Friendly Drama

This is one of many columns I wrote a few years ago for an online magazine. I had just started online dating and was asked to write a column around being single, searching and finally finding who we are and what matters.

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When the relationship is over, some people stumble away with extreme sorrow and bitter memories. The ground upon which the two once stood is now scorched and cursed. The former object of desire is declared an enemy. Lines are drawn and mutual friends, now in the midst of a war they didn't wage, realize there is no neutral ground and are forced to choose sides.

For the more evolved, "friendship" is offered as a consolation prize. To ensure the demotion is clear, cleanly separating friendship from relationship, we use the phrase: "We're just (only, merely) friends." This sly, clever new relationship keeps your ex- close, within your circle, but paradoxically at arms length, stripped of any significance.

When you meet someone else, this new person will have trouble absorbing the friendship between you and your ex-. You cannot expect your ex- to be helpful in this regard. That would require genuine interest and well wishes from the former partner, which is not very likely in this codependent friendship. For one of you in this friendship, it's a win-win situation. For the other, who may be less prepared to let go, the setup keeps the river of denial flowing.

Serena, a galpal with a steady boyfriend (as well as a married friend she met and strings along), is constantly tripping over the remnants of her boyfriend's prior relationships. One unseasonably warm evening, he asked her to get a pair of shorts for him from his bureau. What she found among the shorts was a thong that did not belong to her. He insisted the underwear had been there since his last girlfriend. A later clandestine search revealed more thongs. Because he is a slob with items in his bedroom dating back to eighth grade, she believed his explanation that he simply never got around to throwing the underwear out. He told her that not every relationship ended badly so he has no hard feelings towards his exes.

His house is a graveyard, haunted by the ghosts of his past. The ghosts lurk in drawers and cabinets, waiting to spring out at her at any moment. He tells her that she reads too much into these items. "I don't spring clean after a relationship ends," he told her. "I'm not keeping them, I just never threw them out. Doesn't mean I don't love you." This sore spot in her relationship led her to pick at it like a scab until she began to ask the point of no return questions ("Do I not turn you on? Am I too fat? Am I not attractive enough? Why do you not enjoy sex with me?"). Her boyfriend answered her questions with such brute force and cruelty that she fled his house and wandered the streets of New York, emotionally shattered at 3A.M.

She knows that the friendship with her hot married guy is Avoidance 101. She tells me they are just friends and that they have not slept together but what they have done would make her guilty in any courtroom of cheating but she can't seem to break things off with either him or her boyfriend. The only thing about which she is certain is that she doesn't want her boyfriend
as a friend when it's over. Searing emotional and psychic pain can sometimes run too deep for social niceties.

Bob and I were just friends. I was not sexually attracted to him and had never seen him as a potential partner. We were the poster children for platonic relationships. He's positive about life and the future and he's hysterically funny. He's also an intellectual snob with a love of language and a penchant for writing pornography. He's married with two teen-aged
daughters. We had a perfectly safe relationship, playing off each other supremely well. He was the master of the double entendre and I would foil him neatly, redirecting the game back to safe and neutral territory.

He was the perfect straight gay companion. We were a less neurotic Will & Grace. He was my first base coach during the initial stages of my online dating adventures. He helped me to understand male behavior and his translations of manspeak into Modern Women's English should be a manual for women everywhere. For someone so enamored of language and communication, words have suddenly failed him.

Anita has an obsessive personality and is deeply insecure. She is one of those people both madly jealous and deeply resentful of the fortunes and earned successes of others. It's as though she feels there is only so much happiness to go around and every person who has it leaves less for her. She takes personally compliments given to others, as if those compliments are a message to her, "And you're NOT," e.g. "Wow, she's really talented. (… and you're NOT!)" I've come to understand that Anita sees the joys of life as a pie, with a set number of slices. She's bought into a belief system of negativity and scarcity while I see the joys of life as an ocean, endless and infinite.

Now unhappily married again, she has more than once expressed her wish that she could be single and childless with the choices I have: the opportunity to start a new life in a new place with little baggage. She longed for the opportunity to correct all of her past mistakes, the chance to start all over and make better choices. She wanted what she saw as one last chance at a pie slice.

Our friendship was quite complex and largely revolved around me building her up against the rest of the world, yet tearing each other down. She had no male friends and three female friends. She could never quite understand my platonic relationships with men and would go to great lengths to point out to me how each man she'd ever met wanted to possess her so that being just friends was never a possibility. I understood her passive aggressiveness.

Years ago, she insinuated herself into one of my platonic friendships, creating a sexual relationship with the man. Oddly, his name was Rob, rhyming with Bob and basically being from the same root: Robert (the name of another man I later became involved with and she desperately wanted to insinuate herself between us, begging for his e-mail address so she could find out from him what his intentions were with me. Yeah. Here you go: here's his e-mail. Eff off, dudette)

She obsessed over Rob years and years ago, called him incessantly, finally driving him to beg me to call her off, help him escape her. He extricated himself from her but our friendship was never the same, a casualty of her supreme and unmatched self-involvement.

It's ironic that, as a result of my online dating adventures, an online relationship developed between Bob and Anita, which led to a physical relationship, effectively ending my friendship with both.

Looking back with the clarity of 20/20 vision, I should have seen the pattern emerging once again when she began asking how Bob and I could have a friendship in which we could discuss sex but not have it. She was wildly curious about the sexual bantering and wanted to know everything about our friendship. When she began working at Bob's company, forty miles separated their offices but the immediacy of e-mail closed the distance.

She began to quiz me about Bob's relationship with his wife and his views about sex. She wanted to know everything he had ever told me. His wife was diagnosed with a malignant tumor and had chosen a radical course of surgery and treatment. Bob naturally retreated, asking for time to cope and regroup. Anita bombarded me with e-mails, demanding to know what Bob had told me about his wife's condition and when he'd told me. I wondered if she even cared about his wife's cancer. I was willing to trade my kingdom for a mallet big enough to knock some sense into Anita. I made it clear to both of them I wanted to remain neutral and that being
in the middle was not an option. I reiterated this desire many times.

What about the coupling bothered me so much? Was it because Anita declared open season on Bob when his wife has a life threatening illness? Or was it because Bob was taking moments away from his wife to be with Anita? Was it the fact that Anita glommed onto the friendship in the way she had done previously? Or was it that she lied to me, used me in order to collect information about Bob? Was I so angry with Bob because his provocative e-mails weren't intended as banter but signals to me that he was open for more?

The internet offers the power of instant communication and instant familiarity. We can chat online for hours with people we've never met, believing we're getting to know them so well. Bob and Anita and I chatted through e-mail and IM daily. I began to notice that whenever I visited Anita at her home, she would stand guard over me while I checked my Yahoo e-mail account. It was how I discovered her affair with Bob: I realized she was hovering over me because she was obviously waiting for something and what else could it be but an IM?

She knew I would recognize his screen name. Neither of them saw any reason to create a new screen name while carrying on their affair. One night, I saw that Bob was online and I IM him. No response. I emailed Bob then I saw that Anita was online, too and had been on for as long as Bob. So they were meeting, cloak and dagger style, on AIM.

Bob e-mailed me at my office the next day to tell me he hadn't been online the night before and he was sorry he'd missed me. Lies. I e-mailed him back, informing him that I'd seen his AIM screen name actively online. There was silence from his end. The silence of unanswered e-mails and unreturned phone calls are a testament to his resentment and the knowledge that he really is an ass.

Had it not been for the connection between Anita and I, he would not have been so forward. He certainly would not have approached her at work since he is a corporate trainer and she is in a field office. The relationship would have remained professional. But the e-mails he and I exchanged gave Anita a feeling of connectedness with him. It wasn't long before the e-mails progressed to IM and from there to a real life, real time affair.

Sex changes the dynamics of a friendship, even indirectly. It was tricky with Bob since we were never "involved" but in re-reading his e-mails to me, I can see that he would not have been resistant had I suggested a more intimate connection. He could very well have been waiting for just that suggestion.

He once asked me years after we took a business trip together if I would have been open for a romantic entanglement if he weren't married. I was shocked. I'd never thought of him in that way ever and could not imagine such a thing.

But what could I have answered? The truth? A horrified, "Are you insane? I don't even find you remotely attractive!" I looked back at him, blinked and while closing my eyes in that split second, nodded and gulped while saying "Sure" and he walked away, happy and satisfied that it could have happened ... if only.

Eve, my therapist friend, explains the codependent theorists' steps to reducing drama: first (and easiest) is to stop throwing bombs. The second (and far more difficult) is not responding when they're thrown at us. So, at the core, we stay on our side of the street and take responsibility when we screw up. Resist digging in our heels. This much we owe ourselves, not just our friends and lovers.

It's tempting to analyze what makes people do things, but in the end, what do the reasons matter? The reasons won't help me to have a better life. There comes a point at which the very analysis becomes what is holding me back and victimizing me - not Bob, not Anita. Their actions are not my fault but my responses to them are my responsibility. So there is a need to stop wallowing in what happened, make up my mind to accept it and make peace with them or accept it and move on.

The simple questions remain: are the friendships worth the effort and do I want to continue making that effort?

We know that it's deeply unacceptable socially to discard people - especially those with whom we have a history - but letting go may be the only way to have peace, to permanently close the door on unnecessary drama. Even when you've done the right things, it often just doesn't work.

But sometimes things do work and things just fall together in the most satisfying and amazing way. It works for reasons you do not understand and you are touched in ways you never thought possible. When it works and you have a happy and fulfilling relationship with someone who is a friend, then you're supremely blessed and not just lucky.

Jambalaya

Image by fataetoile/ Cinzia Rizzo via Flickr

It's what I'm making tonight. It just hit me while sitting at my desk in my office that I really need jambalaya. Of course, so did the completely out-of-the-blue idea to have lemon tea w/smirnoff's lemonade vodka so maybe I'm working the jambalaya around the drink. Whatever works, I tell ya. The drink is yummy and the jumbalaya is simmering, I'm making myself get up now and go add the shrimp ... then again, I just may skip the j and stay with the v. *lol*

Ultimate Irony

For someone with an unholy fear of water (add height and I'm almost in tears), it's fairly comical that I thought seriously about having a header picturing not just water but ocean water. And the ocean has a floor so deep, it worries me to consider it.

Speaking of water, I just have to watch Deadly Catch because there is something perversely fascinating about watching those fishing boats riding hellish waves that look as if they'd take out Manhattan. I'd never go deep sea fishing; I'd never even go on a boat smaller than Royal Caribbean but here I will sit, rapt and warm and dry and on terra firma.

I'm afraid to get married but I'll subject myself to untold madness in the dating world in search of Him. Lord God, that's another entry or two or ten. The men out here with us single gals ... and they're not always available (emotionally, literally, figuratively) yet here they come, grinning and bearing bad tidings for those of us thinking it isn't wrong to hope.

It's cold out here in the dating world. If you're inside where it's warm and safe and satisfyingly "we" then count your blessings and quit bitching about the dirty socks funking up your bedroom or the gurliness taking over your manly man rooms and be happy you're not shivering out here in Single City with the rest of us.

Hmph.

Rachel Souza Entwhistle

Rachel in the vegetable stand in York - UK, October 1999

I knew her in 1999 when she was 19 years old and a summer intern at my company. She was a bundle of energy and she had a mischievous smile and when talking to her, you could feel a tug at the corners of your lips.

She was funny and silly and smart and just happy, wonderfully happy almost all the time. She was so chirpy that I asked her one day if she drank before she came in to work. She was adventurous and full of life and always had at least 2 guys clamoring for her attention.

She told me that she was going to York that year on exchange to the University of York and I was going to London that October of 1999. We said the usual things when coincidence like that arose: "We should hook up when you get there!" and I responded, "Of course, you can show me around and we'll have dinner."

Usually, those well intentioned ideas never come to fruition but Rachel always did what she said she'd do. It was something I remembered about her. When she left, the next month, she e-mailed me to give me her phone number in York and to remind me that we had a dinner date.

As the date of departure grew closer, I still didn't really think I'd see her in England but when I arrived at our hotel in Weybridge, there was a message waiting for me from Rachel. When I called her back the next day, she already had train schedules ready for me. There was no escaping the Rachel once she had her mind set on something.

I boarded a train in London and rode through gorgeous countryside to York. I saw her as the train pulled onto the platform and when she caught sight of me, her smile grew wider and suddenly she was in tears because there I was, someone from home in this unfamiliar yet beautiful country.

Rachel's life in York was taking shape: she was on crew as the coxswain (of course, what else for Rachel?), she'd already met a wonderful guy who was also in the rowing club (Neil, her future husband as it turns out), she was ringing the bells in the abbey and she was growing more and more independent. I took a photo of the photos a few years ago.

The Abbey - Rachel was so proud to have been the bell ringer

The brick walkway that stretches around the town

I love the photograph of her at the vegetable stand in York. I never got to see her again after that day in York. She is wearing her trademark stunning smile and she was so proud of her new bob and make-up and stylish cream colored sweater and trousers. She looks so young and hopeful and innocent in the photo and I hope she was always able to retain that innocence.

I lost track of her a few years after she was graduated from Holy Cross. The Rachel I remember would not have been involved in anything dishonest and would not have tolerated it because she had such a strong character. People change, I realize that, but Rachel was an honest, true blue soul. I will hold on to the memories of her and our day together from 1999 and the wonderful, vivacious woman who was taken from her friends and family far too soon.

Cat yak ... yuck, no yuks

Misty between yaks

It's the sound that can make you sit bolt upright in bed from the deepest sleep; the sound that has you dropping everything to frantically search for the yakking cat. The minute you leap to your feet, the yakking cat instantly sprints off, just out of reach while repulsively leaving a trail of yak in her wake.

My vet once asked me about the yak and I shuddered remembering. He asked if it was a long tube or a mushy pile. Ick. Can we get more descriptive? How about I scoop up a sample for you next time? *mad* The tubular yak is, illogically, a hairball. I am fighting the dry heaves as I remember.

I have two kitties, Misty and Eve. Eve is a long haired wonder, bullying, fearless, flirtatious, loud, obnoxious and the undisputed Alpha-ette. A trampy little feline who will roll around on her back for anyone who'll rub her ears. From the time she was a kitten, she vacuumed food and promptly tossed it back up. I remember thinking the first time I saw her do it, "Lord, please don't let that be her signature move." Sadly, it is. She also yaks hairballs.

Misty is more regal, snooty, elegant. She sits in contempt. She vanishes when anyone she doesn't know appears. She will venture out later once she's decided the newcomer is worthy. Sometimes she will condescend to allow herself to be petted. When she is feeling affectionate, she is very affectionate: she'll put a paw no each of your shoulders and "hug" you but if she isn't feeling it, don't bother trying to pick her up.

The vet gave me goop to apply to their paws and pills to give them every other day.

Ever give a cat a pill? Yeah. Good times, good times.

The first time, you can cram the pill down the first cat's throat before she knows what hit her. The second cat is pretty smugly looking on, not believing for a moment the same fate is in store for her. Grab her, hold the head back, stuff the pill in, close the mouth and rub the throat, forcing her to swallow.

Eve feigning innocence

You must make sure the pill goes directly down the middle. If it falls off to the side, you're screwed 'cos the cat will hold it in her mouth until you're satisfied she's swallowed it and the instant you release her, she spits out what is now a nasty, wet, disgustingly soddy mass that you must now again try to force in. It can be done but not before the cat is plotting shit on you.

The next time you have to give them a pill, they're on to you and you must decide which one you don't want to chase because once you grab one, the other one is history.

Eve routinely *glub*glub*glub* signalling the beginning of a yak tirade. It is horrendous made more horrendous if it is done while you aren't home or while you're in the shower. Nothing like stepping into a pile of cold cat yak.

Misty's is either clear liquid or wet grey clumps left around the loft and both are keenly aware of what happens when I discover it. They know they're getting a pill that later apparently makes them cry plaintively and they get a good comb out which doesn't bother either in the least.

So all of this to say there is nothing better to do about the yakking other than putting stones into their food (seriously. this slows them down so that they're forced to eat around the stones so that they're not vacuuming), elevating the food dish (can't remember why the vet said that was important but at this point, just tell me what to do and I'll pretty much do it if it means less yak to clean up), giving them anti-yak pills, sticking gunk on their paws that causes the hairballs to slide through them (double ick on that image), combing them out daily.

This is some high maintenance stuff. Pills, fur product, spa treatments and you think they appreciate it? They run like hell when they hear the pills rattling in the bottle. *snicker*

Finger Lickin'

When I print something in my office, I have to knock over chairs, crawl over desks and elbow anyone reaching out to pick up any documents from the printer.

Why?

Because so many people lick their fingers with enough saliva to actually dampen the pages of the documents as they flip through. I mean, stick your finger(s) wherever you want, just don't touch my documents with the same finger(s).

And why would you want to lick your fingers anyway after having pressed the elevator button, entered a key code, touched the door handle, typed on your keyboard, rubbed your nose and Gawd only knows what else ...

Lick on.
Hah. Some friends responded in this way:

1 - Ooh ick! That bugs me too.
DH does this when he reads the paper and magazines. A couple of weeks ago he was sick and sitting at the table at breakfast reading the Sunday paper, licking and turning away. I couldn't take it and finally WENT OFF on him. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it did make him laugh and make him aware of how gross he was being. Sheesh!
I think a nice big sign over the copier at work is in order for you: QUIT GETTING YOUR SPITTLE ON MY DOCUMENTS OR I'M GONNA HAVE TO KNOCK SOME HEADS TOGETHER! kthxbai (or something like that)

2. Just relax and try to think about how much it's strengthening your immune system.

3. My smart ass friend Dorth: I've probably just been *crunching really loudly* on salty snacks and I need to lick them clean so I don't get salt all over your papers. LMAO. *snort* XO.

4. Ohhhh gads if there's one thing I can't stomach it's watching people lick their fingers. For any reason. *hurl*

I was at a BBQ and this guy was gnawing his way through a rack of ribs, had BBQ sauce up to his knuckles - not the finger knuckles, his make a fist knuckles, KWIM? He SUCKED the sauce off each and every finger - stuck his WHOLE finger in his mouth and slurped. I had to leave the area, it just about did me in.
Never mind that he's a really noisy sloppy slurpy eater too. Ick.
I always had a printer in my office so NO ONE could touch my papers. People always read things that are none of their business too. It's like "beat it punk and mind your business"

My kitty once hated me ... *cry*

The vet and I determined the rash on her neck (which occurred this past summer and just a few days ago) is a result of hand cream that I purchased (this past summer) and just started using again (just a few days ago). Forgive the camera phone photo. (photo taken 1.6.2008)

Poor little Eve.

She gives me the sad face and the vet told me, "Don't give it in to it. She will try everything to get you to take the collar off."

The first collar was too big and she behaved as if there was a pile of bricks fastened to her head ... she dragged the bottom of it on the floor, slunk around down low to the floor while plaintively meowing and the worst ... she'd bump into things then turn to look at me with the sad eyes.

I went to Petco to get the Diva Collar (red!) and now she can jump up on the window sill before giving me the sad face.

I also had to give her pills twice a day and put an ointment on the rash ... It got to the point at which she'd hear my key in the door and I could hear her shuffling across the floor trying to escape.