serial monogamy

While I have been made fun of as a relationship addict before, I hadn't heard the term "serial monogamist" in any academic setting until last week. I was pretty sure it was just the kind label my friends had come up with for the vastly insecure and ridiculously needy person I can be to try and make me feel like my craziness had some legitimacy.
Turns out it does.
And turns out I'm not crazy.
At least not this time.
According to my biological anthropology professor, the entire human race is genetically built as an army of serial monogamists, jumping from one serious, long-term partner to the next, rarely settling with one person for life. While we psychologically and emotionally embark in the world to find that soulmate, biologically, we want to reproduce. So we're constantly at war with our natural instinct.
No wonder the world can be such a miserable place.

How is it that we continue to love in light of the idea that we are built to move on from it?

Every time we love, we hope it's our last. No one enters into a relationship of any kind thinking, "You know, this will end, and probably not so well." You don't buy a Rolls Royce with the intent, or even the thought, to crash it. In fact, you probably consider yourself such a great driver, or the car itself to be so magnificent, that it is almost impossible for it to be wrecked in any manner. Because you take such good care of it, wax it everyday, keep it locked up in a temperature-controlled garage, somehow that negates anything bad happening to it. We're in denial from the beginning, unreasonably optimistic for our own happiness, or else it'd be impossible to start if we knew the outcome would be terrible. In reality, the best outcome we can hope for in a relationship is that one person in it dies; the car just stops working. Or I guess if you want to cite the incredibly realistic film "The Notebook", then the best outcome we can hope for is to die simultaneously. And frankly, when I'm getting off the phone with someone I love, "Hope you die when I do!" doesn't seem to be the kind of romantic, endearing message I want to send.

By evolving to be unrealistically optimistic, we cope with the fact that all good things come to an end, and badly. By that I mean, we never want good things to end, so when they do, it's bad simply because it's over, and anything on top of this that goes wrong just adds to it. Our unrealistic expectations for our own happiness creates a blind spot. It's not huge, just enough to keep us somewhat ignorant of the tragedies in life. For example, if I tell you right now that in 500 years, everyone and everything you love will be dead and gone, your mind immediately discards that idea. Perhaps you're even angry with me for even mentioning it, for burdening you with the thought. "Why be so pessimistic? Don't focus on the future, live in the present."

Let's be real here: if I told you that you were going to die in 3 hours, and I knew it for sure, you would not be enjoying the moment. You'd run around calling every person you know to tell them whatever you really think of them, you'd be eating an entire box of donuts and having as much sex as physically possible. Think of the lottery, or gambling. Upfront, when we buy the ticket, they tell us that it's nearly impossible to win, that the odds are stacked against you, and yet, against all rationality and logical thought, we play. "Someone has to win, right? Why can't it be me?" As you quickly make up a bunch of reasons why you above anyone else should win this complete crapshoot, you're ignoring the fact that you and Joe the Plumber have exactly the same statistical chance of winning.

Crank up the intelligence, would be the first solution that comes to mind with all of this. Be more aware of the consequences of our actions and our environment. But without the blind spot, you've got a dying breed of humans drunk and stoned out of their minds, lying on the floor watching Dawson's Creek reruns and trying to forget everything awful about their existence, which would be impossible given that they have no filter. It's called depression. You would never start out in a relationship if the depressing end was staring you straight in the face. Thus, we'd never reproduce. Voila. Extinction. It's the process of evolution that's made us slightly stupid with optimism, in order to keep the race alive.

But remove yourself for a moment. A relationship ending cannot be considered bad (remember my earlier definition: anything good that ends ends badly simply because we do not want it to end so we're not getting what we want), it's just there. Everything ends. Everyone dies. And everyone will be alone when that happens. So let's know that somewhere in the back of our minds. Be prepared. Think about loss not just when it's happening, so it doesn't seem like then end of our lives when it strikes. Let's not let ourselves be crushed by the weight of loss. We will get up, and do it again. Not necessarily because we want to, but because we're built to keep looking, keep hoping, keep searching, and to keep going. Simply by being human, we are much stronger than we let ourselves be.

And on that warm and fuzzy feel good note, I bid you all goodnig....good morning.

bewitched, bothered, and bewildered

Today's Case: Can Eb actually control the universe with her thoughts? Evidence provided within the last week has raised questions, and thus we put it to a jury of her peers to judge whether or not she's got telepathy with the world.

Take these four scenarios:

Evidence A:
I was walking across the street in the middle of the night, stressing about what all those guys in three piece suits on Wall Street are worrying about right now: money...and more specifically, how I don't have any of it. Just as I am contemplating setting up nice box in the Lincoln Memorial and eating Kraft Mac and Cheese for eternity, a guy drives by in a black Porsche, roaring up 24th Street, and throws something out the window.
$20.00.
Granted, it was rolled up and dusted with a lovely white substance, but it was $20.00 all the same.

Evidence B:
Inspired by the fantastic film "That Thing You Do", I asked a friend of mine the last time they were really kissed. Not an "Oh hey my tongue is in your mouth and it kinda tastes like beer" kiss, but really kissed by someone. We determined it'd been quite too long for both of us, and that we didn't necessarily want Prince Charming, we just wanted to be reminded what a good kiss feels like.
Judging by the standing evidence, I'll the jury conclude that story for themselves.

Evidence C:
Lucky me got to interview Ben Kweller for WRGW last week. Turns out we have something in common: we both get intense nosebleeds at the most inopporutne moments, shedding amounts of blood that would make that whole sacraficial cutting of oneself for a divine blood offering in the Aztec culture completely painless, not to mention we'd be exceedingly popular with the deities.
Three minutes later, it looks like a murder scene in the station as my nose starts pouring blood.

Evidence D:
I have a class with a guy I used to date, and every day on the way, I pass his building. Last week I thought to myself, "Weird how I walk by his building to a class we have at the same time in the same place and I never run into him. Watch, now he's gonna walk out the door just cuz I said that."
Ask and ye shall receive.

Based on current evidence, I ask the jury to reach a verdict: Can Eb actually control the universe with her thoughts? She has now been asked on numerous occasions for unicorns, boyfriends, A papers, and a cookie. Unfortunately, it seems as though this power does not take requests. So is it something that links money, kisses, nosebleeds, and ex-boyfriends?

Has the jury reached a verdict?

I love you. Let's light ourselves on fire.

For the past week, I've been feeling a little lame about starting a blog. My friends Leah and Diego have funny, witty, endlessly entertaining and creative blogs to which I hold no candle, and I thought to myself, "What business do you have starting a blog? If you become one of those people all your journalism professors bash for being an 'uninformed informant', I will kill you." Plus, I had nothing to say and no one to read it. Which I hear are both essential components to the whole blogging deal.
Yet here I am, on the blogging bandwagon. How? Well, I was told. I was actually told "write this down!" today after a conversation that turned heads in the middle of 22nd Street. What better to write about than something somebody has already told you they're interested in hearing?
So here I am, honoring the wishes of a friend. A real friend.
And that's where this starts.
It starts with my definition of friend.

I find most misunderstandings, broken hearts, screams and shouts, tears, all start with two people who have fundamentally different definitions of whatever the concept at hand is. We fight in circles about what is "right" and what is "wrong", when really it's just how I see it versus how you see it. We both consider ourselves right, with no real intention of admitting to be anything but. So that's the foundation we're working with. Already, there's a disconnect. In the end, we decide either that the relationship is more important than getting our way, or not. But the definition gap remains.

My definition of friend is narrow. I know and like a lot of people. I do not have a lot of friends, and I don't think it's natural to, not by my definition. A true friend, a real friend, is someone I have given a part of myself to. "Take this. Don't break it." And, the most important part of the definition, is that the other person has given me a piece of themselves to me with the same openness, but also the same warning, attached. Cliche, I know, but sometimes you have to re-coin a cliche for yourself before you understand why it's a cliche. Anyways, that takes all the energy I've got on any given day, or in any given time in my life. So I've usually got one of these friends at a time. One true close friend. I guess the term "best" applies here. And I don't think any of the other people I know would be offended to hear that, or that they couldn't point out that person in their own lives at some point.

So I embark on this kind of friendship (my definition applied) with someone. We get close. Really close. And then I start to get nervous, because I can feel it, I can feel them slipping. It's like a curse-it's happened to me so many times, I can feel when someone is losing interest. Either we've been separated physically or, more often than not, they meet someone else. In my specific case, my best friends have been guys, and they usually meet a girl who will talk hockey and sleep with them, so I rapidly become about as obsolete as a first generation iPod. Sometimes I even warn the person it's going to happen, but so infatuated and wrapped up with being so close to another human being, they reach such an extreme high that they say they cannot possibly imagine ever betraying the trust and finding the relationship boring once I've spilled my guts.
And that's exactly what happens. Every time. Without fail.
Here's where I find my disconnect with the rest of the human population (it seems) kicks me in the ass. When I get to this point with someone, I give. A lot. My friend Wyatt used an extremely nerdy but absolutely perfect analogy: friendships are like venn diagrams. You give parts of yourself and your friends give parts of themselves, until you're inextricably connected. They don't work if both people don't give. You need to give. Either you need to start trusting the other person, or get out.
Getting out should never be frowned upon at this point in the friendship. If you can't commit, just go. The last thing anyone wants is to be lead on a leash past the point of no return and then left hanging off the cliff as they wait for you to pull them up like you promised. Too many terrible things happen in this world by pure accident. No one needs to create strife intentionally.

So I do that. I take it seriously. What I don't understand is why anyone would not take it seriously. It's an honest question I'll pitch to cyberspace: how is it that when you get close to someone, you can still manage to maintain all of yourself? How can you dehumanize the other half of the relationship to the point where you can walk away like leaving a puppy on a sidewalk? Is it pure selfishness? Is it a trust issue? Because, as it stands to me (and the one other person I encountered today who thinks the same way, and seems to care as much as I do about preserving that thought process), it's just selfishness. It's not being able to understand anything outside yourself, it's seeing the whole world through you-colored glasses. It's believing we live in a vacuum where friendships are experiments testing how much control you have over another human, and in the end your actions will have no lasting affect on the person standing next you.
Pardon my lack of eloquence, but that's disgusting.
What's so awful about it, is some people try to paint this as self-deprecating, thinking they are so "unimportant" that no one pays attention to what they do.
Well if that's not a cop-out, I don't know what is. You are now free of any responsibility for your actions because we are all supposed to pity you to the point of feeling guilty that we care about what you do. Guilty of caring. Guilty of wanting to want you. We now feel small for caring whether or not you call because apparently we're supposed to understand that you don't matter.
And that's just the way you are. Nothing personal, right?
Whoa.
Back up.
I delve into the Meg Ryan romantic comedy canon for my response: "I'm so sick of that. It was personal to me. What's so wrong about being personal? Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal!"
All anything IS in this world is personal! We are persons after all, aren't we? So any interaction we have will be, by definition, personal. When you leave, when you decide you no longer need my insecurities to inflate your ego, I will take that personally. I will be crushed. You will break my heart. If you stay and treat me like crap, take me for granted, I will take that personally. That will hurt. And there's no excuse in the world, especially "That's just the way I am, nothing personal", will fix that. You've already taken part of me away with all of you.
The worst part about it?
You'll be fine.
Since all that matters in the world is you and you'll always have that, you will never mourn the loss of a person and the part of you they took like I do. So while I might be morally "right" by the overarching values of society, I will still feel worse than you. You're probably conscious of about zero of this, but I will miss you a lot longer than you will miss me. I will think about you years down the line when I direct the show you created, watch a movie with the actor you look just like, or get the song you wrote stuck in my head.
And you will be thinking about what you've always thought about. You.

I've never met anyone quite in the same boat at such the same time as me-but looking at my friend on 22nd street, realizing that this incredible person had just been dropped as fast as hippies dropping acid, was like watching a heart break. Scratch that. I was watching a heart break.
Please. Someone be as outraged as I am that someone can look at their best friend sobbing and not lift a finger to comfort them in any manner, walk away without a scratch. I want to ask those people who walk, if you did that to yourself (since that's the only scenario I can imagine mattering to you) how would you feel? You're lucky you can't escape yourself, or I can't imagine how heartbroken you'd be.

Here's the bottom line: relationships shouldn't be that hard (oh, I can't wait to see how I get jumped all over for that one-stick with me). I don't mean you shouldn't have to work at them, nothing anyone ever has is worth anything if they didn't work for it. I just mean that you should be willing to. The incentive to keep up a very close relationship that has been through a lot should not be something in constant question, because the likelihood of finding someone else willing to be that close to you is so small. Those types of relationships should be the aspects of your life that make everything easier. But I guess for those whose world begins at the top of their heads and ends at the tips of their toes, those relationships are not necessary. They can encapsulate everything they need to survive in that space.
Oh, that I were so blissfully selfish.

I don't believe in god, per se. My belief, in a very small and very generalized nutshell, is that we have each other. Period. If you asked me to point to divine intervention in my life, it's the connections I've made with people. The trust I've found in friends and family (surprisingly and only later in life). That person holding my hand, listening to me complain, emailing me their notes from class. That's all we know we've got. Sure, you can believe in god. You can have faith that rocket-powered golden unicorns run our lives. I'm not downplaying anyone's beliefs here-they're powerful and valid. But this is about definitions, not merit. So what do you know? Or I guess the real question is, who do you know? You know your statistics TA laughs at you when you can't add in your head. You know that you and Ben Kweller both get nosebleeds at very inopportune moments. You know that you and your best friend of almost 21 years can eat two jars of nutella in one weekend with no silverware, thank you very much.
That's it.
And if that's it. The person next to you might as well be the last stop. Trust is religion, is faith, is believing in something bigger than yourself. Your connection with others might as well be god. If you don't re-evaluate this for any other reason, think of it as your last chance, as your heaven.
And next time I see you, next time you see your best friend, know they think of you as theirs.