Tag Archives: Men

by - 0 comments

Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Before the final round interview for my dream job, I went out to a handful of stores to find something I’d feel sassy and confident in. Considering how much I wanted the position, I knew I needed to not only study up and prepare intensely for the interview, but also have that extra kick that comes from an outfit that looks just plain killer.

It took a little time, but I ultimately found a pleated pencil skirt and silky top duo from H&M that seemed to fit the bill with some careful accessorizing. The morning of, my friend M came over to approve of the outfit I created (my personal fashion consultant who charges by the glass of champagne) and to come along with me, that way she’d be there once it was over. Mr. P was there in my apartment too, since he was visiting to wish me luck.

Standing in front of the mirror, I said to them: “I have something new (the dress), something old (the shoes), something blue (my cardigan) – but what about borrowed?” Instinctively as if he was waiting for it, Mr. P handed me his Chapstick (yes he carries Chapstick). I smiled and glanced over at M who was sweetly rolling her eyes at me. Mr. P asked as I applied his borrowed gift, “Are you going to marry this job?” I thought about it, pressed my lips together to make sure the gloss was even and said, “I hope…I do!” Mr. P kissed my head, told me to go get em’ Tigar, and headed to work. M and I caught the train after some prayers and some praises to the Job Fairies, and the next day, I got the call that would change my life.

The offer of my dream job. Tomorrow, I start.

Maybe it’s the way to pass time or to calm jitters, but I had a vision of wearing a blue dress on my first day. I wasn’t sold on the idea until my mom called to say she had the same prediction and that it was an astrologically-sound color, so I quickly went on the hunt for the perfect one. Turns out, finding a not-too-professional, not-too-casual, not-too-tight, not-too-loose, not-too-classic, not-too-modern dress in Manhattan isn’t as easy as it sounds. Maybe I was asking for a tall order and just didn’t realize it.

Over the course of week, I went to two TJ Maxx stores, Marshall’s, Gap, H&M, Forever 21, Bloomingdales, Barneys, Express, New York & Company, and a few no-namers without any luck. I messaged my friends for their opinions, called my mom wishing she was there to go around with me, and even got caught in the rain a few times, wondering where in the world my new something blue was.

Finally, today, about an hour or so ago, M and I were picking through the clearance rack at Filene’s Basement and there it was.

Stuck between something with sequins and a pasley skirt, a petite dress that fit me just right. As soon as I put it on, I felt what brides must feel when they find their wedding gown: I screamed to M: “I found it! This is it!!” I cached out of the dressing room and she smiled, beaming and probably relieved that I wouldn’t hassle her with the search anymore: “It’s perfect, Linds!”

And it is.

But the dress doesn’t make the job, just like it doesn’t make a marriage. Even so, a job and a marriage have more things in common than we think. If we’re lucky, they bring us immense joy, but require a lot of work and understanding. Like you must make a commitment to continuously get to know your partner as they change, at a job you should constantly challenge yourself to learn more, to raise the bar higher for yourself and the company. You get to practice trial and error, especially in media – seeing what stories work and what doesn’t, and how to communicate your message effectively. Doesn’t the same go with your partner? You must remain dedicated and patient with yourself as well as your mate and your career, and you should plan for the future as much as you practice diligence in today.

And if we’re lucky, the job and the marriage gives as much as it takes, and it makes some of those dreams we had as kids become a reality. I may not be the expert on falling love, but I think the two things you can fall in the love with the hardest are often the ones we think we’ll never find: the dream job and the dream guy.

I’ve found one out of two and I’m not 30 yet. I’ll accredit it to the luck of the something old, something new, something borrowed, and finally, something blue.

PS: Have a question for me? Want to know anything about my life/advice from my adventures in dating? Before September 19, I’ll publish a post answering all of your questions. Email me, Tweet me, Tumble me, or Facebook me. Or you can comment below!

by - 2 Comments

Get Up and Go

While I am a thinker – always analyzing, discussing, and chatting myself (and my friends) to death, I’d consider myself more of a doer. Like any other transplant who grows roots in New York, I came here with lofty dreams and blind ambition, but I paired those traits with a hard-working, spirited attitude. I’m rarely lazy and I function better when I have a million things to do than if I just have a few. I enjoy being busy; I prefer a fast-paced environment compared to a slow one. I yearn to be challenged and to solve problems that seem impossible.

Maybe that’s why running is a good choice of exercise for me it’s all about motivating yourself to keep going, often without anyone else to encourage me. The problem, though, with being a doer is that I expect everyone else to be the same. And as you can guess (or maybe as you are), not everyone has that get-up-and-go-attitude that I do.

Take Mr. Possibility for example, who wakes up slowly, nibbles on whatever he can find, downs some orange juice, maybe some of that muscle milk stuff that’s so gosh-darn disgusting, and then he clicks around on the computer, flips the TV from channel to channel, then he showers or goes to the gym or picks up coffee or chats on his Blackberry…loudly. There’s nothing wrong with this morning routine, casual Saturdays after all, should be kept casual, I suppose.

But as much as I’d like to think I could just relax and take it easy as he does- once I’m up, I’m up. I’m ready to go. I make my bed, I take a shower, I check my email, this baby, the Times, CNN, and Facebook. I buy coffee on my way to the train, after I make breakfast and clean up after the mess that morning foods seems to always make. I text or call my friends, I figure out what the plan is, and I get moving. I’m not a fan of idle time and because he is, there’s always a bit of tension.

But it’s not just in romantic situations -I’m the same with my friends. My birthday is mid-September, but I’ve already make the Facebook invite and set up a private space at a trendy midtown club. I don’t like to “play it by ear” or “see what happens” – I’d rather have an idea of where we’re going and then let it happen, so I can not only budget my time but my expenses, and most importantly, my outfit. I want to know what’s next, what we’re planning, what we hope to achieve: drinks, dinners, wandering around, working out…what?

What are we doing? And why are you, my best friends, my family, my boyfriend – moving so miserably slow?

Step 11 is about being quiet, meditating, finding inner peace, reconnecting to the universe, being still, and having faith. But if patience is a virtue, I’m not the virtuous. It’s not so much that I want my way – or maybe it is, I wouldn’t deny I can be bossy at times – its just that I want to keep moving, keep going. Rationally I know that being still is positive, but I feel so much better when I go. I mean, my mama swears up and down I skipped walking and went straight to running – so really, I was born this way.

I’m learning as I grow and as I get older though, that getting up and going sometimes leads to poor decisions. It can entice you to enter relationships before you’re ready, agree to things without careful consideration, and make hasty decisions that aren’t always the best. And by being so intent on moving ahead, it can also cause you leave others behind simply because they just take things a little slower. We all move at different paces and our comfort levels rise and fall at varying places – so somewhere between the movers-and-shakers and the restful, wise souls is a happy medium.

A normal person, maybe?

Maybe that’s where I need to be, who I should aim to become – someone sitting sweetly, pacing inside my mind, twirling my fingers and twirling my hair, making endless lists of everything I want to be and want to accomplish, but waiting for a while, completely still. Just so I know I’m doing it right, just so I know I’m not rushing others when going smoother is what brings them happiness. And if they don’t speed up just a bit to meet me in that middle, then I can go without them.

Just a little slower than usual though, so they can catch up if they’d like. So they, in their own way, can get up and go, too.

by - 6 Comments

Writing About Love

Mid-day Gchat conversation with my friend K recently, I mentioned how I had written about something we were discussing. The chatting continued and I realized that again, I had written about another topic that came up. And as if I hadn’t already known, I typed “God, I’ve really been writing about love a long time, haven’t I?”

Maybe I’ve never actually claimed the title, but it’s true: I’m a Love Writer. If you count my teen column in a tiny newspaper at 15, being front page editor for the middle school gazette, and fairytales I composed before I kissed a boy – you could conclude I’ve been penciling love for over a decade. It’s only been within the last five years that I’ve been paid to write about such things, but I’d still do it for nothing (hence this blog).

You’d think after nearly 365 posts (can you believe it?) and ten years of coming up with ideas surrounding the many tangled complications of relationships, the messy wonder of sex, and how those both combine to create a combination of feeling and choice – something most of us call love. And most of us also curse the name of at least a handful of times between the eighth grade dance and “I do.”

But you’d guess wrong. Fodder for these posts and my other pieces is rather quite easy. It’d be easy for you too, if writing was the way you decided to express yourself. Even if you gladly wear the cynic badge, believe you can go your whole life without falling in love again, and have a vendetta against all men – there is always something about love that’ll come out of anything. Especially out of those fleeting feelings of hatred and fear. Writer and monk Thomas Merton said it better: “The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it, from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love, because love is not just something that happens to you: it is a certain way of being alive. Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life.”

I’m not under the belief that you need romantic love to have a full, complete, whole life – but you need some sort of love. Maybe that’s the greatest lesson I’ve learned from all these bylines and this journey – love isn’t limited to men or relationships, but about the life you build around yourself. Even if I found that great love, that patient man who will suffer through a lifetime of me writing about our marriage, our children, our home together – if I didn’t have great friends and great experiences to go along with him, our relationship wouldn’t survive.

But I’ve also learned that while I know I could survive and find happiness if I never did meet that man, if he doesn’t actually exist, I’ve also discovered that half of the battle in shaking the distraction of love is admitting that yes, I do want that. I’m a confident, successful, strong, smart, and bold woman – but I’m also loving and understanding, kind and compassionate, and full of hope that someone out there was meant to be my partner. It doesn’t make me weaker to want love nor does it make me a silly, irrational girl – it just makes me human. We’re all entertained by the idea and we’d all like to be supported – it just depends on how we go about it.

I’ve met important men in my life when I wasn’t looking and when I was, when I wanted it and when I didn’t, when I was unsure of their intentions and when I thought I had them figured out. There’s really not a way to control who you fall in love with, but you do make a choice to stay in that love. From what I hear from married folk, it’s a daily decision to remain committed to not only the person, but to that love.

So maybe that’s why I think I’ll always write about love. Why I’m not ashamed to call myself a Love Writer. Because while everyone experiences it, everyone talks about it, everyone wonders about it, everyone wants it – I take the chance and put it all out there. At least when it’s out, there’s no room to doubt what it is that I hope for. After all, what would a love writer be, without love?

by - 3 Comments

The Baby Daddy

Somewhere between being asleep and awake, I laid in bed wrapped up in sheets with tired eyes, listening to the sounds outside the window. In the distance, a taxi driver became impatient, two women shared a laugh, an oversized truck continued down the street, and a dog expressed concern. Tossing about and wrestling with my pillow, I tried to decide if I really wanted to nap in the afternoon or if I should get up and prepare for my night out. The cotton sheets were freshly pressed and felt so smooth against my skin, tempting me to rest for just a while longer – if only to be more enthusiastic for the hours ahead of me.

I threw my leg over a pillow the same way I would a man and shut my eyes, hoping the noises below would subside long enough for some shut-eye. All was quiet and still except for the sound of the air conditioner running and the pipes busily working away. Just as I was about to drift away, I heard something that almost always makes me beam:

Children’s laughter.

It was simple and subtle, happily filling the sidewalk and bouncing off the buildings to echo up to the apartment. Drowsily, I peeked out the blinds, attempting to shield my eyes from the sudden sunlight. Right outside was a blond-haired-blue-eyed family of  five with two little girls and an older boy. They looked like they lived in New York, dressed in preppy clothes and looking comfortable int he mayhem – a trait that only comes with living in a city. They happily  played with one another and giggled away, their parents keeping a look out for them while talking. This clan was just about picture-perfect as it could be and I smiled at their beauty.

In watching them, I was reminded of some advice an older woman once gave me when I asked her for relationship advice. We were standing outside a cute cafe in the Flat Iron district, saying out goodbyes after a Cobb-Salad-and-Diet-Coke lunch. After a brief hug, she said, “When you’re dating someone, stop imagining yourself getting married to them. See if you can imagine them as the father of your kids.”

She isn’t the only one to give me such wisdom, my friend K said something along those same lines when comparing two men she dated. She said that while she would think about marriage with one, her feelings were so much stronger and felt so much more real with the guy she could see as a dad. At the times they both challenged me to think that way, I wasn’t interested in what they had to say. It sounded sweet, sure, but if I could imagine the nuptials, wouldn’t I naturally see nurseries, too?

Not really – there’s a big difference between seeing someone as the husband and seeing someone as the baby daddy.

I rolled over in bed and stared up at the ceiling, noticing cobwebs I needed to knock down and though I’m nowhere near marriage or babies, I tried to picture myself with a family. Could I see the strollers and the bottles? Can I see someone kissing my belly, anticipating the arrival of our child? Could I see little pigtails and tiny trucks? Onesies and picking out baby names?

Have I ever dated someone who proved to me he could be that supportive, that kind-hearted, that responsible, that dependable, that loving – to be a dad? It was simple, when I really entertained the idea – I had never been in a relationship like that. I had never really met someone or dated someone who I could see that with.

But maybe that’s the point anyway – it’s very rare to come across someone like that. True Baby Daddies who want to be fathers, who would be the type of guy who not only plays catch and plays dress up, but is financially and emotionally stable enough to stand by his family and provide for them – are few-and-far-between.  And when looking for a match, you can’t just focus on how romantic or dreamy they may be, but if they are the type of man who you could see wishing your children sweet dreams as they go to bed.

Who doesn’t just call you baby – but will make a great daddy to your babies.

by - 5 Comments

The Fixer Upper Syndrome

When I moved into my apartment, I was damned-and-determined to do everything on my own. For high school graduation, I was given a tool kit and it made it through college and the New York move, so I used all of its knick-knacks to hang up my decor. I hung a shelf with a balance, stood on my tippy-toes to get my curtains to hang correctly and carried a microwave in a box five blocks instead of taking a cab. Sure, I could have asked for help and it may have been easier – but I get satisfaction by doing it myself.

I think I may get the trait from my mother – she’s the type of woman who would rather struggle with something heavy and mow the lawn herself instead of swallowing her pride to ask my dad for help. He lets her go about things her own way and eventually when something is just a bit too much, she’ll reluctantly admit she needs him. I was raised to believe that nothing stands in the way of my success or my happiness and that anything worth doing is better done knowing you earned it yourself. There are no shortcuts for the rise to the top or for finding peace – you have to work hard, sweat hard, and learn how to accept failure to find your way.

It’s with that mentality that I approach most everything in my life.

I’ll ask my friends for advice until the keys on my laptop start sticking or I’m blue in the face, but when it comes to actually working it out – no advice they can give will make a difference until I make up my mind. I don’t blame anyone for my shortcomings except for myself, and any problems I have are my responsibility to fix, not anyone else’s. I’ve never expected a man to come into my life, erase all of my baggage, be my savior, lover, therapist, and burly protector. A man’s role is to be my partner, not the person who takes care of me – I’m more than capable of doing that alone.

But it’s not a two-way street with me. I seem to attract men who resemble art projects I had in elementary school. Their pieces are strung about everywhere, their edges are sharp and subtle all at once, and the trail of relationship destruction they leave stretches as far as I can see. They have troubled minds and wounded egos, they are going through some sort of midlife crisis where all hell has broke loose, no matter what age they are. They have issues and hangups, tend to get hangovers easily, yet drink easier. They are emotional and sometimes heartless, cold and selfish. They seem sad and lost, angry and resentful – all qualities that most intelligent women would run far, far away from as fast as their Manolo’s would take them.

Not me though.

I’ve diagnosed myself with Fixer Upper Syndrome. And I’m not sure if they’ve found a cure for it yet.  Maybe my real calling isn’t writing, but real estate – finding men when they’re value is rather low and then flipping them into bold, attractive and put-together studs who go at a higher price point. Probably not though – I’ve yet to change a man, no matter how much I’ve believed I could. No matter how much patience I have, no matter how great I am in bed, how understanding and kind, no matter how long I stick around to see if the finishing touches will stick instead of chip.

In the process of dating these defeated warriors though, I end up not doing anything productive. I become a happy, safe harbor for them to wallow in their sorrows deeper, knowing they have a pretty face with a reassuring smile to wake up to. But what about me? What do I get in return? Every man has surely added something and taught me a lesson I needed to learn to be a better person – but most of them have taken way more than they’ve given.

And yet I’ve stayed loyal and constant, an unwavering force that regardless of how much they reckon, I reckon it’s not too much. My enough-is-enough point is pushed way further than any of my friends. While they’re advising me to run for the hills and protect myself from the hurt that’s looming, I’m planted firmly in the ground, convicted in the belief that one day, this tortured soul will transform into my soulmate.

But do they ever? Have they ever? Has any woman stood by her man and he ultimately became the man she dreamed of? Or do we all want to be the special one who could withstand the ups and downs, no matter how much we had to swallow our own heart to survive the storm? What’s the sweet spot between being in a dysfunctional relationship that could be functional and choosing yourself because you frankly can’t give a damn anymore? Or would they have to change so much that they wouldn’t even be themselves, and you would have to sacrifice so much of what you want, that you wouldn’t be happy?

When you’re so incredibly self-sufficient and you yearn to date someone who is the same, why do you always attract and subsequently fall for the exact opposite? Do a go-getter and fixer-upper ever make it? Or do they become stranded in the middle, neither living up to their potential? Can you cause someone more trouble by staying with them than you could if you left them to their own devices, to build that backbone and that thick skin that you already have?

Maybe it’s true that while a lot of things make a happy relationship, like support and forgiveness, patience and kindness, hungry conversation and tenacious passion – sometimes, love simply isn’t enough. It’s easy to love someone when they strike a chord with you or match your heartstrings, but if they don’t love themselves, if they aren’t a whole person – there isn’t enough love to fix them. They’ve gotta fix themselves first.

Perhaps the only way to cure Fixer Upper Syndrome is to fix yourself by accepting that men aren’t supposed to be projects, they’re supposed to feel like the prize that surprises you instead of relying on you.