network of conversations 'bout marriage

So, i'm engaged. And i was exchanging messages with an old friend on facebook, and she asked why i didn't respond to her "congrats". At first, i thought not much of it and said that i started to take the congrats for granted. Then i left it at that.

Not two minutes later i realized why i take the congrats with a grain of salt. What happens is that i find that a lot of people my age are getting married. And, it seems that people i know about ten or so years older, are getting divorced. So it seems like people are getting divorced like its a new pair of hot shoes. And i don't want those shoes. So i'm a little scared (when looking from the outside, at statistics, not from the quality of my relationship) that it's predictable that i'd get divorced sometime in the future.

I thought a few seconds later (and wrote this too) that saying congrats to someone getting married is like congratulating someone on getting a new job at Ford or Goldman Sachs. Granted, the job is great, but the environment surrounding the job seems toxic. knamean?

Now, about being married for a long time. There's a group (i'm too lazy to find them) that tape record a couple having an argument, while hooked up to all kinds of machines which measure heart rate, blood pressure etc, who can predict with like 90% accuracy whether a couple will stay married or get a divorce. Apparently, how people habitually react to the other person's communications stabilizes, and if their reactions are negative, then it predicts a tumultuous relationship leading to divorce.

My remedy is my knowledge of communication that i've learned from Neuro-Linguisitic Programming (NLP) and my experience as an introduction leader for Landmark Education. Both of these technologies/educational methodologies place a premium on open, honest and flexible communication. I figure that i'm a bit insulated from getting stuck in too many patterns, cuz i see them in a matter of weeks (even though sometimes i leave them alone, and don't do nothin about them). So i figure i'm good. But that's just my opinion. The proof will be in the 50 year anniversary. 2059, here we come!!!

the dating game divorced

I was thinking about dating the other day. I'm head-over heels into a relationship and coming down the final stretch of my singlehood and i was thinking about the whole 'dating world' and 'courting world' (which are vastly different arenas). A few years ago i read a tome of a book called "The Kaballah of the Soul" by leonora leet and was struck by one of her analyses (analysis plural, the blog won't say it's spelled right). Her analysis was that the fundamental exchange between man and woman is power for beauty. That's why the bad-boys get the hot chicks, they've got social power. Now, geeks, with economic power are starting to get play - my analysis anyway.

So in "the game" of dating, there is an underlying ethic of man conquers woman. And whatever man conquers the most women 'wins'. But there is a white stripe down the back of that skunk that goes counter, but not many people have been analyzing and talking about. What i'm talking about is the heroism of a faithful man.

Lots of people will agree that people become attractive when they're taken. First and foremost there's someone's stamp of approval that they're worth dealing with. Secondly, there's the 'i want what i can't have' line of thinking. Probably a couple other lines of thinking two. Regardless of how many lines of thinking, there's almost a social movement to destroy relationships. But nobody acknowledges the heroism, bravery, integrity and stick-to-it-ness that it takes to remain faithful during the onslaught (overt and covert) of flirting, propositions and sometimes downright molestations.

So when i say the dating game 'divorced', i mean that i'm distinguishing two ways to win it. One is to have sex with as many people as possible (and of course neither get caught nor infected) and the other way is to enter into a long-term relationship and remain faithful.

The 'problem' is that people don't see these as completely separate games with completely different rule sets. Therefore they oscillate between them, so they'll be 'single and loving it' for a while then switch to 'coupled and loving it' and rotate between the two games. The problem is that marriage isn't explicitly interpreted in terms of a 'winner' being able to be faithful.

The most important thing to note in this line of thinking is that 'winning' at marriage doesn't mean that you marry a faithful partner. Winning at the sex game in marriage means that you stay faithful. And if the other person doesn't cut it, you don't loose, they do.

Seduction, Romance and Love

I was in federal court in norther new jersey and met some guy in the defendant's line. I am a prodigal nerd, and was reading a book called "the social life of information" by Durgid and some other guy i want to call 'steely dan'. It's a book that i hadn't been able to get my hands on since it came out (i don't think the FLOP has it -free library of philadelphia that is).

So this guy asked me "is that book about communications or sociology", i replied that it sat right between them. He replied that he taught a communications, i queried 'technical or rhetorical' and he replied 'rhetorical'. I would have left the conversation at that, then he said that he was creating a course called "seduction, romance and love". I was thoroughly interested by this soundbite. So i asked him to explain a little more.

Now, with people who have these grand ideas, they sometimes aren't tuned in how to refine and communicate them very well. Usually there is a bridge between the soundbite, the news story and the full story. With these people, they've only got soundbite and full story, and you have to ask them lots of questions to get the news story. I did just that. I asked him what he meant. He started telling me that he was going to use the 'classics' like machiavelli and plato. He thought my eyes were going to gloss over with the mention of 'classics', but i came back into the fray when he said 'machiavelli' . . . for the life of me i couldn't figure out how or why Machiavelli would be in the mix.

As the conversation moved on, so did we move toward the courtroom amongst a line of about 30 other offenders. And our conversation got even more intense. Instead of bogging you down with all the details of us trading book names and discussin' sci-fi books, i'll cut to the chase.

After badgering him and trying to fit what he was saying into my own mental-model of the world, i got that he makes a marked distinction between seduction, romance and love. I gathered that he thinks of seduction as a person manipulating someone else for their own gains (hence machiavelli), romance as someone throwing themselves into 'love', and love as an exchange between two people.

Well, an hour or two later, we found out from the prosecutor exactly what our traffic fines would be, and parted ways.
I had never though of that