Relationships

Do you read the women's sports pages? The New York Times refers to it as The Sunday Styles Section. Can you imagine that?

Anyway, it's the Times' play by play of life in the fast lane.  The ultimate scorecard is how many fetes one can attend, coupled with who wed whom.

There are pages and pages devoted to marriage announcements. Additionally, there is always a highlighted story, I think it is called modern vows, that gives an in depth back story, apparently worthy of devoting paragraphs to explain.

They met, they dated, they broke up, they reconnected, they broke up again, they married others, they reunited, they wed. They lived happily ever after. We hope, because we really don't know, except that every so often the Times revisits these highlighted stories to see how the marriage held up. Some well, alas, others, not so well.

Too bad.

But, as to the stories about folks who knew one an other in an earlier lifetime, parted and then found one another for a second go around, I thought maybe I should revisit ghosts from my past.

The major challenge was,  of course, remembering names.

So, with a little Google look here, and a facebook look there, e i e i o, (too much time with grandbabies??) I came up pretty empty. Did they all the guys from my past fall off the earth? Did I only know non accomplished people? Are they so wildly successful that they live anonymously? Did I actually remember the right names?

But then,  I thought, was there actually a first go around worthy of a second go around? Hmmm, not so much.

However, if someone from my past is reading this, and thinks we actually did have a connection once, wishes for a waltz down memory lane…..I'm here.

I can't wait until next week to read the comments provoked by the modern love article Those aren't fighting words, dear.

Let's start with the husband's declaration. "I don't love you anymore." While she felt "sucker punched" she determined that his disclosure, ultimately, was based on his mid life meltdown…she resolved to quietly and determinedly go about her life without shrieking, demanding explanations, and simply waited for his "tantrum" to pass. A saint, right?

I wonder if she would have been so forgiving if he told her she looked fat in her jeans?

I suspect there was a ground swell of murmurings, mumblings and musings by many a marital unit, who might have happened upon this article.

"Let's see" said one spouse, to the other. "I can stay out without explanation, forget birthdays, and be a general all around shit, until I decide not to be." "Yes" was the reply. "I will be oh so patient, waiting quietly, demurely and hopefully until you see the error of you ways."

The author of the article gave this plan of hers 6 months. And he came around. He was back, mowing, painting the porch, fixing the door.

So what do you think?

I guess if your house is in pristine condition and you've got a mate that only feels useful when wielding power tools, you might have to wait longer than 6 months.  In the meantime you can get fitted for your sandals and sainthood robes. Halos are on back order.

Superstitions I find it bizarre that friends (are they actually friends?) are compelled to send off notes that are fundamentally somewhat inane and then tell you that you will have terrible things happen to you if you don’t copy, paste and forward it on to an additional ten people, whom you obviously don’t like, either.

So, I don’t.

 

Then I wait for something horrible to happen to me. Since it hasn’t, so far, I imagine I have once again, escaped the wrath of the “why didn’t you send this on” Gods. But I do think my days of this are probably numbered, and might have, sometime in the not to distant future, torture a few of those I know, with a forwarded call to action email. Just to be on the safe side.

 

And it is the concept of “just to be on the safe side” that confounds me. We knock wood, we throw salt over our shoulder, we avoid walking under ladders, and will do other rituals to ward off a bad thing happening.

 

Some of us have a talisman.

 

Don’t you love that word? Awkward to gracefully put into a sentence, i.e. “She carried her love letters, written to her, so long long ago, like a talisman… Since it is defined as an object, a charm or some such thing, to bring comfort and solace, we tend to be much more sympathetic to that activity.

 

My comfort comes from my credit cards. Wonder if that counts as a talisman?

 

Helluva headline. 

It was one of many absolutely incongruous, to me anyway, sentences in this aforementioned article Testing Evolution's Role in Finding a Mate.  

The article begins reasonably, with an explanation of scientist's prior belief that mate selection is evolutionary. "Women have a vested interest in reproduction, hence they don't want to select a dud for a mate." Liked the way that sounded, but witnessed by the divorce rate, single parenting and the like, it appears that evolution has, for sometime now, lost ground as an argument. 

The article goes on to talk about how Speed Dating is a living laboratory to test new hypotheses about mating. In one case, the scientists were looking to see whether men or women were choosier. Speed Dating, for those not in the know, is musical chairs without the music. But with the chairs. You move from one chair to another, face to face with a stranger for 3 minutes, move to the next chair and the next person. At the end of this totally ridiculous activity, you apparently then let it be known whom you would
like to see/speak to/sit opposite/again. It went on to talk about more research that made absolutely no sense. Example, men's preferences for occupation, height and smoking had little effect on whom they asked out. 

Would what the woman looked like be a factor???? 

The only substantive piece of info I gained from this particular article was about being fixed up as a way to meet people. Oh, it wasn't the being fixed up that was substantive information….it was the "if you know 20 people and each of them knows 20 other people, and each of them knows 20 other people you are connected to 8,000 people. 

20 to the third power is 8000. I may need that info someday. 

I’m Liz Gerson Glatzer.

Richard a and liz1  Having recently turned 60 (how long can one use the word recently, do you think?) I have the dubious distinction of being part of the first generation of Baby Boomers.

I went to Wikipedia, not exactly the arbiter of always accurate information (gotta love alliteration) to see, nonetheless, what the conventional wisdom might be about us.
We were born in the 40’s, came of age in the 60’s. Spent the next 20 years either marrying and having children, building careers, or both. Now, reported Wikipedia “they are in a state of denial regarding their own aging and death and are leaving an undue economic burden on their children for their retirement and care.”

Yup, all the above applies. I’m a Boomer.

And then I thought that the 30, 40 and 50 year olds that I know are also wrestling with the same issues us 60 somethings are…Dating, for some of us;  sustaining a terrific marriage, or grappling with marriage, for others of us;  the effects of gravity, for all of us.

Having said that, it seemed to me if we could share our thoughts we could chuckle our way into the next decade, or two, and beyond.

The comment link is to share your stories, which I really invite you to do.

Hope that you enjoy my streams of consciousness.

So, let’s begin.

 

Cartoon images on aMusingBoomer are from Cartoonstock.com

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