"If he had a girlfriend she would sit across the
breakfast table from him with fork in hand, and every day she
would be impaled on the four steel tines of his intelligence
and his perception and his ambition and his self-regard."
- Holy Fire, by Bruce Sterling
As my mentor Sonia Nevis, Ph.D. says, "It is easier to live
life with joined energy." Dating is definitely a gruesome
process that requires courage. Many women stay way too long
in half-baked relationships because of the fear of returning
to dating.
It is hardest to be single when you are physically ill.
A terrible feeling of loneliness sets in and it is easy to overdose
on your very real vulnerability. Be sure to create a solid support
system for yourself, one in which sexuality doesn't gum up the works.
In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article (Nov. 11, 2003) titled "Still
Single? You're Not Alone" by Joe Donatelli, he refers to a Matchmaker.com poll. Their survey reported 30% of all singles polled are not looking for a long-term
relationship. The most important factor people were looking for was
intelligence. Men valued looks most highly and women valued finances. In this article, the
author suggests finding out, "Does this person make me happy?" which seems
very sage advice.
Friendships
Unfortunately our culture is so frantic that there is not enough
time for friendship. The time it takes to build new friendships
is undervalued. James Hillman, a wonderful man of ideas, calls
friendship a calling. Make friendship a priority and appreciate
the time it takes to build one. After you leave high school and
college, the ease of friendships is gone and the work of reaching
out and issuing invitations regardless of the wince of rejection
is important. Both of you need to be able to admit you are wrong.
Remember that friendship is also a way to notice what makes
relationships work. It is a place to practice greater courage and
honesty: two ingredients that will stand the test of time. If
your friendships are similar to the one portrayed on screen
in Beaches,
you are indeed in trouble. Real friendship should not translate into the
American habit of running away. If we have a major conflict, instead of learning
from the truth and growing, we will disappear from each other's
lives and only return when one of us is dying. Real friendship
has the depth and character of truth and growing because of
the opportunity for honesty. Ask yourself: what is one unspoken
thought you might risk sharing with a friend, one which might take
your friendship to a deeper level.
A Balancing Act
Loving someone else is an act of courage. My daughter
loved Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers movies as much as I did.
I would caution her, "Remember, only in the movies do two
people fall in love with each other the same amount at the
same time. Most often in life one person loves the other person
more, sometimes for months or even years. I loved my friend
Marty more for a decade before she grew to appreciate me truly."
It is important to remember that giving too much love can
be an imposition instead of seeing love as a gift to
be appreciated.
Arm yourself with Mona’s Law from Tales
of the City by Armistead Maupen. It is not possible
to have a great job, a great apartment and a great boyfriend
all at the same time. If two of the three or three of
the three are missing you will score higher on the misery
index. The wiser individual will know that sometimes you must
act the opposite of how you feel to get what you want. It
is dangerous to suffocate the one you love. If you clutch
too tightly, you will lose them. Love is a dance between intimacy
and independence. Both are required for authentic closeness.
You will chase a healthy person away if you insist that love
is 24-7, so learn to back up. Only infants should insist on
the ongoing-ness of attention.
Neither of these extreme positions is what you want in a healthy
relationship. Every relationship can have some adoration and
some being ignored with most time spent in the middle ground
of the dance: learning about each other, caring, too busy
to call every day, knowing, not knowing, asking and telling,
etc. People get anxious and want to push for a conclusion
prematurely which is a mistake. Allow enough time for things
to take shape.
Healthy Things to Look for:
1. Do They Say What They Mean and Mean What They Say?
A wonderful laugh-out-loud book that teaches this lesson is
the mystery Lucky
You by Carl Hiaasen. You have to love an author who makes
a Hooters waitress a heroine.
2. Dialogue
If something seems nutty, bring it up. If a real dialogue
emerges instead of a defensive, deflecting monologue, WOW.
3. Are Your Boundaries Respected?
Boundaries can change if they are respected to begin with.
Boundaries should not be apologized for, they are a good reality
check and a way to take the temperature of the relationship.
4. Someone Who Takes Responsibility
From the ages of 13-27, a lot of latitude can be granted.
Particularly after the age of 27, an adult needs to take more
responsibility if they mistreat someone else or are narcissistic.
If the point of love is to be able to grow and become a better
person, then taking responsibility and being able to hear
honest feedback about yourself is important.
5. They have friends of the same sex
6. Will slowed down sexuality be acceptable?
This may sound very old-fashioned but fast sexuality easily
clouds perceptions. Take time to find out if she/he is worth
the investment of your knowing them. Restricting yourself to
oral sex is not slowed down sexuality.
7. A willingness to problem solve and offers respect for your
point of view
8. They're Grown Up
This means they honestly face painful situations which leads to building character
9. Do they respect you enough that you can influence them?
Being able to influence someone else is the ultimate test of respect.
Things to Be on Guard For:
"For surely I was not a bad person? I had accepted
what had been offered; now I saw that what had been offered
had been insufficient, and worse, that I had over-invested in
something that was intrinsically worthless, or at best of no
consequence." - words of Elizabeth the heroine from The
Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner
Even as a kid, I never really liked the Disney version of Cinderella. She should have walked to the ball under her own
steam and she could have stayed past midnight without any
trouble. I always loved Grimm’s Fairy Tales—even better than
50's/60's television. The fairy tales give glimpses of a darker
reality, the shadow side of tricky, flimsy people who at a
later date become substantial as they learn from the complicatedness
of life's struggles. Too many children have swallowed Disney
whole and expect life to be sanitized. Read Grimm’s fairytales
to be more alert to emotional danger.
1. Manipulation and Blame
Someone stuck in the Victim, Rescuer, Persecutor game,
someone who is obsessed
with manipulating others, or is an active addict is really always looking for an audience.
(Note how the main character is manipulated by the wealthiest
woman in town in Empire
Falls by Richard Russo). (See relationship triangle page
& learn this game).
Stay on the lookout for those who never make statements of
responsibility, or those who find comfort blaming everyone
else. These are NOT people of substance. Stay alert to your
own willingness to be a target for blame.
2. Charm
Run because underneath charm is emptiness and narcissism. Your role
will be the boring one of the constant audience; not very
engaging for an entire lifetime. Rent the movie Mansfield
Park (by a British Female Director of Jane
Austen's Novel) which illustrates this point.
People allow themselves to be seduced by charm because it's glorious to leap
over awkward beginnings in relationships. In the long run, you will be
disappointed.
3. Desperation
No one will be attracted to desperate neediness if they are
in their right mind. Give up the Rescuer role, thinking that
you will be a good person by fixing them up. Let them hire
a therapist instead, where relationship boundaries require
them to do 50% of the work. Rescuing is you doing 60-98% of
the work-bad idea. A client informed me that Dr. Phil says put out an "I want
to be with you" vibe instead of "I need to be with you."
4. If Heterosexual - Determine their relationship with
their opposite sex parent (Freud had a few things right).
If a person is gay, it may have more to do with the same sex
parent. Check out both relationships to be on the safe side.
Extremes such as excessive adoration, disgust, or indifference
in parental relationships can be trouble. Basically you want
someone who gets along with their parents. The point being
that if a son had a hateful relationship with his mother,
you may take her place in the future. A good book to teach
you how your childhood experience leaks into the present in
your partnership is: Couples
Getting the Love You Want: A Guide For Couples by Harville
Hendrix.
5. Never Feel Sorry for Anybody
Nothing good comes from this, erase it from your emotional
vocabulary. Feeling sorry for someone is a treacherous place
to be because it lacks respect. Respect is more important
than love in keeping a long term relationship working. Respect
offers more room to not like aspects of someone, it offers
the respect of being different. Love too often disguises a desire
for a clone.
6. Women, Stop the Myth
Stop the myth that any man is better than none. With
or Without a Man by Karen Gail Lewis, is about single
women taking control of their lives.
7. Expectations
The problems with expectations are twofold; you can have too
few or too many. It is important to strike a balance. Either
of these polarities can get you into trouble. There are three
wonderful books that illustrate the problem of too few
expectations (look under homework and go to books listed on this
web site)
Don’t bury the other person in all your unmet childhood needs.
Try to keep your list of expectations from erasing all the
possibilities. If the man has a good heart, a good mind, keeps
game playing to a minimum and has a decent relationship with his
mother, what more could you want?
See the expectations section on this web site.
8. Isolating Behavior
If your new love interest maneuvers you into leaving all your
friends behind instead of being interested in meeting them,
be careful, something is amiss.
9. Self-destructiveness
It’s simple, if you smell it stay away. Often accompanies
active addictions or dry drunks.
10. Emotional Sadism or Masochism
Examine your own masochism if you are in a relationship you
know is unhealthy and you stay anyway. Those who enjoy being
sadistic do not try to examine themselves, so they will not
be on this web site.
11. Remember Nice is Not the Same as Good
Why do people find it so easy to confuse these two? The big
bad wolf was really nice to Little Red Riding Hood.
12. Don’t Become "Enchanted"
The role of rescuer to a lost boy/girl can be enchanting.
In reality you will come to feel like a mother or father instead
of a lover. Consider the well-known relationship of Mr. and
Mrs. Lincoln. who addressed each other as mother and father.
It doesn't require a lot of imagination to suspect that their
marriage was not warm and wonderful.
13. Serious Mental Illness
Everyone deserves love. Water seeks its own level in couples;
don’t point the finger at someone else unless you are willing
to look at yourself. Blame is so convenient. Rather than blaming,
take responsibility. For example, if either of you requires
medication, it is that person’s duty to explore this option.
Spilling all over people you love is not a birthright. Remember
the tragic life of Van Gogh. Imagine the burden Vincent Van
Gogh’s brother, Theo, must have carried for Vincent’s entire
life.
14. Survival Conclusions or Personal Myths
We all more or less grow up unfinished. We often fill in the
gaps with ways to cope or ways to believe about life and relationships
that are twisted up to fill in the gaps. Work to be more self-aware.
One example might be having a mother or father who abandoned
you growing up, which is not grounds for entitlement to drown
your lover in neediness. Survival conclusions have an expiration
date.
15. Cope Instead of Persuade
Reality really is your best friend. So you risked the question,
"Do you love me?" and got the answer you didn’t want. Instead
of insisting that the other person deny his or her reality
just to reassure you falsely, deal with the truth. It is better
to know than to go on pretending.
16. The Enmeshment of Codependency is not Love
Please read about codependency section under anxiety.
17. "Love me no matter what"
This is an extremely emotionally dangerous requirement.
This is a set up for the drama triangle. This is a crazy thing
to demand of another adult if you are 18 or over.
18. Mirroring the system
An example of this would be the person you date is a
problem drinker and your alcohol intake increases when you are
with them. It’s important to maintain your own boundaries,
to recognize when you’ve lost track of your own values or
sense of self in loving somebody else.
19. No Remorse
Someone without this quality is dangerous to be around. It’s
someone who doesn’t have a heart.
20. Beware the Distancer
There are many who make an art of never really sharing
their heart, who only feel safe buried in distance. Don’t
make the mistake of believing you’ll be the one special
enough to break through.
21. Bitterness
There is an ugliness to living with this that is suffocating.
22. Monologues
Do they consistently erase or discount your reality with long-winded monologues? When authentic dialogue and respectful disagreement are missing, that's a problem.
Online Dating: On June 29, 2003 The New York Times declared
on the front page: Online Dating Sheds Its Stigma as Losers.com.
Online dating is now a staple of dating life, and is no longer
considered disreputable. It is a valid way to meet a large
number of people, and is worth taking seriously.
Homework:
• Read the 3 books listed under Women Who Choose Men
Who are MIA.
• If you feel that you never get what you really want
or need, ask yourself what you get out of hiding your needs?
What is your part in not getting what you want?
• Go back to high school and list the men in your life.
Begin with your father and ask yourself what you were lucky
and unlucky to receive? What was the part you played?
• Then, with what you learned, examine your history for
any patterns. Notice what was repeated, what you have yet
to learn.
• Make a collage of you with three parts - past, present,
and future. This is one way to get grounded in who you are
without requiring a man to validate your existence.
• Wanting the comfort of a man is very reasonable. Validation
is only reasonable if you are in high school. As Fritz Perls
noted, "Growing up is honestly facing painful situations."
• No more losers.com - based on 5,000 interviews and 20,000 hours research
• Be active. Volunteer, go to church, join organizations
as a way of meeting people with the added benefit of making
your world a more vital place.
• Watch all 8 movies about love listed on this site.
Web sites to Expand your Pittsburgh Connections - as Ways
to Meet New People.
Pittsburgh Young
Professionals
Amizade.org -
Pittsburgh International Volunteering
First Fridays
- Events & Parties on First Fridays
Glenda.org - Gay &
Lesbian Organization
Latin
American Cultural Union
Leadership Pittsburgh
Incorporated
Network of Indian Professionals
Amazing Singles - Resource for Single Links
Onyx Alliance - African American Professional Group
Pittsburgh Asian
American Young Professional Alliance
Pittsburgh Geeks - High Tech
Group
Sprout Fund.org
Pump - Pittsburgh
Urban Magnet Project
Shalom Pittsburgh
Thursday Night Live
- Gay Organization
Tiepgh.org -
Network & Nurture Entrepreneurs
Urban
League of Pittsburgh
Three Rivers Singles Golf Club
Golden Triangle Tall Club
Pittsburgh Ski Club
Spirited Singles - Catholics
Foundating.com - Christian Church Singles
Gatheringspgh.com
Pittsburgh Queer Events Calender
KeystoneRamblers.org
Three Rivers Rowing
Ultimate Frisbee - coed & women's clinics, Fall & Summer Leagues
Pittsburgh Dance - Swing dances and more!
Meetups near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh Contra - Fun dancing!
Walls are Bad-Outdoor recreation in Southwestern PA
Venture Outdoors - City of Pittsburgh Outdoor Opportunities
Pitt in Hollywood
- Entertainment & University Community
Craigslist.org - Free Online Classifieds including two sections for Strictly Platonic and Activity Partners, to help chase loneliness away.
In November there is the No Baggage Ball - a fundraiser for Cystic
Fibrosis - where you meet a new single person at each of 5 courses in a
dinner. (412-321-4422)
Hash House Harriers - 6:30 PM Mondays beginning in May. Trail running & social group ages 21-60. (412-381-6709)
Singles Who Run Pittsburgh - 5:30 - 9 PM Tuesdays. The PG writer John Hayes organizes a gathering of runners and walkers for 2 - 6 miles then socializes. (412-474-7903)
|
