me, to Dave, two days ago:
Kelly:…I’m so much more nefarious and strategic than anyone gives me credit for
Kelly: ‘cept you.
Kelly: and my ex.
Kelly: He’s convinced our entire marriage was a conspiracy.
————-
And he’s probably not entirely wrong.
————-
Wondering: maybe, sometimes, this is what The Dudes think?
That this relationship business is a honeypot -
- a bait-and-switch almost too seductive to resist?
Because the truth is…sometimes it is a honeypot.
Sometimes we (and by “we” I mean “I”) want The Relationship more than we want the man in front of us.
But he’d look so nice painting that white picket fence.
And so he’ll do.
—————–
My ex is A Good Guy and I did him wrong.
In the aftermath of our split, here’s the score:
I have a beautiful house, two devilish/angelic kids (depending who you ask), a career, and pretty much everything I ever wanted.
(‘Cept a partner. But these things happen when they happen. And a vehicle with German engineering. But again, will happen eventually.)
He lives alone with the BMW, rottweiler and leather sofa.
I can see why he thinks he got screwed.
I can see why he thinks that one of us had an agenda all along.
I can see why some of us are hesitant to jump in and swim again.
—————
At dinner a couple of months ago, my friend Lianne Raymond (teacher, life coach but she prefers the term “life poet”) told us that the young men she teaches are amazing. They’re sensitive, emotionally expressive, tender, affectionate and they have great communication skills.
And these sixteen and seventeen year old soon-to-be men come to her with broken hearts. They’re distraught when their relationships dissolve. They take it so much harder than do the young women.
Her theory? Heterosexual men aren’t allowed to express their emotions in other venues of their lives, so they often make their girlfriends their emotional centres. Their partners are their most trusted confidantes and sometimes their only source of emotional support. And so when they lose that relationship, they suffer intensely. They’ve lost the relationship, the friendship, and the emotional solidarity.
Women, on the other hand, are terrific at spreading their emotional needs across a network of friends and sisters. When a relationship breaks up, they’ve still got sources of emotional support.
And that’s why lots of women love Sex and The City. For the friendship. Because it is true.
———-
The connections?
I’m wrestling with the eternal issue of commitment phobia.
And here’s what I think: heterosexual men and women are equally emotional. We all have emotions, we just express them and the needs that drive them, differently.
Men need partners just as much as women do. Men aren’t inherently afraid to commit.
But I think the fairy tale that women decry as restrictive and delusional is just as narrow and confining for men.
I had lunch with a colleague and he told me that The Fairy Tale seduces and betrays men, too. He has two gay friends who married women and had families – and then had to leave them – because they desperately wanted to be let into the dream.
This dream needs to be re-dreamed so that love and family is at the centre rather than heterosexuality and rules that pinch us more than they protect us.
My point…I do have one, you know.
In the fairy tale, where is the prince? Who is the prince? What does he do?
Not much, actually. He just shows up and satisfies female yearning.
Now I’m sure there are times when that is a great gig.
But do we care about the Prince’s character development? Do we care who he is? Do we even see him?
He’s Prince Charming. He’s tall, dark and handsome and his kisses break spells. He looks good on a white horse. He shows up to be married at the appropriate moment.
Basically, he’s marriageable.
Now, if I described a woman like that (marriageable) I think we’d all agree that I didn’t really say a damn thing about her. We’d have no idea who she is.
And so I’m wondering if “commitment phobic” men – and I don’t believe that men are truly commitment phobic – fear, deeply, that the women in their lives value them for their roles rather than their selves?
Do men fear being valued for their husband-ability rather than their intrinsic and individual worth?
And…if they do fear that, no wonder they hesitate to jump in and commit. Because if they do commit and it all goes to hell they’ll be sleeping on the leather sofa. Alone.
(Maybe with the dog but only if the dog commits the grievous error of peeing on bare female feet and so Must Go, too.)
And he’ll be gazing at the ceiling, suffering, wondering what the hell happened and what he’s going to do and who he can talk to while his ex convenes with her girlfriends, sisters and goddesses who eternally and unconditionally have her back, heart and soul.
If I was him I’d be scared too.
Wouldn’t you?
from mother to toddler:
Amelia, that’s a cactus. Don’t play with it.
at a sleep-over with five twelve year old girls:
T: Have you ever had a crush on a boy?
K: How do you even get a crush?
T: You stare at a boy, and then stare at him some more, and then you start to realize that he’s really nice…that’s how a crush happens. Have you ever had one?
K, flatly: No.
further to crushes: on twelve year old boys and underwear
all five girls, discussing what they don’t like about twelve-year old boys. (The list is long.)
T: I hate it when boys walk around with their jeans so low that you have to look at their underwear.
All: ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
A: If I wanted to look at a boy’s underwear, I’d go fold my brother’s laundry!
the lesson:
Just say no to cactuses, crushes and boy’s underwear.
And that about sums up my dating wisdom for the week.
xoxoxo
It might not be terribly balanced – and lo, I do not drink at the fountain of balance – but the ability to take risks is a privilege. The rest of my life is stable and secure which means I can be courageous with my heart.
Still, for the last year, maybe more, I took dumb risks. I did not look at the man in front of me and decide “is he worth the risk?”
I took the risk for the sake of the risk.
Unwise. Glad I stopped that.
But there is so much to be said for making the leap. For falling. Maybe even in love.
I’ve written before that I’m intensely frustrated with safe, tepid, tentative, risk-managed, pseudo-”healthy” dating and relationships.
And here’s why: because every single relationship I have had has ended. That fucking hurts. Endings tear you apart. Divorce is violence.
And so if I entered into relationships explicitly trying to prevent pain and and manage potential heartache, I would just never get into one, or any, ever. Because they’ve all ended that way.
And almost every single one was worth it.
That’s why I take the risk.
These days, I’m doing it better.
(The temporarily chaste thing really helped. It was like a “reset” button that made me stop interpreting men in light of what I wanted them to be and where I wanted them to go.)
Now, I only take the risk with someone who deserves it. Who is worth the potential heartbreak. With someone who can show up with the passion, connection, intellect and soul…someone with whom the risk might be great, but so too is the reward.
When I find someone like that, and our hearts and souls collide, and we inspire each other and lift each other up – and all of that is rare and precious – then yes, I leap. I fall. I don’t even look for the net.
Except maybe we don’t fall. Maybe we fly.
We did – or we tried – to fly. Turns out our wings weren’t strong enough.
Hitting the earth hurts. I hurt.
But…
I don’t regret it.
I am terrifyingly brave. I love. I really do. I’m all in. I show up and I open up.
And I am so proud of how I behaved in this most recent almost-love. I didn’t get freaky, clingy, angry or tense.
(When I had those moments, I “networked my neediness” – mostly with the author of that post, thank you, my friend – instead of making someone else responsible for fixing it.)
I didn’t try to fix him. I didn’t fall in love with his potential. I saw him. I saw flaws. I saw strengths. I took him as he was and I liked him as he is. I was kind to him and to myself.
I stayed present. I stayed in the moment. I didn’t worry about what we might be in one year or two years. I enjoyed him and us, right now.
Because right now is all we have. The past is dead and the future is imaginary.
And I really tried. When something needed to be said, I said it. When I was scared, I said so. When I was hurt, I said so. And I didn’t get all wound up about it and blame him for my feelings. I owned them and I spoke my truth. Evenly. Honestly. We made a deal to be honest even when it would be easier to lie.
That, it turns out, is not as difficult as I thought and infinitely more beautiful than I imagined.
And yet it didn’t work out. And so I’m sad.
But I am incredibly proud of myself.
Because I did my fucking best.
In a piece that Dave Doolin and I wrote together (you’ll see it soon), Dave wrote that when submitting pieces to other publishers, you’ve got to contribute your very best writing, because then if it is rejected you’ve got a “useful data point”.
That data point is this: your best effort wasn’t good enough. And that’s important, because then you’ve got something to work with: you need to become a better writer. That path is clear.
However, if you submit a mediocre effort and it is rejected, you don’t really know anything. You don’t know what would have happened if you offered your best. You don’t know if your best would be good enough.
It is a bit of a hop, skip and a jump to apply that to relationships, but here it is:
offer your best and truest love. Offer your you’iest you.
If it is not enough, it is not enough. But at least then you know, definitively, that this is the case. Clarity is peace.
I know this, intimately, because I once let go of a relationship without doing my best to make it work.
And I regretted it. For years. Eight years.
I was haunted by the thought – the bone-deep knowledge, really – that I could have tried harder. I could have done better. Maybe it would have worked if I had only done this, or this, or that…
Regret was my shadow.
So in that case, there’s no useful data point. There’s regret that I didn’t go all out because then at least I would know that I tried my damndest and it still didn’t work.
Instead, what I know about that eight-years-ago love was that I didn’t try.
There is nothing I regret more than not trying hard enough. There’s no fucking excuse for that.
With this more recent, wobbly-winged and wonderful relationship, I tried. I showed up. I showed.
There is nothing I would do differently.
I have nothing to regret.
Which is a great thing to know, because regret is a luxury and a vice.
Let’s not indulge.
amen.
mad, passionate love ‘n kisses to Tara Gentile for e-mailing this print by theloveshop to me today – and for knowing that I’d adore it. mwah.
“Between the page & the writer is a magnetism more compelling than any other relationship.” – Betsy Warland
and this is true. For me.
But I have another ongoing, eternal relationship that is fraught.
Inspiration. Creativity. My muse.
Here’s the truth: sometimes writing is hot lava. It burns, flows, cannot be contained, and obliterates every obstacle in its path. It will not be denied.
When writing is like that, it is easy. It is creative. I instinctively take risks because I’m too carried away with it to be responsible. To make it eat its vegetables.
And so I get seduced by the easy, the high, the flow. I think, that’s what it ought to be like.
And that’s how I get writer’s block. That’s how I get stuck.
(Or as Lianne Raymond so beautifully and wisely reframes it, “becalmed”.)
I start depending on the inspiration. The lightning flash. The earthquake. The explosion. And then I’m distraught and frantic and absolutely unable to produce because my fuel – the lava, the steam, the smoke – is buried so deeply I can’t dig through to it.
But here’s the thing: those creative explosions are inevitable but not predictable. And they’re incidents. Huge Fucking Incidents.
(Or, in my secret language with Dave, HFIs.)
HFIs cannot roll forth every day, and who would want them to? I don’t have the emotional coping skills to manage a HFI every day. I’m still recovering from Saturday when I had to steam clean the sofa and repaint the living room wall – all before 9am.
There was an incident with a bookcase-climbing six year old. We will not speak of it, here.
So HFIs are instances of cataclysmic creativity. They’re waves. Ride them when they’re rolling.
And other times, practice. Train. Do.
Keep doing.
I’ve written about it before, in another context.
Will power. Will power is great, when you’ve got it, but it is best for sprints, not marathons. When you’ve got it, use it. But build your life so that you don’t depend on will power and flashes of motivation or bursts of creativity. Build your life and your creative practice so that you’re steadily producing with or without the molten flow of inspiration.
And, if you do that, you get yourself out of the break-fix, stop-go, roar-hiccup cycle of creation.
And I think that’s a good thing. That rhythm is too syncopated for creative undulation. It asphyxiates my confidence in my own abilities.
So, inspiration? pfffffooey. I’ll kiss you when you’re here and forget you when you’re gone. And while you’re gone, I’ll still be writing. And when you get here, I’ll have even more skills and tools to bridle you and ride you.
Because I’ll be practising every day whether you show up or not.
Inspiration, you are On Notice.
——————-
Dave Doolin and Sean Neprud have turned me on to Deliberate Practice.
Dave’s practice teaches him how to write WordPress plugins, very quickly, as he demonstrates in his WordPress widget plugin tutorial. And he writes every day because that’s his thing. He studies his craft and he practices it. Daily.
Sean’s practice keeps him creating even when the Day Job is eating his life – and this is a Mofo Essential Life Skill, if you ask me – and the results are poignant, mundane and harrowing. His series on the daily grind is gripping.
Good things and great art emerge from boring, unrelenting effort. That’s Deliberate Practice.
(Justine Musk, the most talented Tribal Writer EVER, is imbibing the elixir of Deliberate Practice, too.)
And I’m deliberately practising with Bindu Wiles’ 21.5.800 challenge: 21 days. Yoga 5 times a week. 800 words a day.
Why I’m doing it:
- because writing 800 words a day whether I “feel like it” or not is deliberate practice. It is a big eff you to my contrary, oft-absent muse.
- because I’ve found the more I talk to my body, live in my body and move my body, the more I can create. The more I live in my head and consider my body as merely the vehicle that gets my gorgeous brain around, the more my brain swells up, gets high and mighty, and writes all kinds of bullshit.
Why You Should Do It:
- because all the cool kids are.
- Just kidding. Sorta.
PS I’ll be writing more about creativity and deliberate practice tomorrow, and listing off the ways I’m inviting creativity into my life and my body as a ‘deliberate practice’.
I’m trying to structure my creative practice so that I’m no longer dependant on HFIs of inspiration.
(Which is kind of like waiting to win the lottery, if you ask me. Hoping to win the lottery is not a financial plan. And waiting for Inspiration to visit is NOT a creative practice. So let’s not wait around.)
Let’s create whether or not creation is kissing our asses, pens, and paintbrushes.
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