Love in the Time of the Internets

Lessons on Love Learned from Watching Court TV: A Cynical List of Foolproof Rules.

<BACK TO INTRODUCTION.

You can learn a lot by watching angry couples on Court TV.  Our personal favorites are Judge Judy and The People's Court, but really, you can see the same scenarios being enacted in every television courtroom. 

These shows, my friends, are the real raw thing.  In real life, people who fall in love are often credulous, pathetic, undignified, and stupid.  Such people tend to fall in love with--and sometimes marry---people who are venal, greedy, shameless, amoral, undignified, and stupid.  The credulous ones end up in court because they just refused to believe that their situation wasn't special.

Though the dynamics are not a pretty sight, the stories they tell when they sue each other are instructive.  I could write a book about things you can learn about relationships from watching court TV, a whole cynical book, but instead I'll content myself with one mere cynical list of rules---rules which are as inalterable as the law of physics.

Thoughts about My First Husband on his Birthday.

So anyway, it's January 13, the birthday of my first husband.  Coincidentally, he wrote to me during the week to tell me about some things of mine that he found stored somewhere or other among the detritis of twenty years and to ask if I wanted them back.

I have reason to believe that he still feels a touch of bitterness at the way our marriage unfolded and the way I treated him; as well he might.  But the purpose of this note---posted in my journal and linked here because it fits---is to say in the interest of setting things straight how very fortunate it was for him that I was such a confused, neurotic little wretch in my time. 

Being treated badly is THE red flag that ought to tell you that you'd be better off elsewhere.  Forget hoping the other person will change because change doesn't happen that way.  Move on, find your true love, and get happy.  Be assured, in the meantime, that what goes around comes around, and that the person who failed to give you the love you deserve will live to regret it.

To read all about it, JUMP TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES.

Love in Midlife---How to Fail at Finding It. Bonus sonnet: 57.

[published on August 14, 2005 in "The Flatland Oracles"]

“I came to you because you’re the expert in relationships,” said my friend. “You know--in finding them.  You’ve been so lucky that way. How do you do it? Seriously, I need to know.”

Wait.  I'm an expert in relationships?  Then I realized that what she saysis true in a way---though only in a way.  I have been married three times and I'm still in my forties, which looks like a kind of luck and gives me a sort of claim to expertise from where she stands.  first ended in divorce; the second in my spouse’s death due to an aneurysm, so:  not lucky at all in that respect and certainly no more an expert than any other person who undergoes the losses of adult life.

But I’ve been very happily remarried now for going on for four years. And I was never alone for long during the interim periods. How do I do it? There’s nothing about me which on the surface would explain it. As I considered the point, I became slightly intrigued myself.

Toxic Love and Sonnet 36.

[published in "The Flatland Oracles" on August 4, 2005]

SONNET 36.

Let me confess that we two must be twaine, [1]

Although our undivided loves are one: [2]

So shal those blots that do with me remaine, [3]

Without thy help, by me be borne alone. [4]

In our two loves there is but one respect, [5]

Though in our lives a separable spite, [6]

Which though it alters not love’s sole effect,

[7]  Yet it doth steal sweet houres from love's delight [8]

I may not evermore acknowledge thee, [9]

Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, [10]

Nor thou with public kindness honour me, [11]

Unless thou take that honour from thy name. [12]

  But do not so: I love thee in such sort [13]

  As thou, being mine, mine is thy good report [14]

--The Bard

 

 I do know the story behind this sonnet, or at least I know what I’ve been told by scholars. As a reflection of Shakespeare’s actual experience with his patron, it’s pathetic enough. If taken at face value----as a love sonnet--- it’s a whole different type of pathetic.

  Concealment as a condition of love strikes a number of people as romantic and rather thrilling in the early stages of an unabalanced relationship. After all, if your partner is willing to risk everything for your love, despite the drawbacks of it or you----! Early on, you might focus more on the strength of the bond (lines 1-2, 5-6) which of course couldn’t exist against all the odds if you didn’t have something very, very special.