondness or friendship or nostalgia, some turn to yearning, some seemingly evaporate. Regardless, your heart is not a phone booth or a runway. If only it were that simple and easy. “Room for one” would give us so much clarity. We could just yell ‘Next!’ as soon as we were ready, and if our partner strayed, well that would be their ‘next!’ and we wouldn’t need to ask any of the complicated questions about love, sex, and desire that follow. 

I just went through a break up. I’m reminding myself, “you have infinite capacity to love.” Even wounded, it is still there. 

After a Break Up, the Little Things You Keep

My ex-boyfriend and I broke up on December 11^th,  and today is March or April or May somethingth. Not that I’m counting or anything, but it is over the pivotal three month mark and only today I decided it was time to let go of his black Hanes sock that has resided on my bureau since he left. I admit that it was there because I had some fantasies attached to it. And I don’t mean that I was putting it on my body parts or softly kissing it, but to be honest, I did sometimes hold it in my hand and feel its slight heft. 

I guess what I strangely wished was that our lives had been more tangled up in each other’s. It didn’t feel right that after over a year of dating this was all I had left of him: a black sock. Shouldn’t I have found his laundry in my laundry and his food in my fridge and his tools in my toolbox? And what did it mean that I didn’t? That he was tidy and didn’t forget his stuff? Or that our lives weren’t as intertwined as I had let myself believe they were?

I kept the black sock because sometimes, right before I fell asleep at night, I would imagine the sock was a beacon of sorts, and that together, the sock and I had telepathic powers. (Is it telepathy when it’s an inanimate object?) And that my ex must know that I have his black sock and he must think of it too, and think of me with it, and that maybe, sooner rather than later, he would show up at my door and ask for it back. But when he laid eyes on me, standing at my door with my mussed hair in my oversized tee shirt gingerly holding his sock, he would realize that he just. couldn’t. live. without. me. 

Somehow, the sock channeling thing wasn’t working. I just now put it in my bathroom waste basket. 

It’s not just about the amount of time invested in a relationship, though. Shouldn’t a great love have something to show for it? Some evidence. I should have his name branded over my heart. I should have an imprint of him on my skin. My house should look different from all of the time he spent in it. His footprints should criss cross my concrete floors. It doesn’t seem right for life to easily settle back into the way it was before he came.  

Tonight I saw him online, on a dating website. Ugh. In his photo he had shaved his beard and somehow that helped. Because I loved his beard, and no one else was going to get his bearded self. At least not this week, until it grew out again. God damn this brave new world in which the only way to ever truly get away from an ex is to go completely off the grid. In my profile, I wrote, I am looking for the guy who has the other one of these… and posted a picture of the black sock. 

No I didn’t but I wanted to. 

I also have his water bottle. And it’s sort of distinct— he’s the only person I’ve ever seen with one of these water bottles. When we broke up, over the telephone, he said, “Promise me, Molly, don’t ever contact me again. Don’t email, don’t text, don’t call, don’t post a picture of my black sock on OK Cupid.” (Ok minus the last part.) And I said, “But I have your water bottle.” This is a true story. And he said, “This is not about the water bottle, Molly.” 

But it was about the water bottle! Because I think my cryptic delivery was code for: “ALL I HAVE OF YOU IS YOUR WATER BOTTLE. And your black sock. And you have my god damned heart.” I’m not sure what that looks like for him to have my heart but I don’t think I left stuff at his house either. And as far as I know, he has not gotten my name tattooed encircling his belly button. But, for the record, I think he should. Not because we are getting back together. We aren’t. But because I want to stamp him. Because love it confusing like that. 

He refused to talk about the water bottle. So the other day my daughter took it to the kids’ gym she goes to and when I picked her up she said, “Mom, a kid said he knows who this water bottle belongs to and it’s not mine.” And I said, “Well you tell that kid your mother suffered for that water bottle!” 

No I didn’t, but I wanted to. 

It’s not really about the water bottle. But earlier tonight I realized as I drank from his water bottle and wore his black sock as a mitten, that I really should have more of his stuff, not less. It’s just that I have the wrong stuff, and that’s why I’m ridiculously clinging to it (that and the fact that I can’t let go). I should have some of his tee shirts at least, to sleep in. I should have a stack of cards he had written me (couldn’t you write a stack of cards in a year?) I should have some dried flowers turning to dust.  

If this was 1992, and I was a teenaged girl, I would have those things. Along with a mix tape. 

But what I had was a lot of text messages. Some of them made me laugh. Hundreds of them let me know I wasn’t alone as I fell asleep at night— when my kids were being tiny punk-jerks or my job was sucky for the day or I had a stomach bug or I thought of the best idea for a book and had to tell him at once. Some of his texts were silly, racy, loving, longing, flattering, winning. But now, all of them are gone. I don’t have those text messages. They are all in my head like alphabet soup, and someday, sooner rather than later, they will be nowhere at all. 

I used to see his car around town. Now I never do. What is this closure nonsense I hear of? Every person who has loved and lost knows what it’s like to shuffle through an empty house at night wearing the one black sock of their beloved. Ok, maybe not. I gave his water bottle to Goodwill. Every time I saw it I had a reaction, like a Pavlov dog, and thought he was sitting on my couch or sleeping in my bed. 

I have a pretty amazing tiny gift he gave me (no, it’s not a baby, this isn’t that kind of story!) I’m not going to say what it is. It will stay between me and him. The rest will go. The text record of our romance, the water bottle, the black sock—ultimately, these are ideas and things and they are transitory. It is the story of my life that he has left a mark on. It is me that he has forever changed. I myself am what I was looking for when I was hoping he would leave more behind.