Following the Logic of Feelings

Some of my thinking lately has reminded me of this article that I wrote in the late 1980s about rediscovering the power and need to be emotionally alive. This article was part of a column that I wrote called “The Editor’s Wild Hair” for a little print newsletter that I inflicted upon friends and family called, “Air, Dirt & Ink.” [Sigh], the good ol’ days.

Journal Classic: Following the Logic of Feelings

Heart, why are you pounding like a hammer?
Heart, why are you beating like a drum?
Heart, why do you make such a commotion
when I’m waiting for my baby to come?
Oh heart, don’t do it if it’s not the real thing
Heart, I get so easily deceived
Heart, there is no other I can turn to
if not you, heart, then who can I believe?”
“Heart” by Nick Lowe

I vividly remember when it first happened. It was in the seventh grade when I walked up to Mary Hinck and said, “Hi,” and she said rather unfeelingly, “Oh, it’s you.” It’s like I didn’t even really know that it was there until it came crashing to the ground in front of God and everyone. Jesus, I thought, if this is what love feels like, I don’t want any part of it.

I didn’t mean that, of course, and have spent the intervening 17 years demonstrating it to no one in particular. But something very definitely changed after that first brush with emotional death.

Back at home, though I never once for a moment doubted my parent’s love for me or my siblings; emotions, especially anger, seemed to be like Steven Spielbergian pyrotechnics. Like the much-feared nuclear holocaust, there would be a blinding flash of emotional light: my father would explode over some such reality of living with five children. My mother would then deploy her tactical arsenal. Another flash, then children running in every direction, vainly hoping to avoid becoming part of the scorched landscape. Then just as quickly as it had begun, it would be over. Father would be about his business and mother would continue hers. It all seemed to my childish mind to be quite unnecessary.

So it only seems right that at one point in my life I hung around with a religious group that held to the philosophy that “feelings” could not be trusted. “Feelings, they come and go, but objective truth, now there’s the ticket.” Of course the objective truth that was being referred to here was the Bible, the Scoffield Reference Bible in the King James Version to be more specific. And Love, well that had something to do with some Greek word and God and Jesus dying and . . . (all of which of course made no sense whatsoever to my teenage mind, but who was I to scoff at the insights of my elders?).

I don’t know why I always seem to use this column to take pot‑shots at Evangelical Christianity (no doubt an unconscious attempt to pay them back for the emotional trauma and near fatal brain damage I experienced while getting my Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies). In fact, before this starts sounding too much like “Sex and the Single Brain Cell,” I have to question the wisdom of attempting an article that would argue following the logic of emotions. I mean, either you understand it or you don’t.

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Up in the Air and Life Choices

Just saw “Up in the Air,” and don’t know if I should be depressed or not. Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, is the quintessential road-warrior, who spends over 300-days a year business traveling and he loves it. He’s a firing expert who works for a firm that gets called in when it’s time for lay-offs. The job isn’t “fun” but he’s found a balance that works for him and it doesn’t include any relationship commitments. His foil is 23-year-old Natalie Keener, played by Anna Kendrick, who has come in to make the job more efficient with technology. She has her whole life mapped out and it’s completely the opposite from Ryan’s.

The movie is basically about life choices and the stories that we tell ourselves to make these choices work. Ryan’s life is a set package and he’s happy. But he has to contend with those around him who are convinced that he’s made a mistake by not settling down and making a lasting relationship investment. Sans the mega-frequent-flier mileage and movie-star good-looks, I seem to resemble those contentions. Alas, it’s been my observation that most of us make these life choices long before we’re even aware that we have a choice. Those first few years after high school and those first few years out of college, set us on paths that tend to be impossible to break away from. And most choose not to, and make their lives there, for good or bad. Then there are those of us who get a wake-up call and/or have a higher expectation for ourselves.

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Am I Lazy, Overly Cautious or Just Picky?

Coming back from a presentation I commented on this beautiful park and lake we were driving past. A buddy in the car said that the park was also a great place to meet girls and offered to loan me one of his dogs ’cause “girls love dogs.” I just thought that the park was a pretty.

Then Brother Matt mentioned during his recent Florida visit that my current and persistent lack of a girlfriend was causing mom to openly worry whether I’ve changed my gender preferences. Thanks mom. The truth is I’m beginning to wonder: have I become lazy, too cautious or too picky when it comes to dating?

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Dealing w/ Past Voices

Last night I got the following email from a dear friend:

What would you do if (name-redacted) sent you a friend request on FB? Would you confirm or ignore . . . I still regularly think about (different name-redacted) – almost daily. I’m worried I can never get past her. And yes, I just got a friend request from her.

I’d been letting my “being-too-busy” dictate my social life (or the lack thereof) lately… okay, for the past year. But this dilemma required a response, so I sent the following back to my buddy:

Good question. First I’d be totally shocked because (name-redacted) isn’t an Internet “social networking” person. Second, I would be suspicious of her motives. All that said, I’d probably confirm. It’d be fun for a few days and them I’d remember that it didn’t work face-to-face, there’s even less for me via FB. Then I’d move on, per se, as one can move on from someone who’d previously defined ones life and crushed ones heart.

I have been over a year now without affection and intimacy in my life and that’s because of her. I think about her pretty much every day too, but I think of her as the one who had the chance to have everything I could give and rejected that so completely that I had to move to the opposite end of the continent, away from everything I knew and loved, so that I might start a new life and find someone to love me. I wish her well but in my mind I can’t get past the fact that she chose to not be in my life when I offered it. Now, it does help that I’ve benefited in every way imaginable by this rejection beginning with my job, to my friends here, to the new place I’ll be moving into in about two-weeks. But I think of her as the “oh well” in my life. I know Holly would ask, but if she said that she’s got it all figured out and she wants me back, what would I do?

There’s a danger being overly definitive about previous relationships, but my ability to trust her on any meaningful level has been permanently damaged. There’s no way in hell that I’d leave what I have going for myself in Orlando “to be with her.” If she said she’d come out here I wouldn’t believe it or trust her. The latter would be very destabilizing if it were to really happen (awkward!). Nope, I left everything I had to give. That well is complete dry. I gave up over a tenth of my life to her, almost to my own ruin. She’s not entitled to any more of me. I have to integrate all of that back into my life and be present in the good that is a part of my life now. Like i said, she’s the “oh well” of the past six years of my life.

And you, my friend, have got to do the same with your former flame. As (name-redacted)’s psychologist once described me (not knowing that we were still seeing each other): “he was a wonderful memory which will give you warm feelings later in life, but nothing in the here and now.” amen, end of chapter. Hope this helps. Much love, jbb

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Let’s Be Friends… For Now

I visited my e-Harmony profile today. It’s been awhile. With Pepperdine fading into a confusing memory and things beginning to settle down on the house-front, I feel okay about re-investing some time on the social side of things. Today I also took a survey on my satisfaction with the e-Harmony service. I’ve been on the service since January 2006. I’ve been matched with 1,251 women. For a couple months in 2006 I dated one of my matches. My matches or I have clicked the “close” button 1,236 times. There are currently 15 matches in my queue and I’ve gotten responses from four of the 15. I’m in e-mail communication with one match outside of the service. Fortunately the survey didn’t ask for numbers.

In the time that I’ve had my one dating experience most relationships have gone through whole life-cycles from discovery to death. Truth be told, the vast majority of my time with e-harmony I haven’t been actively pursuing anything as much as kept the service in my emotional back-pocket as a “Plan B.” I had a lot of fun the first few months when I was convinced that my former relationship was over and loved the possibility of meeting someone who was specially selected for me. Then that former relationship came back… kind’a. Well, it didn’t quite come back as much as it just took an extended period to expire. In the meantime, some of the air was let out of my e-Harmony expectations to the point where I just kept the subscription so that I could feel like there was a possibility of something for me in the future. Then when that former relationship really expired (for real this time!), it took almost all of my ability to trust myself and relationships with it. At that point I kept the e-Harmony account because I wasn’t ready to kill it too. Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time to change a few things.

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Electronic kisses

It was Valentine’s weekend for some. For me it was just another weekend spent grading student blogs. But after reading an article in the UK’s Telegraph online newspaper titled, “Valentine’s Day: Technology is killing romance,” one of my students wrote a blog entry weighing the article’s premise that, because of technology, people don’t write love poems or letters to each other anymore. She said that a survey of over two-thousand people revealed that 62% had never sent a love letter (via the postal service). At the same time most everyone said that they had sent a text-message love note. My student shrugged that even though a text message isn’t anywhere as good as a real love letter, a text message is better than nothing. I’ve heard this one before: if it’s not on paper, written by hand, it’s just not as real. I don’t mean to be cruel or even crude, but I think that’s just bullshit.

Well, I was a little gentler when I began my response:

I’m curious, what is it in an electronic Valentine’s message that make is not “expressing yourself with your own thoughts”? I’ve been known to use every communication means at my disposal to let my beloved know that I was thinking of her. From 140 character text messages, to “Hello” IMs, to overly long voice-messages, to rambling emails, I found the “electronic” experience to have a certain level of “presence” that I didn’t experience before. Granted I might have over-used said technologies.. a bit… resulting in … let’s just say that my options are very flexible these days. But that’s not because of technology, that’s because some folks just don’t know how to put one word after another in a coherent (and passionate) manner. What’s that old saying about a good painter never blaming his tools…

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Conditional Unconditional Love

The ideal of love is it’s unconditional nature. The closest we usually come to that kind of love is the love between a parent and her child. But even that love has it’s limits, it’s conditions. I know that I’ve come up against my own limitations with a love that I thought was permanent and eternal. I thought I saw the face of God with this love and poured all that I had into it. But I was wrong. Time and trust were broken and I had to walk away. So much for the face of God.

I’m looking for a hard headed woman,
One who’ll take me for myself
And if I find my hard headed woman
I won’t need nobody else, no no no.
- “Hard Headed Woman” by Cat Stevens

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Not Fair

Yeah, I know, get over it. But there’s something really cruel about going to one’s e-Harmony account, find a few cuties in one’s “matches” folder only to see that said cuties have “closed” the match before you even get a chance to say, “Hello.” Argh. It’s no doubt a sign of my own shallowness that I’m irritated enough by being “rejected” by attractive women to write about it. Nah, it never feels good to get the “closed” message, but after getting and giving the “closed” message over a thousand times I can feel myself teetering toward giving up on the whole process. Just like everyone else, I want to be attracted to my potential mate, but these two examples really add insult to injury. Thanks, e-Harmony. I wonder how I might do on plentyoffish.com? jbb

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Answering eHarmony Questions – “What’s the Skinny” edition

I’ve been an e-Harmony member long enough that I’m beginning to wonder if I might be eligible for some prize, just for hanging in there so long. It’s that old adage: the older I get the pickier I get and the less marketable I get. No fun. Actually it’s not that bad. Occasionally someone will say something nice and it’s just enough for me to ramp up again and give it another try. Only problem is that occasionally I’ll have a great question/answer exchange that normally would only be shared between my matches and myself, which frustrates the writer in me.

For example, one young lady asked: In your Must Haves/Can’t Stands profile, you state that you “can’t stand someone who is overweight.” Hopefully, you can see from my photos that I am in no way “Skinny.” I’m a “Healthy size” girl! :- ) Where does that leave us?”

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One Just for Me

I have these two wonderful friends, Dan and Terri, who are always looking out for my happiness. They’re a young happily married couple, any two of which is an oddity these days and whenever we go out they’re always looking for a woman for me. It’s very endearing to me. So, several weeks ago, knowing that there was no talking them out of their self-appointed mission, I decided that the best way to deal with this was just to tell them specifically what I’m looking for. Fortunately we were at one of our favorite spots, Mellow Mushroom, where a young lady works who had caught my eye from the first time I’d gone there last summer. So I told Dan and Terri about the young lady, petite, curvy and bright. I added that it doesn’t have to be her, that I was just giving them an idea of my “preferences.” Good times. A week later, Terri met Dan and I at our other favorite place, Friendly Confines, and Terri made sure that our waitress that evening was up to my specs and when we got there Dan made sure to sell her on the wonderful fun she could have if she went to have sushi with yours truly. To the young lady’s credit she was playful and not overly creeped out. I didn’t have my business cards, so I gave her Dan’s card with my name and cell # and designated Dan as my “agent.” I have no illusions that anything will come of this, but it was fun to have my friends actively make the effort and look for someone based on my preferences. I’m one lucky dude. jbb

music: I Know Why by Sheryl Crow from the Wildflower CD

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