“If you feel comfortable to go on a date on Valentine’s Day, we could go out then.”
I had planned on avoiding Valentine’s Day this year. Those plans involved signing the lease on my new Range Rover Evoque and going for a kind of joy ride. Heading north a ways. Away from the red mylar heart-shaped balloons and pink doillies bombarding you at every store from Duane Reade to Saks. Perhaps I’d go somewhere I could test my new car’s off-roading capabilities, or take it somewhere where I could get lost on my snowshoes (but not really lost, cuz it’s winter and that would end badly.)
My stomach churned a little bit at his text message. A Valentine’s Day first date with the most stunning and potentially most interesting man you’d ever met? This was bound to go as badly as my snowshoeing without a map plan.
This puppy was my best Valentine’s Present
I am famously neutral about Valentine’s Day. I have a knack for ending relationships ahead of the holiday, and so I can’t remember if I have had a legit Valentine. My mother often comes to my rescue, buying me necklaces, or chocolate, or shapewear to help me turn future first dates into second dates. I’ve also fulfilled the day’s requirements by going bar-hoping with plantonic male friends.
This year, my right hand in the office, my Gallery Coordinator and I agreed to be each other’s Valentine. I’m taking a comp day on Valentine’s Day, so I cheated and gave her a box of truffles on Wednesday.
The best Valentine’s present I ever got was Kasey, my Cairn Terrier. She was a grey-black puppy who I nicknamed my Blue Valentine. She liked to chase feet and sit on my lap while I sat at my desk, writing on my laptop.
When this man asks you out on Valentine’s Day, you say yes.
“Do you think he’ll bring you flowers?” my girlfriend Sammy asked when I told her I’d accepted the invitation from the European PhD who bore an uncanny resemblance to Rupert Penry Jones.
While I’d welcome the gesture, I confessed, part of me hopes he won’t. They’d totally steal the thunder from my new car — I’m a sucker for flowers.
She, like everyone else I’ve seen in the last week, doesn’t believe that I really mean it when I say I’m okay.
No, I’m not okay. I’m great.
They keep waiting for the waterworks to start again, the way they did last Thursday when every inquiry into what was wrong started a lip quiver. Like all good things, a relationship that seemed to be going in a good direction ended. Perhaps, more abruptly than we would have liked, but sometimes, when it isn’t love, you just have to rip the bandaid off and get it over with.
Break-ups suck, even the good ones. Each has its own recovery path and time. Sometimes, there’s the shock of the loss to overcome. Every one is has its mourning period where you remember the good times and come to terms with the fact there won’t be any more. Then there comes the anger – at the ex, at the “system.” Next, you press the restart button and begin your make-over as you prepare yourself for the road ahead.
Being emotional after a breakup gets you pity drinks from friends. Being rational gets you nothing but a “thata girl!”
Sometimes I wish I was more emotional and less rational. Being emotional gets you out of work early and earns you pity drinks from friends. Rational gets you to the restart period faster — 3 days later and I’m already several ab workouts, a manicure, and a date with my stylist in. I don’t think I’m going to cry again.
This break-up came with an unusual stroke of clarity. I’ve decided that the hurt or pain following the end of relationship is the less daunting challenge to overcome – harder to conquer is the fear of the “what’s next.”
For every end of a significant relationship, a significant question lingers.
After the one that got away: Will I ever love someone that much again? So far, No.
After the one I left behind: Will someone ever love me as much as he did? So far, No.
After this last one: Will I ever be as comfortable being myself as I was with him? So far, TBD.
The path to finding love ever lasting is an uphill marathon
The feeling that something’s missing, or that something you had can’t be replicated with someone new — that’s what gets ya down and keeps you there for a while. Makes you swear off falling again. Or lowers your bar for the next person. Or adds another layer of bricks and mortar to the wall around your heart.
Endings are supposed to be new beginnings, but the truth is, new beginnings are hard. First dates are fun and easy. But getting to 4th, 5th and 6th dates — when you start the uphill slog towards trust and a committed relationship — that’s the most testing part of the cross-country marathon that is finding everlasting love.
For now, I’m on the bench for a while. It’s time to treat the wounds and seek the trainer. The course ahead is a long and tricky one. I need to be ready before I get back in the race.
I was in the middle of my whiskey phase. Mad Men had nothing to do with it.
It was late on a November Saturday night in 2012 when I sauntered into my favorite cocktail lounge with an unusually high spring in my step. I nodded with a chirpy hello to the bouncer whose scarred eyebrow and barrel-sized biceps hinted at the fact his day job was cage-fighting coach. I slipped into my favorite corner seat at the bar and leaned across to give the bartender, Kay, my best girl friend’s boyfriend, a warm hello.
He looked at me puzzled. She had called him earlier to warn him I might be coming from a rough night — I’d need taking care of, she suggested. The chipper red-haired girl in the tangerine top didn’t look like she needed taking care of.
“Something strong?” Kay asked.
“Yes, please! I’ll have a Manhattan.”
Seconds later, he slid a martini glass under my nose, a rich copper-hued drink sloshed but didn’t jump over the edges. I was in the of what can only be labeled a Whiskey-phase. Mad Men had nothing to do with it. The Manhattan had replaced the Tanqueray10 martini as my go-to night out indulgence and a Jameson on the rocks was my new dive bar safe bet. All it took was one sip and I knew this was the best Manhattan I’d ever had, was ever going to have. Liquid gold. When he slide a small carafe with the “leftovers” from the shaker (the equivalent of a second drink), I figured I was satisfyingly set for the night.
I was alone on a Saturday night, drinking a whiskey drink and content. Sitting next to me was another loner, and apparently, another regular. Kay introduced the robust and somewhat rotund young man to me as Joe, and since I was already onto the carafe, I was in a mood to chat… and over share.
I was newly single. So I let the Tony Soparno look alike buy me a 3rd and 4th drink… mistake.
Joe was a well-manner Jerseyite who could easily have passed for an extra on The Sopranos — perhaps even a younger Tony Soprano, in the right over sized golf shirt. We talked about the Yankees and our favorite restaurants. Even though his waistline was evident of a life spent mostly eating out and watching sports rather than playing them, Joe was a top-shelf kind of guy, which roughly translates into my kind of person.
“Are you always such good company?” Joe asked, as I neared the end of my drink and in theory, the end of my night.
“I broke up with my boyfriend an hour and a half ago.”
In my head, that answered the question. Isn’t every girl extra charming and cheery after she breaks up with the guy who sent her flowers on her birthday and talked about spending the rest of his life with her?
“Shouldn’t you be crying with your girlfriends, or something? You’re in an awfully good mood.”
I shrugged and took the final slug of my drink (technically, my second, though I had convinced myself otherwise.)
“It’s a relief, to be honest. That it’s all over. I wanted to throw up the whole day before it happened. Now, I couldn’t be in a better mood.”
Wait. The irony is coming.
“You’re not leaving yet are you?” Joe chripped as I began to fumble for my wallet — a perfunctory motion as I knew tonight’s $15 beverage was likely on the house. “You’re newly single. Let me buy you another.”
I looked at my watch — I’d already missed my train and my rule is to never let strangers buy me drinks. But, really, what harm would another drink do? I was newly single, after all. Joe fancied himself a cocktail connoisseur and ordered me what I vaguely recall him calling a Manhattan Perfect. I could be totally wrong, but it seemed to fit because drinks 3 and 4 (Kay and his damn carafe!) were perfectly toxic.
The Burberry trench coat fell victim to one Manhattan too many, but recovered in time for a trip to Prague.
I wobbled out an hour later, convinced I was totally sober and even a little proud for being able to hold down so much whiskey. But as I stood on the subway platform, I realized I was in for it. When I vomited all over my Burberry trench coat and silk jersey tangerine Theory top, I knew I had just been taught a lesson. There is such thing as too much whiskey.
And I had just become that girl who throws up on the last train out of Grand Central.
I vomited two more times — once on the sidewalk at my home station and once again in the trashcan next to my bed — before finally falling asleep. In the morning, the only reminder of the previous night’s break-up and excess was my tangerine top, soaking in the sink, a few bits of undigested orechette and broccoli floating beside it. I might have been sloppy, but at least I clean up after myself.
The purging of my stomach contents so soon after finishing my last sip might have saved me from a hangover, but it also killed my taste for whiskey. And that favorite tangerine top, while the stains are long gone, will always be that shirt I threw up on the night I broke up with the Admiral. At work on Monday, I was greeted with an email from Joe asking to take me out for dinner somewhere I could never afford on an non-profit employee’s salary. Apparently, I had given him my business card. I had been back on the market for less than 24 hours and already I had a suitor. I politely declined.
Last night, I poured a heavy draw of McMallan 12, figuring it was a perfect companion drink on a cold winter’s night dedicated to writing a curatorial essay. With a new boyfriend at my side and the past year behind me, I figured I could handle my first whiskey in over a year. One sip and the room began to spin and my stomach began to turn. Apparently, at least for this girl, it’s easier to recover from a relationship gone wrong than from a bad night of drinking.
This kitty is never drinking Whiskey again…. Tanqueray is still on the table, however.
If only good girls keep diaries, then I must be a very good girl.
“When did I ever have time to write this much?” I said to myself when, in another rainy-day induced fit of house cleaning, I uncovered over a decade’s worth of journals and diaries. Most are thick enough to be worthy of the label “tome.” Few contain content worthy of any label besides “meaningless nonsense.”
I can’t remember ever not having a book to write stuff down in. In my tween and early teen years I keep “diaries.” While most kids would sneak a flashlight under their covers to read Treasure Island (or US Weekly?) I’d make a tent and take an erasable pen to a notebook. Each entry began with the ceremonious “Dear Diary.” (I know. Right? Gag me with a spoon.)
At 16, with a driver’s license pending, college nearing, and hormones raging, I decided daily happenings in my life might become significant enough to start treating my “personal” notebooks more seriously.
Good-bye, diary. Hello journal.
Good-bye faux letters that droned on and on about the boy who threw crayons at me in art class. Hello mini faux essays with an imposed sense of the profound… about the boy who studied with me before each calculus exam.
As a scholar, journals accounted for a third of my resources on any research project. At times it was a tedious process — reading the day-to-day accounts and musings of someone with whom I had no direct personal relationship, hoping to find gem of a detail that would prove a revelation in the history of art… Mostly, I learned what my subject liked to eat for breakfast…
In my own life, I make it a habit to sit down and read the pages of my most current journal. In doing so, I mostly discovered that meaningless nonsense is surprisingly revealing — there are life lessons to be gleaned from your unpublished, unedited, unmediated autobiography. Mistakes I made in dealing with challenging situations, mistakes I made in love, right life decisions, questionable life decisions — it was all there, laid out in my own words. My journal was my own handwritten guide to” what not to do.”
There are many reasons to keep a journal — for the sake of having memories, as a place to vent — but perhaps the best reason to have a journal is to have reminder that you’re constantly moving forward.
If it wasn’t for Cam and a re-run of “Modern Family,” I would probably have no idea what a “meet-cute” actually is.
In romantic comedies and Disney movies, the protagonists tend to meet in the most adorable of ways
Cameron Tucker: You know, if this were a romantic comedy, this would be our meet cute. We’d spend the rest of the afternoon drinking wine, eating food, flying a kite… you know, montage-y stuff.
Mitchell: Am I in this movie of yours?
Cam: Yeah. You’re the gay best friend.
Cue laugh track and google search.
From our friends at wikipedia: “A meet-cute is a term sometimes used to describe a situation in film, television, etc. in which a future romantic couple meets for the first time in a way that is considered adorable, entertaining, or amusing.”
Considering how many friends I have who attempted to make a go of it as screen writers, and considering how many romantic comedies I consumed growing up a teenage girl, the fact I have to urban dictionary and wikipedia “meet-cute” feels like a major personal failure.
Then again, this might also be because the romantic comedy that is my life is a narrative based on the “meet-expected” and the “meet-lame.” Thank you, online dating for taking the serendipity out of new love.
My parents have a meet-cute. It involved an elevator and an oddball question that is quintessentially my mother:
“You have a very Dutch nose. Are you Dutch?”
I always imagine my parents’ meeting happened in black and white. This is largely because they met in 1961 and I associate the story with the opening scenes of The Apartment for no real reason other than the elevators.
Meanwhile, the closest thing I have to a meet-cute in my romantic past involves a college reunion. A male friend of a girl friend sauntered up to our table to join us. I turned to her and whispered: “Every girl’s crazy bout a sharp dressed man.”
Like Cam fantasized, we spent the rest of the night drinking wine, eating food and flying a kite. When we walked off campus holding hands to the song I had designated as my wedding song, we decided our meeting was fated.
But life isn’t a romantic comedy. In real life, the wind dies down and kites fall out of the sky, making one think there’s sometimes something to be said for the meet lame and the meet expected.
Sometimes the kite stays up forever. Other times, the wind dies down…
40 Days of Dating is my new blog obsession. Get hooked.
If you haven’t caught whiff of 40 Days of Dating, then you’re probably living under a rock. It’s more addictive than Pringles. This is largely thanks to well-stylized type treatments, a highly readable format, and its extreme relatability — we’ve all been there, we’ve all had that friend we sometimes wonder if we should be dating.
A quick summary for those of you living under a rock: two designer friends, Jess and Tim, decide that their romantic lives have been an utter failure. They embark on an experiment. They’ll see each other every day for 40 days, as if they’re in a relationship, and see what happens. They keep a kind of diary. That diary gets shared with us.
What become apparent quickly to readers is that despite their compatibility as friends, and their genuine affection for each other, is that they really are like oil and water when it comes to love. Being in a relationship is hard. The things you can ignore when you’re just friends become deal breakers when you’re lovers. In short, at about the mid way point Tim decides that being in a relationship is killing their relationship.
Considering the Platonic “Problem”
For anyone that’s had a friend of the opposite sex (or same sex — yay death to DOMA!) this is what we fear most — taking a great friendship and killing it in the name of happily ever after.
Where’s Bacchus when you need him?
The stakes are higher when you get involved with friends… but of course, when the stakes are higher, so is the potential payback.
Shortly after discovering 40 Days, I picked up my copy of Plato’s Symposium — the slim book that’s supposed to define a Platonic relationship — wondering if I could find anything in it that applied to Jess and Tim.
“‘Love’ is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”
This is from a speech by Aristophanes, and if you read the speech in his entirety, that sense of wholeness comes from a relationship that transcends physical intimacy. The bond is greater.
The Mirror Has Two Faces
“You know what we need to do? Go back to my place and watch that scene in When Harry Met Sally. The one where he explains to her that men and women CAN’T be friends because of the sex problem. We’ll get a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.”
When you’re talking about Plato, some how, Greek froyo seems the best side dish
Nothing beats best girlfriends. After they ask the tough questions you need to be asked, they always find a way to keep you smiling.
Pause. Rewind.
I had been talking about 40 Days of Dating with my favorite girl over meze and wine when she flipped Jess and Tim’s situation back on me.
“I just don’t get you two,” she had said earlier that night, part way into our bottle of wine. “You go out on dates, but you’re not dating. You wonder why you’re both single, and it’s never occurred to you that it might be because you’re not dating each other. Which one of you is scared to like the other?”
As someone whose relationship history is made up mostly of Platonic relationships, which always seem to inspire confusion, I was armed for this.
“The stuff he and I do together isn’t any different than what you and I do together. The only reason you think it’s a date when I see him is because he’s attractive. We work because there’s no pressure and no expectations.”
“That makes sense. I just don’t want you waking up one morning wanting more than he does. I don’t want you getting hurt… but I think he’s missing out.”
She might be on to something — one of us might get hurt and maybe he is missing out. But if he’s missing out, then so am I. I guess that’s why I applaud Jess and Tim for having the balls to make the leap to see if their friendship will lead to that wholeness. They’re braver than the rest of us. My fingers are crossed for them.
They Told Me to Find a Rich Husband 