This year my father’s flare for the official (and melodramatic) has subsided and he has simply said to each of us: “Come to the house on New Year’s Eve. I need to talk to y’all again.” It is at this second meeting where I begin to sit with the reality that my father will be dead soon. Last year, his verbose explanation of how we were to handle his funeral, the house, our inheritance were merely reminders of how responsible he is and protective of the modest safety net he has built for us over the years.

But, this year his breathing seems a bit more labored, his step a bit slower, his energy even more clipped. I and one of my brothers are the only two of his children who know the doctor has suggested that our father would need to be put on dialysis in about a year. Because he is our father, he has told the doctor this will not happen. Unlike the doctor, my brother and I are positive that our father’s calm, yet certain refusal will remain even when the doctor’s suggestion has graduated to the recommendation stage.

This second meeting, which repeats much of the information from the first meeting, is only a guise. A way to seat the four of us together for three hours and remind himself that he has reached the most pivotal of goals. The son of a junk man who survived the Jim Crow South, “seperate but equal” public education and several major hurricanes beat the system. He has been able to build his own house, live off a good pension for the last decade and now, leave this house and some money to his children. He has proven to this country that despite its attempts to beat it out of him, this negro boy has, truly, lived the life of a MAN.

I feel myself begin to be overcome by…something. I do not know what this something is. I only know what it is NOT. I am not overwhelmed by the thought that in a few short years, my brother is likely to call me to come home because the result of my father’s refusal to be put on dialysis is our attendance at his funeral. I do not think my eyes get itchy because I know deep down I will never again live in this house that has become a symbol of victory for my father. A part of me thinks my eyes are itchy partly because it has occured to me during this meeting that I will never again live in the only city which my father and his father called home. (I think?)

What I know is that when my father hands us all our original birth certificates, my eyes somehow find their way to the section where my parents’ names and ages are listed. The yellowed paper tells me that on June 4, 1975, Marva Kendrick was 29 years old. This legal document reminds me that before she was thirty, my mother had been the wife of Gerald Kendrick for several years and had just given birth to his fourth child. This is not new knowledge for me, but for the first time I am aware of the sharp contrast between her life and mine. I have never been anyone’s wife or mother. For 36 years, I have simply been: Keturah, pursuer of passions, traveler of the world, observer of people.

And this is why my eyes are itchy. My mother’s is not the only life that is in direct contrast with mine. For my father, a life is created by staying safe. 1. Plan to stay in a pensionable job for 25 or 30 years. 2. Do not risk that job by paying much attention to boredom or the lack of challenge or growth you feel. To me and most of my generation, job security has become an oxymoron in the best of circumstances, a plain ole pipe dream in the worst. I have vaguely planned my career track based on my interests, talents and desire to feel challenged in every aspect of my life. Anytime I have been able to parlay any type of employment that is not a standard job that one finds listed in the newspaper, my father is absolutely awed by my ingenuity.

Looking at my mother’s information on my birth certificate undescores how drastically different my story has been from my parents and how different it will continue to be. For one, I doubt there will be children to sit down at my kitchen table with whom I will go through important financial documents. While I do own property, it is no more a smybol of my victory over the system than my secure, reliable job as a public school teacher. The condo I own now can be easily traded in for a flat in London or even sold simply to rent a nicer apartment in a better neighborhood. My Department of Education paycheck can be suspended for a year or two while I spend a year teaching in South Africa. I may marry. I may divorce. Neither will do much to add to or subtract from what I envision as a happy, fulfilled life.

And as I sit at the kitchen table in my childhood home, I come to the most powerful realization. My father is going to die. He may have already been told this by his doctor. And I, his doting daughter, will be able to handle it with grace. I am not afraid of his death nor my own anymore. I am not dreading the phone call as I had been years ago when I first began to notice his whezzing and coughing. I am prepared for it mainly because unlike my parents, I have chosen Nichiren Buddhism as my spiritual practice, a religion that is not based on Christianity’s premise that salvation from this cold, cruel world is granted by an all knowing, all powerful deity. While I do not propose that the Christian faith is not valid and unable to bring comfort to its believers, I am aware that I, unlike my parents, ventured out in my spiritual path just as I have in my profesional and personal paths as well. I CHOOSE the religion that brought the most to my life as opposed to remaining in the one that was the most familiar to me. The one with which others were most familiar. I chose Buddhism because it has been most congruent with the truths of life and the world than other religions. It has also been the most useful tool for transforming my life than the Christian faith. This reason for my being a practicing Buddhist instead of a practicing Christian, too, seems to be in direct contrast with my parents’ reasons for being psuedo-Christians all these years.

So, perhaps what had and still has me “overcome” by my father’s second family meeting is gratitude. A sense of sincere appreciation for the real inheritance he has already given me. I want to cry because I am thankful that he had the courage to navigate a world that was so limiting to him and for doing so in the most dignified way he knew. I am grateful that he prepared this country for me. If I didn’t fear it would steal his thunder, I would interrupt his auto-eulogy by thanking him for my inheritance. And explaining that it is, in fact, more than this four-bedroom brick and mortar victory in which we all now sit. It is so immense it can not be whittled down into numbers on a check.

The THING did eventually happen. Kind of. I realized that isolation
from other humans was merely cowardice draped in the fancy dress of “independence.” Once I stopped working so hard not to allow my Self to be swallowed whole by romantic need, I began to enjoy the comfort and safety GOOD men brought to my life. I even took up cooking. If only because my 30ish body held onto restaurant food a lot longer (and positioned in disturbing places) than my 20ish body did. The THING didn’t do much for my indifference to marriage, though. Six years into my 30s, I have only managed to graduate my “Marriage? Hmmmm….I guess” to “Sure, if I met a cool guy…who I loved…and who was an adventurous eater/traveler…with an acceptable FICO score…yeah, Dude could talk me into marriage…why the hell not?”

I have ruminated on whether I am just too stubborn in my indifference to matrimony to ever be fully won over by the THING. I have been attending weddings for about a decade now, devoid of the latent animosity I hear women who have been gripped by the THING feel. Amidst my happiness for the couple, a silent “When will it be my turn” has yet to whisper its way into my psyche. When I am at the beginning of a new relationship, I don’t ask trick questions that are designed to decipher if the object of my affection will be ready to walk down the aisle in roughly a year or two.

I figured this was one battle of modern single womanhood from which I had been exonerated.

Until….

I attended a very symbolic wedding. The bride was a friend and former colleague whose presence at the school where we both taught has been missed since she left. The other bride was this friend’s girlfriend of 5+ years.

There was nothing particularly unique about Monique and Michelle’s wedding. A get together at Monique’s childhood home the afternoon before the ceremony in which she and her future wife gave out gift bags to all those who had helped plan their wedding. Loving wise cracks from one of the bride’s father at the reception, where he admitted: “the only time Monique disappointed me was when she went to that college in Ann Arbor….but she met her life partner there so I guess I can forgive her for that.” There was a meticulously planned ceremony that expressed the personalities and cultures of the couple. There was an endless parade of professional and amateur photo sessions that made me wonder just how stressful weddings are for the people who star in them. Food. Grown up beverages. Lots of smile. Lots of love. Nothing too unique as far as weddings go.

Except….the state of Michigan didn’t deem Monique and Michelle’s commitment worthy of legal recognition.

It was this fact that made me truly envious of the love that marriages, in their purest form, represent. Monique and Michelle decided to follow the African-American tradition of “jumping the broom.” When this tradition showed up in the ceremony, I naturally assumed it was just another standard way of honoring the Black American experience. Until the minister explained the tradition to the uninformed. “Slaves’ marriages were not legally recognized in this country. They developed this tradition of jumping over the broom as a way of having a concrete symbol of being married. As the brides honor this tradition today, they want you to reflect on the reality that their commitment is treated with the same disregard as the marriages of the ancestors of one of the brides here.”

So, Monique and Michelle spent thousands of dollars (and twice as many planning hours) on this wedding to stand in front their families and friends, committing their lives to one another with the complete understanding that they would not be “really” married? What was the point of this ceremony?

The answer to this question is what I now realize the women who have been completely gripped by the THING really desire. It is what I and every other living being intrinsically seek the older we become. Love that goes beyond fickle feelings of passion and romantic euphoria. Love that even extends beyond the two people who are at its center. Love that connects two families; thus making the two individuals in the love responsible not only for each other, but also accountable to the many people who were instrumental in forming them into the people who had the courage to commit to each other.

So, this matrimony thing is much bigger than the wedding dress? It is of much greater significance than the exchange of rings and vows? It is two people saying, “We need you here to witness this. When arrogance, selfishness, doubt weasel their way into the life we have created and try to convince us that we don’t have to bother anymore…we brought you here so you could remind us that we promised each other and all of you to do the hard work of loving.” It is that sentiment, that unabashed need for the kind of love that requires the love of extended family and friends that almost brought me to tears. Here, these two women understood the REAL reason why we marry. They understood it so much they took it on with none of the built in safety nets that their heterosexual counterparts receive with no questions asked.

The THING has won. I want to love that completely. Whether or not I marry is still irrelevant to me. What has become more relevant is my desire to become the person who accepts that such a level of love is what contributes to my humanity. It is what makes me like every other human being. Perhaps, that is what the THING ultimately does to you. It shakes you out of your youthful delusions that you are somehow different. That the way to do adulthood is to reinvent the wheel. Redesign the whole entire bike until the ride is much more difficult and complicated than it need be.

The THING is over 30 itself. (It is probably well into its 40s, actually) It likes things simple and plain. When people are in relationships, they compromise. When people are hungry, they cook. When people love, they commit.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about us. Our journey. Can we talk tonight?

Sitting in Starbucks trying to get some work done, I looked knowingly at Bernard’s text. I am 35 years old, I thought. A calm, yet ominous reality washed over me as I gathered the remaining papers I was grading and reached for my purse. I knew. Once I called Bernard, I would be having the same conversation with him as the one I’d had with Daniel almost eight years earlier.

2.

Meredith is one of the most vibrant, energetic older women I have ever met. She works full time in a job she adores, never seriously considering what most women her age dream about almost daily: RETIREMENT. Recurring days with no where to go and nothing to do. Meredith loathes the thought of this “reward” given to Americans who spend their youth productively contributing to society.

30 years ago when Meredith was my age, she was married with three children. It was not a happy marriage; she was a wife and mother because all of her friends were wives and mothers. She was an ordinary girlchild with an average education who did what was expected of her and married the first young man who she seriously dated. He had a college education and thus the earning potential to take care of Meredith and the inevitable army of kids she would birth.

“I never thought about having kids. About what it would mean for me. About how much time and dedication it would take,” Meredith explained to me. “I wasn’t surprised by the difficulty and the level of sacrifice motherhood involved,” Meredith was quick to add. “I just never thought about it or considered whether or not I wanted to take on the responsibility. It’s just what I assumed I’d eventually do because…well, everybody assumed it was what all the girls would eventually do.”

3.
Nothing about Bernard’s hesitant “let’s be friends” monologue surprised me. Somewhere around our third date, it became clear to me that Bernard was ready for fatherhood. And since he was a man of stellar character, fatherhood would come after he had fallen in love with the right woman and married her. Somewhere in between our third date and this current conversation, it had become clear to Bernard not only was I not ready for motherhood, I was rather disinterested in it.

“I knew it was not smart to keep seeing you when we wanted two different things, but I really liked you and…I don’t know…I guess I thought this gap in what we saw for our futures would just magically disappear.”

There was no need to explain. Bernard was 39 years old and didn’t want to be a 50 year old waking up in the middle of the night to change a diaper. It made no sense for him to become more emotionally attached to a woman whose vision of her lifestyle now and ten years in the future just made no sense when a baby was inserted in the picture.
“I respect your decision, which is why I never openly asked you about it when you made comments that suggested you didn’t want to have children.” As Bernard awkwardly tried to find a way to end this unpleasant conversation, I was acutely aware of how much this conversation differed from the one I’d had with Daniel some years ago.

Unlike Daniel, Bernard was, at the very core, my ideal mate. He was intellectually, spiritually and socially the person who I am working relentlessly to become. If I can have this conversation with him and still not question whether or not I REALLY don’t want kids, well…could it be that this really is a decision that is solid. I was 28 when I had to explain to Daniel that I didn’t really see myself as a mother. Like many people suggested to me, I wondered if perhaps it was just him. I didn’t love him enough. I just didn’t see him as someone who would play an equal role in parenting. But here I am, at a point in my life where I crave a partner and a life spent tending to someone other than myself, and my reaction to the notion of pregnancy and caring for an infant remains the same: a clear and certain NO.

When I finally save Bernard from his ill attempts to terminate our phone conversation, I sit on my sofa feeling two emotions. Sadness at the loss of what my relationship with Bernard could have been. And RELIEF. I literally exhale, thankful that I have been given an opportunity to truly have my value tested. When a man with whom I was falling in love admitted that he could not see me as an option, it never occurred to me to think about “fixing” the problem that disqualified me from the race to be his mate.

4.
“This generation is a lot more focused on knowledge,” Meredith points out. “You guys seem to be more aware that big life decisions should be made after gathering information. You actually do make INFORMED decisions.” Meredith maintains that I am not the only woman she knows who does not want to have children. Her daughter is childless by choice. A niece even younger than myself has pushed back her attempts to “get pregnant” every year since she and her husband started vaguely planning to have a family. As Meredith lists the young women she knows who are making informed decisions, I suddenly realize why I wanted to talk to her shortly after my conversation with Bernard.

I have been given a privilege that women from Meredith’s generation were denied. By simply coming into my womanhood at the end of the 20th century, I was causally handed what I have never quite understood until now was a right that my mother’s generation was dismissively denied and what my contemporaries and I routinely take for granted.

I am not only repeatedly put into situations where I must make ENORMOUS adult decisions based on my own values, but the world EXPECTS me to do so. To choose the life that is the best fit for me. I dictate my professional life and my personal one as well.

I have spent over a decade deciding if a particular man was worth my trust and love. Or even another date. If his personality and dreams and values were properly matched to mine. I have had the added privilege of choosing to prioritize the aforementioned traits over the characteristics on which women are often encouraged to place the highest value: is he gainfully employed and does he treat me kind of nice? When I said yes or no to these relationships for any number of reasons, there was a world that was able to accommodate me regardless of the outcome of my decision. I had the privilege of agonizing over whether I had made the right choice when I said yes or no. I was fortunate enough to even worry about regret slowly seeping into my bed during late nights when I slept without a Bernard or a Daniel. To question if I had made the unfortunate mistake of letting a good man go. Should I have just married (insert the name of any good man here) and had his baby?

I made these informed decisions and dealt with their consequences, holding no one responsible for their repercussions but the woman who had made them.

I have won what Meredith’s generation never even realized they were not offered: a womanhood that was synonymous with adulthood. For some reason, the womanhood Meredith describes when she was my age sounds much like the lives of my teenaged students. Lives where they have illusions of choice, but at the end of the day, they follow the dictates placed on them by a host of “others.” You don’t really choose to do your homework; if you don’t do the homework, your parents take away your cell phone. You don’t really choose to mutter quietly under your breath about how stupid the homework assignment is; if you actually said outloud – for EVERYBODY to hear – that the assignment is asinine…well, this teacher lady makes you pay for the comment.

It is not just childless-by-choice women who have benefitted from the expectation that we fair creatures should consciously choose to mother or not to mother. It is also women who choose to delay childbirth until THEY feel they are emotionally and financially ready to handle the commitment. It is also married women who matter of factly say to their husbands: “We’re stopping after just this one.” These women have essentially gone through the same data-gathering process that I have and have made an informed decision. One based on not simply emotion, but also the realities of their lives. They have brought life into this world on their own terms.

After my recent conversations with Bernard and Meredith, I find myself deeply appreciative to the universe for this radical expectation that I and I alone should dictate the parameters of my life and stand behind those dictates without flinching.

Both mothers have spent months trying to “punish” these feelings out of their daughters. When her mother has discovered that Bev has still found ways to communicate with her girlfriend, Bev has had video games and computer privileges taken away from her. She has been forbidden to go anywhere but straight home after school so as to minimize the chances of her spending time with her girlfriend. Bev was crying in my classroom because she did not think it was fair (or even logical) that her mother could punish her for something over which she had no control in the same manner she had once punished her older sister when she cut class in high school or was caught smoking weed with the neighborhood losers.

“I know my mom loves me,” Bev agreed after I reminded her that her mother wouldn’t be taking such extreme measures if she didn’t fiercely care about her daughter. “But, what does she expect me to do? When she tells me to stop seeing my girlfriend, I never say I will because I know I’m going to keep seeing her. And liking girls. What she wants from me…well, I just can’t give it to her.” As teachers often do, I bit down on my tongue and compassionately listened to Bev, telling her that I was sorry she was in such pain. I valiantly fought not to voice my own disbelief and sadness that her mother unjustly placed this bizarrely level-headed, thoughtful and well behaved teenager on the frontlines of a battle she was destined to lose. “Do not lie to me,” her mother repeatedly demands. But, to tell her mother “the truth” she wants to hear, Bev would have to tell her mother and her herself one gigantic, soul-stealing lie. And then, until she is old enough to move out of her mother’s house, Bev would have to act out the lie that her mother has pretty much required her to live.

And all because Bev has decided to love. Openly.

There are many things that baffle me, but none have floored me as much as my conversation with Bev. I am amazed that Bev’s mother has decided that either her daughter is able to simply shut off the feelings she has felt since she was in middle school like a bedside lamp or if she can’t, that she should properly respect her mother’s house by not acting on those feelings or acknowledging them openly enough to remind her mother that they are still there. “I know it’s hard for you to be you, but it’s harder for me to ACCEPT you so could you work harder at not being you, please?” How can someone who loves you so casually and cruelly take away your dignity like that?

Apparently, to be repeatedly robbed of your dignity is common place for people like Bev who have the audacity to be who they are and love who they love with no apologies.
According to my friend, Janine, she obeyed her parents’ silent orders to not be who she was well into her 20s. She brought her girlfriend home many times, careful not to touch her arm too tenderly or brush away a lose strand of hair from her face and then smile sweetly at her. “They thought we were just friends for years,” she told me. Janine, who was a 25 year old college-educated, productive member of society, thought it easier to save these tender displays of affection common among lovers for moments when no one was looking. Basically, Janine regressed back to being a teenager whenever she went home. She “snuck off” to kiss her girlfriend or hug her in a manner not congruent with platonic friendship.

Now that she is 30 and her parents are well aware that the friend who visited with their daughter all those years ago was her live in lover, they still require her to lie to them. Janine and her ex-girlfriend were together for almost a decade, but never spent a holiday together in either of their parents’ homes. Janine went to her family for a few days and her girlfriend to her family. Both families avoided talking about the mate with whom their daughter/sister/niece/cousin had created an honest, productive, mutually loving life. While sisters showed off engagement rings and younger cousins awkwardly tried to incorporate first boyfriends into the family routines, Janine ate potato salad. Across the country, her girlfriend did the same thing.

Oddly enough, no one in Janine’s family showed any hint of discomfort about their family member quietly cutting off a part of her life just to be a part of their’s.

Recently, Janine has made it clear to her parents that there will come a point when this lying will have to cease. Not solely because getting jacked for your dignity gets exhausting after a while, but it simply is impractical.

“I plan on getting married one day,” she told her father. “I plan on having children. When that happens, it would be crazy to expect me to leave my wife in New York City while I take my kid to you and Mama’s house to spend Christmas with my family. So, eventually, I won’t be coming home.”

Her father asked if she were threatening him. He implied that she was black mailing him, trying to force him to accept a life style he believed to be wrong by refusing to come home.

When Janine shared this disturbing exchange with me, she also mentioned how her parents routinely dismissed she and her ex’s relationship. From never asking how her girlfriend was doing to not taking Janine’s plans to travel with her partner as a “good enough” reason to miss a family function, her parents made it clear that they questioned the validity of her love. As I listened to Janine relay how her father felt so comfortable adding guilt to the shame and dismissiveness her parents had placed on her over the years, I actually questioned the validity of her parents’ love for her. I was not questioning whether or not they loved her, however. What I questioned was the purity of that love. The depth of it.

How does Love look you square in the face and repeatedly demand that you sacrifice who you are because it believes who you are is not acceptable? Who you are makes it uncomfortable so it then further asks you to bend the truth a little when you are in its presence? Live a benign version of a “double life.” How can love make these types of requests of you when “who you are” is simply a person who chooses to love? Isn’t that all Janine and Bev are doing?

As I listened to Janine share her story, I found myself having the same internal conflict as I had while listening to Bev tearfully share her own turmoil about trying to be a good daughter while staying true to who she was. I did not want to demonize Janine’s parents, either, and judge them because their belief system differed from mine. But, I really could not wrap my brain around both sets of parents’ preference to have their daughters lie to them and pretend they were something they were not.

When you punish your teenaged daughter for refusing to stop loving another girl, no matter how you justify it, you are asking her to be silent and allow you to believe that she has managed to heterosexualize herself. This is a lie. When you repeatedly sit across from your adult daughter at Christmas dinner and talk about her job, her latest travels, her new apartment, never mentioning the woman to whom she vents about her job, with whom she shares those trips to Europe and the home they both come back to…well, you are instructing your daughter to play act when she is in your presence. To pretend she is a single gal in the city when she obviously is not. This is a lie.
While I am by no means an expert on love, I do know one thing with absolute certainty. LOVE DOES NOT LIE. It doesn’t ask you to do so, either.

Oprah encouraged her audience to create a detailed list of every quality they wanted in a man. The sensible expert gave very specific instructions for this list. “You are not wasting ink on his income, hobbies and whether or not he likes poetry,” she chided. She urged the attentive single gals to dig deeper. To think hard about what characteristics were encoded into the very core of their ideal man. Qualities that were so central to a person’s way of “being” that a woman would not even really see these qualities until she was well into the relationship. Both Oprah and her expert then instructed the audience to put the list away and not to worry about it again. They warned against pulling it out every time you were excited about a new gentleman caller and comparing the few shallow details of his life you were able to figure out after two dates with the list of your mate’s core characteristics.

Like any good American, I did as President O instructed; I made my list.
In the years since that show aired, I don’t remember what became of my list. I do remember what a great time I had compiling it, proud of myself for finding it ridiculously easy to dig beneath the surface and get to the core of what I sought in my Mr. Right. High on my list were honesty and openness. A series of unfortunate events over the years has now caused me to question these two attributes that every woman on the planet claims to seek in a man. Oddly enough, my questions have nothing to do with this ideal man (who I have yet to meet, by the way). My questions are directed at me. I am wondering if I can honestly claim that I am…well, honest. And open.

One painful, complicated relationship and one dead-upon-arrival courtship later, I have come to realize: I lie. A lot. It is difficult for me to identify just how often I lie because I lie in the sneaky, sophisticated way in which many women excel. I do not speak untruths to gentlemen callers. I just don’t speak at all.

During the dead-upon-arrival courtship, there were several times when I felt uncertain of his interest level in our budding relationship. Instead of voicing this discomfort when I felt it, I simply said nothing. By the time I got around to saying something, I admitted to the easiest emotion: severe annoyance. My voice registered a tone with which it has the most experience: blunt pseudo-honesty. I asked the gentleman caller: “Is it your intent to send the message that you are no longer interested and I should back off?” I allowed myself credit for not beating around the bush when I asked him this question, conveniently overlooking how this version of honesty was tainted with deceit’s classier cousin: silence. I said I was irritated. I didn’t say I was frightened. I pointed to the week that had passed since we had seen each other or had a conversation that lasted more than five minutes. I did not admit I noticed the exact number of days since he had disappeared because I missed him, which meant I liked him. I left all of this out because the rule of casual dishonesty dictates: Stick to the surface. Stay there.

Shockingly, when you are not honest with a gentleman caller, it makes it that more difficult to be open with him. Weeks before I shared only about 45.5% of my truth with him, the gentleman caller had made a telling observation about me. “I tell a story about some part of my life and I wait for you to share something about you,” he explained. “Either you offer nothing or when you start talking, it’s like you are being very careful in what you share. You shut down. Edit yourself all the time.”

Really?

Perhaps that could have been what the gentleman caller who had starred in the painful, complicated relationship was eluding to when he challenged: “Remember that time when you broke up with me? When you abruptly kicked me out of your apartment…well, I really had no idea where that was coming from.” When this particular gentleman caller mentioned this incident (months after he was asked politely to leave my abode), I was reticent to accept that I had not been completely honest with him about my dissatisfaction with our relationship. Hadn’t I actually said: “I do not like where this relationship is going.”

Cue the sound of crickets as I thought long and hard to remember when I had actually said those exact words to him. Does pouting vigorously when I didn’t get what I wanted count as being honest?

Hadn’t I stuck to my guns about not allowing him access to my time and the pleasure of my company until he gave in to my vague, hinted at demands for intimacy?

Well, right before I politely asked him to leave my abode, we were naked on my living room floor. So, yeah…

Apparently, this decision on my part to forego the arduous task of giving full voice to my wants and needs leaves me wide open to not having those wants and needs meant. Yes, I could claim that these gentlemen callers took advantage of the loophole my silence created. “What grown man DOESN’T know that any woman in her 30s wants closeness, attention, depth,” I could argue. Unfortunately, such an argument is woefully flawed. The gentleman caller’s choice to take advantage of the loophole does not exonerate me from my repeated choice to create the loophole in the first place.

The dead-upon-arrival courtship officially flat-lined almost two weeks ago. It has been embalmed, eulogized and tucked away into the earth. The painful, complicated relationship has already decomposed to dust. The ghost of the gentleman caller no longer powerful enough to warrant more than a passing shrug of the shoulder. However, my list still lives on. If I could locate it, I would smile proudly at this wonderful human being who I will someday meet. Although I am looking forward to meeting the human being who posesses these wonderful qualities, I am even more excited as I struggle each day to BE this amazing human being who posesses such wonderful qualities. Isn’t working to become more honest and more open simply much more practical than exerting limited energy on hunting down a mate who is honest and open?

Is it even possible to have something/one you are unwilling to be?

I use that word “trying” loosely.  J. Franz doesn’t really try to lose his virginity.  He thinks about how much he is trying to lose his virginity.  He thinks about this a lot.  As a grown woman reading his accounts of “trying” to get the attention of any kind co-ed who will take away his virginity, I want to tap little 18 year old J. Franz on the shoulder and give him this advice: “Bruh…you aren’t really trying.  You keep thinking about the girl.  Maybe you should actually DO something?”

I suspect if I dropped these words of wisdom on the 50 year old J. Franz, he would be just as baffled as his 18 year old self.  J. Franz would really believe that his thinking about that cute girl in his Russian Literature class could have somehow (perhaps through magic or the miracle of fate) morphed into he and the cute girl somehow being in a situation where they would have possibly kissed and then caressed and then…WHAM…SEX! Even in his humorous depictions of standing in the corner at parties, looking at all the girls dancing and wondering if one of them would be in his bed that night, there is an air of “Why didn’t I ever end up with one of them?” As J. Franz recounts these experiences decades later, he still seems to underestimate how much his lack of action played a  key role in his inability to shed his virginal self and the subsequent loneliness that ensues when you are the sole person on your college campus who is not having at least semi-regular sex.

Over the years, I have come across more than a few men who believe as 18 year old J. Franz did.  If I do absolutely nothing in the arena of love, the fact that I wanted to/thought about/tried to do something will buy me at least a little bit of attention from the object of my affection.  It is a sad delusion that often results in perfectly nice, perfectly sweet men spending year after year wondering why women don’t like them. Why men who are less nice, less sweet still end up with pretty women on their arms.

Right now, there is a 40 year old J. Franz who calls me periodically.  Every few weeks, I get a series of enthusiastic calls from Peter in which he leaves me voice mail messages that sound a little bit like this: “I have been thinking about you so much.  Call me.  I really miss you.”  When I do get around to returning Peter’s calls, he proceeds to share all the things he thought about doing with or for me.  “I wanted to take you out to brunch since I had to work the night of your birthday party,” Peter sorrowfully informs me.  “I wanted to call you last week to see how you were doing,”  he will share just as sorrowfully.  I am always tickled when Peter seems surprised when I do not react positively to all the things he has thought about over the weeks.  He seems even more confused when I do not react negatively to his thoughts either.  More often than not, I simply respond to these sharings with, “Oh, okay.”

Since Peter and I run in the same circle of friends, I have come across him randomly at social events or just on the street.  When these moments occur, I am reminded again of how much he discounts his inability to act on his attraction to me as a key factor in my indifference to him.  Recently, I ran into him at Union Square Park.  We hugged, chatted, gossiped a little about mutual acquaintances and then I politely bid him farewell.  “It was good seeing you,” I kissed his cheek.  “Be well.”  Peter stood there and stared.  He suggested we head to one of the million Starbucks in the area and have a quick coffee so we could continue our talk.  “I’m actually on my way to meet friends,” I explained as I made my way to the subway station.  Peter jokingly pleaded: “Just one quick latte. We don’t even have to sit at a table.  Just get the coffee and go.”  I laughed and kept walking to the train.

Peter actually looked disappointed.  While I can understand why he would be, I am flummoxed as to why he would be surprised I didn’t trot to Starbucks with him.  A woman chooses to spend her day with friends instead of a few more moments with a man who consistently chooses to remain on the periphery of her life? Makes sense to me. Getting on the train and meeting up with real friends is the logical route any person would take when the alternative is more time with a psuedo-friend whose presence in your life only occurs because of a chance happening on a busy city street.

It is easy to simply write off Peter’s inept attempts at courtship as yet another lazy New York man who is running a bunch of women and therefore, doesn’t feel inclined to make effort with any of them.  I don’t believe, however, that Peter is a playboy who has placed me at the bottom of his priority list of beauties.  If he were, I wouldn’t be wasting words writing about him.  I believe that Peter is J. Franz trying to lose his virginity.  He is not a stupid man or a lazy one.  When it comes to other aspects of his life, he seems to understand the concept of graduating thoughts into action in order for life to reward you with a tangible thing.  Somehow, there is a disconnect in the part of his brain that deals with women and love.  As J. Franz’s memoir reveals, Peter is not the first man to suffer from such a disconnect.

And this is what I know with absolute certainity: Both Peter and J.  Franz know how to take action in other aspects of their lives.  I think of Peter going to his boss to negotiate a pay increase.  When his boss asks Peter to explain why he is entitled to a raise, I can not fathom Peter (even on his worst day) rattling off all of the things he THOUGHT about doing for the company. “I thought about staying late to finish those reports.”  “Sir, I really, really, really wanted to go to that conference and I would have gone, if…” “Remember when I almost  brought in those new clients?”  The mere thought of his approaching his professional life that way is completely ridiculous to me.  And it would be ridiculous to Peter as well.  So, why would he believe that it were less ridiculous to win a woman by doing nothing more than thinking about all the things he should be doing to win her?

The only conclusion I have drawn is that Peter believes “taking action” means something bigger than it really does.  After closely listening to men do their own ranting about relationships, I am keenly aware that many falsely believe most women expect to be bowled over with unrealistic amounts of attention, gifts, high pressure dates and endless adoring flirtations.  For men like Peter, who are of average charm and humble means, doing nothing might prove to be of less risk than doing a little bit of something and being made to feel that that something wasn’t enough.

I am hopeful that Peter will come across The Discomfort Zone and learn from J. Franz’s story.  When J. Franz was finally successful in losing his virginity, he didn’t do much.  But he did do something.  Here is what happened: A cute girl (not the one from Russian Literature class) invited J. Franz to a party.  J. Franz thought about going.  Then, J. Franz actually went to the party.  At the party, J. Franz. thought about dancing with the cute girl.  Shockingly, he then proceeded to actually dance with her.  As it got late and the guests dispersed, J. Franz. thought about staying behind and watching a movie with the cute girl whom he had come to learn had similiar tastes in film and music as he.  J. Franz actually stayed and watched the movie.

While watching the movie, J. Franz had two more thoughts.  He thought it would be nice to put his arm around the cute girl.  He thought it would be even nicer to kiss the cute girl.  Now, J. Franz actually harbored these thoughts for quite some time.  BUT…when he finally promoted those two thoughts to two actions…WHAM…SEX!

While Peter will have to do much more than show up at a party to eventually win over an adult woman, the implication of the scenario is not so far fetching.  I think it’s pretty clear what he can learn from this 18 year old mating story.  The Spark Notes version: When J. Franz thought, he slept alone.  When J. Franz did, a woman magically appeared in his bed.  He seemed happier once he started to do.

Recently, I watched the well-written indie rom-com, 500 Days of Summer.  Unique in its take on love, 500 Days follows an overly romantic young man, Tom, who spent much of his boyhood fantasizing about meeting “the one.”  When he does meet her (Summer), he is so blissful enjoying the reality of what had until now been only a fantasy, that Tom is left crushed and unable to function when Summer inevitably breaks up with him.  For the next 500 days, he replays all the memories he shared with Summer, trying to do what brokenhearted lovers have attempted since humans crawled out of trees several hundred years ago.  Figure out how such amazing memories could have culminated in a painful, abrupt end and more importantly, load those memories with enough power, enough sincere hope, that they would magically summon his soul mate back  into the fantasy he had spent most of his life envisioning.

Critical to Tom’s ability to move on was his personal little yoda: his 12 year old sister.  In all of the conversations I have had so far in my course on love, this little sage shared the most insightful tidbit of knowledge.  “I don’t know why you thought Summer was the one,” she admits to Tom one day.  “I never did.  When you go back and look at everything you think the two of you had, maybe you should look twice.”

For the past year or so, I had been looking back on the memories I shared with my male version of Summer.  Much like Tom, there was an almost constant replaying of the moments in our relationship that for me, signified our status as hopelessly in love.  When I voluntarily reviewed these memories, they brought me equal amounts of comfort (it was good while it was good) and confusion (if it was so good, why didn’t it last).

Tom looked at his Summer memories twice.  And so did I.

Much like Tom, a second scanning of my heartfelt memories with the male Summer revealed me to be an expert in revisionist history.  Upon second viewing, the memories I most cherished held glaring signs that what the ex and I shared was pretty much doomed from the start.  My favorite memory was the one where he was introduced to my friends.  At a small dinner party in my apartment, he was charming and loving, draping his arm around me several times and making sure everything was running smoothly.  During the requisite how-could-this-go-wrong months following my first break up with him, I thought long and hard about that night.  How he seemed so eager to be my boyfriend.  How his whole demeanor that night seemed to scream: “I am falling in love with you.”

That astute 12 year old gave her brother some damn good advice. Like an obedient Tom, I relived that night slower, with more clarity.  Looked twice.  What I saw was the part of that night that was more convenient not to remember.  When my friends had gone home and we were going to bed, I told him proudly: “I can tell my friends really liked you.”  The second scanning brought back his look of discomfort.  His avoidance of talking about the dinner that had just happened and the realization I didn’t need to voice out loud because it had already settled solidly in my bones: He is unsure about this.  He does not want to be here in the same way I want him to be here.

Almost every memory that had served as evidence of my being in a “healthy” relationship did not hold up under a second, more thorough viewing.  It is slightly ridiculous how flimsy the memories really became.  How paper thin our relationship had always been, without my noticing. After thoroughly scanning my cherished memories, I was able to revise a common cliché about l.o.v.e.  No, love is not completely blind; it just needs glasses.

It took Tom a few more weeks before he could admit the truth of his love for Summer.  That it was one-sided.  That he had chosen a woman who was indifferent about him and openly disinterested in commitment, particularly commitment to HIM.  And perhaps the hardest for anyone to admit: He knew all of this.  In the deepest part of him, he knew the love story taking place in his head was not the one playing out in his life.  But, he went along with it anyway.

I am happy to report I am much smarter than Tom (and almost as smart as his sister).  While Tom was still refusing to believe he had revised a great deal of he and Summer’s  history, I was deleting my Summer from my phone.  After months of justifying why I should not completely erase him from my life, the deletion process had become amazingly easy.   I simply held  firm to the truth of our memories and what our relationship really was instead of what I remembered it to be.

The love-clouded mind is truly an unreliable source.  It is shrewd in its ability to write a complete work of fiction and then pass off its creative little novel as a memoir.  Perhaps the lesson isn’t to look twice at your memories of passionate love, but to be aware that your mind is not always accurate.  And memories, although comforting, can also be quite misleading.

Sobering thought, if ever I read one.

So, if the love an individual gives to another is only as good as that individual herself, then how are any of us expected to offer love that is not…well, let me speak frankly here: How can any human being be capable of love that is not in some way fucked up since MANY of us wander this earth nursing countless emotional wounds that go unnoticed by ourselves and the ones we attempt to love?  So, if love is only as good (as whole, as healthy, as pure) as the person who offers it, then how can any mere mortal love another mortal well, wholly, purely?

Quite the dilemma, no?

Rachelle, a newly single woman in her mid-30s, certainly believes so.  Rachelle’s encounters with love suggest that Morrison’s observation has a hint of truth.  The first person to teach her about love was her father.  “Growing up, I was never unsure of his love.  I knew he loved me.  I knew he would protect me no matter what.”  Rachelle even recalls a specific time when she felt uneasy around her father’s male friend.  Before she could voice this uneasiness, her father read the look of discomfort in her eyes whenever this particular friend was around.  “Does he make you uncomfortable,” her father asked.  She nodded and like magic, the creepy friend never stepped foot in their home again.

A very pure and sincere act of love from Daddy.  But, while Daddy was saving his daughter from the hands of a (possible) pedophile, he was also snorting cocaine.  Starting as a casual pastime, his cocaine use escalated to an addiction by the time Rachelle was a teenager.  Rachelle recalls the loving father who hugged and comforted her just as easily as she recalls the father whose drug-induced temper was so volatile and erratic, she sometimes did not know what to expect from him.

In addition to teaching her that love protects, Rachelle’s father also taught her that in order to maintain love, one must be very, very careful not to anger it and chase it away. “I remember one of my first relationships,” she shares.  “When I look back on it, I walked on egg shells all the time.  Feeling like I really had to avoid making my boyfriend mad.  Once, I mistakenly broke something of his and for a few seconds I was terrified he would be so mad with me that he might want to break up.”

How good was Rachelle’s father’s love?  It was not without its winning moments.  Because of his love, Rachelle came to expect that if a man said he loved her then he would listen to her, take action to give her what she needed and make her feel safe.  But, her father’s love also set a template for most of her relationships with men whose love was only as good as they were.  A few short weeks ago, she ended a long term relationship with a man who would not commit to her.  In addition to his disinterest in marriage, Rachelle also cites a list of self-destructive behaviors in which her boyfriend engaged as factors leading up to their split.

It would be easy to connect the dots from teenaged Rachelle’s relationship with her father to adult Rachelle’s relationship with her ex.  Any armchair psychologist would deduce that she subconsciously chose the self-destructive boyfriend because her formative years were spent around a man who routinely self destructed.

“I don’t know if it’s that easy,” Rachelle shakes her head.  “Morrison may be on to something with that quote, but I think it passes judgment on people like my father and ex-boyfriend.”  Yes, if you are emotionally scarred, if you are addicted to any substance, if you are fearful of commitment, there is only so much of your love you will be able to give.  But, her father did give her love.  Her ex-boyfriend was sincere in his love.  “We didn’t break up because he couldn’t love me enough or because he was unable to really show me how much he cared about me.”  According to Rachelle, in both of these pivotal relationships, the men were not completely good, but their love was.

Kind of.

“I don’t know if the relationship I had with my father was healthy.  Nor do I know if all the  years I spent with my ex were just evidence that Toni Morrison is right!”  What Rachelle does know, however, is that both of these men’s love has been valuable.  It may not have been the healthiest.  It definitely did not come from the “best source.”  Still, when it came, it was graciously accepted by her.  It provided her with what she needed.  It was completely and unquestionably good.  Even when the lover was not.

Perhaps the truth really lies in the heartbreaking story of Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist of The Bluest Eye.  Yes, Ms. Morrison, love is only as good as the lover.  But, at the end of the day, most of us are in the same predicament as Pecola.  We long for love.  We sacrifice too much for it.  We are grateful for it or anything that feels like it or looks like it or promises to turn into it.  To consider from whom the love comes and how that source might taint such a coveted commodity is too much to ask of us.  So, we love.  Broken and poised to break, we love.

Over the years, I have come to believe that unlike women, men often have a difficult time offering up their hearts to even the most sincere woman when it has been mishandled by a less than sincere one.  Case in point: My childhood friend, Tammy, got knocked up in high school.  The father of her son was abusive, crass and subjected her to years of emotional and physical abuse.  When she escaped his madness, spending a few months in a battered women’s shelter, Tammy met Peter, a worker at the shelter.  About a year later she was happily coupled with him.  My friend, Conrad, on the other hand, has had his fair share of relationship failures.  His biggest occurred when he was in his 30s.  A woman with whom he had fallen madly in love dismissed his intense feelings, choosing instead to marry a man who could provide her with an upper middle class life style.  Since that time, Conrad has made a conscious choice not to genuinely connect with another woman.  “I’m too jaded; I’ve failed too many times at love.”  Tammy, who endured emotional torture from the man she loved, was willing to take another risk at love even though logic would suggest love had been no friend to her.  Conrad, who endured a very painful failure, allowed such a common casualty of love to deter him from a real connection well into his 40s.

I am perplexed by the vast differences in Conrad’s and Tammy’s reactions to love gone terribly, terribly wrong.

My friend, Bernard, is not.  When I shared Conrad’s story with him, he did not seem bewildered at all.  As a matter of fact, he verified that Conrad’s perspective is shared by every man he knows.  “I have been him,” Bernard casually admits.  “Maybe not for ten whole years, but I am very familiar with the place he is in now.”  Bernard feels confident in speaking for most men when he says that failing at love is such an undesirable result of taking the leap to love in the first place, that if it does happen to you, the most logical response would be to do everything in your power NOT to put yourself in that predicament again.  “I guess a heartbroken woman would continue to seek love even though she might be carrying the same ole baggage into all of her relationships.  For men, we simply just don’t seek it – at all.  And for some of us, if the failure was so big and so humiliating as it obviously was for Conrad, then we stay in that extreme avoidance of love for many, many years.”  Bernard notes that it was the woman who left Conrad for a wealthier man that sent him into this downward spiral.  “Men already are insecure about not having enough to keep a woman’s interest.”  According to Bernard, if your failure at love stems from a woman not finding you suitable to love based on your bank account, then it prolongs that dark, dangerous period where a man simply sits across the table from a woman or lies in her bed, committing to nothing else but sitting across the table from her or lying in her bed.

Bernard is the first to admit this is not healthy.  However, he is also quick to assert that it is the only coping mechanism men have to deal with the pain of love letting them down.  “People think men don’t long for love as deeply as women.  That could not be farther from the truth.”  According to Bernard, young men fantasize about meeting that one woman who is everything they’ve dreamed of: beautiful, supportive, intelligent, willing to set and achieve life goals.  Bernard even asserts that men spend a great deal of time agonizing over a relationship in trouble.  “Earlier today, my boy called me to ask my advice about problems he’s having with his girl.”  When Bernard recited how the conversation went, it sounded identical to the conversations I have had with girlfriends over the years. “I think we long for it even more than women do.”  How else to explain the difficulty in moving on when the woman a man  loves chooses to no longer love him?

I have never been of the school of thought that men are adverse to love. That they only surrender to it when a determined woman refuses to accept anything less than their love and commitment. I have always wondered if the only reason we assume women are more willing to love is because our culture encourages men to take love – particularly romantic love – for granted.  To look at such an intense emotional connection to another human being as the antithesis to manhood.  If this is the case, how do men get to the point where Bernard is now?  Knocking on 40, he has recently fathered a child and is happily nurturing a fulfilling relationship with his son’s mother.  When I asked him if he felt he had enough love in his life, he beamed with laughter. “Oh…I have an abundance!”

So, how did Bernard get from that dark, painful place in which Conrad has permanently settled to a place where he has opened up his life to an onslaught of love?  Bernard actually thinks it has nothing to do with men’s inability to love after being hurt or our culture’s ad campaign about the beauty of love being pitched solely to women.  When he thinks about all that he has learned about love and how to sustain it, he sees one common thread between all the genres of love he is blessed to experience right now.  “Love with absolutely no expectation,” he advises, “and you will find that it not only makes you happier, but it also makes the love itself grow much deeper.”  When he was younger, Bernard had lots of expectations when he offered his heart.  When he loved, the recipient of that love was expected to respond in specific ways before he felt secure enough to love further.  His love came with an invisible contract.  He made certain that a clear signature was at the bottom before he gave 100%.

“The same reason I lovingly hold my son because he is fussy is the same reason why I lovingly hold his mother when she is upset.”  Although I would argue that it is much easier to take such a diplomatic approach to loving your child than to loving a romantic partner, Bernard is convinced that there really shouldn’t be any distinction.  “Love is pure,” he explains.  When it becomes convoluted, it is because people sully it with their own agendas and expectations.  “I love my son because it makes him happy.  I love my girlfriend because it makes her happy.  I love my mother because it makes her happy.”  Bernard has managed to make the GIVING of his love uninfluenced by his RECEIVING love.  “I might get the love back the way I want it; I might not. I still give my love either way.”

Perhaps, this is why his feelings are not compressed into a lump of coal.  Sounds like a much easier and more energizing place to be.

For all my enlightenment, however, there are still many things I don’t get.  Many mysteries in this life that leave me flummoxed.  Signs in subway stations that read: Northeast corner.  People who enjoy cleaning, cooking, doing laundry.  Algebra.  Living in Iowa, Ohio, anywhere in middle America, actually.

The biggest mystery that continues to elude me is this loaded word we humans call love.

For all I think I know about love, there are a host of questions that sit on my psyche as I, like most mortals, go about living a life in which I am daily faced with the challenge of loving.  So, what does it take to love another human being?  Do different genres of love require different skills from the lover?  Is love a passive emotion or does it require as much energy, as much determination as hate, happiness, anger?  Do most of us feel we have an adequate amount of love in our lives?

I took these loaded questions to my friend, Katrina.  Since she is an even smarter cookie than me, I figured she’d have something profound to say.

Katrina waxed poetic, explaining that even when she lacks romantic love in her life, she still feels surrounded by love.  I expected her to supply the requisite admonishment of confident single gals the world round: “I have my friends, my family…I have LOTS of love in my life.”  Katrina surprised me, however, by voicing an even broader view of love.  “The universe is full of love,” she pointed out.  She spoke of first coming to this realization when she went camping.  While resting in a hammock and gazing up at a tree whose bare branches blew in the wind, she realized the tranquil peace that she felt was, in fact, love.  “When I stop myself from being driven every which way by anxiety and worry and really just sit and look at a flower or even a regular ole tree, it becomes clear to me how much love the universe has at its disposal.”

Katrina is of the belief that we are all one with the universe.  Therefore, if there are copious manifestations of love in the cosmos, then there has to be just as much love (if not, more) within us.  “Some people see that love in the eyes of their children or they feel it when they are with their partner,” Katrina went on to explain, “but, I think even without such concrete representations, each of us already has love in our lives.”  According to Katrina, the only reason why many people don’t feel that love within themselves is because they either don’t know how or choose not to access it.

I’ve known Katrina for a very long time; I was not aware she was such an enlightened, thoughtful soul.  When I jokingly asked, “Dude, can I start calling you Buddha,”  Katrina blushed and waved off my compliment.  She explained that it took her a while to figure this out.  Like all of us, when she was in her late teens/early 20s, there was only one type of love worth thinking about: romantic.  There was only one goal: to get it.  There were many reasons you thought you wanted it, but after much self-reflection, it is now clear that the real reason you fought so long and hard for it was: you believed it validated you in some way.  “Friends had boyfriends.  They fell in love. It looked like fun.  They seemed so happy.  So, I wanted all of that, too.” Romantic love would give you a husband and nights snuggled next to him.  Romantic love promised you a life of less loneliness.  It promised you a future.

“I, obviously, don’t deny my desire for romantic love,” Katrina went on to explain.  In her mid-30s, marriage and family are very important to Katrina.  She does view her search for love a bit differently now, though.  Unlike when she was in college, Katrina realizes that romantic love has its limitations.  “Universal love doesn’t.”  When she contemplates this statement further, Katrina is able to express why universal love is really the foundation for any other type of love.

“Not only are we one with the universe,” she explains.  “Each of us is one with each other.”  I am not merely similar to the man who sits next to me on the train reading his book.  I am that man.  And that man is me.  According to Katrina, when we are able to tap into the love that exists within us, we naturally relate in more loving ways to the fellow mortals we encounter in our daily lives.  If we are unable to acknowledge this universal connection (love?), then how can we truly sustain love with a romantic partner?

I went into my conversation with Katrina hoping she would answer if not all of my questions, maybe one or two.  I went into my conversation with Katrina hoping to learn something. Oddly enough, the conversation taught me nothing; it really only confirmed the ONE thing I was 150% sure of about love: it comes from within.  Love, in its purest form, has little to do with the person whom we choose to love.  It has more to do with us and our ability to tap into what is the natural state of the universe.