love and relationships

Top Three Love Songs


When I was thirteen I could be found at the roller skating rink on winter weekend nights with a fair amount of frequency. I loved to skate but though I went with, or met up with friends, I skated alone for the most part. Partly because I disliked linking arms with people whose balance was questionable and because I enjoyed moving fast. It wouldn’t be apparent today in my wobbly demeanor at the ice rink, but when I was thirteen, I moved with no small amount of grace and the swiftness of a child of Hermes.

There was only one time when I would skate hand in hand and that was couple’s skate. I can recall only a time or two when I was approached by a boy during the obligatory date skate. Both times, he was someone I didn’t know and never saw again, but it was thrilling in that budding sexuality sense of the age.

The song the dj usually played was Color My World by Chicago. It is, in retrospect, one of the worst songs ever. It’s a dirge really with plaintive lyrics that lend it an off key sound which makes me wonder if being tone deaf is related to growth spurts and hormonal surges of the teen years. In spite of the epic awfulness of the song, it is the feeling that counts and so I name this my number three of love songs.

Number two arrived during my MTV university years. Rarely was I asked to dance when the slow songs began during my dance club days. The song I longed to dance to more than anything was Spandau Ballet’s True*. Another truly horrific song in terms of lyrics because they make no sense what-so-ever. Again, it was all about feelings. The melody is simultaneously dreamy and sweeping you off your feet in a swooning kind of way, but that doesn’t make the song any less sea breeze through feathered hair and boys in pastels.

My number one was difficult to narrow down. I have sappy, cheesy, girly, weepy, sexy and person specific to choose from, but I felt to honor the holiday was the way to go.

Love should be giddy and gooey.

Since this is not Rob’s idea of romantic music, I dedicate the following to him:

*I never danced with anyone to this particular song though I was asked, but as the young men asking were literally random strangers – I declined. I never slow danced with boys I didn’t know and rarely with my few dates.

A Pre-Valentine Thought


I am attending a workshop with Michael Stone this weekend and at last night’s lecture, he mentioned that in his current book project he is musing on love. Well, not love in the rom/com way but more like intimacy. It wouldn’t have to be romantic, though that is generally what grown-ups in our culture focus on (that’s my opinion, by the way, not Stone’s).

Anyway, he said something I found interesting in light of all the backlash against Lori Gottleib’s new book which is essentially the perennial single woman’s dilemma in our brave new world.

Do I wait for Mr. Right or settle for Mr. Good Enough?

Stone says this*,

Love essentially is. It exists always around us. We, however, don’t notice  – or we deny it – because we can’t let go of our stories. These stories are those internal narratives we cling to in order to validate how we feel or to justify our lives and actions.

In other words, when a person is willing to simply get on with life and not worry about whether or not love will come into it in some way – it will show up. Mostly because it was there all along.

So, Gottleib’s argument – irritating as it is – makes sense. Women, and some men, have constructed such elaborate narratives to explain their continuing single state that they leave no room for perfectly wonderful people to become a part of their story.

And now, I am off to a five-hour asana practice**.

* I’m paraphrasing and oversimplifying in the process no doubt, but it isn’t far off what people’s married/couple friends constantly parrot, is it?

** Well, not the whole five hours. Practice will be about 2 ish with lots of demo stuff and talking about it after.

Traditional Marriage


Stumbled across this post at DoubleX yesterday. Group of young feminist bloggers trash talking marriage and all things wedding mostly, but what struck me about it was the focus on details. As if tossing bouquets and ugly bridesmaid dresses were the point of relationships and marriage at all.

“It’s details,” I complained to Rob. “Why do people get so bogged down in minutia of marriage that they miss the point of the relationship that marriage is supposed to be all about?”

“Everyone can’t be as enlightened as we are,” he replied.

I know I’ve beaten this horse before, but intimate relationships are built on communication and an understanding of expectations by both parties. Whether a woman keeps her maiden name, wears white or decides to stay home with babies is really beside the point. It’s like shaved legs.

Shaved legs?

I wrote a post for 50 Something a week or so back about the fact I don’t shave during the winter. It’s pointless, as no one sees my legs really and it’s itchy besides. In my post I stress that my hairy legs are just hairy legs. It’s a practical decision that in no way should be misconstrued as a feminist statement. Things are simple, and female, should take care to avoid “statement” status in the realm of feminism because they usually become so entangled in nonsense they end up undermining feminism’s real point – equality.

The same can be said of these ridiculous debates on the “tradition” of marriage. Marriage is just a formalizing of an ongoing intimate relationship. The trappings are details. That’s all. They reflect personal or religious tastes – for which there is no accounting.

Whether a couple goes Disney princess or jeans/t-shirt on a mountain top doesn’t matter as much as the journey that brought them there or the continuation of it after that moment has passed.

I am no less equal to my husband because I took his last name or wore white. Getting married in a church or on a river bank surrounded by mountains (and I’ve done both – in white) was a moment – shining and special, imo – in something that began earlier and will continue until one of us is gone.

I suppose it is important to define one’s self, but turning everything into a symbol or anti-symbol seems a waste of energy better spent elsewhere.