Dating

Let’s Take a Hike

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Lady-slipper

Lady-slipper

It’s a beautiful spring day, the kind with just enough crisp in the breeze to start out with a light jacket, just enough sun in the sky to later slip it off. The Appalachian mountains call me this time of year. On the forest floor lady-slippers and trillium bloom yellow and pink, while high above, tall trees re-sheathe their limbs in green. Fat robins rustle in the nearby brush. Sun-dappled shade filters through the canopy, lighting a flame azalea on a far hillside, making it look for all the world like the mystical, ethereal burning bush.

I grew up going camping with my family and Girl Scout troop, and more and more in recent years I’ve sought again the solace of the trees. Or maybe I’m seeking more smarts—science tells us that time spent in nature both reduces stress levels and improves cognitive function. Elizabeth Kwak-Heffernan, in a May 2012 article in Backpacker magazine, cites a University of Rochester study (2010) that showed even 15 minute nature walks gave rise to a greater sense of “vitality”; she also describes an environmental neuroscience project that shows how “exposure to nature causes significant, measurable changes to the brain” that “let you think more clearly, focus more acutely, and perform to your maximum cognitive ability.” Continue reading →

The Secret to a Happy Relationship in 140 Characters (or Less)

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Right…
Happy!

One of the best pieces of relationship advice I’ve ever gotten: when facing or anticipating conflict, ask yourself, “Do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy?”

I’m not entirely sure where I first heard this advice. I associate it with my brother and think it may have come from a seminar he once encouraged me to take (so maybe chalk that one up as the seventh lesson learned from him). But asking myself that question—both in the split second between sensing irritation and potentially snapping in response, as well as in cooler moments contemplating what matters most in the knotty matrix of desire and decision that is a relationship—has spared me and those I love pointless arguments and thus needless heartache.

Don’t get me wrong: I like being right. I am a woman of strong opinions, with an Energizer-bunny brain that never stops thinking, sifting, testing, wondering (even when I wish it would so I could sleep). I’m also a scholar of rhetoric, so I understand objectively what makes for a powerful, ethical argument. I’ve got a good arsenal, and I know how to use it. Sometimes I’m kinda glad I can’t get into an argument with me. Continue reading →

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Venn I Look at You… Steve Speaks

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Every so often fiancé Steve offers his take on mid-life marriage.  Here, his thoughts on why it’s good to have some differences.

In a previous post Sandee joked that for nerds like us, drawing a Venn diagram on a whiteboard at the wedding might make a better unity ceremony than mixing sand or lighting candles. The overlapping circles motif shows up on a number of patterns for wedding invitations or save-the-date cards, where I’m sure it’s intended to portray wedding bands overlapping.

wedding ringsBut a Venn diagram is not a bad way to look at what happens when “two become one.” A “Venn Diagram” shows the relationship between two sets, A and B. The area of overlap represents the things that A and B have in common, or the intersection of A and B. The total colored area is the union of A and B, or all things encompassed by either A or B.

Venn diagramI imagine most couples spend some time pondering the things they have in common and the things that make them different. I’m curious about how much overlap works the best. If your circle barely touches your partner’s circle, you have almost nothing in common. That has to make communication difficult and suggests there are not many things you would enjoy doing together. Why be a couple, then? On the other hand, if you overlap too much, it means your partner is only slightly different from you, and perhaps doesn’t bring much to your life that wasn’t already there. I think most healthy couples’ relationships fall somewhere in between. Continue reading →

Not-So-True-Love Tuesday: Poly- wants a what?

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Every so often, I delve back into my dating past to share a story of those “BS” (Before Steve) days.  It’s always an exercise in extreme gratitude.

“Jeremy,” the firBroken heartst man I met on Match.com, lived in a small town in North Carolina. Largely because of the distance, we traded online messages for a couple of weeks before getting together. Jeremy’s emails were smart, witty, and flirtatious. One day he sent me a lyrical note describing the silver crescent moon flanked by Mars and Venus he’d seen in the early morning sky, a hopeful sign that made him think of us.

When we finally met, he hugged me and told me I was even cuter in person than in my pictures. But things felt out of sync. In person, both of us were quieter, more reserved than our online personas. Dinner was okay. On the road to visit my parents in Georgia, I stayed at Jeremy’s apartment that night, while he slept at his buddy’s house down the road.

When he arrived the next morning to go to breakfast, he caught me absent-mindedly perusing a bookshelf. With more animation than I’d seen from him up to that point, he asked, “Did you see anything that scared or unnerved you? Because if you did, you can ask me questions.”

I hadn’t, but I hadn’t been looking that closely. I shook my head no, and gave the shelf one last glance as we headed out the door. No “DIY Guide to Murder” or “Bombbuilder’s Manual” I could see. Did I want to know? Continue reading →

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How to Tell You’re in the Right Relationship: Two Snapshots and a Metaphor

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Snapshot 1: Clearwater Beach

Clearwater 3

Clearwater crowds

I recently drove to Clearwater Beach from Tampa, where I was attending a conference. I left in the middle of the day, landing myself smack in the middle of high beach traffic, exacerbated by construction obstacles and a GPS that kept trying to send me the wrong way down one-way streets. Return traffic was even more frustrating, driving back to the city a long, arduous process made doubly painful by the fact the beach itself was disappointing. Near the Coronado St. pier, cabanas lined the shore from one end to the other, jammed so tightly side-by-side that if you stood behind them, you could barely see the ocean. Stand in front, you’re crammed elbow to elbow, towel to towel, with spring breakers of every stripe. There were no shells to be seen on my visit, and the only sea-life I encountered were the poor gulls being harassed by a kid pretending to hold a cup of food, then splashing the birds with water as they approached. Walking along the surf-line felt more like playing chicken than taking a stroll, since every other step required dodging right or left. Parking to enjoy all these privileges: insanely pricey.

There were a few unexpected delights: an alfresco dinner of a grilled grouper sandwich and cold lemonade, sand that slipped like silk over my bare feet. And a brief conversation with Mary Beth, a bubbly young woman who bounded up off a nearby hammock and asked to share my shade after I gave up on the crowds and retired to a cluster of palms well behind the cabana line. Mary Beth and I traded talk of vintage clothing finds, and she complimented us on our similar (good) taste in sunglasses. She was as sunny as the bright orb above.

Still, I left Clearwater almost more stressed than when I arrived. It was a bad fit and bad timing. The costs outweighed the benefits, and I felt uncomfortable, disoriented. Getting there was difficult, getting out even worse. The best thing about the visit was the lesson learned: no matter how much I loved the ocean, not every beach would make my heart sing.

Snapshot 2: Pass-A-Grille

chair

Chair-on-loan

I drove to St. Pete Beach from Tampa early on a Saturday. The timing was right: the traffic light and steady, the GPS cooperative, most of my journey lit by the warm pink glow of sunrise. When I arrived at Pass-A-Grille, the parking lot was near empty, and I parked just a few yards away from a public access boardwalk over the dunes. As I paid the fee at the meter, I noticed a beach chair leaning up against a nearby trash can. It wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t broken. It seemed to have been left there just for me. Continue reading →

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I Propose…

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After a long, hard (and in many places, lingering) winter, the day we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived.  Happy Proposal Day!

Wait, what?

You were probably expecting me to say, “Happy first day of Spring!” That it is. Is it also, at least according to some, National Proposal Day. The origins of this unofficial holiday are not entirely clear, although a couple of websites reference Texan John Michael O’Loughlin as the creator, noting he chose March 20th specifically because the Vernal Equinox “symbolizes the equal forces between the couple necessary in making a marriage work.”

The National Day Calendar–prime source for oddball holidays of all stripes–acknowledges National Proposal Day, although this year it’s highlighting, on the lighter side, ravioli, and on a more sobering note, Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Based on the wildly rambling website http://www.proposalday.com, it sounds like the holiday may have been imagined primarily as a (gasp!) marketing gimmick to sell “Proposal Day Cards” and, even more intriguing, “Proposal Day Candidacy Cards,” which are not for proposing, per se, but rather to “declare your candidacy for marriage directly to the one you love” and “make clear your desire to be viewed by them as a candidate for their consideration as a spouse.” If you’re the crafty sort and don’t care to buy a Candidacy card, the site also has suggestions on how to make your own.

It all sounds a little bit too much like those non-committal pseudo-invitations that pass for asking someone out these days: “Maybe we can meet up for lunch sometime,” or worse, “There’s a really great band playing downtown Friday night I was thinking of going to see.” Um, was there a question in there somewhere?

If you want to ask someone to marry you, propose.  If not, don’t.  Save declaring candidacy for the politicians.

But since it is Proposal Day, I have a proposal to make. How about we simply celebrate the arrival–on the calendar if not in the forecast–of Spring? Let’s celebrate new beginnings, the possibility of growth, the balance of hours on this day.

I don’t know if Proposal Day is a “thing” or a wanna-be.  But Spring, beautiful spring, is here at last.