Tag: love

If My Blog Had Theme Song…

On By KathleenIn Dating, insights/observations, Love, relationships2 Comments

If They Told Me to Find a Rich Husband had a theme song it would be Sara Bereilles’ “Fairytale.”

Skeptical Princesses passing over not-so-enchanted Prince Charmings is not the only commonality between my blog (my life?) and the tune. Bereilles has written a song that is frisky and subversive as well as catchy and marketable — qualities I’m hoping to cultivate  here in blogland.

But it’s a disenchanted Sleeping Beauty that interests me at present…

When that psychic told me I was going to meet my soulmate within the next 6 weeks, she also told me not to worry, I wouldn’t have to do anything, Mr. Soulmate would come to me. If I just went about my day-to-day, he’d find me. If I just sat very still in my life, he’d come rescue me. If I pulled a Snow White or a Sleeping Beauty, he’d swagger up on his white horse, tear away the glass ceiling, and wake me from my romanticized slumber. This forecast appealed to my inner-12-year-old-Disney-fan.

The “sit still, don’t move, play dead” advice seemed vaguely familiar. Where had I heard it before? Was is from my friend who told me that the moment he stopped looking for love was the moment he found it? No… no, that wasn’t the conversation that came to mind. Was it the “don’t chase after him, he’ll chase after you” conclusion that punctuated each chapter of “He’s Just Not That into You?” No, it wasn’t that either.

Ah, yes! I remember! As my psychic prescribed a more passive approach to the future of my love life (“You don’t need eHarmony!”), I recalled a discussion I had with a strapping National Park Ranger… “sit still and play dead,” he said…he was instructing me on how to survive a Grizzly Bear attack.

Apparently, playing dead attracts Prince Charming and can save you from the jowls of an angry grizzly bear. It’s a surprisingly versatile tactic.

I’ll remember that when I go out tonight… and the next time I find myself lost in an enchanted forest.

Playing Dead attracts Prince Charmings but wards off hungry grizzly bears.

They Warned Me I’d Find Love

On By KathleenIn Dating, Love55 Comments

A few days before I left for my 2-week-plus roadtrip to and through Newfoundland, Canada, I stopped in on a psychic. It was one of those post-lunch-with-a-friend-margarita-splurges, so I have something of an excuse for dropping $25 on a tarot reading. I won’t go into the details of her assessment of my future — that’s a story for another blog — but I will say that she rightly tagged me a globe-trotter and proceeded to predict that my soulmate would come to me within the next 6 weeks.

An optimist.

Newfoundlanders have a definite rugged masculinity that has a certain sex appeal

Considering that nearly 3 of my next 6 weeks were to be spent in the rough n’ tumble, fishery-driven, foot-stomping Canadian province of Newfoundland, odds were  50-50 that my “soulmate” would be a Newfie — that is, if you invest any credibility in psychics.

I didn’t necessarily mind that possibility.

Have you ever been somewhere and been hit by an overwhelming feeling that love was waiting for you there? I don’t mean a holiday fling when you’re on vacation. I mean a sense that the real, meaty, lasting stuff is right around that next corner in that city. I was hit with that feeling once — when I was in Vancouver.

Truth is, New York (or perhaps just New Yorkers) has always felt like a romantic deadend for me, (this is not a jaded singleton speaking, it’s intuition). Yet, there’s something in the Canadian air that always makes me feel like  love is possible.  And I’ll confess, I’ve always had a thing for Canadians. Maybe it’s because the men I’ve met there know what I’m talking about when I say I daydream about a Necky Chatham. Maybe it’s because they don’t look like they’re trying too hard when they wear plaid. Maybe it’s the wholesome accent. Or maybe it’s because I’m in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship and I realize marrying one would save me a lot of paperwork.

Newfoundlanders are friendly...go to Living Planet for your own T-Shirt with this Lichtenstein-esque image.

Our psychic might have been on to something?

Newfoundlanders are notoriously hospitable, and everywhere I went in the province I made friends, starting with a retired fisherman/musician I met on the ferry from Nova Scotia. Before we disembarked he looked me in the eye and warned me:

“You’re going to meet someone here. Newfoundlanders love girls like you.”

I laughed, thanked him, and not entirely sure what he meant by “girls like you,” went on my way. I didn’t give him and his warning another thought until a few days later in St. John’s when a local, keen to give me restaurant and concert advice, suddenly stopped our lively chat to say: “You should be prepared. It’s happened before, you know. People come here and fall in love. You’re going to meet someone. Go with it. Newfoundlanders make great mates. They’re very loyal.” He then took his dog and walked away.

It seemed that with every day on the Rock, came another prediction that Newfoundland would present me with new found love. If you’ve seen or read “The Shipping News,” then you have some sense of the real mysticism that hovers over the island. The setting is romantic, the people magical, the tone otherworldly, so with all the forewarning that I would be swept off my feet by a local, I started to think… why not?

It turns out, at the end of the day, they were right. I did meet someone, fall in love with him, and discuss the possibility of taking him home with me…he just wasn’t exactly the Newfoundland stud they might have had in mind…

Newf and I had something special.

Ask not what your relationship can do for you…

On By KathleenIn Dating, insights/observations, marriage, Mr. Right, relationships10 Comments
shopping for labels? shopping for love?

When it comes to finding a mate, we all have long shopping lists. We have lists of superficial things we prefer (ex. he should be tall and work at Goldman), of values we want matched (he should like children and vote Democrat), and of qualities we think we need (he should be financially sound and be able to make me laugh).

But let’s not forget what we’re really after when we set out to find love everlasting…

What we really want is a travel companion or biking-buddy, fellow Trekkie or like minded museum-junkie, congenial Scrabble adversary or able party co-host. In short, what we’re really looking for is a teammate.

Everyone knows the cliche “there’s no ‘I’ in TEAM,” and anyone whose played a sport or watched a professional franchise win a championship knows what makes a team successful: synergy.  One person makes up for the short-comings of the other, while both foster and bolster each others’ talents. Yes, a successful team is whole that is greater that the sum of its parts, and love-based relationships are no different.

That being said, when it comes to finding the Misty May Treanor to your Kerri Walsh, or the Jorge Posada to your Mariano Rivera,  it’s important to have a grasp not only on what they bring to the relationship, but also on what you can or can’t provide in this partnership. I’m not necessarily prescribing a selfless “ask not what your relationship can do for you, ask what you can do for your relationship” approach to a new flame — that’s extremely dangerous territory in which to tread. But I do think it a worthwhile exercise to evaluate, as objectively as possible, your strengths and weaknesses as 1/2 of a couple.

I suppose, if I prescribe, I should take the first does:

My greatest strength as both a friend and lover is my loyalty. I’m an excellent and sincere cheerleader who will always be there on the sidelines ready to help you up after a bad game.

My greatest weakness? I want to me my own person. To some (read: a select few), my independent, stand on my own feet, “this is who I am, this is what I want and I’m going to get it”  attitude is attractive. But it’s often my biggest relationship roadblock. I have no doubt that my athletic aspirations and career goals have dead-ended several potentially awesome romances. For a long time, I simply wasn’t available enough to be someone’s girlfriend. Yet, while I may have more time in my schedule for dates and weekend getaways, I still refuse to subjugate my ambitions to those of someone else. Sorry, but I want Glen Lowry’s job, and I’m not going to get it if I have to move to Oklahoma with you.

In coming to terms with my relationship shortcoming, it seems I’ve found the critical, must-have quality on my significant-other shopping list: allows me to be independent.

I guess I don’t sound like too much of a team player, do I? That’s not entirely fair. Compromises will be made by both me and my mister, because at the end of the day, if I get to be my own person, so does he. The challenge is finding someone whose goals happen to be compatible with mine…and I don’t just mean retiring early to a villa in Tuscany.

Give a girl an education…

On By KathleenIn insights/observations, marriage2 Comments

“Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”

— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Once upon a time, we members of the fair sex could content ourselves with a surface knowledge of history, geography, romance languages, and poetry. We were amusing, nay, enchanting, if in addition to a knack for sketching, we also had a good command of the pianoforte and a hefty repertoire of sing-along ditties. A penchant for witticisms were a plus, but not requisite.

In short, dear ladies, had we lived in the age of Auntie Jane, we would have earned the esteemed and coveted epithet of “accomplished” by the age of 13. But as women of the 21st century, we know the Austen-ian accomplished just doesn’t cut it any more.

If you want to be accomplished in this day and age, you need a Pulitzer.

The T.W.I.T proudly points to her MA thesis title on Commencement day

In May 2009, I attended my second Columbia commencement ceremony. This time I was graduating with a master’s degree in Art History. For several months before starting my MA, I felt the need to apologize when I told people what I was studying as a graduate student. “I majored in Economics in college” was the footnote added to most conversations about my future academic plans. Eventually, to combat the tilted heads, puzzled stares, and “whatcha gonna do with that?” I tried self-effacing humour: “I’m going back to school to become a trophy wife.” A book about women painter-etchers of the late 19th-century wasn’t going to get me a Nobel Prize nomination, that was for certain, nor was it likely to earn me much of an income. But people found my declared T.W.I.T status (Trophy Wife in Training) both amusing and acceptable. It was fine that I wanted to write about obscure American artists, if doing so meant I would be a good adviser/cocktail party hostess to my art-collecting mogul husband.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman, in possession of a good education, must be in want of a husband.

Apparently, “settling well..without further expense to anybody” still doesn’t mean settling on my own bank account.

A week ago, I ran into Amanda, a woman who has known me since I was 14 and who thinks of me as existing in a constant state of studentdom. She asked me if I had finally graduated. Yes, I told her. A year ago, with my masters.

“Oh, no! You poor thing!” she exclaimed. “You’ll never find a husband. Half the men in the world will think you’re too smart for them and won’t want you. And the other half… well, they’re just smart enough for you.”

I told her things were only going to get rougher for me — I plan to get a doctorate.

I may not win a Nobel, but goddammit, I want a Pulitzer.

Maybe then I’ll be able to settle well on my book deal, without further expense to anybody.

Technology and Affairs of the Heart

On By KathleenIn Breakups, Dating, insights/observations, relationships, romance3 Comments

Poor Sandra Bullock. Apparently, she received an apologetic letter from one of Jesse James’ mistresses via fax.

I didn’t know people had personal fax machines any more. Hadn’t the scanner and the PDF replaced them? Clearly, an “I’m Sorry” Hallmark card is passe. Perhaps, a fax retains more sincerity than an email or a facebook message.

The tabloid sites say that James met this Other Woman via MySpace. Remember those days when husbands used to meet stripper mistresses at strip clubs?

I know I’m not the first blogger to bring up the subject, but it’s amazing how technology has changed the way we meet people, date people, and break-up with people. We know we’re in an age of hyper communication. Thanks to our smartphones, we’re never out of touch. Gone are the days of landlines and dial-up modems only (yes, I’m old enough to remember late nights before wikipedia and craigslist). And gone are the days when our only means of meeting prospective significant others involved leaving our cozy apartments.

Let’s think about this…

If we want to find a date/one night stand/long term relationship we can log onto okcupid, match.com, eharmony, craigslist or myspace. We can find those “missed connections” from the subway platform or establish a flirtation through dating site aliases. Maybe we can coordinate a single’s night through a facebook group.

Then we meet someone and exchange email addresses, pins, skype names, or screenames. We go home and become friends on facebook and start following feeds on twitter or blogs on wordpress. We keep in touch/track movements through text messaging, bbming, gchat, AIM, and phone calls. Eventually, we announce that we’re “in a relationship” to the world through an avalanche of statuses.

And then we break up…

The breakup itself can happen through all the above forms of messaging. Apparently, the fax and the post-it note are also modern forms of communicating the end of the affair. In-person is always preferable, but thanks to technology, if that’s not convenient for you, a face-to-face termination can be initiated by video chat. In-person breakups are mandated only by rules of tact.

Then there’s the change of “relationship” status on the social networks followed by the defriend maneuver. Then we have to block his email address and delete him from our contact list.

There are so many things to keep track of… it starts to get a little overwhelming.

Especially for folks like me who, on top of her all the aforementioned “buddy lists,”still insist on keeping an actual hardcopy address book.  A left-click on delete is, in the end, far less messy than whiteout.

Good thing I switched to pencil…