So Long and Thanks for All the Kind Words

I've been letting this one percolate for a bit to see how transient my feelings on the matter really were, and I think the mental lava has cooled enough to see the shape of the landscape now.

I posted on Facebook a link to my pompous meditation on marriage, and received a caustic comment that accelerated my thinking on how and why I use Facebook and this blog. That comment, part of which was "It's possible that every thought you have isn't meant to be thought aloud" didn't start me down this line of thinking, but it did bring it to the front burner of my mind. It did snap me awake to a perspective I hadn't had: that the focus of all my words, which I had thought of as firmly centered on myself, my perceptions, my emotions, my understanding of myself and my world, includes my perception of others, and expressing that perception can be selfish, hurtful, and pompous. Is that OK? Yes. I am not responsible for other people's emotions. And every person who reads the words written here is capable of doing exactly what billions of people around the world do, and even scores of my own Facebook friends do: don't read them. But still. My words do have an impact.

But what impact do my words have?

Why do I write this blog? Am I doing it now for the same reasons that I started it 9 years ago? Why do I link to my blog regularly on Facebook now when I didn't when I joined Facebook 7 years ago?

When I started the blog, I was reading a lot of blogs. I thought it would be fun to think out loud publicly. I hoped, but didn't believe, that mine might become one of the well-known, widely read ones. It didn't. But I still liked it. After the birth of my son, and my embarkation on the stay-at-home dad journey, it became a place to reach out when I felt isolated, to get positive feedback when I felt like a failure as a parent, a place to think out loud about what it was I was doing and how I felt about it. It was a place to write stories that I hoped would make my family and my son's know him and me better and to feel more involved in our lives. I wanted him to be connected to his extended family like I was when I was very young but was not as I got older. I wanted that for him, and I hoped that the blog would help keep him on the minds and in the hearts of his own extended family.

Now, I'm not writing about parenting. I'm not isolated. In my divorce, in my quitting drinking, in my dating adventures, I do feel like I'm doing something unusual that makes me think a great deal about what I'm doing and why, just as I did with my stay-at-home dad role. So I write about them here and link to them there.

I have received feedback that the impact of my words has been positive. That my openness about what I'm doing, why, and how I feel about it has inspired others to make changes in their own lives, and that they are grateful for that openness that many people do not exhibit. I made it easier for them, and I made it easier for them to talk about it.

Mostly the feedback that I get, though, is a balm to my ego. I don't kid myself that this space changes lives. This space feeds my ego. I know that. I post funny snapshots of my life on Facebook, and wait for the likes and comments to roll in. I write a blog post hoping that it's funny or clever enough to prompt someone to tell me how great I am. And some of you do. Thanks for that!

In thinking of my drinking, though, I know it was an addiction that I used to waste time that I could have and should have been using more productively. It was an excuse to not do something amazing out of fear that I could not do something amazing. I haven't had a drink in approaching a year and a half now, by the way. Please do feel free and encouraged to tell me how great that is. Because it is great! I'm very proud of it. And I'm still going strong. I quit drinking during one of the toughest, most emotional, most ego-crushing periods of my life, and I've not picked up a drink through plenty of difficult periods since then. It's awesome! I'm awesome! I'm kicking ass at not drinking!

But from that perspective, Facebook and this blog are exactly the same things. Addictions. I'm addicted to the positive feedback that I don't have to work very hard to receive. I don't have to really earn it. Friends and family are often very supportive and kind. That's part of being family and friends for many of us. We're nice to the people we know. And that addiction is an excuse not to commit the time I spend here or on Facebook to something more meaningful. And it's a time suck that distracts me from the fact that I'm not doing that more meaningful thing. If I write here, I don't have to work hard at crafting what I write. I don't have to try to convince someone to publish it. I put it out there, and people say, "Yay! Look at you! Good job!" And I don't write articles. Or short stories. Or poems. Or novels. And I certainly don't make any money at it. And I certainly don't have to face that fear-laden question of, "What if it's not good enough, and no one wants it?"

My dating adventures have put me face to face with my fears over and over again, and I've come out the other side of each episode still here, still alive, still kicking, still sometimes getting what I wanted and sometimes not, but always pretty much OK. Often more than OK. Often better than I was. So I think I'm ready to face that big fear that I've carried around ever since I first started writing, I think probably around the 5th grade or so. Maybe younger. I don't know. Carrying around fears from childhood, and shame about those fears, right through adulthood is how so many people end up closed off, defensive, stagnated, isolated. Afraid. I'm committed to never doing that again. It's not easy. But I can do it. So as someone I love often says, I'm going to say, "Nope!" And I'm going to say, "Fuck that shit!" And I'm going to write.

Which means I'm done here.

Thank you all for reading. Thank you all for commenting. If I know you personally, you probably came here from a Facebook link. The status update that included that link also included personal contact information. If we know each other in cyberspace, let's stay connected in the real world. If we don't, that's OK, too. I know I don't have as many friends as my Facebook Friends list would have me believe. None of us really do, I suspect. But if you want to, you'll know how to reach me. If you want my email address and you're not a Facebook friend, drop me a line in the comments or otherwise reach out. I probably like you.

See ya in the funny papers!

Jabs

I've been thinking about and observing married people a lot lately, for reasons so obvious that I'm going to state them anyway, because that's how I roll: I was married for a long time; it didn't last forever, even though we both promised each other it would; my perception of myself was negatively affected; I'm rebuilding my self-esteem now, and I'm interested in how to avoid that damage in future relationships.

So I've noticed how often married people pick at each other. They deliver small criticisms with frequency in all sorts of conversation, publicly, in front of friends and relatives. Newly married couples do it. Couples married 50 years do it. Couples whose love and partnership I respect and admire do it. It's surprisingly universal, at least in my relatively small collection of empirical data.

And me, I internalized that criticism. I took the blame and built up a lot of resentment towards myself for not being able to be the man my wife wanted me to be, and towards her for not being the woman I wanted her to be. And towards her for not being satisfied with who I was. That's what I want to avoid in my future relationships: that moment when the honeymoon phase is over and the stars in the eyes have faded, when we begin to believe that we have the right to behave in a corrective manner toward this person that we love.

I want relationships with people who are happy with me and aren't focused regularly on ways that I should change. I want relationships with people with whom I'm happy and am not focused regularly on ways that I want them to change. If I'm in a relationship with someone who is not happy with who I am, I'd rather the relationship end than I begin to resent myself or her. I've done the resentment version of marriage. I never want to go back.

Is that impossible? Is it co-habitation, and not marriage, that makes us all snipe at each other? Is it just at root human nature to focus on the ways in which we want other people to be different from what they are right now? Or is it just that I'm the only one that took all those jabs to heart?

Continued

As I may have mentioned, I went from a monogamous relationship that lasted more than half my life to living single. From that perspective, dating seems like a strange solution to a strange problem. And the problem is not just physical intimacy, but the natural craving for companionship and emotional intimacy. There's not a quick and easy way to find those things, to find someone who fits well enough to make those things with me. So I make more or less random connections, hoping that one (or more) becomes real, that there's someone on the other end who matches up with me in some meaningful way. Every time I swipe right or optimistically send a message to a stranger, sometimes funny, sometimes earnest, sometimes tired and half-assed, I think of "A Noiseless, Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman:

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

And most of those filament, filament, filaments that I launch forth out of myself catch nowhere at all. There's probably a thorough science made of how attraction works in the various online dating apps. Often my magical words and charm are met with silence. Often my profile photo does not inspire anyone to swipe right on me. It is fascinating to me how different we all are, how different our experiences and likes and fears are. I ain't for everybody, certainly. Sometimes, though, the gossamer thread does catch somewhere. Sometimes I am told that I am "easy on the eyes" or that I "sparkle." I sparkle! Me and Robert Pattinson, we're like twins separated at birth!

When, now and then, those threads do catch, I'm stupefied by how quickly all my free time disappears. I always thought I had tons of it until I started filling it up. I'm scheduling casual interactions weeks ahead on my Google Calendar. I'm way behind on my blood donations, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've dropped from a Level 5 to a Level 4 this quarter. My weeks with my son are for him and me, so they're off the table for my social explorations, but still, with half my time I thought I had great swaths of evenings to fill. But in reality I have no time to drive for Lyft, my brilliant solution for additional money to afford my social life. So far I've given exactly 8 rides for a grand total of $37. That's not going to pay for many dates. And it was inevitable, but somehow I thought I'd avoid the pitfall of mixing up which plans I had with which women. Happily, when it finally did happen, all parties were already aware of each other and able to express feelings of awkwardness and hurt without making it more awkward and hurtful. Still. Embarrassing. I need a secretary. I make it sound like I have a harem of women clamoring for my attention. That's not at all the case, but I'm still juggling. I don't know how they do it, the guys who maintain two separate families, each completely unaware of the other, for years. I'd need an entire staff to help me keep up with all that.

So I've had first dates. Not so many seconds. I've been brushed off, blown off, and stood up. Now I'm involved with a woman (she was my second first date, and my first second date) with whom I've gone from "going on dates" to "dating" (we stopped counting after 6). She is exactly the person I was looking for when I started this weirdness: someone who is on board for the open relationship, who values openness and honesty, who derives as much value from this experience as I do. She's learning about herself and pushing her own boundaries, too. It's odd and refreshing and liberating to discover from very early on that it's not just OK, not just acceptable, but downright safe and desirable to be as direct and genuine as possible. About everything. About feelings! Madness!

Madness because still, with most of the people I meet or interact with online, it's all a dance. All of it. It's a performance. It's a manipulation. It's a test to see if we can pretend to be what we're not in order to attract someone we wouldn't. I was told by one of my first dates that maybe in the future I shouldn't tell the woman sitting at a table at a restaurant with me that one of my goals in life is to pick up a woman at a bar. Nope. I absolutely should tell her that. Because if she's not a willing and informed participant in the adventure as I intend to pursue it, then she should know as soon as possible that this particular adventure is not for her. Fair play all around! I'm not hiding a damned thing, and that's incredibly refreshing.

It's all much simpler than I would have guessed when I was conceiving of what it might be, and it's all much more complicated than I thought it would be when I actually started doing it. The feelings are real, and not always under the immediate control of the people who are having them. Feelings in general are messy and riotous and rebellious, and they don't listen to the calm and reasoned logic of the brains that they agitate with their messiness. I've more than once been surprised by the emotions passing through me and the physical sensations in my body when they do. I don't think I've ever before in my life gleefully texted somebody to say, "Huh! I think I might throw up!" because I was stunned to feel something that I thought I had logically processed right out of my soul. Nope! Your heart doesn't give a shit what your head has decided, and your body is more than willing to go along with the example your heart is setting, even while your brain is yelling, "Guys! Come on! This isn't what we talked about at all!"

The beauty of emotions, a beauty I already knew but am now beginning to really understand on a deeper level, is that they are always temporary. Every single one of them, the ones I want to stay forever and the ones I wish would never come back again. They may come and go, and maybe even many times, but no matter what, they will pass through me like a hot or a cold wind, and I will still be here, and still be me, when they've blown on down the road. I'm still here. I'm still me.

Why

I haven't labeled what I'm doing much. I haven't put it in my OK Cupid profile. Sometimes I think I should, though I'm going on the assumption that the act of online dating implies non-exclusivity in and of itself. I suppose it's best described as "in an open relationship."

It gets raised eyebrows sometimes when people ask me about it, and sometimes furrowed brows. I've been on the receiving end of high fives and fist bumps. Some of the conversations I've had are goofy, and some are thoughtful. A couple of people have mentioned the old adage of "If you love someone, set them free..." etc. One person told me, "It's like that old saying, only you're really doing it. Everybody says it, but nobody really does it. You're actually doing it. That's cool."

And it is cool. But I wanted to verbalize what it is I think I'm doing, and why.

For me, this is about two things most of all: fear and genuine human connection.

Fear

I have been afraid, and I have been dishonest because I was afraid. Fear has done more damage to my interpersonal relationships in the past than anything else. And the greatest fear of all? Fear of rejection. I have not been honest about who I am and what I want because I have tried to be and want what I thought other people wanted or expected. It didn't work. I was insecure because I couldn't know what they wanted, so I couldn't know who to be.

An open relationship brings that fear of rejection to the front and center of everything. I am reaching out and asking women to meet and interact with me to see where, if anywhere, it goes. Friendship? Romance? Rejection? It was a terrifying idea to me, reaching out. But now, already, only three weeks in, that particular fear is nearly gone, at least in the online realm of dating apps. I still haven't made that leap in person, but I have no fear of messaging women anymore. I have almost no fear or nervousness in meeting them for the first time. I've been rejected twice after first dates now, and even that wasn't the horrifying, embarrassing, or even mildly awkward experience I was afraid it would be. Both times, it was a "Fair enough. Best of luck to you!" sort of experience, and one of them even told me, "You are a gentleman, and you deserve to be happy!" How terrifying is that?

What I'm learning is that the world is full of an infinite variety of human beings. Some of these may be a good match for me in personality, temperament, humor, and taste. Many will not. If we are not a good match, then what's the harm? None, unless we arbitrarily determine that staying together is more important than being a good match, and then, damage is done to both of us. That's a silly path to take. So peace be with you! Go with God! Fare thee well!

Jealousy, too, is only fear of rejection. If the woman I love chooses to date other people, what shall I choose? To be afraid that she will find someone she likes better than she likes me? No. I can choose to set aside that fear response and look at it from a distance. She loves me. I love her. If we go on our separate adventures, just like anything else we may do separately, we can come back to each other and talk about it. We can each find in other people human characteristics that we do not find in each other, and that is part of the joy. Each person we meet, interact with, and connect with meaningfully will resonate within ourselves a different set of tones, and by discovering the differences in how we connect and relate with others, we discover truths about ourselves we would not otherwise have had the opportunity to bring into the light and examine. We have new pathways through others toward change and growth in ourselves.

Connection

That's the real treasure of this weird scavenger hunt I'm on: human connection. For me so far it's mostly been first dates, which is only the first step in developing connection, a first step with its own challenges, but it's a necessary first step. I've told and listened to tales meant to reveal something of who we are. How we tell and hear these tales is the beginning of a kind of connection that we as humans seem incapable of having with the hundreds and thousands of nameless strangers that surround us. It is the first step in humanizing The Other, in turning a Them into an Us, and it's a joy. And with second and third dates, it's an even greater joy to begin to see how that connection can, with openness, honesty, and a rejection of fear instead of a fear of rejection, begin to blossom and spread into something even more meaningful.

And the connection with the woman who started all of this for me has deepened, too. Maybe that's a surprise. Maybe not. When we come back together, missing each other and craving each other's company, we talk. And some of what we talk about is what we are learning about ourselves and each other through this process of opening up, reaching out, and connecting. That, in turn, brings a new and higher level of connection between us. And missing each other, by the way, is a wonderful thing. Being apart long enough to yearn for each other's company is far preferable to seeing each other so much that the connection becomes stale and taken for granted.

Bonus

The added bonus to all of this is that I'm finding that I really am losing interest in maintaining the relationships I have that don't fit, that provide no real connection, that make me feel bad about myself. And that's a relief. If you don't like me, that's fine. You don't have to. But I don't have to listen to you tell me all about why you don't. That that is a revelation to me says a lot about who I was and who I'm working to become.

Swimmingly

I suppose an update is an order, and really I should get that shameful obscenity out of the top spot on my little corner of the web here. So here ya go:

You may have heard: I'm dating. This is still a mind-boggling turn of events for me, but how many times exactly can I keep telling you that you met me at a very strange time in my life? I started with Tinder. I did communicate with a couple of women through it, but mostly it was silence. It was crickets chirping. It was the sound of one hand clapping. So I deleted my account. A friend told me, yeah, that's mostly for hook-ups. Even though all the women with profiles say they're not there for hook-ups. But notice that it wants your GPS location, and a whole lot of the women have no profile at all. So: current location + picture only = hook-ups. And I wasn't getting any of those. Not that I wanted those. At least, I don't think I did. A few more tests. (That's a reference to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Mom). (Yes, I just spoke parenthetically to my Mom while talking about hook-ups).

So I started using OKCupid. Because I'd heard of it. And because it also was free. But then I lost my mind and started paying for it anyway? Because I'm easily lead? Because I was in an internet-fueled feverish haze? Anyway, what was I saying again? Oh yeah. Dating. OKCupid. Right.

I was stunned to discover it worked. I made my profile. I answered my questions. I added my pictures. I browsed my "Matches." I sent messages. I got responses. If the banter went well, I asked women out. Some said yes. A couple even asked me out! It was madness. Pure madness.

So now I've gone on two first dates, with a third scheduled for tomorrow. I have my first second date on Saturday. I have no idea what's going on here. And that's OK!

I have to say, my favorite exchanges have been with women who've been on dating apps for a long time and feel qualified and justified in critiquing my approach. It probably has a name, talking about courtin' while courtin'. Meta courtin'? Meta dating? I don't know. It's hilarious. Experienced women love to take me under their wing. I'm a newb. I'm a rook. Ha ha!

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah. Here's the most amazing part of all of this: I did something that terrified me. And it was fun. And shows every sign of continuing to be fun. And (I notice this is a recurring theme in this blog) the thing that I feared most didn't come to pass. I was afraid that I would be unappealing to women, that I would attract no interest myself and all of my interest in others would be rejected. Looking back over the last week, I see now how silly that is. In the world of online dating apps, where a person is defined almost entirely by his words, I am a man who can use words well. That has appeal. I have appeal. Also, my fellow men have largely set the bar pretty low, as evidenced by the jaded comments women sometimes feel compelled to include in their profiles, like, "Don't message me if your profile pic is your chest or your crotch."

In the last year, I've had a dear friend with relevant life experience tell me that I would be happy again, when I was sure I would not. I've had an amazing, beautiful woman that I thought of as out of my league demand, "Are you going to kiss me or not?" And now I've asked several women out, and they said yes. I've asked one woman for a second date, and she said yes. My self-esteem has gone from completely bottomed out a little over a year ago to bobbing along at a pretty damned healthy level right now thank you very much, and I couldn't be happier about it.

If I keep dating, though, I'm going to have to get a second job to boost my disposable income. This social life business is expensive! But if I get another job, how will I have time for dating? Such a conundrum.

Fuck It, I Ain't Skeered

As long as I'm handing out advice about being unafraid, I've decided I'm going to do a few things that I wasn't doing for fear of what might happen. First among these is dating. I kind of stumbled into a new relationship almost as soon as I was available, which I didn't see coming at all. I was suddenly available after being faithfully committed to a monogamous relationship for over half my life, then true story: I was asked, after a few weeks of escalating flirtation, "Are you going to kiss me or not?" So I did. And she did. And the upshot is: I've done some flirting, but I've never really done the whole dating thing.  I met my ex-wife in my first year away from home at college. I have never in my life tried, successfully or unsuccessfully, to pick up a woman in a bar. Never. I've never been on any dating websites or used any apps. Never. Never! When I got involved with the woman who was getting tired of waiting for me to work up the nerve to kiss her, I was relieved in part because she's awesome and way more than I thought I deserved at the time, but also in part because the idea of putting myself out there and risking rejection was more than a little terrifying.

So I'm going to do it. Because it's terrifying.

I made a Tinder account two days ago, and it's already a weird mixture of hilarious and depressing. The profile of every fortyish woman in the Greater Austin Metropolitan Area contains the phrases "outdoors, hiking, and wine" as well as "looking for a partner in crime!" And for some reason, height is really important for a woman's Tinder profile. Should my height appear on my profile? Does it matter for men as much as it seems to for women? I'm 6'2". Does it matter that I'm 6'2"? I used to be 6'3", so I'm shrinking. Maybe that should be on my profile: 6'2" and shrinking. Fuck it, I'm going to go add that right now.

So I've done a lot of swiping. Which is getting pretty dull. I feel like a heel making straight up yes/no judgements on so little information, but I suppose that's the point. At first I kept screwing it up, left swiping when I meant to browse pictures. Right swiping when I meant to say, "Nope!" I mostly say no when there's no profile text at all. Saying absolutely nothing about yourself is an attraction strategy I don't really understand. I'm mis-swiping less now, but I think I did accidentally Super Like someone. I don't know what that means. I almost dropped my phone when I got my first match notification, then proceeded to immediately make an ass of myself when I messaged her. I think I did pretty well on my two other matches, but I still haven't heard from anyone.

So there's that. I'm dating. Or will be, if I can get a date. Even though I already have a woman in my life that's very high on the list of Best Things to Ever Happen to Me. Brave? Or stupid? Don't answer that.

Another thing I did because I'm pretty sure I was afraid of it was to invite that amazing woman to date other people, too, if she were so inclined. When we first got together, I told her that monogamy was important to me. On reflection, I thought I may have said that out of fear of competition, that if she put herself out there again, she'd find someone she likes better than she likes me. But fuck it, I ain't skeered. Who's better than me? I'm awesome! And if she finds someone who makes her happier, then more power to her. I want her to be happy. She's awesome, too!

Which all makes me solo poly? I guess? I'm Googlin' all sorts of acronyms, abbreviations, and other mysterious shorthand that appears in Tinder profiles. I'd never heard of solo poly until I saw it on my first night of swiping. I get that the poly part is polyamorous, having multiple relationships. I'm not clear on the solo part, though. I guess. Maybe that makes me fuzzy poly? Maybe I should wait until somebody actually responds to a message before I start wondering what all this makes me. Or maybe I shouldn't give a shit what it makes me. The acronyms are fun, though. There are a lot of personality types, like INFP and ENFJ, on Tinder profiles, which are apparently related to Jungian Functional Preference Ordering. I dozed off before I could slog through what exactly Jungian Functional Preference Ordering means, but it does give me a giggle to use phrases including the word "Jungian" in the same sentence as the word "Tinder."

Another was "6+4+3=2." The woman suggested in her profile that if I knew what that meant, I might have one up on the competition. So I Googled it. She and I were clearly not made for each other.

My favorite so far, though, was TDTF. I assumed it was another personality type. One profile said, among other things, "Please don't be TDTF." I tend to text in full sentences, so I didn't recognize it as texting shorthand. I Googled it, thinking it would be another of the personality types. Am I TDTF? I wondered. Turns out it stands for "Too Drunk to Fuck." Ah. Well! No problem there then. I have not, in fact, been TDTF in quite some time.

Next, I'm going to try hitting on a stranger in a public setting. Maybe a bar. Is it weird for a dude who doesn't drink to hang out in a bar trying to pick up women? If I have a Topo Chico in a glass with lime, who's to say it doesn't have a shot of something in there, right? Do fortyish women go to bars to be picked up? Ah, fuck it. I'm doing it. I ain't skeered.

I'm thinking of trying karaoke, too. And dancing in public. Why not? What's the worst that could happen?

Divorce, Sobriety, and New Beginnings

One year has passed since Mrs. Rodius told me she wanted a divorce. About 2 1/2 weeks have passed since we signed and filed the Final Decree of Divorce. In about a week, it will have been a year since I had my last drink. 2015 was a helluva year.

In that year, I lost a wife. I lost about half of my time with my son. I lost my financial security. I lost my identity as a full-time stay-at-home dad. I lost my home, and my neighborhood. The best of my losses was the 50 pounds or so I shed, mostly because I quit drinking and spent a lot of time in the first half of the year angry walking, roaming for miles and hours every night after Thumper went to bed, stewing and avoiding fights with my future ex-wife. I put a lot of miles on my shoes in the spring of '15.

At the same time as all those losses, I had many gains, too. I gained a new relationship with my son as we navigate all these changes together. I gained independence and responsibility. I gained a new identity, returning to full-time employment after an 8-year hiatus. I gained a new home, a space of my own, something that I've never had. And most surprising, because I was certain that I wanted nothing to do with long-term romantic relationships for at least a couple of years, I gained a girlfriend.

I don't think I'll blog much about her. I'll tell you now that she lifts me up in ways that I didn't know I needed. She was a dear friend who mentored me through the early days of the implosion of my marriage, who told me often, though I didn't believe her, that I would be happy again. She is an amazingly down-to-earth mother who regularly talks me down from all of my intellectual flights of fancy and over-analysis of everything I do and think when it comes to Thumper and to myself. It was a surprise when that treasured friendship evolved into something more. She likes to give what I like to receive, and she likes to receive what I like to give. She is a gift. She is a gift that I don't want to share with you. So you may never hear another word about her. Though who am I kidding? I talk a lot. She'll probably come up again.

Something else I gained that I didn't think I would, though I wanted it very much for a very long time, is my sobriety. I drank. Too much. Through most of my adolescence and all of my adulthood. Most people who know me, or knew me, would be surprised, I think, to know how much I drank. I was good at hiding it and at functioning well enough. But it was a lot, and it would have killed me eventually, I have no doubt. Now I'm sober, and I don't even miss it. Sobriety is yet another thing that 2015 brought me, including divorce, and happiness, and a new and very different romance. If someone had told me a year ago that these things were coming, I wouldn't have believed any of it.

If you are here looking for advice on how to quit drinking, I don't really have any. I went to one AA meeting. The people there were kind and welcoming. I participated. I stood up and called myself an alcoholic. I cried. I got a hug, and a desire chip, and someone bought me a copy of The Big Book, though I don't know why they call it that. It's really not that big. I read every word, and some of it twice. I never called the number that the person who bought it for me wrote on the inside cover, and I never went back to another meeting. AA just didn't speak to me. I wanted to be done with alcohol, not spend much of my life talking about it. I had no stories to share of waking up in jail after a three-day blackout bender. I hadn't lost everything to alcohol. I don't even believe that alcohol killed my marriage. If anything, alcohol kept my marriage stumbling along long after it should have lain down and died. Most of all, though, I couldn't see myself ever getting past steps 2 and 3. For many non-religious people, the phrases "a power greater than ourselves" and "God as we understand Him" make it possible to reconcile a lack of faith in God with the faith necessary to work the steps. One person even told me that I could make that power and that God entirely symbolic, substituting something as mundane as a doorknob if I chose. But I still couldn't do it. I couldn't conceive of the power and I couldn't admit powerlessness. But reading the book helped, and knowing that I really never wanted to go back helped, too. I'm not denigrating it. It's a stunningly powerful and effective program, and its grassroots development from a handful of people to a worldwide movement is virtually unprecedented. It's famous because it works. It will work for you if you work it, as they say. I just didn't work it.

But I haven't had a drink in a year, and it hasn't been that hard. Outside of the first couple of weeks, especially the sleeplessness, it's even been easy. I don't want to drink any more. I don't know why I don't, but it's a huge relief. Some people I drank with seem puzzled, maybe even baffled that I would never drink again. Like Andre 3000 in Outkast's "Ms. Jackson," they wonder, "Forever? Forever ever? Forever ever?"



Yes. Forever ever. That idea was scary to me before I quit. To never drink again? Unthinkable. But now, it's more than fine with me. It took from me, but it didn't give anything back. What I thought it gave me was truthfully just another way it took from me. I don't want it back. I'm free. You can drink. You can drink when I'm around. It doesn't bother me to be near it. I'm just done. Don't know why. Just am.

And yes, I know the Big Book is full of stories of people who quit, and were sure, and started again, and never truly made it until they did steps 2 and 3 and the rest. And I haven't. And maybe that puts me in jeopardy. We'll see. Right now, I'm fine. I'm better than fine.

 And that's pretty much the sum total of my life philosophy as I move from 2015 to 2016. I don't know about next week. I don't know about next month. I don't know about next year. But right now? Right now is good. And that's more than enough. I don't really have any resolutions for the new year. I don't know that I need any. I do have a goal: run the Cap10K in under an hour. That's a pretty big one. I'd have to check the race bibs on my wall to see if I've ever done it before. I've done 10Ks in under an hour, but maybe not that one. It's all uphill for the first half. But I want to keep my weight loss going, and I want to get back the sense of accomplishment that running gave me in 2010, 2011, 2012. I don't know if running will ever again be for me what it was. I don't know anything, really. And I'm keeping my focus right in front of my feet for now. But if 2015, the worst year of my life, brought me so many unexpected and truly priceless gifts, who knows what 2016 will bring?

It's Different for Me Now

Driving to work this morning, I heard Dr. David Buss on KGSR talking about dating in the modern age. The gist was that modern technology and communications do not make it easier to find a long-term mate.

I'll be completely, officially divorced soon, probably some time in November, so I've been thinking about dating and mating and finding a match that works in the long term. I thought I'd found The One two decades ago. I was sure of it. But The One is now as foreign to me in heart and mind, as inscrutable, as an alien. I'm sure I am to her, as well. We simply do not speak the same language. It's not her fault, and it's not mine, or if there is fault, it belongs to each of us. But I think fault is meaningless in the end of our marriage. There was no infidelity. There was no abuse. There was the long, slow accumulation of resentment and the inevitable separation of what was once, truly if briefly, a close union of souls. Some of that foreignness comes from the pain of The Breakup itself, the cruelty we inflicted on each other while finally, irrevocably snapping that bond between us. But I also think most of our marriage was the desperate attempt to return to what existed for a few years and was lost through the vagaries of time and circumstance, mostly because we were at our cores incompatible in our personalities and desires. We were friends for a long time, even good friends, close friends. But we stopped being mates, I think, probably some time in the 20th century. We fell in love quickly at the age of 20 with the people we had the potential to become, and we fell out of love slowly over the next 20 years with the people we actually became.

Anyway, that's my paragraph-long post mortem on almost 23 years of daily interaction.

All of which begs the question, whether you call what came before a failure or an indispensable life experience, how does one go about making a new match that lasts and uplifts and continues to uplift over the course of years?

I don't think it's on Tinder. Or Match. Or eHarmony. Or OKCupid. Maybe. I don't know. Dr. Buss pointed out that each of these, and especially all of them in combination, give the illusion of infinite choice, infinite possibility, which leads to a paralysis of choice. It's a world where the next possibility is always better than the current reality.

A friend told me I'd have to go through my "divorce crazies," to go crazy and date lots and lots of people over the next couple of years. To step out of my comfort zone and go wild would be the only way to find out who I am in relation to other people, to find out what I liked and what I wanted. While I can see its value, that idea kind of gives me the heebie jeebies. I said in June or July, shortly after I moved out of my marital home and established for the first time in my life a space that was my own: I don't want to date. I wanted to live on my own, making my own choices for my own sake. I wanted to spend at least a year or two discovering who it is I am alone before I try again to discover who it is I am in cooperation with another person. And it was true when I said it. And it's still kind of true now. But I can see that a time will come, and maybe sooner than I thought when I was just beginning to believe that the end was in sight, the end of something that had become destructive, that I will want to find someone. Someone to spend time with. To talk to. To cuddle with. To help and to be helped by. To uplift and to be uplifted by. And yes, to bone. Bonin' is fun, after all. And making love is an expression of, an extension of, and a reinforcement of emotional intimacy. But more than sex: I will want someone to show my intricacies and to discover her intricacies, with all of the joy and fear and frustration and giddiness and fever and love that comes with that openness and discovery.

Who do I want? The more important question is who do I want to be? I think it's answering the second question that will lead to the answer of the first.

What I will not do is hold on to the past. I have friends who model for me exactly the behavior I refuse to engage in. I will not dwell daily on what I had and lost. I will not dwell daily on what she did that brought about the end, or what she did in ending it. I will not remain mired in the muck of what went before. I can't see anything of value in fighting any longer to keep or regain what is gone. I can't see anything of value in hating her or pitying myself. If you are one of my friends who thinks now that I'm talking to you, then hear this: let it go. It's over. You are only hurting yourself and your kids. Find a therapist. I have a recommendation for you if you want it. She was instrumental for me in seeing things differently. But you have to stop it. There's no point. There's nothing to be gained, only everything to be lost.

That's what I won't do. What will I do instead? I will be honest. Trying to be someone I wasn't didn't work. Pretending to want what I didn't want or to be happy when I wasn't didn't work. That staple of couples counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous, "fake it 'til you make it" only goes so far. Eventually the faking is as destructive to the self as the not faking was to the relationship. So I will tell the truth, even when it's difficult or awkward. I am who I am, and I'm a lot more comfortable with that at 43 than I was at 20.

I will be kind. Bullying someone to make them become someone else is a stupid strategy. It didn't work for her, and it didn't work for me. If I'm dating someone who turns out to have very different priorities than I do, it'll be OK to end things and move on. Better now than later. The ending can be as much of a kindness as anything else.

I thought it would be a long list, but I think that's it. I will be honest and kind. I think everything else is a subcategory of one or the other. Is it possible that the next great love of my life will appear, will draw me to her and be drawn to me, by living my life and endeavoring always to be honest and kind?

All That and a Bag of Chips

The title is one of my college roommate's favorite phrases for describing women he found attractive. He also liked to say, "I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers!" High praise indeed.

This week's Trifecta Writing Challenge got me thinking about my wife. Here are 333 words:

She is a powerhouse to the rest of the world, a force of nature, a focused and driven accomplisher of feats. She is that to me as well, but she gives to me more than she gives everyone else. To me alone she reveals parts of herself that she protects from the world. She walks in straight lines, and quickly, but I have come along on the slow meanderings, just us, alone. That is part of my love. I am elevated.

This, too, is part of my love, though I cannot make it sound the way it feels in my heart when I become lost in her: the inexpressible ache, the inexorable yearning to wrap her around me, to be thoroughly immersed in her as if she were the earth, the sea, the sky. I want to be so completely inside her that I disappear and she is everything. It is not destruction; it is transformation.

It’s a silly idea of course; I tower above her. I could wrap her up more thoroughly than she could me, at least by all appearances. She’s just a little thing, though certainly voluptuous. Upon meeting her for the first time, the word “ample” might rise to the minds of some, but both her body and her being are more than that. Such a small word, with suggestions of “enough” or even “a bit more than enough,” or “adequate,” “ample” is itself not adequate to describe her.

There are moments when her soft curves become the whole world.

When my son has come to me frustrated and baffled by the incomprehensible machinations of the neighborhood girls, I’ve told him that girls and women are special and magical and it is the role of boys and men to respect them, to honor them. He was dubious, but it’s a message I’ll repeat.  I could add “worship” to that list, too, but he’s not ready to hear that. He will learn it in his own time, if he’s lucky.

Weekend in Review

What a weekend. The entire family, even the Florida branch, got together to celebrate the birthday of the Matriarch Formerly Known as Purelight. The last time we all got together, there were sixteen of us. There were eighteen this time. We stayed at Great Wolf Lodge and had Birthday Dinner at Riverwalk Cafe at another giant resort right across the street.

It was great seeing the whole family and meeting or getting to know better some of the new additions. I think I missed some good conversations because of chasing Thumper around, but as Mom said in her birthday night speech, we're all connected not just to her but to each other. Renewed contact keeps those connections live, and I'm glad we (almost) all made it. Thanks badkitty812, Pirate71, and all you other non-commenting family lurkers, and even *gasp* non-blog-reading family members. It was good reconnecting.

And now of course, returning to my narrow focus: this Thumper kid amazes me. I fret and worry about things like the long drives to and from, and the sleeping in the hotel room, and the missing of naps, the staying up late, etc. etc., and he handles it all with grace, charm, humor, and patience. He loved nearly every minute in the pool, in the lobby, in the hallways, playing with his cousins, his aunts and uncles, his grandparents, perfect strangers, the guy vacuuming the lobby in the morning.



We made him skip a nap the day of the drive to the resort so that he'd sleep most of the 3 1/2 hours, but he only slept one hour and spent the rest of the time playing and chatting and singing. He did the same on the drive home again. I can't figure out how we got so lucky with this kid. Part of me wants to take credit, saying that it's because we did the right thing having a stay-at-home parent for him and giving him a solid schedule that makes him secure enough to be able to deviate from it now and again. But really, I think we're just lucky. Sometimes I get weird, paranoid twinges when I think about how wonderful he is, and I think of parents of children murdered or killed by horrible diseases. They always say what a joy the child was, what a spark, how he brought light into the world. And I think he's too perfect, he can't last, I'll lose him. What can I say, I've got a dark side. The kid is unbelievable in a way I can't believe I deserve.

And lastly, I have to just mention this: I went to bed before 10 o'clock last night. I know, that makes me officially an old fart, but it was a tiring weekend. So I was about as dead asleep as I could be when Aerie decided to come to bed around 11:30. I woke to her cuddled up against me, softly kissing me. She whispered, "I need you to come listen to something." So I dragged myself back up to consciousness and tried to pay attention. She told me that when she turned off the living room light, an alarm went off. She couldn't figure out what it was. It sounded sort of like the UPS on the computer, but not quite, and she was afraid the house was going to burn down. We went out to the living room. She turned the light off, and sure enough, there was a strange sound. I staggered back toward the bedroom.

"It's the puzzle," I said.

Gummas and Gumpa got Thumper a Melissa & Doug Vehicles Sound Puzzle for Christmas. A sensor (apparently a light sensor) knows when a piece is placed, and it makes a sound. The cruise ship piece was askew, and when Aerie turned off the light, it fired off the ship's foghorn, convincing Aerie that danger was imminent.

When she came back to bed, she was giggling hysterically. She apologized for waking me. And then she made it worth my while.

Gauntlet Thrown

Mrs. Rodius here. My darling husband sooo wanted me to take the typing test because he was CERTAIN I could not beat him. Alas, 'tis true.

IN MY DEFENSE:

I have a handicap here at home because we don't have a split keyboard like I do at work and that slows me down. These teeny keyboards are a pest in the butt. And so, I admit defeat.

ADMISSION:

My darling Rodius, you are faster than me even when I have a keyboard I'm comfortable with, and I'm OKAY with that. I'm not nearly as competitive as you are...at least when it comes to games, contests or sports. You ARE a speed demon. This is the best I can do:

91 words

Speed test

REALITY:

My IQ is still 2 points higher than yours and you have yet to beat my high score on Soda Pipes.

FRIENDLY REMINDER:

Speed isn't everything. There's something to be said for a slow, steady pace. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

Wifely Duties

Since I've been doing this job for almost 3 1/2 months now, I thought it was time I did the Full Housewife and got down on my knees.

You know, to scrub the kitchen floor. What did you think I meant?

I'm not particularly particular when it comes to cleanliness. I'm not cleaning the floor on a weekly basis. Or monthly. But we have one of those Swiffer things, and every time I use it, I get pissed off. It's completely useless if your floor has any more texture than, say, your average pane of glass. So I'd use it, curse it, and put it away for another couple of months, then use it, curse it, put it away. Every single time, I'd look at the dirt still stuck in the pattern of our tile and think that some day I'd scrub it with a brush. For some reason, today was some day.

If this is how housewives before 1972 spent their days, it's no wonder they wanted to leave the home and join the workforce. It kinda sucked. I spent almost 4 hours, split between two Thumper naps, on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a brush, then wiping up the dirty water with a sponge. I kept thinking about Girl 6, Spike Lee's movie about a phone sex girl. In it, one of the phone sex operators acts out Richard Belzer's character's fantasy of a big-breasted woman in a short dress scrubbing a floor in "big, soapy circles."

Wait, where are you going? You got this far through a story about scrubbing a floor, and you're going to let the proximity of the words "sex," "Richard Belzer" and "fantasy" chase you off?

Well, anyway, I scrubbed a floor today. I thought about my mother telling me years ago that I'd make someone a good wife some day. I compared myself to a big-breasted vixen in a short dress. In the end, my manhood returned, though. As I neared the end of the job, I thought to myself, "I wonder if this will get me laid?" Sure, years ago, that thought would have occurred to me much, much earlier in the project and probably would have even been a prime motivating factor in undertaking the project in the first place. But at least I still thought it. I'll take what I can get.

In the Beginning

anniemcq emailed me this morning to make sure I understood that she was not offended that I used her sweet, innocent child as the starting point to a story about anonymous sex in public spaces. She also expressed the desire to give my pea-coated, pipe-smoking, bearded nineteen-year-old self a hug. It occurred to me that my nineteen-year-old self could've used a hug, and it was a good thing he connected soon thereafter, despite himself, with the future Mrs. Rodius.

So, even though I should probably be saving up this kind of thing for NaBloPoMo, I thought it was the perfect time to tell the story of "How Mrs. Rodius and I Met and Didn't Murder Each Other."

She lived on the floor below mine in the dorm, which, rumor had it, had once been a mental hospital. There were strange inserts in the doors that I heard used to be removable for shoving trays of food through to the nutjobs. I wished I'd lived in the dorm across the street, which was dark, musty, and mazelike, with low ceilings and uneven floors. It was rumored to be haunted.

My first impression of Mrs. Rodius was that she was definitely out of my league. She was a sophomore, and I was a freshman. She's four months younger than I, but I had spent my first year out of high school taking only a couple of classes at the local community college before following my Brandeis-attending girlfriend to Boston. We maintained a long-distance relationship for a year after high school, but within a month of me moving to Boston, that girlfriend had dumped me. She liked me more when she saw me less.

Mrs. Rodius was confident. She had friends. She walked with authority, thumping her heels through the hallway like she had places to go and people to see. She had a boyfriend who wore a fireman's coat. It was the coolest coat I'd ever seen, much better than my pea coat and felt cap. I was jealous of him in his coat. He also had a job at the college radio station, and you can't get much cooler than that. I later found out, though, that the coat really was his best feature.

I was also in the same French class as Mrs. Rodius. I had two years of French in high school, but Mrs. Rodius had no previous French experience. She had taken Russian instead, a fact that made her even more intimidating. But she was defensive about the fact that she was behind the rest of the class due to her lack of previous experience in French. I was a little cocky because I felt sure my pronunciation was lightyears ahead of the rest of the class, what with my familiarity with Inspector Clouseau and all. Consequently, I thought she was a bitch, and she thought I was an ass.

Our professor was much amused by our interactions in class and decided always to pair us together in classroom exercises. He even took me aside after class one day and asked me to take her under my wing, as it were, and correct her pronunciation at every opportunity, thereby jacking up my ass factor considerably. Our annoyance for each other began to really blossom over the first few months of the semester into a deep and abiding dislike.

Over time, though, our dormroom proximity and my tendency to skip class for no good reason began to bring us together. We came to each other to find out what homework assignments we may have missed. She began to spend more and more time in my room, finding great pleasure in toying with one of my roommates who was, incredibly, an even greater ass than I. We discovered a shared appreciation for Captain Morgan and Diet Coke. She started treating my roommate and I very well at the sandwich shop at which she worked, one of a couple of jobs she held while paying her own way through school. I was impressed by that, because I was attending entirely on my parents' dime, as were most of the student body there. And for the most part, those who had it the easiest were achieving the least.

By the time the school year ended, we'd become good friends. She dumped the boyfriend with the cool coat, whose ass factor was also greater than mine, though perhaps not greater than my roommate's. With the free ride from my parents ending, I couldn't afford to come back to school after the summer, but I moved into an apartment with my roommate, who wanted to stay close since he would be returning. So by the next fall semester, I was working full-time and no longer a part of the college community, though I stayed close to it.

Mrs. Rodius went back to her parents' home for the summer and returned in the fall looking absolutely smoking. She'd worked out all summer, partly out of revenge against the ex-boyfriend, and she looked amazing. I honestly didn't realize that I was attracted to her, though. I wrote SWSIL (Social Worker Sister-in-Law) a letter telling her about my good female friend, and how nothing would ever happen between us because our friendship was too strong.

Five days after I sent that letter, the roommate and I were throwing a party; Mrs. Rodius was working late that night and would miss most of the party, but I invited her to come over after work for a margarita and a massage. I think she believes that this was me being smooth, but honestly, smooth was not in my repetoire. She came over long after the party had petered out. We sat on the couch and talked. Eventually, she asked me, "What would you do if I kissed you?" I think I said something like, "I'd probably kiss you back." And so we did. Now, fifteen years later, there's finally a third attendee at the party. I'm glad he's here, but it's strange no longer being alone on the couch together, after all this time.

All Symbolic and Whatnot

Last night I dreamed that Mrs. Rodius and I tried and tried to make the sweet, sweet love, but we couldn't because no matter what room we went into, we were interrupted by house guests that wouldn't leave us alone.