Tag Archives: Men

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The Gals You Just Need

I’ve talked about “just knowing” in terms of love and how I’m not sure of its validity. Though I’m far from pessimistic, the tiny dose of realism I indulge it makes me believe taking the wedded plunge is a lot like diving into dark waters, you hope you won’t hit rock bottom, but you could.

Maybe I’m wrong – there are some things I do just know. I just know I feel sexy when I lay around on a Saturday afternoon, air-drying my hair, and applying lotion to every crevasse of my body. I just know New York City is the place for me, right now, in this moment of my life. I just know nothing can comfort or soothe me the way a nice long shower feels or the smell of my mother’s Oscar de la Renta perfume, or how my dad’s arms do.

And I just know when someone is going to be a great friend of mine.

There’s no way to describe it, really – which is the same excuse those blissfully happy folks use when you ask them “how they knew” it was the right time to get married. But really, it hits you during a fluid conversation full of giggles and shared interests. Or when time passes quickly, along with workdays, and heartbreaks, when you’re around them.

For a long time, I felt very alone in New York. I had moved here, I had done what I set out to do, and I was proud. I had the apartment, the byline, and the confidence to keep pushing for more, but I was missing a critical ingredient to my happiness: friends. I remember calling my mom on a Saturday night, sobbing that I missed her and the girls I’d know my entire life, and wanted to know how to meet people I could be close to. People I could share my dating trials that I actually knew, instead of thousands of viewers who read my words, but will never see me face-to-face. I wanted someone to call after a tremendously awful date, from outside the restaurant in tears, who would meet me at a puppy store around the block with ice cream, and remind me that the reason New York is called Manhattan is partly because of all the men to pick from.

As mothers do, she told me to just wait. She said I’d find them when I least expected it, just in the way that love finds you when you’re not looking. And she was right – after I mastered my city, treated myself to great sex, – the sex and the city came together in the form of women who are so much more than replicas of the show’s characters. It wasn’t until I finally formed some friendships – some quite unexpected, some ignited years later than they could have, and some based on a certain obsession with publishing – that I finally felt like I belonged here.

Men are great and they dominate our minds and conversations more than any of us would like, regardless if we ever make an effort to correct it. Careers are challenging, changing universes we all get lost in, but if we’re lucky, make us into little stars that light up the path for someone else to follow. Cities are homes, homes are cities, but nothing is ever home-sweet-home unless you have someone to share the adventure with.

I’m not convinced a relationship is necessary to complete us and I tend to think women are total packages, independent of being in love with any man at all – but I do believe full heartedly that friendships are absolutely essential.

I can do without love. I could survive outside of New York City. I could not write anything for a year. But if I had no love, no city, no pen, and no friends – what would I be? I’d still be me, but not the best me that I can be when my ladies are by my side. And maybe you just know when someone will become a great friend, maybe you don’t. But I think you just know that you just need friends to make the journey…a journey.

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Avoidance is Adult Like

When I was six, I loved dressing up in my mom’s old maxi dresses, stuffing my chest to pretend I had breasts, and walk around in plastic high-heels, pretending to be a real woman. When I was sixteen, the freedom of wind in my hair driving old country roads alone was incomparable – I was finally independent, minus an 11 p.m. curfew. When I graduated from college, degree-ed and certified employable, I just knew I’d find a job eventually. I couldn’t wait to have my own little place in my oversized city, eating Ramen, and making ends meet.

I’ve always wanted to be an adult. Except now that I am one.

And some of those things – like having real ladies that fill out dresses and real high-heels that are significantly more delicate than the chunky, plastic ones, are great. I indulge in my curves, I celebrate being a woman, and though I’m not high-maintenance, I’m quite girly. The state of North Carolina, my family, my friends, and pedestrians are overjoyed I don’t drive anymore, but I get the same sense of autonomy when I navigate the city without looking at a map or Googling. And of course, the fact that I’m happier than I’ve ever been, living completely, 110 percent on my own, makes me proud of the path I picked for myself.

But then there are the things about being an adult that no one tells you about.

Like these really difficult, emotionally-draining choices you have to make. The really sticky ones that have awful consequences but in the grand scheme of things, are best for you – even if at the time, when your vision is blurred with mascara tears, you can’t see it. It’s those decisions that you have to remove yourself from, tug at your heart-strings so they loosen enough for you to be realistic, and stand firm in your resolution, even when those heels are shaking and your heart is about to burst into open air from your chest.

Maybe we’re not warned of these difficult decisions because they don’t come around often. They really aren’t all that common, but when they come, they arrive with vengeance. They burst into your everyday, ordinary existence and demand you pay attention to them – stealing you from any other task, every other priority, and get you to the edge of tears in the middle of the afternoon.

But that’s when you reach into your adult tool belt to find your gumption, your pride, and your big girl panties. You swallow that pride in one swift gulp, gather all the gumption you can build, and put on those panties with a mission – you won’t be upset, no, not right now, not today. You’ll make the adult-like decision to avoid the worse –even if it is imminent – until you absolutely, positively have to deal with it.

You’ll distract yourself with long to-do lists that include things you’ll never actually do like clean out the junk drawer and dust the corners of your apartment. And then you’ll overexert yourself into your social life, planning and making happy hour dates, going to dinner and events, spending money you don’t have out of purses you saved for years to buy. You’ll pick up a new project or come up with great entrepreneurial ideas, but never write business plans, and leave the pieces of the masterpiece scattered about your homes until they ultimately end up right back in that junk drawer you never cleaned out.

Avoidance is a vicious circle. And avoidance is very adult like.

If you ignore a problem or a rough-and-tough, life-altering, plan-changing, dream-killing decision with an outcome you just don’t want to face – it’ll eventually go away. The adult, mature thing to do is to believe as such. The adult thing to do is to focus more on pushing our boobs up with push-ups, renting fancy cars for weekend getaways with Zipcar, and dreaming of the day when we’ll be grown up enough to avoid things better than we pretend to do now.

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More Time With Me

It’s the second day of summer and I feel like a slacker. Those two words may seem to go hand-in-hand, but not for me – I had big plans for May through August. And now, I only have two months to make up for lost time.

Time I spent sitting in front of the computer writing this blog. Time I spent sleeping in because I crave the blissful sound of alarm-clock free wake-ups on the weekends. And time I spent sitting around with Mr. Possibility as he mulled over textbooks nearly as tall as me sans-heels, studying for a test he won’t know the results of until past my birthday, past the end of this blog.

It’s funny to me that even I’ve written a dozen articles about dating, vented each and every insignificantly significant detail about my personal life, and given advice to those in love-lemmas – and still, still, I can’t do what I tell other people to do. If asked, I’d always advise to make yourself a priority, to spend more nights a week in your own bed than in your boyfriend’s, and that nights with your girlfriends on the town are much more fun more times than not. I’d say to budget your time, put yourself first, and do your own damn laundry instead of lugging it across the river to his free washer and dryer to avoid the ever-disgusting communal Laundry Day scene.

And yet – with my piles growing consistently taller each day in the corner of my new bedroom, I’ve considered it. I’ve put off plans with my friends to make plans with Mr. P. I’ve gone against every dating rule I’ve read and ever adage I’ve endorsed. But that’s the thing about being a relationship blogger – especially one who called herself an “addict” – it’s hard to swallow your own words. It’s hard to listen when you’re in the situation, no matter how honest you may be with your readers.

With Mr. Possibility out-of-town last weekend, I finally was forced to look at my summer and my choices for what they are. Walking through the park with M (who has a great blog you should check out, I’m LT, if you’re curious), I thought out loud to her: “This is the first time I’ve laid out in Central Park all summer long.” She asked, surprised, “Really? I come all the time.” Maybe it was the green mini-rolling hills dotted with half-naked pale New Yorkers or the character of the park, but in that instance I realized it was time to make more time in my life…with me.

Overindulging myself in overanalyzing, I thought about why exactly I was deciding to spend so much of my moments outside of work with Mr. Possibility. I had invited him to happy hours with my friends, he went with me to North Carolina, his roommate is probably entirely sick of me at this point, and I haven’t spent as many nights as I thought I would in my new apartment -without him, anyway. Do I enjoy his company that much? Do we thrive off all those hours together? Is that what keeps us going?

No, it doesn’t. It causes petty arguments and makes things so comfortable that romance doesn’t have a chance to boil. I knew that going on, I still know that now – so what in the world was I thinking?

I think I was (and am) trying to integrate part of my life into our relationship: here are my friends, here is where I am from, here is what I think, here is what I need, here is how I sleep. And that’s not such a bad thing, in fact it’s rather normal – but it’s easy to get carried away. It’s easy to lose yourself…even on the way to loving yourself.

And so, with the request for a few nights off a week from being a girlfriend (well, you know, still exclusive but not tied to dinner plans or living together), I’m back on track to fulfill my summer to-do list. It includes, but is not limited to – a bubble-q (barbecue and champagne), a trip to Six Flags Jersey (yikes!), more Long Beach visits, sight seeing and bathing in Connecticut, a roaring-20s themed jazz fest, more Central Parking, more…life. More friend time. More time with me. More time to do what I set out to do – enjoy the time I have with me as much as the time I have with others. No matter how possibly wonderful that time can be.

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Be True To Yourself

My very first girlfriend in New York is a gal named E.

We went to the same college, though she’s seven years my senior, so at different times. When I moved, I emailed anyone and everyone I could, asking for job leads and to introduce me to people they knew in New York. As desperately as I wanted to be an editor, I also didn’t want to be alone in my favorite place either. A college newspaper alumnus put me in contact with E and ironically, on the day I was offered my first job, E and I had plans to meet for dinner and drinks.

As a designer who has pieces currently available at Anthropologie and an impeccable sense of style, E may be tiny in stature, but she’s big in heart and personality. When we first met, I was amazed at the easy flow of the conversation and by her tenacious spirit; not to mention she shared the same affinity for the city as I do – a quality that will never be old to me.

We now have drunken memories and inside jokes, trips we’ve taken and friends we’ve introduced one another to – but she’ll always be the first lady I called a girlfriend on this island. For that reason, she’ll always be part of my life.

And also because she’s totally, always, completely herself. She never makes excuses and she does what she says she’ll do, doesn’t do what she says she won’t. Call it stubborn, I call it brilliant and beautiful.

Case and point, this Sunday when E, M, R, and I headed to Long Beach for a day of bathing and bubbly goodness. The weather could not have been more perfect and though the day started with M’s mad dash to catch the departing train (she made it with a minute to spare), it was the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon: burning our skin into a nice shade of pale/tan and chit-chatting in girl speak. After four hours of laying out, cheeseburgers the size of my face, and ice cream cones overly priced at $3.75 for a single scoop, we caught the train back to Penn.

To pass the hour trip – which we were never charged for luckily enough – we decided to play “Would you rather?” in true mature, 20-something fashion. Of course, this was my idea as I can’t stand idle quietness during any trip, unless its 12 hours long or something absurd like that. Does that make me an obnoxious traveling companion? Probably so. But does that make for good conversation? Totally.

Someone proposed the question of: “Huge diamond or designer dress?” We all traded a very large rock for the gown, but my friend E added in: “You know, I have no desire to have a wedding.” Disgusted, my friend R stammered, “Whaaa? How could you not want a wedding?? You don’t want to have a big party and get married in front of all your friends and family?”

Calmly, E replied, “I want a reception to celebrate, but I don’t want a wedding. I don’t have any need for it. I’m more concerned with the marriage.” R continued to quiz her, asking if she wanted a wedding dress (sure, but it doesn’t need to be white or long, just nice), and who would be her witness (you can have friends and family in the courthouse), and if something had happened to her to wreck her dreams of having a wedding (nope).

R and E are obviously very different and at times, I’m surprised they get along with one another – but as M and I sat and listened to their conversation, I felt a certain affinity for E. Not wanting to have a big, ol’ fat wedding – Greek or not – isn’t the norm today. Especially in an age where the grander the wedding, the better, and if you’re not registered at three places you’re damned, and if you don’t have a wedding website, all of your friends on Facebook are annoyed they can’t stalk you (even if you haven’t talked for years). People go into debt for weddings, they take out loans, and they become bride and groom-zillas. Couples break up because they plan a wedding. Women go into depression after it because there is nothing spectacular left to look forward to.

But that’s where the wedding industry has it wrong and where E has it right: it’s not about the wedding day. It’s about all the days that follow it. It’s not about being the bride, it’s about learning to be yourself while being a wife.

And in her true self, she spoke that simple wisdom so many tend to forget, and maybe something I’ll eventually have to remind myself of should that happily-ever-after ring my buzzer. As for E, I have no doubt she won’t have a wedding with a man who is much himself as she is herself, and I can’t wait to drink her signature Jack & Coke at her non-reception…reception.

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No Other Man Could Compare

There are a lot of things a man can do to impress me. Like remembering little things I said or having knowledge of current events and the ability to hold a normal, adult conversation. Knowing the right things to say, but more importantly, having the conviction to follow-through with promises and nurturing a life outside of our relationship. Or not needing me to be rule his life, no matter how much validity there is to the Oedipus complex.

But above all other things, characteristics, traits or talents – there is one sure-fire way to make your way into my heart: remind me of my father.

The one topic that is the most difficult for me to write about is my dad. Thoughts of him are so tightly sewn to my heart that when I try to put our relationship into words, it feels like it tears at my most delicate areas. I admire him in a way that knows no boundaries, I cannot stay angry at him for any period of time, and when I need to know how to cook or build something, or when another guy stomps on the love I give him, I never want to call anyone by my daddy.

As a retired fire captain, he is the symbol of bravery and courage in my mind. He represents the strength it takes to overcome anything – even an illness that nearly emotionally and mentally paralyzed him for six years. In his weakest of moments and darkest of hours, he still supported me. He never forgot to tell me how much he loves me and when all else had failed, when I didn’t know if tomorrow would be a day he would see, I could rest assured that I was among the lucky and the blessed to have a remarkable father.

And I was also part of the crowd who grew up with a shining example of a supportive marriage. Apart from the time my dad was sick, my parents have been each other’s best friends, confidants, and life partners. They make decisions together, they have hobbies together, they communicate in a language I don’t and would never want to understand. They respect each other and dissolve their anger before laying to rest. Their marriage isn’t perfect and it has seen its trials, but they are still standing – though aging and a tad bored – it’s impossible to deny the love they share.

In every man I’ve dated, each affair I’ve entertained – I’ve looked for my father. For someone who looks at me with the same admiration in his eyes that my dad has when he looks at me or at my mother. I’ve looked for someone to protect me, to comfort me, to chase away the adult monsters that seem so much scarier and life-altering than the ones I thought were under my bed. I’ve looked for someone with that same passion, that same intensity, that some vitality that I see in my sweet daddy – the guy who taught me to ride a bike, drive a boat and a jet ski, and encouraged me to go higher on the swing even when mom thought I was plenty high enough. For someone who will push me to be a better person, he will challenge me, and who will have that same intoxicating smile and laugh that I miss so much inNew York.

But recently, I’ve come to realize that I’m looking for my dad in all the wrong places. He isn’t going to be found in the arms of Mr. Possibility – no matter how many similarities they seem to share. I’m not going to develop and create a relationship or marriage like my parent’s love because that belongs to them, not to me. I’m not going to find my father by searching for his 20 or 30-something form in the streets, bars or buses of Manhattan.

The only place I’m going to find my daddy, my hero, is by pressing “5” on my speed dial. Or by logging into Skype or sending an email to Captain Tigar. Or by way of a direct flight from JFK to Asheville, where he’ll be there standing and waiting for me with a silly hat, a big goofy grin and a tear running down his cheek he’ll try to hide.

And that’s where he should be.

Maybe we look for our parents in the relationships we have as adults and maybe we sometimes look for the exact opposite – but what if instead of investigating who has the most potential to reincarnate our dads…we valued our father? We made who he is special. And help that daddy/daughter relationship as sacred as it deserves to be. What if we kicked our own daddy complex out the window?

I’m not going to meet someone who is just like my father and no man, regardless if he’s my boyfriend, my lover or my husband will ever mean what my dad means to me. Nor should he. No other man could ever compare. The love of my father I keep in my heart wherever I go belongs to me and my dad, no one else.

Because I don’t want to meet another daddy. I love the one I have too much to share him.