Hey girl.
Or guy.
Or whatever gender pronoun floats your boat.
Let’s talk about love, sex, and dating. The human heart is a complicated place. Also, sometimes needy and attention seeking. Or repressed and desensitized. Or clouded and jaded. Or optimistic and peaceful. Experienced. Naive. These are all adjectives that mean things in the context of describing words in what we call a “language.” Know what I mean? Good, because I don’t really have a sense of where this is going exactly. Just that I’m kind of skirting around the issue. Which is very much what happens to people sometimes when they try to discuss relationships.
You see, like it or not, you’re going to have to interact with other humans. It’s because we are pack animals. Life is like one big nature documentary and as far as I’m concerned, if you’re not currently being eaten by a lion, you’re doing a great job.
But sometimes, for some reason, somehow entirely outside of your control, you find yourself slowly falling in love with another sack of cognizant human meat flesh.
Everybody drink!
In this section of the book, you will find yourself privy to my limited personal insights regarding the arena of love. Now, to be fair, I have very little experience because I run from relationships like a person who enjoys running. (Except that I don’t actually enjoy running at all. And I don’t understand people who do. But to each their own!)
In my mind, a relationship between two people and its lasting effect on their lives can best be likened to the experience of eating a meal. For instance, sometimes you decide to try something new, like Ethiopian food, and maybe you like it, maybe you don’t, but at least you tried.
Sometimes you eat something you order a lot, but just when you least expect it you discover that this thing you have all the time has suddenly made you very ill. That’s like food poisoning of the heart and it can last for a very long time if you let it.
To make this more clear, let me describe my only three experiences with love (significant love, not just sex, not spooning your best friend, not falling in love with a fictional character, etc.) as if they were parts of a meal:
1 FIRST COURSE: Appetizer
A small dish of food or a drink taken before a meal to stimulate one’s appetite
I was about nineteen when I fell in love for the first time. It was with a classmate of mine who was also studying Japanese literature. She was Japanese, in fact. Oh, she was also a she. A fact that disturbed me no end, because I had spent the majority of my life crushing that sort of thought into a dense ball of repression about the size of a balled-up Britney Spears poster that I most certainly didn’t buy because I thought she looked really pretty and it made me feel nice to look at. Anyway, back to the love story.
She and I were friends for a very short period of time before making out in my bed one night after I had confessed to her my very confusing and muddled feelings. I believe the exact phrasing was “Being near you makes me feel happy. But being that happy, so happy . . . well, that makes me feel sad. But then not being near you makes me feel sad too. So I don’t know which sad I want . . . the sad from missing your company . . . or the sad from having you around.”
I mean, how could you not kiss me after that bucket of nonsense?
Our relationship was very sweet and very much “first love.” There were many awkward moments, melodramatics, neglected friendships, and all that comes with falling into that obsessive pit of devotion that happens when you find someone who you want to tell everything to. Especially when you want to tell them everything while you have your mouth on their mouth and it feels so nice.
We dated for six months before I left the country to study abroad in Japan. She was a mess before I left, saying that “it would never be the same” and “what would she do now” and “what’s next” and all the sentences that would make someone with experience in a healthy relationship do a double take. But I was so blissfully closeted and lovesick that I didn’t question the strength of our devotion to each other for one minute. Because this was the one girl, the only girl, that I was ever going to love.
Two weeks after I left, I found out (via incredible amounts of Facebook stalking) that she had slept with one of the male RAs in her building. I called her in the middle of the night a total train wreck—alone in the countryside in a country where no one spoke a language I could understand—asking her to explain how she could cheat on me so soon after I had left.
Her reply was a question.
“We were in a relationship?”
So, as you can tell, the first time I fell in love it was a pretty jarring experience. It left me pickled, in fact. Tsukemono mitai.
2 SECOND COURSE: Entrée
The main course of a meal, or the right to enter or join a particular sphere or group
Watching your first love exclusively date the opposite sex for the remaining years you shared classes in college can leave a closeted homo feeling pretty shitty about themselves. Also, with enough trust issues to start a magazine fund! (Trust . . . fund? Issues . . . magazine? Anybody? Bueller?) So, after I was dumped I desperately tried to make myself love men again and just found that it was like kissing your brother. (Not that I’ve done that. I mean your brother is a nice guy, I’m sure . . . but no thanks.) Basically, I felt that the world had done me a great disservice by having me fall in love with someone who didn’t want to love me forever like I wanted to love them forever. I felt that this occurrence was very unique and no one could ever, would ever, understand the level of heartache I was currently enduring.
But obviously as time passed, and I healed, I realized that maybe I could love again, but I had to know for sure that they were going to be the one, so that meant dating a “real” lesbian, who for sure was never going to cheat on me with some dude while I was away! Needless to say, this was not a foundation strong enough to build a healthy relationship on.
Now this was one of those situations where you find yourself dating a person for over a year when you knew two months in that it wasn’t going to end well. But being young and only recently introduced to the joys of sex with someone you’re genetically predisposed to find attractive . . . well, you’ll put up with a lot for a long time. And for me, I put up with it for as long as I could stand to have such amazing sex.
But there comes a point in any relationship when one party simply doesn’t enjoy the company of the other and it just can no longer be ignored. For me, this point happened twice. The first time was when I tried to break up with her before we left for a trip to Paris together—a trip that I ultimately went on anyway and deeply regretted, as it kept our relationship going for another four months. The second time, I finally succeeded in breaking up with her, but that ended in her seeking some serious mental health assistance. And I felt pretty terrible about it. But maybe happy because she’s hopefully doing a lot better now? She was lovely! But we really just weren’t right for each other. Can you guys tell that I still feel slightly guilty? I can. Oy.
Anyway, point being, by the end of this relationship I had given up any denial over who I was. I was a person who loved girls, because I would date someone who I couldn’t stand for a year because I loved to have very gay, gay, gay, gay sex with her. And that’s okay. People are shallow sometimes. In the end, at least, I’m not in the closet anymore.
And because I didn’t finish eating my entrée I had plenty of room for . . .
3 THIRD COURSE: Dessert
A sweet course served at the end of a meal
It’s important to start this off by saying . . . I don’t really like sweets.
I never really have. Probably something to do with gorging myself on cheap food as a child (candies, dollar menus, etc.), but as an adult I just don’t like sweets. I don’t crave them. They are not “must haves” for me. I don’t drink soda. And frankly, it feels more like obligation than indulgence when I do dabble in desserts.
So, I can honestly say that I never expected to find myself so deeply in love with someone who can’t get enough of Funfetti cake.
Now, after that last relationship ended, I didn’t really date anyone for four years. Four years! Four years is a long time. Especially when you’re rockin’ this sweet bod! (Not pictured: sweet bod.)
But it’s true: four years. No dating. I took a long hiatus from hearts in general. I just didn’t want to make myself vulnerable to heartache again. Nor did I want to hurt someone else whose only fault was that they fell in love with me. It just seemed like a messy and unpleasant prospect. So, instead of seeking out a companion (which up until then had been my one and only goal: I’m very simple. I honestly just want a wife and kids and a backyard for a puppy), I decided to focus on building a life with my career instead.
And they say that’s when it happens. That when you stop looking for love, then love will find you.
But if that doesn’t work then there is always online dating.
So that’s basically what I know about love at this point in my life. I feel like the people we find ourselves drawn to are somehow reflections of the love we were given (or denied) as children. And this could manifest as unconditional loyalty or devotion to people who don’t necessarily classify as healthy and/or functional human beings.
But more often than not, they don’t know that about themselves, so how should I!
Before I let you go to read those recipes with my tips and tricks on trying (or crying) while in love, here is one helpful tool to identify if you/your loved one are loving correctly or at least semi-decently: love people for who they are, not who you want them to be. (Yourself included.)
Meaning, if you find yourself continually disappointed or drowning in excuses for erratic or unchanging behavior, then just get out! Life is too short to waste on trying to fix somebody you can’t fix.
HOWEVER: Such actions should only really be taken if you know that you are communicating your needs properly. You can’t accuse someone of “not trying hard enough” if you haven’t given them a clue as to what exactly you want them to be trying for.
HOWEVER-2: Be careful that you’re not blaming someone for your actions too. You’ve got to take proper care of yourself before you can ever hope to take care of a relationship that matters.
HOWEVER-3: Understanding another takes time. So does bonding when you don’t feel comfortable with attachment. Try combining your names on party invites or buying embroidered vanity towels with your names on them. Oh! Also say “we” a lot. People love that.
Anyway, take the following section with a rice-size grain of salt. Remember: I have no idea what I am talking about when it comes to cooking. So why would I know anything about love? Or, frankly, the experience of any life outside of my own?
But I can imagine what it might be like.
And I can try to understand.
And that’s really all this book is doing anyway.
