Research shows that the older we get, the happier we are. I know, it sounds counterintuitive. You never see old folks flailing around with uncontrolled glee in Mountain Dew commercials. At best, you might see them in Cialis ads, doing a gentle waltz before doddering off for a little missionary position. Sometimes you see them on sailboats because they’ve retired filthy rich by selecting the right investment counselor.

But as I enter my doddering missionary years, I find that I am, in fact, generally happier than I have ever been. Sure, I still wake in the middle of the night filled with free-floating anxiety and dread, still find myself racked with feelings of inadequacy, still fret far too much over the impression I make on others, but those are just hobbies. For the most part, when I step back and survey the life I’ve created, I have to say, “Not bad.”

In a way, though, this new found satisfaction is a liability because I'm increasingly impatient with gloomy people who have locked themselves into a misery schtick and don’t seem interested in finding their way out. This is a particular problem because in the past, these were kind of people I chose as friends. Misery does, in fact, like company. But now that I'm no longer miserable, I have a handful of friendships I don't know how to continue.

I’m not talking about people who, like me, enjoy recreational bitching and moaning. Again, I consider that a perfectly viable hobby, although I now prefer it be diluted with occasional happy talk. I’m talking about people who are chronically dissatisfied with their lives and refuse to take hold and make changes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People suck. Life is disappointing. Money is tight. We haven’t lived up to our potential. Relationships are hard. George Bush is a butthead.

But the temperature here in Dallas probably won’t hit 100 again this year. The State Fair starts Friday. Sarah Palin provides ample fodder for recreational bitching and moaning. And there’s a new episode of Mad Men on Sunday night.

Life ain’t so bad in the day-to-day.

OK, I do feel bad about eating Popeye’s for dinner last night but this, too, will pass.

I’m sympathetic to misery. I’ve been headshrunk and medicated and self helped and group therapied and all that over the years. And it all works. So does exercise. So does identifying goals and working towards them. So does stepping back and taking inventory. (The expression “count your blessings” makes me want to hurl, so I won’t say that.)

I’m sure I’ll be unhappy again. I am genetically and temperamentally disposed to recurring unhappiness. But when I feel it coming on, I rally all the resources I’ve gathered over the years and fight back.

You can too and probably should because I promise you: If you’ve been unhappy for a long time, you’re friends are tired of hearing about it.

(Hm, I’m griping about gripey people. How confusing.)

OK, here’s some food for thought. My second-favorite podcast (after This American Life) is called All in the Mind. It’s an Australian radio show about all things related to the brain and mind. Natasha Mitchell is a wonderful interviewer, the topics are fascinating, the guests are top-of-the-line.

The show recently had a two-part series of brain plasticity, which is the ability of our brains to change even into adulthood. In Part 2 (here), Mitchell talks to psychiatrist Dr Norman Doidge about plasticity as it applies to psychotherapy. Think therapy is just a lot of self-indulgent blah-blah? Scientists are beginning to home in on actual neurological changes that take place in the brain as you do the work. (And yeah, it is work. Hard work.)

So there.

Get happy, people. Or risk getting on my nerves.

Labels: brain science, personal growth, psychology

What I’m wondering today: Are there really people in the world who can spend an evening socializing and then NOT go home and chew over everything they did or said or didn’t do or didn’t say that made them look like an dolt?

You would think at my advanced age I would be long past such pointless anxiety, but no. Every social occasion for me is an opportunity for varying degrees of self-loathing. I talked too much, I talked too little. I was too loud, I was too aloof. I asked too many questions, I didn’t ask enough questions. I acted like a dope, I acted like a smarty pants. It’s always something. After any social event, I wish desperately for a do-over, during which I would be an entirely different person. I promise. Just give me another chance.

It's a form of narcissism, this delusion that all eyes are on me. Rationally, I know most people are busy enjoying themselves or worrying about their own presentation or wondering when they can go home or thinking about what to make for dinner tomorrow. Everyone has a million better things to do than scrutinize my behavior. I’m incidental to the movies in which they star, their own lives, as I should be.

But irrationally, when I’m back home, my head is full of invented conversations about the cloddish and irritating embarrassment that is Sophie.

Geeze, I sound like a teenager. When I yearn to stay forever young, this is not what I have in mind.

What is the secret to self-confidence, please?

Labels: memoir, psychology

First of all, I have a zit. A real, bona-fide, pubescent-style zit. Right in the middle of my cheek. That’s not fair. I can’t be middle-aged and have a zit. Where is the justice in that?

So, my online goofing off has given me further fodder for contemplating marriage. Here’s an article about a new book called "The Marriage Benefit: The Surprising Rewards of Staying Together" by Mark O’Connell, a marriage therapist and clinical instructor at the Harvard Medical School.

O’Connell doesn’t argue that all marriages are worth saving, but his focus is on the benefits of long-term intimacy. I like this excerpt:

He explained that scientists have discovered that the first 18 months of any romance effectively are ruled by body chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin. "We think everything that follows is a compromise."

Lordy, ain’t that the truth.

And:

What O'Connell and marriage therapists hear a lot is that one or both spouses in a marriage feel bored or that they know everything about the other.

"The underlying assumption is we know each other so well," said O'Connell. "That's baloney. We are endlessly complex and always changing. Once romance wears off, we tend to block the complicated places within ourselves, those places where we are most scared. In that way, boredom is sort of dynamic self-protection."

In other words, as I understand it, sometimes it's fear of knowing ourselves and facing our own shortcomings and bogeyman that cause us to turn on our spouses.

More interesting than the article is this radio interview with O’Connell. I find the show host annoying but it’s worth a listen.

One fascinating point O’Connell makes is that marriage (and by that he means long-term monogamous relationships—the callers kvetching about marriage as a legal arrangement are missing the point) make us less narcissistic. In a way, I think, even more so than children which may require people to step outside their own needs but which are an extension of ourselves. (And by “our’ I mean “your.”) Marriage requires us to voluntarily support the well-being of another person without the biological imperative of parenthood.

He also speaks about the terror we all fear when we really do love someone, when we reach the point where we would be devastated if we lost that person, which we inevitably will, one way or another. As I understand it, he believes fear of vulnerability may be behind some resistance to marriage. When we love that deeply, we may someday hurt more. And that's scary shit.

Labels: marriage, personal growth, psychology

Among the many newsletters and sundry mishigos that come to my Inbox is a newsletter called Everyday Health. I don’t remember subscribing to it but I’m sure I did at some point and it’s just interesting enough just often enough for me to keep the subscription through periodic subscription culling.

The topic on Saturday was cognitive distortions, which seems appropriate in light of my foul mood this week. Read it here. I’m sure distortions are playing into my inability to wrestle my mind back to its happy place. (That and not enough yoga. I’ve been neglectful of my practice.)

Of those listed, All or Nothing, Mental Filter and Leaping to Conclusions are probably my pet distortions—and they all lead me straight to the cesspool of shame. Which somehow eventually drags me to anger. Or maybe the shame and anger are unconnected. I’m not sure yet and I’m too busy this week to thoroughly chew it over, but I’ll think about it.

The article goes on to discuss recognizing your distortions and distracting yourself from them. Sounds like worthy work. I'll try to get around to it...

Last night I hooked up the radio and listened to SuperNanny during our walk, so Jack had an easier time of it, although his lollygagging remains incredibly annoying.

Labels: personal growth, psychology

Instead of getting flotsam on your asses today, I’ll be deep instead. I’m a little rushed so I might be shallow in my deepness, but just because it’s on my mind…

A friend and I have been discussing love—what is it? Can it be defined? Should it be?

I’m a fan of M. Scott Peck’s iconic self-help book The Road Less Traveled in which he defines love as “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s or another’s spiritual growth.”

I always liked that, although my definition of “spiritual” may not be the same as yours. But I do believe love means helping the other person grow—in the direction he or she chooses. That’s pretty key. “Helping” your loved one grow in ways you choose is not love, it’s control. And I like that Peck’s definition of love requires some sort of action, some effort. To my mind, love without action is an empty word--even if sometimes that action means walking away. (If you love something, let it go and blah blah blah.)

My friend likes Robert Sternberg’s theory of three types of love: romantic, companionate and commitment. That also makes sense to me, and the two definitions aren’t mutually exclusive.

But she also questioned whether defining love at all is wise, since it invites judging other people’s relationships. Who are we to say whether another couple is loving or not when we don’t and can’t live in their hearts, minds or relationships? Good point—we can’t know what makes someone else’s relationship work (or not work, for that matter) and to condemn something we don’t understand is just bigotry. And stupidity.

But I would argue that there is benefit to guidelines on what love is and isn’t because a lot of people seem to get confused. Women in abusive relationships sometimes believe their menfolk are driven to abuse because of deep love. Some people confuse sexual desire for love. Some people think that love is static--that once it is declared it need not be tended. Some people think love=drama. (I thank pop culture for that, since companionate love is rarely depicted, except occasionally in country music.) That would probably be my love vice.

But I’m pretty careful with the word “love,” as I am with the word “friend.” I don’t slap it on any old attraction until I’ve thoroughly parsed it.

Tom and I love each other and, I’m sure he would agree, it’s not always easy-cheesy. It’s not just a matter of deciding it, declaring it and getting on with our lives. Sometimes love requires conflict. Sometimes it requires sacrifice. Sometimes it requires boundaries. Sometimes it requires restraint. Sometimes it requires courage. Sometimes it requires saying, “I’m sorry.” (Take that, Ali McGraw.) All of which require effort.

Labels: books, personal growth, psychology, relationships

Alrighty then, lots of flotsam for your procrastinators today. A little something for everyone. (Maybe. I don’t know.)

I am happy to report that the incorrigible Jack has become partly corriged. He has adjusted to the electric fence and no longer wanders at will. No more crossing the creek and coming home muddy, no more chasing off the mailman, no more patrolling the alley and riling up the other dogs. He doesn’t seem particularly traumatized by the limits. Perhaps the responsibility of patrolling so large an area weighed heavily on his burly shoulders and troubled his large noggin. His own yard is large enough. So many squirrels, so little time. And so much napping to be done. How is one dog to do it all without some limits?

Now I need an electric fence for the sofa. He is not allowed on the sofa and knows it, but at night, after we go to bed, he helps himself. At the suggestion of one of his many trainers, I tried booby trapping it last night by covering it with newspapers and balancing a couple beer cans filled with coins on the papers, which were supposed to fall off and make noise and either frighten him off or wake us up. They did neither. He managed to fit his large tuchus between the cans, barely even disturbing them. So, back to shutting him out of the living room at night. He hates that. The other night, I had to put his leash on him and drag him out. Literally drag him—he put that aforementioned large tuchus on the floor and wouldn’t move it.

Brat.

***

Slate has a special issue on procrastination (speaking of blogging) which includes this story, asking the question What is the difference between severe procrastination and writer's block?

So, I have this novel I’ve been working on for about three years. I’m in revisions. Ten painful pages at a time. And a half-finished book proposal that’s been collecting cyber dust for more than a year. So slow. I could do better. I know it. I’m not blocked, I’m procrastinating, Because as long as these remain remain unfinished they might be brilliant. If I finish them, their lead feet will be obvious.

Says one expert: "The chronic procrastinator knows he's presenting a negative image, but he'd rather be perceived negatively for lack of effort than for lack of ability."

***

The research corner:

Important news about men and their thingies: First, the International Society for Sexual Medicine has only just come up with (no pun intended) a formal definition of premature ejaculation. I know, can you believe it? I personally have never encountered this particular problem but in case you’re wondering, it is now defined as: “a male sexual dysfunction characterized by ejaculation which always or nearly always occurs prior to or within about one minute of vaginal penetration; and, inability to delay ejaculation on all or nearly all vaginal penetrations; and, negative personal consequences, such as distress, bother, frustration and/or the avoidance of sexual intimacy.”

And, says the study’s main author, “The hope is that more people with these symptoms will understand this is an actual health condition and seek treatment. They no longer need to suffer in silence.”

In related thingie-research: Gastric Bypass Surgery Restores Sexual Function in Morbidly Obese Men—Losing weight may help resolve erectile dysfunction in obese men.

Mostly, it helps them get laid more, I assume.

Having just experienced a highly unpleasant allergic reaction to a drug (my friends got all the gory details, I spared most of you) I was drawn to research into why scratching helps an itch. The study involved 13 healthy participants who underwent testing with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology that highlights areas of the brain activated during an activity. Participants were scratched on the lower leg with a small brush. The scratching went on for 30 seconds and was then stopped for 30 seconds – for a total of about five minutes.

“To our surprise, we found that areas of the brain associated with unpleasant or aversive emotions and memories became significantly less active during the scratching,” said Yosipovitch. “We know scratching is pleasurable, but we haven’t known why. It’s possible that scratching may suppress the emotional components of itch and bring about its relief.”

So scratching is not really physical relief, it’s emotional. Which, when you think about it makes sense. Itching is so miserable … a persistent itch makes you want to scream, cry, bang your head repeatedly against a wall. Finally succumbing to the urge to scratch? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It’s more than physical relief. It’s bliss—however short lived and guilty, since we know we shouldn’t scratch.

The rash is fading and I will never take Aleve again.

Here’s a fun read from the Wall Street Journal, about retail therapy. Yup, psychologists and neuroscientists are studying that, too. Not to help us, mind you. To help retailers.

But keep this in mind—just like those little 100-calorie size snack packs of cookies and other treats can help us eat less, how we carry money can help us spend less, according to one study: Students were given $100 in pretend cash to participate in a gambling study. Some students received one sealed envelope with all the money, and others got 10 sealed envelopes that each contained $10. Individuals with multiple envelopes tended to spend less, sometimes half of what the people with the single envelope spent. "The power of partitioning can reduce spending by 50 percent," Cheema said.

I don’t like carrying lots of cash for this very reason. If I have it, I spend it. If I have to go back to the ATM, I become more aware of my spending. (And I am on near-lockdown on credit cards right now. Not complete, but I’m staying careful. Baby needs a new tank of gas…)

***

Dunno why it’s taken me so long, but I’d like to point out a new blogroll link—to the blog of my friend Jenna and her friend Rachel. The Haiku Diaries is commentaries on life entirely in the 5-7-5 format. It’s so much fun. I like to comment in haiku when I’m feeling sharp enough.

***

This week instead of just a list of google searches, a little commentary on a select few.

Again, numerous searches for crossdressers in saris this week. Is it possible these are not just fetishists? I found a New York Times article about a Pakistani talk show host: Ali Saleem may have devised the perfect, if improbable, cover for breaking taboos in conservative, Muslim Pakistan.

In a country where publicly talking about sex is strictly off limits, Mr. Saleem has managed not only to bring up the subject on his prime-time television talk show — but to do so without stirring a backlash from fundamentalist Islamic clerics.

And he has done so as a woman.

In a sari.

I haven’t found anything similarly uplifting about searches for women peeing in saris.

On a related subject, I came across this Q&A from a woman who planned to cross dress her husband for a party because he lost a bet. Responders were not impressed.

I find a lot of searches that look like this: 2008 contact emails of the doctors @yahoo.com in Florida; email contact women's america 2008@yahoo.com

I was baffled until learning that these are the kinds of searches used by spammers to harvest email addresses. OK, that would explain the ever-thickening blizzard of spam I receive.

Three of my photos have become very popular: the one of a pyramid at Teotihuacan, the portrait of a xoloescuintle and the plastic army men war atrocities. These turn up so often, I assume someone is using them for something somewhere, but I can’t figure out how to figure it out.

Someone searched hillary jillette cunt which I suppose relates to Hillary Clinton and Penn Jillette. I know he called her a bitch. Did he call her a cunt, too? What a prick.

Someone searched Elizabet gilbert eat, pray, love review childfree, which is a little confusing.

Chelle, someone searched you. Someone searched my brother Oliver. And someone searched "black and blue" "rolling stones" tribute band dallas, texas myspace which had a very happy ending, since it resulted in a job for Black and Blue. May 31, Tolbert’s in Grapevine. Glad to help…

And that's Friday.

Labels: blogging, brain science, dallas morning news, dog training, dogs, google, jack, photography, psychology, research, sex, sexism, shopping, writing

So you know that old head game, don’t think about a white bear?

No? Well, don’t think about a white bear...

...now, what are you thinking about?

I’m trying not to think of the poor little poochy, but damned if that image isn’t locked and loaded into my head. It. Just. Won’t. Go. Away.

It’s not like I’ve never seen roadkill before. And it’s not like I’ve never seen an animal die before—Tom and I have had to euthanize four pets over the years and we wouldn’t dream of not being right there with them. I was even with my friend Russell when they turned off the respirator. I saw my brother in his coffin (he looked handsome and just like himself) and my mother (not good).

Nothing has haunted me like this little pup.

It was partly the violence of the moment. I won’t say more about what exactly haunts me because I find the thoughts so painful …

But I've been thinking now about soldiers. How do they ever recover from the experience of war? I guess they don’t, not really or completely. They must carry the images forever, if they don’t manage to repress them. (Yes, it's possible.)

This interesting article from Stanford discusses how women’s memories of disturbing, emotional images is stronger than men’s—that women tend to store the emotion of a memory in the same place in the brain as the memory whereas in men, the emotion and the memory activate different parts of the brain.

So I guess that might mean women wouldn’t make good killing machines, eh? Is that a good thing or bad? Discuss.

I am distracting myself as much as possible from the memory of that miserable moment Tuesday night. Lunch with my client yesterday was a lot of fun and productive. I held it together just fine. It’s only at quiet times that the image pops back up. I started crying during the final relaxation in yoga class this morning.(In unrelated good news, my tree pose was fine today so I seem to have recovered some balance.) However, it was good mental exercise to tear my mind away from the bad thought and bring it back to the moment—the music, my own breath. By wrestling my mind back to the here and now instead from the there and then, I felt immediately better.

Maybe little pup’s last moment has a little lesson for me. One I’d really rather have skipped. And so would he, I’m sure. If he’d had a chance to think about it.

Labels: brain science, death, psychology, the meaning of life, yoga

Don't read this if you don't feel like getting bummed out. (Does anyone ever actually feel like getting bummed out?) But I have to write it because it's all I can think about. (Besides, according to a recent poll discussed in this article, people get therapeutic value from blogging.)

Yoga isn’t competitive and you’re supposed to let go of all self judgment and listen to your body and bla-bla-bla—but all that aside, I really sucked in my yoga class last night. I got out the door late because I was having trouble getting my VCR (if I may be so old school) set to tape Idol (which also sucked last night) and then traffic was stupid and erratic so I arrived to the rec center late and then got stuck behind a slow moving lady screwing with her cell phone as I tried to scurry to class… I was all kerfuffled by the time I got to the “studio.” (It’s actually a conference room.)

My Tuesday night teacher does a lot of balance moves which I’m ordinarily pretty good at but last night, I could barely balance on two feet much less one. I was wibbling and wobbling and although I never actually fell on my ass, I couldn’t hold any of the poses. And the more that happened, the more annoyed and stressed I got (so un-yogi of me). Plus, the room was freezing, as is often the case, which is not ideal for yoga. (My teachers says it’s often too hot for her early class but then when she requests an adjustment, the arctic chill sets in.) Maybe it was the barometric pressure or maybe I’d eaten too much sugar this week (recall the late lamented coffee cake) or maybe my mind was too unbalanced which set the rest of me off balance, but it was one lousy evening of yoga. The only thing I rocked was the wheel, which for some reason I’m really good at. (OK, look at that photo. TMI right?)

After class my evening went from bad to worse.

Since Tom wouldn’t be home for dinner and the cupboards are bare, I figured I’d punish my incorrigible bod with Whataburger. Happily, my timing was right and the food was piping hot (don’t you hate greasy fast food that’s been sitting under the lamps too long?) but on the way home…

…oh, here I go, choking up again…

… I saw a little fluffy white doggie—it looked a lot like ZsaZsa (RIP)--get hit and killed by a car. I saw the whole thing happen and screamed—the car just sped on. I pulled over to see if it was…well, it wasn’t. It was clearly someone’s pet, all fat and fluffy and groomed. I put it on the median and sobbed all the way halfway home, then turned around and went back to make extra sure I couldn’t save it. Then I cried all the way home again.

Of course, my food was cold by the time I got home. So I sat on the couch and ate cold food and watched crappy Idol and cried all evening.

I can’t seem to shake the sad. It’s dark and rainy today and I keep thinking about that little pup lying on the median in the rain. Maybe I should have taken it and buried it but I was so freaked out, and someone will be looking for it, I’m sure.

I have lunch with a client today. Sure hope I can stop crying long enough to get through it. Poor little doggie.

Labels: blogging, blues, bummer, dogs, psychology, yoga

I was mesmerized (thanks for the great word, Franz Mesmer!) by this strange story in today’s Dallas Morning News about Carrollton mayor Becky Miller who seems to have a very active imagination. Unless proven otherwise (still waiting…) she has made up stories about being engaged to Don Henley, singing back-up for Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne, an imaginary brother who was killed in Vietnam—even the college she allegedly attended.

I don’t care about Miller, she’s not my mayor, but aren’t liars fascinating? What are they thinking?

I wonder if most liars get caught in their lies or if we all move about in a swirling soup of others’ undiscovered untruths.

Some lies don’t really matter. If she weren’t an elected official, nobody would care about Miller’s imaginary love affair with cranky old Don Henley. The only reason the story is noteworthy is because such a string of lies seems to lead to an unhinged mind, which might be considered a problem in an elected official.

I like Bill Clinton and honestly couldn’t care less who sucked his dick, but I was annoyed when he lied about it, despite believing he was inappropriately backed into a corner. I’m bummed about Hillary’s Bosnia fantasy, too. (And the whole gas tax holiday idea, but that’s something else.)

I’m a terrible liar. In fact, one might even suggest I’m truthful to a fault. No, I won’t tell you if your haircut is ugly or point out when you’ve gained weight, but I’m no good at saying “everything’s fine” when it’s not. I’m trying to get better at biting my tongue when something is none of my business but even that can be challenging for me if it’s something or someone I care about. Annoyingly—even to myself—-I seem to feel obligated to speak the truth as I see it, which often isn’t the least bit helpful. Mostly, it makes everyone, myself included, uncomfortable.

But telling tall tales like Miller did is beyond incomprehensible to me. What do they accomplish? Such tales wouldn’t boost my ego if I knew they weren’t true, and I would always wonder who could tell all along that I was lying and when I would be found out, stripped naked and laughed at.

My shame muscle is far too well-developed to want to risk that level of shame.

Clearly this is some sort of bizarre compulsion. But what does it accomplish? I’m bumfuzzled.

Labels: becky miller, bill clinton, hillary clinton, liars, news, politics, psychology

This NYT article asks, “Can you become a creature of new habits?” It ran in the business section but it’s so much more than that—it’s about opening our minds to their full capability.

The article says

… the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

And…

“The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”

Yeah, I’ve always been puzzled by the accusation of “waffling” as a bad thing. What some see as waffling, I see as thoughtfulness and an open mind. I’m a big “on the other hand” thinker. (And writer. I have to watch myself when it comes to that phrase—my first drafts are often terrifying multi-handed monsters.) What’s wrong with taking an idea and turning it around and around in our minds, reviewing pros and cons and even—horrors!—changing our minds in light of new information and perspective? That has to be better than locking into an idea and closing off all other possible views.

Still, although pushing ourselves into new patterns of thought is good, we are best if we respect our own ways of learning. I like learning quietly, on my own, with books and through trial and error. Some people prefer picking the brain of a mentor. Some people study best in groups, I study best alone in a quiet room. Different strokes … don’t make me do it your way and I won’t make you do it mine.

I’m also a visual learner. I took copious notes in my classes and sometimes during tests could actually conjure the image of a page to “see” the answer. Don’t even try to give me verbal driving directions. I need a map, or at the very least, turn-by-turn written directions. This is why I never stop to ask for directions. The minute someone starts explaining, my mind goes completely blank and the words sound like the grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa.

Another fascinating concept from the article:

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

Learning new stuff is really scary. Starting college in my 40s may be the bravest thing I’ve ever done. (Here’s an essay I wrote on the topic.) But it was in the stretch zone. It was uncomfortable, but involved books and ideas and writing, so it wasn’t too far fetched. Writing is definitely the comfort zone. The stress zone? Hm…probably that hang gliding lesson. No friggin’ way, thank you very much.

Finally, let’s contemplate the idea of kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements.

The moment we let go of the idea that we must fix/know/accomplish everything right away, now, not later NOW NOW NOW, we can begin the journey to accomplishment with that one, tiny step. When I decided to go to college, I started with “developmental” algebra (algebra for dummies). Just one class, at a community college. Scary—I long ago decided I can’t do math—but necessary and, one equation at a time, do-able. When I got through that, I was ready for step two. And then I kept going. And all sorts of new pathways developed in my brain.

Labels: brain science, learning, personal growth, psychology

Lots of flotsam today so let’s get busy.

First, shameless promotion: Black and Blue and the AllGood Café tomorrow night. Meet me there! The Dallas Observer advanced the show here.

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A month or so ago, my brother sent me this link to Missing Money, a site that searches for unclaimed property (i.e. money). He’d searched my name and found money owed to me. I went to the site, filled out the brief form and forgot all about it. Well shiver me timbers and blow me over—a check for $371 turned up in my mailbox last week! Try it.

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The email subject line said: Press release

The message said: Hope your readers find this press release of interest.

The press release was an attached Word document.

If ever a presentation begged to be ignored, it’s this one. A subject and message that tells me nothing, and an attachment from someone I don’t know. Maybe it’s a perfectly legitimate release with information that my readers would find of interest but I’m not going to investigate. Hit delete, get on with my life. The world is full of cluelessness.

***

Here’s a nifty little tip from the NYT tech blog. If you use Firefox, you can bring up the Quick Find box to search a page by just hitting the forward slash key (same key as the question mark). Seconds saved every week!

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Texas Tech University psychology department has launched a series of short podcasts about this and that, psychology-ish, featuring interviews with experts here and there. Here’s the homepage. They’re a little homespun sounding but that’s OK.

***

I don’t know why this story is buried on page 3 of the business section, but it’s big exciting news to me. Gas prices are causing people to “stampede” to small car. Can I get a HELL YEAH?

Unfortunately, this is bad news for SUV and truck manufacturers (i.e. American companies). But it's good for the planet, the highways and my blood pressure, since the mere sight of a Hummer makes it soar. I'm very sensitive that way.

***

Another of my pet peeves is the luxurification of the world. Have I discussed that before? How we seem to be devaluing all qualities—quaint, cozy, charming, kitschy—in favor of luxurious? It’s one of my favorite rants, I’m happy to go into it if I’ve neglected to rant it here.

Anyway, the DMN has a story this morning that seems to back my point, about a direct sales company called Home Interiors that was extremely successful until new owners decided to aim for the high-end market instead of the cozy low-incomers for whom the brand was developed. It didn’t work and now the company is filing for bankruptcy.

I love having my prejudices affirmed.

***

The snarky chick-oriented website Jezebel puts an interesting and believable spin on reports that the depression rate in women is twice that of men.

The Jezebel writer suggests that this isn’t because twice as many women as men get depressed but because women are so much more likely to go for treatment when they do. She speculates that many more men are depressed than ever seek treatment. If some dude is walking around depressed but undiagnosed, does he count? she asks.

It’s a good post, take a look.

***

Jezebel has also alerted me to a Ms. magazine article that sounds interesting, about self-objectification or "viewing one's body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze."

The post continues: More and more women are viewing themselves as sex objects, says Caroline Heldman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of politics at Occidental College, and it's due in large part to the veritable onslaught of advertising images that we're subjected to.

I think this is right on right on but the only solution offered, evidently, is to avoid media images objectifying women, but that would pretty much mean locking oneself in a dark room.
Read the post yourself.

I certainly wish I could stop constantly comparing myself with other women--both media images and women I see every day. It’s a miserable pastime, a distracting little drone in my head: I’m fatter than her…I’m thinner than her...fatter…thinner…fatter…fatter…older…younger….fatter…

What a useless waste of brain energy.

***
Hey, the cool website WorldHum linked to my post this week about how rising travel costs might discourage dabblers from traveling. OK, so I alerted an editor to the post in a bit of Shameless Self Promotion, but he liked it enough to link so that was very gratifying.

***
Finally, in what may become a weekly voyeuristic feature as long as I feel like it, this week’s Google searches that brought people to this site are:

xoloescuintle price

Thank God I books for sale Castagnini

inside the brain of a narcissist

Narcissist Bully

negative reviews of elizabeth gilbert's eat, pray, love

gmail emails not reaching their destination

derivation of lithium name

cashmere bouquet plant

customer support gmail

crossdresser in saree

outlook autofill subject line

mayeaux pronunciation

odd looking dogs

give me obama email adress and guest 2008@yahoo.com

Xoloescuintle Dog

jack kent cooke Conundrum

gmail to yahoo not getting sent

Labels: automobiles, beauty, black and blue, culture, economy, fashion, fat, feminism, flotsam, jezebel, news, nightlife, personal growth, psychology, public relations, rolling stones, sexism

We might as well discuss the shocking story du jour—that gang of girls in Florida who beat up another girl for YouTube fame.

First, allow me to say the obvious: Would the news media be all a-dither if the girls hadn’t been white cheerleaders with names like April, Brittany and Brittini? (Yeah, really.) I say no, but maybe I’m just cynical.

My developmental psychologist friend Lara, who studies popularity and aggression, has blogged on this issue with interesting new insights such as—“the combination of being popular and knowing that you’re popular predicts the very highest levels of physical and relational aggression in a given high school grade.”

You would think popular people would feel so secure they could afford to be nice, but I guess not. Actually, researchers find that being popular and being liked are two different things altogether.

I guess this isn’t surprising, when you think about it.

While popularity wasn’t a huge issue in my high school full of oddballs and artsy-fartsy people, it was big in junior high and I never felt that the really popular girls even liked each other all that much. Rather, they seemed connected in some sort of uneasy bond.

I was not popular in junior high school. The Dedes, Alisons and Amys made fun of me and singled me out for destruction in dodgeball. I wasn’t particularly crushed by this (although evidently, I’ve never forgotten) because I had my own friends outside of school. And that makes all the difference. I suppose not going to a neighborhood school (I was in a horrid private school at the time) helped, since I wasn’t always surrounded by people who didn’t like me. The popular girls lived on the Upper East Side, I lived on the Upper West Side. (Back in the day, this coded as “rich” vs. “not-rich.”) I had friends of my own who were grubby as I.

Among the things researchers know about bullying is that its negative consequences on the bullied are greatly mitigated if that poor soul has one friend. Just one is all it takes. Just one person to confirm that you are not actually the scum of the universe, the butt of all jokes, the whipping post for all. Just one to affirm your humanity.

In junior high, another oddball and I found each other and it then mattered even less that the other girls didn’t like us. Though Eve and I didn’t hang out together outside of school, we both discovered drugs around the same time and bonded over that, transforming ourselves from geeks to freaks and gaining grudging respect that way. (Again, the 1970s. Things were different then.)

Research into childhood abuse at the hands of adults similarly finds that abused children with one adult in their lives who can be trusted implicitly and who advocates for them, are more emotionally resilient than those who don’t.

Which brings me to an interesting op-ed in today’s Dallas Morning News that points out that the only people who can really save kids from kids is kids. Yelling and screaming at schools to end bullying is not productive. Rather, parents need to encourage compassion among their own children. (Unlike, say, the freakshow parents who joined in the MySpace torture of the girl who ultimately killed herself—what a chilling story that was.)

I remember sitting silently and pained a couple of times when school and camp oddballs were tormented—once overtly and once covertly—by the more fortunate. I still feel guilty. Speaking up is horribly difficult under those circumstances, especially for those of us who are not among the chosen.

It was easy in elementary school, when I was both liked and popular, to befriend the girl who was too shy to raise her hand in class and wet the floor instead. I had no fear then and could see past her oddness to her intelligence.

But when you’re unpopular and the attention is directed elsewhere, you learn to bite your tongue and be thankful that for the moment, you are safe.

But perhaps parents of outsider children can teach them of the power and safety of numbers—even if the number is just two.

The last line of Lara’s blog about the YouTube beeyotches is particularly disturbing to me. She writes, “Something tells me this story is being told and retold among their high school peers with a level of awe and respect that would make us cringe.”

Do you think this is true? Are kids this mean these days? And is this the kind of popularity to which outcasts secretly aspire?

If so, what are we doing wrong?

Labels: bullies, bullying, news, personal growth, psychology

So, I’ve been thinking about bullies and narcissists a lot, as they’ve been a recurring theme the past few years in various contexts.

Lara raises an interesting conundrum in her recent blog post about social/relational aggression, which is behaviors—rumor spreading, exclusion—we typically attribute to teenaged girls. A school principal recently told Lara that she was seeing a sharp and surprising increase in social/relational aggression from boys.

So, Lara speculates, is it possible that zero-tolerance anti-bullying programs are not eliminating bullying but just pushing it underground, into the guerrilla bullying we usually associate with girls?

And I wonder: Is it possible that aggression—physical or relational--can’t be stopped because it contributes to our emotional and/or moral development? Does it teach us lessons about survival? After all, the world is full of people who suck. We need to know how to recognize aggression and protect ourselves from it.

That’s what people who are bullied learn—if they survive the bullying. I know not all do, or they are wounded. Here we are yet again, at my favorite words for living: That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Because the first time you stand up to a bully and watch him or her shrink back, or the first time you realize you can deflect emotional blows with attitude alone, is a powerful moment.

But what of the bullies? If bullying itself is a developmental stage, what is it good for?

Some young bullies learn empathy, I’m sure. Based on nothing but what I would like to believe, I think some young bullies have epiphanies, a moment when they see something in the eyes of a target, or hear their words echoed back to them in a new way, or face a bully themselves and experience a compassionate awakening, when their hearts grow three sizes.

But some young bullies just grow up to be old bullies. These people, I think, are the narcissists. I don’t think all narcissists are bullies but I speculate that all bullies are narcissists because one of the hallmarks of narcissism is lack of empathy and one must be lacking in empathy to be intentionally cruel to another human being.

So thinking about all this got me thinking—can empathy be learned? Is an adult who lacks empathy capable of developing it? Is empathy a behavior, a thought or a feeling? (What is a feeling, anyway? Entire books have been written about that.)

Meandering through these thoughts, I stumbled on this little article about mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that respond equally when we perform an action and when we witness someone else perform the same action.

In other words, when we see someone else do some things, our brains light up as if we were doing that thing ourselves.

The main reason I have trouble watching violent movies is because I have sympathetic pain. If I see hurt, I hurt. Physically. I can’t even listen to people describe dental procedures. And as a child, I was big on sympathetic throwing up. If someone else hurled, I’d hurl in solidarity. Not all the time but it happened. Could that be overactive mirror neurons?

Research on mirror neurons started with monkeys and peanuts (doesn’t everything?) and is now to the point where researchers are looking at whether the neurons are triggered according to the intent of the action witnessed. For example, in one study, participants watched videos of a hand picking up a teacup.

In one video, the teacup sat on a table amid a pot of tea and plate of cookies--a signal that a tea party was under way and the hand was grasping the cup to take a sip. In the other video, the table was messy and scattered with crumbs--a sign that the party was over and the hand was clearing the table. In a third video the cup was alone, removed from any context. The researchers found that mirror neurons in the premotor cortex and other brain areas reacted more strongly to the actions embedded in the tea-party context than to the contextless scene.

Taking this research about a thousand stages from this, we could extrapolate that emotional empathy is also connected to mirror neurons—that thinking about the sadness or pain of someone else would fire up the mirror neurons so we feel the same in us. We would “feel their pain.”

Can this be learned? Now that brain science tells us that the brain is not a locked black box but can grow and change, I suppose this means it can, theoretically. I can’t think how, though. Nor would it would be easy—even if you could find an unempathetic person who believed it something worth learning. If you don’t care, you don’t care, right?

Labels: brain science, bullies, narcissists, neurology, personal growth, psychology

I’m feeling mighty puny today so I might not bedazzle you with my insights but I’ll do my best.

I’m generally a fan of Jezebel, a snarky site that takes on the news, media and celebrity through feminist eyes. Granted, their posts add up too quickly for me to keep up with—they’re the kudzu in my Google Reader—but I try to skim it every few days.

I was waaaaaay turned off, however, by this post, about kicking commentators off the list—they call it “Commenter Executions”. You have to be approved to post comments on Jezebel and according to the FAQ, you can be given the guillotine if your comments are, “excessively self-promotional, obnoxious, or even worse, boring.”

Wow, doesn’t this slip neatly into the Queen Bees stereotype of popular girls? It’s not enough that the arbiters of snark must boot those who don’t live up to their expectations. The executions must also be public and gleeful. Yuck.

Researchers into popularity, like my friend Lara, might call this social aggression and in its schoolgirl form (perhaps later in life, too, though I don’t think researchers have gotten there yet) it can be as damaging as wedgies and getting beaten up for your lunch money. Bullies is bullies, with fists or words. Or rolling eyes, or exclusion, or rumor mongering. Bullying takes many forms and it’s ugly in all of them.

Actually, if you perused my recent MySpace squabble you witnessed a beautiful example of social aggression/bullying. After all, who else but a bully would boast about mocking people who are weak?

I’m trying to continue enjoying Jezebel but don’t know if I can. I have no respect for bullies.

Labels: bullying, jezebel, personal growth, psychology, social aggression

Well, now that Mary has declared me funny in print, I will be contrary and write a morose blog instead. If you’re here for the first time looking for funny, then please come back tomorrow or go back to yesterday. There’s nothing for you here.

The topic du jour is suicide.

In the darkest days of my adolescence, I often indulged in the comfort of what the pros call “suicide ideation”—I thought about killing myself. On a pretty regular basis. It seemed like a pretty simple solution to all of it. Maybe I was a miserable teenage girl, maybe I was just a teenage girl. Dunno.

A couple of things people said kept me hanging on.

When I was about 13, Julie, a slightly older and equally melancholy friend, said that she thought the idea of “attempting” suicide was bullshit. “If you want to kill yourself, you don’t fail,” she said. We were on the hot back seat of the 104 bus, rumbling down Broadway. She stared straight ahead into her bleak future as she said it, and I knew she was right. I lived in a 12th floor apartment. If I really wanted to die, nothing stood in my way. Her words embarrassed me, forced me to acknowledge that as much as I found solace in the thought of dying, I clearly was not committed to the concept.

Many years later, I was hanging out in the Stromboli pizzeria on St. Mark’s Place, where my friend Steve worked. Steve was from a small town. “You know why I would never commit suicide?” he asked, leaning on the counter like a bartender. “There was a guy in my town who killed himself. It was terrible and all that, but after a while, everyone forgot. He probably wanted to make some kind of big point, but everyone just moved on.”

Yikes. That’s not an appealing thought, either.

Eventually, I memorized Dorothy Parker’s “Resume” and got on with my life. (Julie lives on, too. I think she’s a doctor or something.)

And as I got on with my life and moved past the bleak terrain of adolescence, I started understanding that the real problem with committing suicide is what it does to the people you leave behind. That is the immorality of suicide.

I’m on the topic because we just had a high-profile murder-suicide here in Dallas--a couple of movers in local politics.

I feel deep sympathy for the family and friends of the couple who decided their troubles were too much to bear. My heart breaks especially for their son, a senior in college, to whom they bade good-bye to in a phone call.

But because I did not know this couple, I feel free to indulge my anger towards them.

Perhaps more will be revealed over time, but according to newspaper reports, the Shaws were evidently driven to despair by life’s “turbulence,” according to a friend—much of it self inflicted. They had run up huge debts and Mrs. Shaw allegedly forged a letter from the Dallas County district attorney to avoid a debt and was facing a criminal trial. Mr. Shaw had prostate cancer, although friends said they thought treatment was working.

Yes, it sounds like they were having a rough time of it--I'm not being facetious when I say that. One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons is a guy standing in an hour glass that has the word "Life" written on it. Instead of grains of sand, bricks fall on this guy's head, one at a time. Bonk, bonk, bonk.

That's life.

Were the tribulations of the Shaws life really rough enough to justify what they just did to their son?

How self-absorbed. How cruel. How unnecessary, selfish, childish and cowardly.

In a way, I almost hope something really terrible in their lives comes to light, something that might somehow in some way justify this action, something that will let their son know that only the most dire circumstances would cause them to visit such a terrible tragedy on him. Debt? Unethical behavior? Hey, you were tough enough to do it, buck up and face the consequences.

When I was suicidal, I thought not committing suicide was cowardly. Now I understand that the reality is the opposite. (Except in the face of mortal illness. I have known people who have chosen suicide over an unavoidable and unbearable physical decline. I understand and respect that.)

I am also annoyed at James Ragland, who tried to be poignant about the Shaws but ended with a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar about the faces slaves wore to please their masters while inside they were in agony.

Slaves? C’mon. As far as I can tell, the Shaws were slaves only to their own aspirations. There is, of course, tragedy to their story, but they are not victims. They made choices to the very end. The analogy insults Americans’ mutual history.

P.S. This afternoon, a woman threw her two sons off a highway overpass then jumped herself. They all lived.

P.P.S. Required reading for all people contemplating suicide: Tad Friend's New Yorker article, Jumpers, about people who jump from the Golden Gate bridge. Not all of them die. One of my all-time favorite magazine articles.

Labels: dallas, personal growth, psychology, suicide

First of all, a day of cleaning and show music worked wonders. While I’m still not sure what to do next with my life, I am quite sure it remains worth living. Shall we dance? (One, two, three and…By the way, I used to keep a postcard of this photo of Yul Brynner on my bulletin board just ‘cause he was so damn hot.)

So, let’s get flotsam!

* Last night I saw a TV ad for a re-release of the Disney classic 101 Dalmations, which was touted as a perfect Easter gift. Um, since when is Easter a gift-giving occasion? Peeps. Peeps and chocolate bunnies. Those are Easter “gifts.” Let’s nip this in the bud right now.

* Product news release of the week:
Before you go to the restroom spray - POO POURRI

You think I could make that up? No, my friends, this genuine new product (being promoted by “Pillowcase PR—we’ve got you covered!”)

Basically, you spray this stuff into the bowl before you foul it and, "...essential oil proprietary formula creates a film on the toilet water surface, effectively trapping embarrassing odors.”

"Imagine . . . Not only not leaving odor behind but also not experiencing any odor while using the restroom. Could it get any better than that? People have said that this product has actually transformed their bathroom experience, and you know what we’re talking about."

Actually, the young woman in the photo here looks like she trapped her embarrassing odors by slamming the lid down and sitting on it. Or, considering the hat, it’s entirely possible her shit don’t stink.

* Which brings me to my next flotsam, this article about a young man in South Pasadena who managed to initiate a No Cussing Week in his town for the first week of March.

You may have noticed that I really enjoy profanity. Sure, lots of people consider it refuge for mini-minds but I can live with that. I’m comfortable with the size of my vocabulary and my intellect. But I enjoy “bad” words. I just do.

I have my standards—I’m not fond of motherfucker but I will toss out an occasional mofo, just for fun. I’m not crazy for cunt, but if I use it you can bet I really hate the bitch. And I do try to restrain myself in company who might be offended, although Mary assures me that my “screwed things up”—tossed out at dinner the other night with a bunch of her church friends---didn’t ruffle a feather. I think that’s the worst I spewed that night…

* How ‘bout these animals, competing in Amsterdam’s stiletto run. I can barely walk in those things…

* I enjoyed this column in my paper today about soul-killing teachers.
Man, who hasn’t had one (or more) of those? I love that this writer dared call them out.

* And finally, apropos to nothing, here’s a fascinating NYT article about the décor in therapists’ offices.

One of my longtime shrinks had a generic print of a Paris street in her office that was poorly framed and slipping in its frame. This picture framer’s wife could barely stand looking at it. Another, who I ended up breaking up with for various reasons, had framed on her wall the famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker magazine cover, View of the World from 9th Avenue. The print came up when I was ending our relationship because, I pointed out, this was a type of parochialism I left New York to escape. It just annoyed me. (So I moved to Texas, where no parochialism exists...)

My last therapist had hanging by her window what, after many months in her office, I realized was supposed to be angel wings, not lungs, as I’d always thought without giving it too much thought. She also had a quietly burbling fountain somewhere in the office. I always thought it was plumbing somewhere deep in the walls.

Well, that’s it for now. If any other flotsam drifts through my mind, you’ll be the first to know. But really, I should get something done today.

Labels: language, news, press releases, psychology

I got into a squabble yesterday with a friend who is in her early 30s. At one point, she told me I was “showing my age.” She meant it as an insult and I took it as such (and the situation degenerated from there) but I’m rethinking both her attack and my response.

The accusation as intended is a double-insult because it not only says I’m old, but also that my age is a bad thing. And admittedly, by taking it as an insult, I was perpetuating for myself the stigma.

I’m finally ready to push back.

Don’t underestimate the middle-aged broads. We are the insurgents.

I’m reminded of a Mediabistro party I attended a couple of years ago, shortly after the Dallas Morning News had massive layoffs. After frat-boy-about-town Tim Rogers made an unprovoked, unnecessary and obnoxious crack about my age, I wandered away from his exalted hipitude to be with my own, a group of pissed-off middle-aged broads (including several who had just lost their jobs) sitting at a table quietly plotting to blow shit up. We laughed and griped and laughed and plotted. No, we haven’t exactly blown anything up but we sure weren’t having a quilting bee.

Mediabistro parties, which occur in cities across the country, are infamous for their youth orientation. I’ve been to two in Dallas and felt marginalized at one and insulted (as described) at the other. When I was in New York once, I tried to get a colleague to attend one of the parties there and she declined, having had the same experience. I decided to stop attending Mediabistro parties.

But now I’m just pissed. Showing my age? Yeah, maybe I am—and it’s a competent, powerful and, once one comes to terms with the number, increasingly self-assured age. I've heard that as women age, they tap more into their masculine qualities and with men it's the opposite. Know what that means? We have a lot of personal resources to draw on. Power, baby.

Just because we’re not loud doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to say. I’ll go to the next Mediabistro party. Don’t want to bother with antiques like me? Fuck you and all your little friends. And let me know when you figure out how you’re going to stop your own aging process.

Don’t count us out, kids. Maybe we didn’t want to cram into crowded arenas and swoon for our candidate, but when it’s time to vote and caucus, we show up. And no, I don’t suggest all women my age voted for Hillary. But a lot of my friends did and I think we surprised you, yes?

Labels: midlife, personal growth, presidential election, psychology

I don't have anything fresh to say today so I'll say something stale. (For me, anyway.)

This column is a couple of years old but I never managed to sell it so I thought I'd give it away here, just because I've always liked it.

A long time ago I stumbled on a news release about research that said: "Couples who laugh together and intentionally reminisce about that shared experience are likely more satisfied with their relationship than couples who don’t have that reservoir of experience to draw on, according to research by an Appalachian State University psychology professor."

At first, the research seemed absurd. I planned to blog and mock it. I don't think I did and that's a good thing, because I remembered it when I wrote this essay.

Marriage of My Unnecessary Discontent

At a luncheon recently, I ran into an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in many years.

“Did you get married? I think the last time I saw you, you were about to get married,” she said.

I laughed. “Eleven years ago!” I replied. “The last time I saw you, I think you were pregnant.”

“My son is 11 years old,” she said. And so we agreed, it had been 11 years since we’d last seen each other.

That night, as my husband and I loaded our dinner dishes in the dishwasher, he mused, “We’ve been together 20 years. This year will be our 15^th wedding anniversary.”

Busted.

Well, I busted myself anyway, and confessed my mistake that afternoon. Tom looked annoyed and I don’t blame him – especially since this wasn’t the first time I’d forgotten how long we’d been married. I forget more often than I remember. Same with the date of our anniversary. I know it was July 4^th weekend, since we married in Dallas and it was the world’s sweatiest wedding. But the only way I can remember the exact date is by remembering 7/6, or ’76 -- the year of my high school graduation – which is evidently better seared in my mind that what most women consider the most important day of their lives.

As for the year – I still can’t tell you without doing some math. Let’s see, it’s 2006, we’ll celebrate our 15^th anniversary in July, so I was married on July 6, 1990. No, wait, that’s wrong -- 1991. I was never any good at math. I am better at marriage than at math, and yet I seem to struggle with that, too.

Am I ambivalent about my marriage?

Actually, I’m ambivalent about marriage in general.

I never thought much about marriage as a girl growing up on the Upper West Side, surrounded by artists and iconoclasts. I yearned for boyfriends, yes. I looked forward to discovering sex, too. But marriage? It just wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t, like so many girls, plan my fantasy wedding, I didn’t imagine the man I’d grow old with (unless John Lennon freed up). I had no visions white picket fences etc. I can’t explain that, except that I always liked to imagine myself different and different people didn’t do anything as bourgeois as marrying. (Besides, like the boys in the Squid and the Whale, I was led to believe that my family was swimming in a sea of philistines and only a certain amount of deprivation and artistic garret-suffering was an admirable life. A happy marriage was simply too cozy for that sort of thing.)

Perhaps I would have given marriage more thought – one way or another -- had I been a product of a divorced home. But in defiance of national statistics, my parents and my husband’s parents are still married to each other – although both sets of parents had a midlife split for a time. (Two years, in my parents’ case, around the time I graduated high school.) In many ways, I took my parents’ marriage for granted.

Yet I also am startled to find myself following in their connubial footsteps.

My husband and have no reason but love and compatibility to stay together. No melancholy experience of broken homes bind us to our vows. We are childless, so no dependents compel us to honor our troth. We both work, so neither of us is entirely financially dependent on the other (though, as a freelance writer, my quality of life would certainly take a hit if I should I be forced to live on only my own income, unless I managed to step things up considerably).

I’m not bragging. I’m puzzled. And, in a very strange way, a little ashamed.

When I read about yet another celebrity break-up, or about a woman with more than one husband in her history, or hear about a couple I know who is splitting, I’m supposed to be saddened, sympathetic, perhaps even a little bit smug. Oddly, I feel none of those things. Instead, I feel inadequate and threatened. Do these people know something I don’t know? Are multiple marriers more discerning than I? More adventuresome? More nuanced in their needs? More … interesting?

I recently read Gail Sheehy’s new book, Sex and the Seasoned Woman, which is full of women my age (47) and older who leave their leaden husbands to discover themselves, or who are abandoned by their husbands, leaving them free to discover themselves and their multi-orgasmic capabilities. Many of these women staunchly reported that weren’t interested in remarriage, that life was better, freer and more fulfilling on their own. And they were getting laid plenty, thank you very much. A few women in the book were married, but they were somewhat more opaque about their lives – protecting their husbands, I imagine.

Or perhaps, like me, they feel funny about staying unfashionable hitched.

Long-term relationships are only theoretically admired in our culture. Healthy ones appear only rarely in film and literature and almost never in pop music, except country (Kathy Mattea’s tearjerker Where Have You Been, Johnny Cash’s transcendent Memories Are Made of This). In popular culture past and present, new love is romantic, frustrated love is romantic, torch carrying is romantic. But long-term relationships are most often portrayed as stultifying, tainted by seething resentments and unspoken disappointments. Love is Jack and Ennis. Marriage is, well, their marriages. Harpies they can’t wait to escape. Disappointment and disillusionment. Ties that bind too tightly.

A couple of years ago, my marriage went through a painful stretch when my husband and I seemed to be careening towards the abyss of divorce in separate cars. To our credit we did (to torture the metaphor) both put the brakes on before it was too late and, with a lot of hard, self-revelatory work, eventually (to now beat it to a bloody pulp) traded our old jalopies for an improved, new-model marriagemobile.

As we worked our way back together, we found ourselves taking an informal and spontaneous months-long inventory of the running one-liners we had collected over the years – those little, inexplicable, you-had-to-be-there inside jokes we had accumulated with our memories and tossed out at appropriate moments.

“IT’S A MULE DEER!”

“That is not possible.”

“Did you WALK to Provincetown?”

“Feels good, though.”

“Pickles and olives in the SAME DISH?”

Nobody gets the jokes and we don’t try to explain them. It doesn’t matter. They belong to us. Each refers to a specific moment and, they are, in a way, the glue that held us together when in other ways, we were breaking apart. “That’s another one,” we’d say, each time one of us tossed one out and we would both smile. These little touchstones represent an important part of what brought us together – similar senses of humor and an ear for the absurd. And they represent history, our irreplaceable shared past.

One-liner by one-liner, Tom and I found our way back to each other. Oh, it took more than that, of course. Counseling. Difficult conversations. Time apart and time together. Determination. Courage. Blind faith. Fear of the unknown. Horror of dating again. (“If we were to break up, this would be our dating pool,” I said to Tom at a Neil Young concert. We looked around at a grizzled crowd of Hawaiian shirts and Mom-jeans and shuddered.)

Maybe I’m just afraid of intimacy. I suppose that’s the easiest explanation for the fight I have with myself not to flee from what most people spend their lives seeking. I’m sure that’s part of it but that’s not all of it. My fear of having a happy marriage is my own personal, inexplicable bugaboo. I push against it continually, even as I settle back into my revived marriage. Besides, don’t America’s divorce statistics tell me that by staying married, we are actually still being a little bit different from the norm? Isn’t divorce as bourgeois as marriage these days? And in what parallel universe do I imagine more happiness alone in a garret than with a man who loves me in a little stone house on three acres? Our marriage isn’t perfect but it has taken us this far, held together with his tolerance for my poor memory, my appreciation for his solidity (and tolerance), and a string of one-liners.

And, the more I think about, the more marriage seems less a solid form, an impenetrable brick fortress than -- like the atoms that make up matter – a dense collection of tiny moments comprising the whole. Marriage is forever, but forever is this minute, and this minute, and this minute and so on and so on for as long as Tom and I still laugh together, still look after each other, still maintain the magnetic field that keeps the moments together. Is that really so scary?

“What is it about us? How is it we’re still married when so many people get divorced?” I mused to Tom as we drove home from dinner at a favorite restaurant, not long after that luncheon where I’d lopped years off our marriage.

“What people?” he said, annoyed again. (And, again, I can’t blame him.) “Most of our friends are married.”

“I know,” I stammered. “But, you know. Celebrities… the divorce rate... so many people …”

“True,” he conceded. “Maybe people aren’t meant to mate forever.”

“I know,” I said, “It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with us. If we’re …”

“Lazy?” he interjected. I laughed.

“Yeah.”

We fell silent.

Later that night, as often happens, I fell asleep with the television on. I woke several hours later to the blare of some sort of X-games, the commentator shrieking into his mike. Tom awakened at the same moment, fumbled for the remote among the bedding and turned the television off.

“That was really loud,” I mumbled.

He chuckled. “Yeah, it was,” he said.

“Hey,” he muttered before dropping back to sleep. “I was watching that.”

That’s another one.

I smiled into my pillow as I drifted back off myself, feeling loving and loved.

And pleasantly married.

Labels: divorce, marriage, psychology, relationships

Something particularly peculiar happened to me on this trip to India. Well, actually, a lot of peculiar things happened but this particular peculiarity had nothing to do with India and everything to do with me.

I got homesick.

Honestly, this never happens—not homesickness per se. I always miss Tom. I sometimes get exhausted and overwhelmed. I often long for my own bed. I sometimes have trouble with one or more of my travel companions. (Many years ago, on a grueling trip in Australia, I was the press trip geek—the one person among a group who just doesn’t quite click with the rest. I'd never been the press trip geek before and it was awful. I called Tom from Ayers Rock, sobbing with exhaustion and insecurity. Insult to injury: The sniveling phone call cost me $70.)

But this bout of homesickness was different for me. It wasn’t in reaction to much of anything and it was all-out I wanna go home and see Tom and Jack and write and eat dinner and go to sleep in my own bed and not have to worry about all this strangeness RIGHT NOW!

This wave of misery hit me a few days into the trip, during the long wedding ceremony. The wedding took place over four days at a resort outside Hyderabad. While everyone was very nice, I didn’t know anyone well, including Catherine, who understandably was wrapped up in seeing old friends, leaving me mostly to myself. I was older than everyone in my group and I didn’t have any logical place among the ecstatic throngs of family or friends. I felt like a loose thread.

As a rule, I get lonelier in crowds than I ever do alone. And here I was in a crowd of strangers, far from home, feeling left out (this was partly self-inflicted, I’m at an awkward age). And I was jet lagged. And I didn’t have internet access to touch base with Tom, which always cheers me up on the road. (IM is a great invention for travelers.)

Thinking back, I can hardly believe what I did. I left the wedding ceremony early (it went on for hours, so I felt I’d seen a lot), went to the room, got in bed, and cried. I thought about Tom. I pictured Jack’s silly face. I imagined myself on the couch, drinking tea and watching Oprah while I write, as I do most weekday afternoons. I wanted to go home.

Oy vey, right? Here I was in the midst of a travelers’ wet dream—an Indian wedding—and I wanted to be at home, on my couch.

So, I’m of two minds about this.

The dark side implicates my increasing agoraphobia. When I’m not traveling, I spend a lot of time at home alone. I feel bad about that only because it’s the sort of thing society frowns on. Otherwise, I don’t care that much. Still, I am so reluctant to go out and interact with the world (ask Tom how hard it is to get me to go to the grocery store) that I have to worry about myself a little bit.

Will agoraphobia interfere with my desire to travel?

But there’s my other mind, too. And that mind was happy about this bout of run-of-the-mill homesickness.

After all, I started traveling 30 years ago because of certain feeling of rootlessness. “The outsider” has been my identity for most of my life, and I wrenched my roots from New York City with great intention when I started traveling, determined to become a citizen of the world. Some people do their seeking in church, I did it in a Greyhound bus.