Interesting session with my therapist. I heard an interview with the author Jane Smiley (I read and enjoyed her novel 'A Thousand Acres' but nothing else). The interviewer--I think it was Leonard Lopate--said something to her like, "So you put your life into your novels." She said in reply, "Yes, but my novels also show up in my life. After I wrote (I forget the title) I left my second husband. And that's not uncommon. After Dickens wrote David Copperfield, and gave Agnes to David, he became deeply disappointed in his own marriage. Relationships are the stuff of novels, and writing a novel necessarily involves putting a lot of imagination into relationships, and imagining how a relationship can be."

Wow. I've been thinking about that ever since. By and large, the relationships I've had have been largely happenstance, making the most out of what was presented to me in the form of a willing admirer. To a large extent, that changed when I left my Ex. I spent a lot of imaginative effort conceiving of a full and complete life as a single man. How would my life be? To what would I devote myself? What would I do for companionship? What would my values be?

This has paid off in spades. I'm content and satisfied being single. But I'm wondering, what would happen if I thought hard about what a relationship could be that would be rewarding, satisfying, fulfilling, and nourishing? This is trickier. When I thought through bachelorhood, it was tabula rasa. No one thinks about being single. You won't fiind in any magazine an article on "Ten Ways to Make Single Work For You!" Our culture values relationships and that is the mode that's held up as the idea. If you're not attached, you must be looking. Or unwanted. Since I've been single, I've come across more than a few men from whom I got the impression that if I said, "Wanna be boyfriends?" then I'd find myself husbanded up in short order. With the exception of Special Guy, I held back, or backed off. Why? Because Special Guy was my partner in intellect, spirit, and we were hot as hell for each other. Alas, he was stuck like Br'er Rabbit to the Tarbaby in his life, really in a rut. And I think I knew from the git go that therefore our relationship--although it would be good while it lasted--wouldn't last.

But, imagining a relationship is hard just because it's so difficult to clear the decks. "Communication is the key! Accept him as he is! Be partners in decision making! Share household tasks!" I could go on and on. There are entire sections in bookstores devoted to relationships and 'how to' books.

What if relationship were the abberation, rather than the norm? Sort of like in '1984.' Or 'Brave New World.' If I were living in such a society, what would compel me to break with the values of the society around me and get me to risk my life and freedom to be in a relationship?

Much food for thought there. Unquenchable passion and mutual desire, a sharp and wide-ranging intellect, ambition, a firm sense of self-worth, a spirit of adventure, a heartfelt hunger for life, emotional depth... And, must it necessarily be a partnership of equals? That's a relatively new idea, and one that I haven't seen work well. I don't want companionship. I don't want someone to go to the movies with. I will not settle for something less than everything I want. There is no need to. I'm happy just the way I am. Might I spend my whole life waiting? Yeah, I just might. But I've been down the road of Good Enough, and it's lined with a picket fence that pretty quickly is transformed into iron bars topped with barbed wire the farther along you go.

So that's my paradigm. I will live as if to be in a relationship is a crime punishable by death. And I'll hold out for a man for whom I'm willing to risk my life.

See, this is what happens when you become an English major...

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