Vulnerability, a conscious choice to find love

Today is Valentine’s Day and even those ordinarily stubborn and immovable hearts long for connection.  Connection, in its truest and most meaningful form, demands vulnerability – honest, authentic, weak-kneed, open-hearted vulnerability.  It is the integrity of our vulnerability which issues forth the tenderness we wish to claim for ourselves and enhance our lives.  Vulnerability is our collective “raison d’etre” – without it we are nothing.

At the risk of sounding too go-hug-a-tree like Aquarian (that I most certainly can be at times)  I often wonder what holds people back from ‘putting themselves out there’ because it is in my most vulnerable moments that I know I am truly alive.

“Hellelil and Hildebrand, the meeting on the Turret Stairs” (1864) © National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

I don’t know that I have ever felt the purity of emotion and sentiment, the perfection of human love (however impermanent) so eloquently captured in Frederic William Burton’s painting of the ill-fated lovers Hellelil and Hildebrand. Still, I agree with the words of George Eliot (British, 1819 – 1880) who wrote of  the painting ‘the face of the knight is the face of a man to whom the kiss is a sacrament.’  Who amongst us wouldn’t wish to love in such a powerful manner? In this work of art, as in life, it is the vulnerability depicted that humbles and wrenches the heart.

In contrast with Burton’s watercolour, earlier today The Local Sweden ran a story for Valentine’s Day about a widower named Nils 87, and his lover, friend, and wife of 59 and a half years Mimmi – and my heart constricted with both sorrow for the loneliness he expressed and joy for all that he had the pleasure to know as her husband.  My girlfriend Doris knows something of this having lost her amazing husband Bob to cancer a couple of years ago after 48 years of marriage – each holiday my heart breaks for her aching loss, something I can’t imagine and will never know, pain I cannot abate for the woman I hold dearest and longest against all those people in my life that I love.

Yerba Buena Mosaic Heart, San Francisco, by Laurel True

Love stories, the ones that end happily especially, are what give the rest of us hope – to find that elusive connection with one person (while there may well be multiple soul mates, I prefer to believe in the “fairy tale” version of profound love that empowers, encourages, cherishes).

Some time ago I read the (miraculous) effort of A.S. Byatt – Possession.  A Booker Prize winner, both intellectual mystery and powerful romantic effort spanning the intricacies of two (primary) relationships, and integrating the fictionalised writings of Christina Rosetti (as the character Christabel LaMotte) and the character of Randolph Henry Ash (generally believed to be based upon a combination of the English poets Robert Browning, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson) Ms. Byatt’s effort brought the stunning vulnerability of loving completely to very nearly audible breaths and sheaths of brittle paper held in our hands.  I read it twice, stunned both times, wanting the protagonists to cause less pain to each other even as their truths established the means of surviving their immutable hearts.

Rumi, ever wise, oft-quoted in love, wrote:

And it’s true, what comes back to us in any form of loving should not be the gift of our vulnerability but the beloved’s version of it.

To be, in the words of the last man I kissed, “be full of fire and of tears”.  The passion that ignites a fire is kindled with fuel found in tears of vulnerability, transparency, compassion, kindness, tenderness, and authenticity and there cannot be a strategic vision for success in such a realm.  We give ourselves over to love’s magnificent power – in hope.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

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My Croatian Dance Card

Lace and ribbons and embroidery on dresses, feathers and ribbons in hair, delicate gloves on a woman’s hands holding a fan, and a dance card on gilt ribbon with a pencil, oh, where did we stray from such pretty things? Okay, okay, okay – our lives are not a Jane Austen novel.  Mr. Darcy is highly unlikely to enter many of our lives with his estates complete with in-home sculpture gallery but, there are things about gentility that just are so…so, well, gracious.

In my 10 months on OKCupid there have been backhanded invitations – Francisco’s ‘come, meet me in Curacao and Bonaire for the week’ and Dominique’s plans to come to the States in conjunction with his work as a photojournalist and go on a week long road trip across the Great Lakes to Michigan and back, Roland bringing his kids for Christmas (until Roland in the Skype video didn’t vaguely resemble the Roland previously sent in JPEGs and, while not quite Cyrano de Bergerac it was seriously not the same man), and an invitation (sadly) by a married man to come to Egypt all expenses paid, well, you get the idea.

When did men stop being men? I mean courting and wooing and taking care of things that make a woman (even if she is like the 2014 version of Enjoil perfumes’ ad) feel like she is in competent, capable hands? And, least you misunderstand these questions as my maintaining a tether to the 1950s I can assure you I am a modestly feisty feminist.  But really, when did doing things for a woman cease being pleasurable for both parties? Is this the real reason that men know longer know who they are because the lines have become so blurred over something as simple as courtship?

About a week ago my “dance card” for Croatia got its first notation – a formal request for my company, and I am delighted.

“Prvic, Kapri, Murter, they are all wonderful, how you feel about taking a canoe around Kornati islands?”

Sea kayaking? YOU, my friend, have a partner any time!

“That would be fun”

I would love to – truly (even if you haven’t formally asked me yet)

“:) I am asking you now, would you come over here to this country, I will take you out the sea…”

Then, yes, I would be delighted. You are the first on my Croatian “dance card”

This follows with proposed fishing for our meal (pray do not make me gut the fish!), cooking them with sea stones ‘brodetto’, drinking cold sparkling Croatian wine, and eating freshly dug wild asparagus (presumably also grilled) brodetto. Knowing how intense the Mediterranean sun can be I mentioned the need for SPF 50 for my pasty white girl skin and he countered with Kantarion oil + olive oil (would an American man even know of such things unless he was gay?).  I think my years of sequestration from the sunlight are about to come to a crashing halt! You wouldn’t think that I’d be so genuinely excited about sea kayaking (or canoeing if such be the case).

Here’s the truth, relocating to anywhere (least of all a foreign country where you don’t speak the language VOLUNTARILY) at midlife is not for the faint of heart. Now add visa applications, supporting documentation such as a business plan and partners (I am blessed to have found truly amazing ones with complementary skills and work ethics who speak English faultlessly), selling a lifetimes worth of things (precious and not so), having not a clue where I will live but clearly needing to find a place, arranging the transportation of the things I wouldn’t dream about parting with – yet knowing that their transit will be four to six weeks, and wondering “what am I going to sleep on”?, what do I pack to set up a modest household (with some achingly familiar talismans so I am not completely swamped emotionally)? And how fast can I make all of this happen? It might seem that I am worried about these things – I don’t worry, annoyingly, as friends who have known me for any length of time can testify – but the list of things requiring my attention grows longer with each day.

Generally speaking, I admit , I am not the most practical person. The things I give priority to sometimes will make a person stare in disbelief (no cell phone, no landline by example) but to function at life you must have a tick list, even a mental one, and acknowledge and deal with interdependencies, and do things which have to be done, some sooner than others while some apparently (through others’ lens’) such as decorating the yet unknown environment of my new life (which even as I write this I know reads as ridiculous) less so.  But Maxim (he spent 15 years in the States, his real name is Mladen) came to know how nuts Americans can be about this kind of “stuff” that a proper Dalmatian would never waste their energy over – his familiarity with my culture has become a welcome buffer to his.  If I ask a question he has a solution without overtly ‘fixing’ anything while he liaises within his community and network to secure answers for me – like finding a really good tapetar to build a tufted ottoman for me to sleep on (and, yes, I used the proceeds from eBay sales of my other things to already purchase a length of blue mohair velvet woven in Italy the same shade of the deepest blue of the Adriatic) while I wait for my bed to arrive in my shipping container (something that can double as a bed for guests when they come to visit).  I never thought I, of all people, would admit that I rather like that a man would step into to do these things to help me.

Maybe that is the real reason I need to move to a country where I don’t speak the language; a yet un-learned life lesson. I am finding it is really something to be utterly vulnerable, it forces me to trust and give over power to other people, to not be so independent and ‘cat-like’ as a former boyfriend once chided me in anger (over not needing anyone, just like a cat, least of all him).

That I can attach escapism for my overworked brain to an old-fashioned and proper invitation to go on a date, it is a welcome haven. Just randomly thinking about exploring my new home, a country adorned with a jeweled necklace of blinding pearl white, emerald green, lapis and azure, with the scent of sea salt and pine and cooking those fresh-from-the-sea fish on stones with a man who, regardless of whether we have some amazing romantic connection, is being a wonderful friend to me before I arrive makes me pause – and breathe.

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When we are done mourning – a lesson in impermanence & truth

It’s been said, very likely hundreds of thousands of times, in philosophic as well as brutal business speak – your problems always follow you. Yes, but –

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.”
~ Buddha

Everything is impermanent. The truth is sometimes the emotional strength necessary to extricate ourselves is found in circumstances beyond our control, a final wake-up call where the universe provides the mechanism for a karmic smackdown which demands that we actually MOVE or be forever stuck in a place that is filled with angst.

I have an ugly anniversary coming up.  An anniversary that still niggles at my being, catches me off guard and can reduce me to tears – sometimes it is ‘just’ my throat constricting and catching, sometimes sobs or tears of the kind that well up and spill over like the water at the edge of a mill pond race, thankfully, less frequently now, tears that I can’t seem to stop no matter how much I might wish to control them – even more than a decade later.  Anything can set me off, seeing a ‘normal family’ circumstance over-flowing in tenderness, reading gorgeous words from an anonymous father to his daughter, picking up on the tension in the air between people clearly part of a familial unit who I don’t know as well as those that I sometimes do, snark-y words expressed – all can serve as a catalyst for my ‘going to ground’; my emotional response isn’t one of anger or jealousy or longing but it is a difficult pain to process, escape from proximity is my only recourse as neither wretched vulnerability nor confrontation are within my comfort zone.

Nice people don’t trash talk about other people, let alone their own family. Really nice people wouldn’t dream of expanding the cosmic contamination of negative energy by mentioning ‘from personal experience’ in a passing conversation – it’s bad karma; I am a really nice person.  But my threshold of silence is slipping away from me, even as I have tried to slam home the iron pin in the stone doorway to the house of beauty I try to live in each day.

Oh gosh, I know that my position is far from unique and better than that of a lot of people.  By most standards it was a normal childhood in the middle class America of the 1960s and 1970s. I wasn’t physically abused or sexually molested and while it took me until I was 39 to realise that my parents drank far more alcohol than anyone I knew as an adult living in Boston, I had known for years and years that I was the outsider to the dynamic triangulation formed by my (younger) brother and my parents.  I distinctly recall the epiphany I had in the Thorold, Ontario, Canada ice rink (age 11) where my brother was playing hockey – they shared some huge karmic drama which didn’t include me.  Though I confess it has made me less receptive to letting people truly ‘in’ than intended my karma has clearly been to learn self-reliance (in all things) and to leave the room lighter than it was when I came into it.

Tacitly verboten in my childhood home was not sharing – a ‘what’s said in this room, stays in this room’ philosophy that I am grateful for learning because I keep the confidences of others like a sacred trust.  It is so much more polite to smile nicely and discretely change the subject then it is to admit to being from an environment of dysfunction of any kind. Besides, who really wants to hear such melodrama? 2002, in the weeks following Thanksgiving and leading up to New Year’s Day, I fell out with my parents, eventually severing all ties with them, no text, emails, or words spoken since.  I tried for the first couple of years to send greeting cards on the appropriate days, to no avail. What’s lost sometimes should not be found again.

I speak of it infrequently and I try not to dwell on it, I didn’t even include a reference to it in my book (written three years ago) much to the surprise of many who knew my circumstances.  Finally, pushed to the absolute limits of being treated like a second class citizen, denied, ignored and ridiculed because I was born out of some archaic preferred sequence of primogeniture my father held dear and with far too many ideas and opinions and too much independence for ‘a girl’ I stood up and said enough.  The final straw coming as my father cornered me in his garage, raised his fist threatening to hit me and said, “Someone should have put you in your place a long time ago you little bitch.” My last words included dropping my first and only F-bomb at him and promising to have him arrested for assault on New Year’s Day if he hit me.

My ‘white lighter’ friends know that I am a receptor and try to keep my energy safe but if I haven’t figured out how to protect myself from such haunting memories how can even a small army of capable loving people bathe me in sheltering light? I think that it’s really enough to have held this inside me for so long and in doing so, not give myself the liberty to be free of the shackles and chains that cut into my soul like a huge bleeding abscess. The debris of all this is that real intimacy is hard won for me, harder still to accept because I have this deeply embedded belief that if my blood relatives could be so indifferent what could possibly make anyone I let into my life really wish to ‘stay’.  I know people who collect people, in some cases tens of thousands of them through social media outlets, I am not one of them; on one hand can be counted the people I trust implicitly.  If I let you in and in time I sever all ties it is because I recognise that the role that my presence played in your life has been fulfilled – people come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime.  Equally so, I have established inviolable boundaries around mutual respect – to quote Jane Austen’s Lizzie from Pride & Prejudice, “My good opinion once lost is lost forever.”

It can be embarrassing for me to be in the midst of really happy family dynamics because I know, ripping across my soul is a searing pain that should be apparent to everyone breathing, that I am an outlier to their experience of civility (even in the face of stress) and more so to their very genuine warmth. It fills me with a beautiful ache to bear witness to such love. As a child we always think no one can see what we are experiencing, that we are so very good at hiding the truth by being bright as a penny in the sunlight.  In the last couple of years childhood friends, friends of my parents who no longer speak to them, even my ex-husband have shared their perspective on my family with transparency that stilled my breath.  Their words were like falling through ice into shockingly cold water – perhaps more painful for the idea that I had gone through it alone, yet they all saw.

My reality is that I have stayed in this emotionally bereft place too long – it is largely because I am the eternal optimist that I haven’t wrest myself loose and unstuck myself.  I hoped, against all odds, logic, and years of experience that somehow I would be included in the lives of my niece and nephew, but it’s patently clear it’s never going to happen in the way I would like it to.

A man I met on the ski lift wrote a magnificent poem about me and sent it along weeks after our shared day of white powder:

[…]

sadness already cuts in so many ways

soar to the top and speak with the sun

frolic in life – leave nothing undone

eyes with laughter and soul with a song

the essence of living so warm and so strong

[…]

My New Year’s 2014 resolution was not to run away, but toward ‘leaving nothing undone’ and finally put all the pain of being born into the wrong family on the other side of a vast ocean. Here now at the end of 2014 I am in Croatia, cleansing my soul and body in the healing waters of the Adriatic. To own my truth and not only start ‘the walk’ but finish it.  Distance doesn’t provide a guarantee of being emotionally safe but inaccessibility does offer me a brilliant excuse for not subjecting myself to the harm of longing for something normal with my blood relations.

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the price of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

The Hand-kiss a courtly, tender, respectful gesture we need more of!

Jacques Chirac kisses Angela Merkel’s hand

Last evening, for the first time in so many years I can’t recall exactly who, or when or what the circumstances of the last time it happened were (though am pleased that I should have known such a chivalric gesture previously) a very genteel man kissed my hand.

It could be his octogenarian age which made this such a natural thing to do – though the last man was certainly not his age peer and I believe was a member of a German fraternity half of my then age of 39. It might be that he is English, a world traveler, a global thought leader and a networks influencer (long before social media made such ‘easy’) as such refined behaviour is somehow natural to men in these spheres of influence. I understand from my girlfriend that in all the years she has known him he has never kissed her hand.

It is gallant in the extreme, and evidently (most) American men often think it is silly or feel stupid attempting it, but this nearly archaic sign of regard for a woman Il est incroyable! A man gently taking her hand in his, kisses the air just above her skin and, sometimes the skin itself (as Jacques Chirac, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Nicholas Sarkozy have so exquisitely executed on the back of all kinds of ladies hands – my favorite is the particular hand-kiss Keith Urban gave to his wife Nicole Kidman on the Red Carpet – it captures the fullest extent of his love and respect for her, intimate in the extreme, tender and effortless even with several billion people bearing witness).

For those of you who have never bestowed such, nor received, allow me to explain why this is such a high form of regard. A man doesn’t offer a hand-kiss lightly or randomly, only to particular lady to whom he feels a special level of homage is due. It is an unusually formal gesture.  When a man kisses a woman’s hand it implies that he thinks her noble and that he respects her (pay attention, there is a lovely version of this in the @2CELLOS & @ZuccheroSugar video) as a remnant of the feudal ceremony of vassalage in which a knight swore fealty to his King or Queen it also means that he is putting himself at her service. Of course there can be romantic connotations as we witness in period dramas and in romance novels but I think it’s important to understand the origins of the hand-kiss are based in respect, not seduction.

There are rules of engagement – of course, thank you Raven Emrys for the following three points:

First of all, one kisses a lady’s hand in only three social situations:

1.) You already know the lady, and she offers her hand,

2.) You are being introduced to her, and she offers her hand, or

3.) You know the woman intimately and you offer your open hand to her and she accepts it (as we see in the picture of the elderly couple)

What made my experience last night so extraordinary was there was no intention to receive such  – blithely unaware (some of my friends my say, “as usual”) I extended my hand to the gentleman as he was departing our company, taking leave from the back seat of my girlfriends’ car.  I gently clasp his hand while I verbally expressed my delight in finally having the occasion to meet him and how much I had enjoyed our conversation.  On his part it was completely without artifice – he simply took my outstretched hand, gently cupping my fingers in his palm, lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed the spot just behind the knuckles of my two middle fingers. The effect on my being was one of humbled breathlessness – mind you, not a swoon – but surprise that I should be so regarded by someone so accomplished.

My friends seem to regard my life as being somewhat extraordinary – perhaps so.  Perhaps it is extraordinary because I view the exquisiteness of life in measurable beauty such as an unexpected hand-kiss, these things happen to me because I am receptive to them, charmed by the possibilities and humbled by being present to them, grateful for a sweeping vista as well as the tilt of a man’s head over my hand as he calls upon the courtly manners so lacking in our world today.

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the price of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

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Cringe-worthy

In any relationship, but I think it is somehow more potent and damaging in romantic ones where so much of our self is tied to the approval of the other, the least welcome expressed words are some variation on “it’s so expensive” or “but I bought you everything you ever wanted!” or “what about the cost of the plane tickets?”.  Let’s understand something straight up front what finances are expended in the name of pleasing another (which is essentially about doing something that pleases you) should NEVER subsequently be mentioned as a means of control, extorting emotions or invoking some kind of guilt on the part of the recipient.  My next point to this post is I HATE EXCEL SPREADSHEETS!

I am not a rich woman, in fact there are times when I am so underwater that were I not a very good swimmer I would surely drown. I have been told that my generosity goes so far as to give someone the shirt (sometimes quite literally) off my back.  I do these things because I WANT TO not because of a perceived indebtedness to the person to whom I am giving or any expectations of reciprocity. If there is any ugly truth attached to my giving is the still prickling subconscious ethos of my father of ‘being one up’ and never owing anyone anything.  Unfortunately it has been my experience to be subjected, or witness, to the human foible of equating expenditures with buying love or such gross cheapness that a husband spending $16 (instead of the $8 the wife demanded) on Godiva chocolates for a hostess gift being attended by four people created such an embarrassingly ugly scene as to still be vivid in my mind more than 3 years hence.

Here’s the truth – hard as it might be to embrace – generosity should never be conditional. If the cost of something is beyond your means, do not spend it to please another only to later negate it in drawing from that “filing cabinet” of wrongs which human beings keep and use when some behaviour of a friend or lover does displeases us. And by cost I don’t simply mean monetary expenditures – there is a cost to everything, if you have to evaluate the action against value then you are ‘doing’ for the wrong reason. If you have an opinion that something is expensive – keep it to yourself. The person on the other side of this conversation has just taken your words to mean they are ‘not worth it’ because your sliding scale of value deems something to have a cost too high to justify in relation to them.  Only rarely the recipient is suggesting that they desire that you purchase a strand of (or even a single) rare, natural, perfect, Tahitian pearls which have been collected by diving without apparatus by a native and then hand-knotted with silk and embellished with a diamond and high carat weight clasp or ‘a season’ long rental of a private villa on Lake Como (and how many of us would even ask for such things?).  If you have to keep a spreadsheet of your expenditures against any relationship (other than profit and loss statements for your business) you have larger issues than being in that relationship. A man I was once acquainted with said (something to the effect of) “with enough money any guy can have any girl” – what does this say about the morality of participants at the intersection of their (ahem) transaction?

The fullness of your being isn’t tied to the monetary value of your gift-giving; rather it is tied to the purity of intention and the tenderness of your actions, the surprise and delight factor that expressly conveys “I thought of you today” and wanted to bring you joy.  There are a million tiny expressions which cost next to nothing to tell someone, without words, how highly you regard them and their presence in your life; your relationships and who you are should only truly be defined by such.  While both are appropriate, there are times when bestowing a handful of daisies gathered in a meadow will have more resonance than a florist perfect arrangement of exquisiteness with a gilt embossed card.  Presenting ourselves and our relationships with value has very little to do with monies expended and everything to do with innate generosity of spirit.

“Anything that just costs money is cheap.”

― John Steinbeck

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The love letter.

I have just done a couple of things that I never thought I would do (again). At 52, and having been divorced twenty-two years, sworn off dating or even so much as considering romance a possibility for the last eight years, a man is prompting me to ‘pull out all the stops’ – go figure.

I made a double strength pot to make Vietnamese Iced Coffee (decaf, I wouldn’t even subject myself to me on caffeine).  I took three pages of Crane stationary – the remnants of some long ago fancy with having my own copperplate engraved stuff – and sprayed long discontinued Niki de St Phalle fragrance over it, pulled out my favorite shade of red lipstick and did up my mouth so I could leave a lip-print on the last page, and, more incredibly, just snipped a lock of my hair and bound it up in lavender embroidery floss.  I am about to respond to two emails this incredible man wrote to me earlier today and provide comment on a picture he has sent to me of himself taken in Martinique in June.  There is no doubt after the morning and early afternoon of thoughts as to why I am doing these arcane things steeped in history between lovers – none at all. 

It would be ‘more efficient’ I suppose to simply fire off an email covering all – in fact I did respond to each but hours of quiet reflection since have brought forth a level of intention, of making a gift of the span of what I am thinking and feeling in response that is more equal to the transparency the man has daringly offered of his own mindset.

How odd.  We have never spoken a word to one another as yet – my French being in disuse for more than a decade and his confidence over his spoken English determining that ‘for now’ our exploration of becoming familiar is limited to the typed word.  How we are communicating is tender, slower, filled with anticipation and hopes. The graphic sexual desire and content that has accompanied so many other men met through OKCupid has, over the course of more than 100 bits of communication, been blissfully absent.  I have been happy with the pace of our mutual discovery, it has made me calm, thoughtful, laugh, has made my heart leap and my butterflies flutter in my stomach. And yet, today something shifted for me as a result of his words and in combination of a benign image of him I really started to consider him as he signed off in the last as “your French lover”.

Is there a woman on the face of the planet who hasn’t secretly longed to have an interesting, passionate, desirable man think of himself as her lover long before their eyes meet or their lips touch?  Hours earlier I had expressed his need to ensure that I had sufficient space to not be scared off, and suddenly I could actually feel his hands in my hair, hear his whispered passions, taste his mouth as he kissed me and feel myself swoon. This is how I come to have assembled this tableau of romance before me, why I write this now before I settle in to write him a second scented letter, so he will know it’s forthcoming and the anticipation of that knowledge brings us closer to the eventual meeting when we will either confirm this has not been a delicious fantasy and something that requires bolder steps toward bridging the 6000km between us, or goes down against our mutual histories as something pure and delightful than men and women in the year 2013 rarely have the skills to cultivate.

If you enjoy my blog please considering ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and please do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Ambivalence kills any relationship

Let me say that the “Dick and Dork Theory” of my girlfriend Jennifer and her college best friend spans the entire human condition. In brief: at any one time, in any relationship, one person is being a dick and the other is being a dork. My brief (on the same) is “s/he who is ambivalent determines the course of a relationship” – any relationship by the way. It is the uncertainty, the lack of constancy and displacement which ultimately drives a wedge between people – patience, expectation, passion and being valued are all extinguished in the face of ambivalence.

I have been thinking a lot about relationships of late. Those based in friendship, the possibilities of new love, of those falling out of love, what we feel for humanity or the blood of our hearts in small people, social interactions un-imagined even 20 years ago (that often come with unrealistic expectations of immediate intimacy and action), old marriages that mature with time like great wines and those which after years of various piled up illusions shatter like a crystal goblet on a stone floor.  Storms of alcohol and sarcasm, ignorance and selfishness, self-pity and meanness are the outward signs of deeper symptoms of co-dependence, neglect, abuse, and yes, ambivalence.  And it is the light (or darkness) of bearing witness to the pain of these un-couplings which make me grateful to have lived alone for so long – nothing I offer will prevent the raw emotions or serve to heal wounds faster, there is no equivalent for New-Skin or Bio-Oil for the soul.

What we at our most vulnerable often forget is that to “treat someone as we wish to be treated” leaves no ambiguity about how to engage with others. Of course FULLY embracing this across the scope of those with whom we come in contact on a daily basis would be exhausting and utterly impractical. Without self-love and self-compassion, some measure of discernment, and personal responsibility we cannot be present for others.  Whilst we should offer the same compassion we would like to experience, sometimes the recipient is far too busy casting blame and aspersions or feeling sorry for him or herself to accept what we can, realistically, offer.  Therefore, the challenge I believe is ever to be “present” without embracing the cliff hanging rescue of our protagonist by the likes of Lara Croft or Dudley Do-Right.

A man I am coming to know recently wrote to tell me that I didn’t owe him an email – that my desire to do so (or his) was not an obligation to reciprocate. Which reminded me of a single line from the wonderful movie Monsieur Ibrahim where Omar Sharif’s character says to his young friend Momo (Pierre Boulanger)  while in the Turkish bath (somewhere in Paris): “What you give to others is yours, no one can take it away, what you do not give is lost forever.” (My translation from the original French – forgive me if I am ever so slightly off). This is the antithesis of ambivalence, this is manifestly how living should be – giving without consideration of reciprocity or ego demanding ‘credit’ for the doing, for taking pleasure from what (we hope) gives pleasure to others but taking that pleasure for ourselves regardless.  The process of building discernment is a means of protecting our energy and our being, it creates a permission to disengage and, of course, cease ‘doing’ when our efforts are not appreciated or when there is hostility being expressed on the part of the other person.  Our raison d’etre is to live (and hopefully love), justly and powerfully, gently and with kindness and respect, whilst maintaining inviolable boundaries and we can only do this when we present ourselves in fullness of being.  Our relationships should be a source of comfort and stability, providing sustenance against the toxicity of family, friendships, work relationships and ‘love’ that we have all experienced that are terribly wrong.  It is truly up to us to stand for beauty and provide a means for it to resonate rather than let life slip from our fingers.

It is why, I think, people who garden are more generous than others. The gardener has a tacit agreement with the Earth and its creatures to nurture and understands that time and patience is requisite to see a single flower bloom to be pollinated and produce a pepper or tomato or an arm full of blossoms. It is much the same with relationships – to flourish we need to give and receive in measures which will sustain and cause us to thrive, assuming that connectedness provides desired intention and subsequent action is without egregious error.  Guarantees of success do not exist with any relationship without sincere desire to take something precious and provide shelter and cherish it.  I think it takes so much more to extricate oneself from the less than ideal than anyone credits. Perhaps if we made our expectations as transparent as we later do with our regrets the altered reality of our relationships would mean less pain all the way around.

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the price of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Exploring relationship compatibility

I believe that the structure of any relationship, of establishing trust, of migrating toward rather than pulling away from another is based upon tiny imperceptible nuances of behavior as well as ‘acceptable’ standards. Some people just ‘fit’ together with ease, others find a way of working through to meet someplace in the middle, some compromise better than others. Still, there is the level of self-esteem we cultivate within us which tends to set the bar a bit higher (hopefully) for people entering our lives. I do not believe that culture or religion or geography or age have so much to do with this as the individuals involved – a natural harmony that is easy to feel as well as to recognise in its absence.

Gustavian-style five arm chandelier – click to reach my Pinterest.

Click to reach my Pinterest

It’s no secret that I aspire to make a move to Sweden.  As a quasi-realist I recognise the total impracticality of shipping 30 years of my worldly possessions via slow boat and then being hit with any related import duties on my fantastic collection of 18^th and 19^th century antiques.  No, I am selling most of this before leaving the States.  Given the wonders of the Internet I am able to poke around Stockholm online to source ‘replacements’.  I am currently nominally sick to my stomach over my inability to have negotiated the purchase of two such pieces – one, a slightly damaged (could always be restored) Gustavian-style five arm (non-electrified) chandelier and the other, a very practical, early 19^th century bracket foot English mahogany butler’s writing bureau with the original brasses and key!  As anyone could see from the photos, even without knowledge of my specific decorating aesthetic, these two pieces would have been amazing in the same room, my living room ‘to be’ in Stockholm.  In the United States, specifically Boston or NYC, these two pieces combined would have a retail cost someplace considerably north of $10,000 (as I discovered a nearly identical chandelier is priced at $28,500! at Belevdere Antiques they also have a similar writing bureau in stock though it is Swedish); yet their final combed price with 22% auction commission and a ‘whatever fee’ of $60 USD each would have brought their grand total to $364.50 USD.  Yes, you read quite correctly, THREE HUNDRED, SIXTY-FOUR DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS. Now, some of you antique freaks are likely screaming at your computer monitor “WTF! WHY DIDN’T YOU BID??” let me explain. For starters to bid it was requisite to have a Swedish social security number, which I wouldn’t have been able to secure in time for the ending time this afternoon and their offices were closed when I discovered the auction late yesterday and so would have been impossible to come up with a Plan B; the second half of the reason has more to do with my opening paragraph.

You see I DID actually reach out to a man in Sweden that I had met through OKCupid some months ago and with whom there has been a very nice dialogue. He has done some remarkably thoughtful things (such as sharing advertisements for jobs) so I asked him if he would do this favour for me, and in exchange, as he is recently divorced, he could use the bureau until such time as I got myself to Stockholm. It was a practical, logical solution in which everyone would win – and he could have been a hero to me.  To be fair, I proposed the structure of this be such that gave him the amounts I could spare for each item and even strategically framed the “how to” to improve my chances of success. I figured out what I could afford, plus the fees, and gave him the amount and told him that I would transfer the funds to him via PayPal IMMEDIATELY at the close of the auction.

My rationale in purchasing these being that I was going to need a place to write, to store some of my clothes and, for romantic evenings cooking and cuddling with my potential lover that a chandelier with candles was going to be incredibly ‘practical’.  But, despite that I am so transparent, and that this lovely man seemed very interested in exploring some kind of a relationship with me, something was off in his willingness to do ‘my bidding’ as it were. I don’t think it is being American or being Swedish, and I would like to believe that it wasn’t even about the time involved or the technical logistics of my transferring the money, but I am sure it is about trust.  Trust cuts both ways. From my perspective to prove I trusted him enough to assist with my migration, I was willing to hand over the money “in good faith” in advance of actually having physical possession so that he would assume zero financial exposure. I figured in the event that he absconded with the chandelier and the bureau, it would be relatively inexpensive in contrast with something potentially much more costly later on.  But the Skype dialogue made it quickly clear that this wasn’t within his comfort zone. He wasn’t inclined to bid on the pieces without my arranging the money to be sent to him in advance, (as if I had a crystal ball to determine what the end bid would be and the amount I would owe him) and, as he doesn’t have a PayPal account, I couldn’t even (easily) transfer the funds to him post auction; a logistics nightmare.

I have to recognise that when it comes to extending ourselves for other people, or levels of trust, that not everyone is easy with entangling their lives with others to the same degree I am.  There will be other auctions, and other chandeliers and desks and chests of drawers and carpets and art to decorate my new home and I just have to let go of the ones that got away.  (Though my frustration at not ‘getting the look’ for a pittance borders on apoplectic.) I also came to realise two other things from this experience – that although damn inconvenient to live minimally again once I arrive in Sweden, as with most of my life, I need to do these things myself and, this man is so clearly not the right man for me.

Das Boot(s)!

Yesterday I scored a pair of utterly impractical, Kaki Daniels black velvet boots on eBay for $51.99 (original retail around $500) because, well, because of OKCupid… and also because I am working on my second book – this one about finding love after 50 (yet untitled) so I am considering them a prop for ‘field research’.

My book is chronicling my personal experiences in navigating online dating, combining it with research involving histories’ greatest lovers, the lives and ‘careers’ of women commonly referred to as Les Grandes Horizontales of 19^th century France, Geisha’s, Venetian courtesans (like Veronica Franco), the seductive power of, say, Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman and the confusion I experienced in watching Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, what makes something truly sensual, and men, oh, yes MEN, finding a GREAT ONE and what makes them respect, swoon, finally commit! That I am the least qualified woman on the planet to write about these (I am not a scholar of women’s studies, human sexuality or for that matter a historian) matters not.  Why? Let’s start with the fact that I can still hear my mother say “why do you have to make every guy your best friend?” (Maybe because that safer path meant I wouldn’t come home a pregnant teenager or acquire STDs.) Okay, and I was a virgin on my wedding night and I can count more years of not having intimate physical relations than those in which I have.  Oh yes, and I have this ABSOLUTE about physical expression needing to be bound to emotional and spiritual commitment.  But I am curious and as someone who exists in a state of mindful sensuality about virtually everything, whose friends leave notes on the back of business cards tucked inside my books saying things like “use your power wisely”, I wonder WHY have I put off finding this ‘perfect for me’ man and hopefully in finding him I might create laughter, foster thoughtfulness, encourage the passionate exploration of life and love, and find it without clichés in the process. Of course I am experiencing plenty of clichés!

Anyway, back to the boots, which in their own way are just as scary as the movie title I have used for this post!  I have never owned anything remotely like these – they are so sexy that they should come with a warning label and age restriction around their use. I am trying to figure out what (besides the obvious Lise Charmel) to wear them with, and more specifically with whom and when!?  None of that matters for the present.  It was the art of bidding here in combination with the fact that “the universe” clearly understood that I should have them is most important. One, never, ever, be in a hurry. The auction, as most are, was 7 days in duration. At the time I found the listing (primarily a fluke because I was actually searching for a pair of Emma Hope beaded and embellished mules) 3 days remained, they had one bid of $18.99, and I was not inclined to pay more than $40 plus shipping for something so frivolous. So I put them on my watch list and w-a-i-t-e-d.

I was on a Skype call when the countdown to bidding began – 34 minutes to the auction ending. It’s amazing how slowly time can pass even while multi-tasking. All of the sudden it was 3 minutes to go. At 2 minutes before auction end I opened the bid window, entered $60, prayed that my timing was spot on against the processing (actually I have never done this before) cycles at eBay, waited until the countdown clock cleared 58 seconds and submitted my bid. My heart was racing, my hands clammy. Really? Over a pair of boots I might not have the nerve to wear in public (or private) in the spirit of discovering their effect on the right man? The site registered my bid, and the high bid jumped from $18.99 to $31.99 at 2 seconds to go – and then, CONGRATULATIONS, YOU WON! My girlfriend in London did a happy dance with me virtually.

Maybe the boots have certain magical powers like Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers. Almost as a reaction to my stepping over the edge of reason, the universe conspired and an OKCupid suitor sent me an invitation to be his guest in Egypt at the end of November.   (I doubt these will be in my luggage.)

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Authenticity

Many years ago, in my second job in the high tech space, The New Yorker magazine ran a cartoon by Peter Steiner.  My senior management team loved that cartoon because it perfectly exemplified the business case for our B2B enterprise solution – credential issuance, authentication, and instantaneous revocation (where necessary) and an assurance model for high value transactions rooted in commercial bank relationships.  In 1998 this was a paradigm shift so far ahead of its time it took until 2004 for the concept behind it and platform to be accepted and subsequently deployed at the global Fortune 50 firm where I was brought into to serve as the project lead for the related communications and change management.  The journey of finding love, in particular almost exclusively relying upon a single online dating site, is not one that promises authenticity.

On the Internet – now, just as in 1998 – you can be anything you want to be and, sadly, an awful lot of people do exactly that.  Recently I experienced both extremes of behavior. Three weeks ago a man asked to ‘take our conversation outside of’ the site and provided an email address.  The next email included five photos allegedly with his son.  But ‘the little voice’ suggested ‘trust but confirm’ and with my reply I asked for him to connect via Linkedin or Facebook; not surprising there has been no subsequent communication. In contrast, in the last 24 hours, a man has so thoroughly astonished me with his transparency as to truly reaffirm my belief that all things are possible.

“Hello. Is there any possibility to date with me?”

I emit a heavy sigh when I see that he is 24, and lives some 6000 miles away from me.

A friend (also attempting to find love) points out ‘it’s not like you are ever going to meet’. Well, perhaps not but still, a conversation never hurt anything, right?  As has previously been my reply to expressed interest by someone so much younger than myself this is also one of polite dissuasion. But then what is a number? If it doesn’t bother ‘the he’ then why should it bother me? But it does – a bit less than when I started this journey but still…

“Many thanks for your supremely flattering desire to take me out – truly lovely. Aside from the geographic challenges involved I have no immediate plans to be in Istanbul and surrounds – sorry. But if something changes I will certainly let you know and would delight in meeting you for tea.”

A decade ago a girlfriend commented that the 18 year old renter who lived downstairs had a crush on me and would hum Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson, the theme from The Graduate, every time Daniel left our company.  When ultimately he not only made a pass but pinned me to my sofa in amorous intent I was, as the Scots express, gobsmacked.  When he subsequently held my hand and stole a kiss in front of his (all male) friends in the 19-22 year old range I was as embarrassed as a 13 year old.  This was the extent of it because I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I was a year older than his mom! Now, ten years later here I am being charmingly wooed by a man who was four years YOUNGER than Daniel was when he originally pressed his suit. (Shaking my head, heavy sigh.)

My new friend Momo, age 25, wrote this morning “sweeti, u r really something special” (spelling is his own).  I should believe this, understand it at a most cellular level, but the truth is I think I am rather ordinary. When it comes to being the focus of any male attention I feel like I should be looking behind me at the real source inspiring their words, I am overwhelmed and seriously under prepared. Having shut myself off for far too many years to count from the potential pain of being betrayed or hurt in a relationship all this is surreal to me.

Serhat’s reply leaves me breathless (unedited).

“Your reply proved that how true my decision; I sent message to you. I am sure you know everting about man, how to make him happy. 🙂 you are so cute thank you for your nice message. I want to date with woman that older than me at least once.. ı havent dated yet. But if ı date she should be like you. İf you havent planed your vocation you can take into consideration izmir also. it is really nice city you can search from web. and I can take you to showing around , be sure if you are with me anyone can’t it beter 😀 ( maybe litle bit embellishing) but ı am sure ı can make you happy. (by the tis way ı have a car) maybe it is litle bit rude but ı should mention that because it is big easiness to reach somewhere. ı can make a food for you that girls always says “delicious.” if you dont think to come izmir it is not problem first year of next year ı will go to riga (latvia) as a student maybe ı can go to sweden from riga to see you. ı have saved you as my favorite see you”

This is all on the assumption that I am successful in making Stockholm my home.  From my agreeing to meet for tea when/if I should make my way to his native Turkey (which isn’t such a reach as one of my dearest friends in the world lives there) to the above.  But it is lovely, isn’t it? In a world where we are so cynical about everything the kindness and enthusiasm being shown to me makes me want to believe that somehow I have fallen through the best kind of rabbit hole and time has stood still, that I am like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray without all the debauchery and moral repercussions.  Or, maybe something else is really at the root of this.

Concurrent with the decision to get serious about finding love, I discovered a British man (age 26) name Matthew Hussey. Matthew is a life coach, dating guru and author whose universal wisdom exceeds that of men twice his age, he is also spot on in identifying ways to foster success in dating (for both sexes). I don’t need most of his practical advice about body language, confidence and self-esteem but I find the habit of receiving his blog posts reassuring as I navigate these oceans again.  But I think that just maybe (as Matthew challenged mom’s to help establish a standard for how women should be treated by raising their sons ‘properly’) men in their twenties have learned the new paradigm of courtship. They don’t seem to be hung up on the number but (in my new, limited experience) are really interested in the woman, who she is, how she thinks, what makes her heart race, how to make her feel like a goddess. I know it’s narrow in my view to assume men (even in) their forties are clueless (let alone older than that, men who are my peers and older still) but it strikes me that the confidence and bar no holds attitudes of reaching out and making it clear what they want belongs uniquely to the domain of twenty-something men.  Even as I am trying to politely extract myself from dating men less than half my age I am exploring the kind of man I do want – regardless of his age. There is a line from Steve Lopez’ The Soloist which resonates with me on my journey “… I’ve learned the dignity of being loyal to something you believe in, of holding onto it. Above all else, of believing, without question, that it will carry you home.” I am loyal to the idea that while I am not perfect, nor is it likely that the man I eventually find will be such, I believe that some place in the world a man exists that is perfect for me.

To which point I finally took a deeper look at my potential suitor’s profile and discovered we actually have a great deal in common.

“Thank you, truly. You have a vibrant wonderful smile and what shines through is your happiness and joy for life. I am, again, deeply flattered that you have chosen me and find my profile worthy of saving to your favorites. I will do so as well and will keep my promise. So, yes, if not Izmir then definitely Riga or Stockholm.”

I don’t know how, in the space of 24 hours it goes from:

“I will be waiting you.”

To his creation of a private Facebook page (we are the only two members of the group, and he migrated it from being a closed group to a secret one within an hour) but it has. Here he is sharing his family and friends and providing links to their Facebook profiles, essentially bringing me into his world and making himself utterly transparent in the process.  It might be the one truth we can all agree upon that “On the Internet no one knows if you are dog” but in Serat’s case he is proving that he is certainly a man worthy of knowing in the real world.

If you enjoy my blog please share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you!