Tag: relationships

When Ranting On Your Blog Doesn’t Turn You Into the Next Mark Zuckerberg

On By KathleenIn Bio Pics, Breakups, Dating, insights/observations4 Comments

Blogging is dangerous business. Originally, They Told Me to Find a Rich Husband was supposed to be anonymous. For a long time, even after I had given the “About” section a named authoress and a face, googling me wouldn’t get you to my blog. Somewhere along the way, probably thanks to Facebook, that changed. Now, anyone doing background on me will find TTM2FaRH front and center on the first page of search results.

Is this a problem?

Up until today, the answer would have been “no.” There’s nothing I’ve written that I would be ashamed to have a boss or family member read. A few boys doing their pre-date due-diligence have stumbled on this page — what they uncovered had never amounted to a strike against. Quite the contrary.

And that’s largely because I had adhered to a few simple rules: never be mean, never complain.

Boys behave badly, boys break your heart, but never make your blog about them. Keep it about you. Because sometimes, you behave badly. That’s more or less been my motto.

But I broke my rules. In a moment of frustration, I riddled off and published a post I shouldn’t have. For the first time, I made it solely about them. And it was mean-spirited. Thanks to google, it was found. I was rightly put in my place.

“One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling upon something witty” — so wrote Jane Austen in Pride & Prejudice. Stumbling upon something witty is what TTM2FaRH hopes to do. Yet in the same book, her best loved hero, Mr. Darcy confesses: “I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself…My good opinion once lost is lost forever.”

The keyboard is mightier than the sword, and used recklessly, offers the Mr. Darcy’s of the world reasons enough to loose their good opinions.

There are enough blogs out there that ridicule men — Fail Males, for example.They Told Me to Find a Rich Husband will not be one of them.

 

An Essayist Fails to Find a Moral: or The Boy Broke My Heart and Taught me Nothing about Life. What a Jerk.

On By KathleenIn Bio Pics, Breakups, Dating1 Comment
An essayist breaks a cup. She writes an essay. She learns and shares a life lessonl. No pressure.

A personal essayist carries the weight of the world on her little writer’s shoulders.

She breaks a teacup.

She writes an essay about breaking the tea cup.

She turns introspective.

She employs wits.

She jerks at the heart’s strings.

She considers the social impact of breaking the teacup.

She turns a seemingly insignificant moment into a neatly resolved story with a moral and rounds it out with insightful commentary on the way we live now.

No pressure.

I like to think of myself an essayist, or perhaps an essayist in training. I’ve always believed that there is a story behind everything – and every story is interesting if you tell it right. There should never be a lack of inspiration, as long as you’re in the mood to be creative.

And there is certainly never a lack of inspiration when your favorite subject is the way we love now.

This is how I look when i'm trying to write an essay...

After several years in the trenches of Love’s War, I’ve decided every first date can provide preliminary material for a minimum of 3 essays. For each date thereafter, the number of possible papers increases exponentially.

As you stop counting singular dates and start measuring your relationship in real time frames (i.e., weeks, years), you can generate an endless number of moralizing assemblages of prose.

I’ve never had a problem finding a greater life lesson or an aha! moment of self-reflection in a first date… until Gary.

Gary came pre-approved with the Grimm’s Fairytale Stamp of Prince Charming Approval. He was everything I had ever designed for myself in the Simms World of dream mates. I was ready to fall in love with him. Fate dangled him in front of me just long enough for me to get my hopes up and then, it whoosed him away.

Sitting pen and paper in hand a few days later, I was at a loss. I find myself asking:

What was the fucking point of that one?

If I could have walked away having learned something worth sharing I would feel better about Gary’s intrusive foray into my dating life. Be a jerk, I say, but at least lead me to an “aha!” moment in the process!

Thus, instead of rising above the fray of emotion to bring this to a resolved closing remark, I end insight-less. Essayist major fail.

woof woof

Pass me the Lace & Dark Chocolate. I’ve Changed My Mind About Valentine’s Day

On By KathleenIn Bio Pics, Dating1 Comment
What are you doing on February 14th? Will You Be Mine?

“What are you doing on the 14th?” Brian asked. “Would you be our Valentine?”

When Brian says “our” he means him and his Cliff. And their housemate. It’s the best Valentine’s Day a gal could ask for. There will be great conversation. There might be candlelight. There will likely be pasta. I’ll definitely be wearing that lacy item I bought using my Victoria’s Secret gift card — but that’s for me, not for Brian, Cliff, or the housemate because sometimes a gal needs to feel a little femme fatale on night out… even if she’s the only one who notices.

In my elementary school youth, Valentine’s Day was one of my favorite holidays. Everyone would come into school bearing candy for every one of his or her classmates. At the end of the day, you would have as many “Will you be Mine?” notes as you had kids in your homeroom.

It was a holiday of equal opportunity love.

Then we developed hormones.

Tim Burton's drawing more or less summed up my feelings about V-Day. I had turned a little bitter

Eventually, I spent the days leading up to the holiday lingerie shopping with my girlfriends as they went to pick out that special something for their sweethearts or went bouquet-buying with my guy friends who didn’t know whether or not roses were too cliched. I had managed to dodge Cupid’s arrows, and so was best put to use playing Venus’s other little helper.

I grew a little bitter. “Valentine’s Day is a holiday developed by older married women to make younger single women feel inadequate” –> this is something I apparently wrote in a notebook one year. I think it might have been one of those many years when the guy I liked decided to take my roommate/best friend/someone else out for Valentine’s Day instead of me.

This box of victorian-style collage valentines, by Punch Studio, change my mind about Valentine's Day

Last year, I found a box of Victorian-style Valentines at a bookstore. They appealed to my inner history nerd and so I bought them. It was time to drop the bitter single girl act that had plagued my late teens and early twenties and to return to being that youthful innocent who loved that Valentine’s Day was an excuse to wear excessive quantities of pink lace, an excuse to eat lots of chocolate, an excuse to tell people you care about that you care about them.

And so each of my friends received a vintage Valentine in their mailbox, complete with a LOVE stamp.

I don’t have a Valentine in the traditional sense this year, but I’m content. I have good friends, a box of Valentines that need to be postmarked, dark chocolate, and that something lacy for that someone special — myself.

Lessons I probably should have Learned in College but Didn’t Because I was Too Busy Doing Calculus Homework

On By KathleenIn Bio Pics, Career, insights/observationsLeave a comment
Microwaves have been around for decades, and yet I've never been able to make one work.

Microwaves don’t work

In an attempt to be both healthful and economical, sometimes I bring leftover homemade soup to work. Like most offices, we have a kitchenette with a fridge, a dishwasher, and a microwave. The microwave has a variety of settings, none of which anyone in the office knows how to make work. I put my soup in the microwave and set the clock. 3 minutes later, I take my soup out and burn my hands. The bowl is untouchable, but the soup? Still refrigerated.  Expediency fail.

Fun tack doesn’t come off walls.

I’m not sure what it says about my youth, but I never hung a poster on my wall with that blue, sticky putty stuff called “fun tack.”Even my teenage pin-ups of JTT went in frames and were placed on my walls using picture hooks. The long term benefit of this? When it comes to installing an exhibition, I’m probably the fastest hammer in the tri-State. But for my last exhibition, I ran out of Velcro for my wall labels and had to resort to that blue, sticky putty. The blue, sticky putty is still stuck on my gallery walls. There’s nothing fun about Fun Tack.

I just don't have the stamina for all-nighter after all-nighter any more.

Sleep isn’t overrated and life begins before 10:15AM.

Between the ages of 18 and 23, I was built for pulling all-nighters. If I accumulated 12 hours of sleep over 3 days, I figured I was ahead of the game. Plus, if I was clever enough, I didn’t have to be in class before 10AM. And if I moved across campus quickly enough, I could easily grab an hour nap before my afternoon lecture. But in the real world, there’s no nap time to catch up on your zzzz’s. And what about pulling those all nighters? Well, I just don’t have the stamina anymore. Give me 8 hours or I’m a totally unproductive, man-eating zombie.

When a boy asks you to “hang-out,” he doesn’t mean “let’s make grilled cheese sandwiches and sit on the couch platonically to watch the Yankees game.”

In college, this sort of thing was platonic. But apparently, not so much in the real world.

In college, all my friends were guys. We’d play poker or guitar hero, order in BBQ or head out to the Gin Mill for beer and pool, talk politics or sling mud at Jane Austen heroes. In short, when a guy in college asked me to “hang-out” I always assumed it was in the platonic sense, because 9 times out of 10, it was. But as soon as I was outside the bubble of study groups and communal living, I realized “hanging out” is just another vague term for everything from “date” to “hook-up.”

hangovers hurt. I missed that memo.

Hangovers hurt.

I didn’t really drink in college — blame it on equal parts fear of getting caught,  fear of freshman 15, and fear of anything that wasn’t top-shelf. I’m not exactly making up for it now, but I do have a cocktail more frequently than I did in my student years. Sometimes, I have a cocktail too many and wake up with a headache to prove it.

 

Push-Up Bras are false advertising

…and can, therefore, be a real letdown when they come off.

What Superbowl XLVI Revealed About my Relationship History

On By KathleenIn Bio Pics, Dating2 Comments
I'm armed with my Giants t-shirt. Too bad my date rooted for the Patriots.

Who would have thought a Superbowl Game could reveal so much about my romantic history? Gearing up for this weekend’s New York-New England showdown put me face-to-face with a startling trend in my dating habits.  Apparently, there’s a part of me that’s a masochist, because as I look down the timeline of relationships and dates past, all this Yankee sees is a string of New Englanders in their Red Sox caps and Patriots jerseys.

I was still carrying the bag housing my freshly-purchased Giants t-shirt when I met Robert for drinks. Robert and I seemed a nice fit. Putting aside his boyish good looks, he was an artist and environmentalist, and for both of these I have a particular soft spot. But then the trouble begins. Robert is a Rhode Island born, Vermont educated Patriots fan. I am a Giants fan (newly-minted, albeit, but still a fan), and when our discussion turned to the pending Superbowl, we both started to get prickly.

It's a modern day, sports world Romeo and Juliet. If they can make it work, why can't I?

The story of Romeo & Juliet is one of the most over romanticized in the history of English literature, and yet I find myself destined to play the part of the New York Montague consistently attracted to a New England Capulet.

That boy my senior year of high school. My first love in college. The last 4 guys I’ve been on at least one date with. Red Sox fan after Patrios fan after Bruins fan after Harvard alum. It’s my tragic flaw – I always seem to fall hardest for men who root for my teams’ arch-rivals.

I blame New York men, mostly, for this. If New Yorkers canoed more, if they were more transcendental, if they had served time on turkey farms  in their youth, I might find it easier to fall for one of my own men in pinstripes. But there’s something about that rugged New Englander with a well-worn copy of Walden in his back pocket and a knack for layering sweaters that I find totally irresistible.

Given my type, this may very well have to be my wedding cake.

Luckily, Robert hates baseball, so if anything comes of this, I won’t wake up to find my Jeter t-shirt slashed to bits or my traveling Yankee gnome beheaded.

Back in 2008, when my MA thesis advisor recommended I apply to Harvard for my doctorate, I practically spat at her:

“I’m a New Yorker! I can’t live in a city that roots for the Red Sox.”

In the wake of Superbowl 2012 and what it reveals about my dating history, it occurred to me that this may have been a foolish display of stubbornness. In December, I’ll be applying again for PhD programs. I suppose I’d better apply to some Boston schools, because apparently this pinstriped Juliet is in the wrong city to find her Romeo.

In the Playoff Games of Love, I’m totally Billy Cundiff

On By KathleenIn Dating, insights/observations, Love1 Comment
It was a 32 yard field goal for love and I missed.

Sometimes, I feel like an a-hole. Like a few weeks ago on that first date. Enter seasonal sports analogy: Team Kathleen was in the playoff game for love and I was the team’s equivalent of Billy Cundiff. That’s right, I was the kicker who only had 32 yards to a game-winning field goal but MISSED. Yea, this was the date that was going to put me in the SuperLoveBowl and I had just kicked wide and had to go home without getting to play for the “championship” ring.

There’s nothing more disappointing than sitting across from someone you think could be “it” and feeling like you’re just not on your A-game. It turns into an almost outer-body experience where you get to watch yourself plummet faster and faster, but can’t seem to come to your own rescue.  My heart kept bouncing back and forth between my stomach and my throat – had it been only a flutter, I might have been able to get it under control and build myself a life raft. Instead, I found myself head under water, drowning in flatly-told stories and saying “all-the-wrong-things.”

Somewhere between the sandwich and the dessert menu, I sighed with the thought that “this just isn’t going to amount to anything.”

The walk to my next destination might as well have been a walk along the green mile.

The farewell walk might as well have been a walk along the green mile. He had been thoughtful enough to accompany me to my next destination, but I almost wished he had shown less chivalry. Mediocrity is exhausting, and I was plum worn out from three hours being a mediocre date.  I needed to walk briskly, add a few extra blocks to my trek and let the winter air numb an already aching heart.

The good-bye was awkward enough that, if I tried really hard, I could find a glimmer of hope that not all was lost. But I knew better. As I made my way home later that evening, I resigned to what would become the reality – he would evaporate as quickly as he had appeared.

Love really is a game. Luckily, I’ve been an athlete my whole life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned on the sports field that’s also applicable to the quest for love it’s this: there’s always another season to be played, which means there’s always another chance for victory… that is, as long as you’re not too quick to throw in the towel.