been writing this blog for months now and the biggest written response ever is to a piece about my kitten.

“chickpeabree” who are you in real life? I may already be in love with you.

you be like Sinatra and I’ll be like your puppies.

Chinese proverb:

A fish and a bird might fall in love, but where will they live?

Sometimes I wish English had the 14 different words for love the Greeks used. Brotherly love, patriotic love, god-like love, lots of different words for love. Agape. Perfect love.

After it’s all said and done, aren’t a lot of us just looking for that love we will NEVER get — the love we didn’t get when we were kids. Can’t go back in time and make us feel loved as children. No matter who loves the adult us in the here and now, it won’t substitute for that childhood love we missed. It’s the wound in the soul that just won’t heal, the slash across the heart we can’t forgive or forget.

As I age, the difficulties of love compound. I have my baggage. About a ton of it. Steamer trunks and makeup cases, two suiters and overnighters. These bags naturally accumulate with experiences and experiences naturally accumulate with age. So it also is for everyone I meet. Every single woman I ever will meet for the rest of my life will have experiences, some good and some bad, with men. No virgins at my age. And, therefore, the difficulties get more complex. I get less trainable and more brittle with every passing day. So does everyone else, especially the eligible women in my age brackets — they have children and hot buttons and have learned ever more effective methods of manipulation to get their way. It’s not a gender thing, kids. I’m not being a misogynist. I’m learning how to manipulate better and better every day just as they are. The more immutable my boundaries, the more I want perfect forgiveness and flexability in YOUR boundaries.

My friend, SuzArt, says she’s no longer seeking a man who is perfect, she just wants someone who can match socks. It’s a bitter joke, of course, because it’s SuzArt. Nevertheless, it’s an important point. If you lower your standards enough, there’s someone out there who is more desperate than you. We become so desperate for someone to understand and put up with our crap that we clasp everyone who seems remotely likely to hang in there for more than a weekend. Then, we’re surprised when we find ourselves desperately hanging on to someone who doesn’t love us and that we can’t stand.

For whatever it’s worth, here’s how I feel about it:

A. The nature of relationships

All love relationships have three overlapping parts (triune brain, Skip?). Each person must be intellectually challenged and challenging. Each person must be emotionally fulfilled and fulfilling. Both must be sexually satisfied and satisfying. If you only have one of those things with your partner, you’ll either not last long or have a very sick relationship. Two of those things can drag out a relationship for a long time, but it will ultimately fail. It takes all three for a rewarding and lasting relationship.

Mind, body and spirit. All three have to match.

Not easy.

B. Passion is key

From my perspective, it’s better to give yourself passionately to the relationship and fail than to never give yourself over to your passion. Yes, it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. For me, I must be led by my hopes and not driven by my fears or I am lost. While it is true that you will not be hurt if you never let yourself be vulnerable, neither will you ever be fulfilled, nurtured and at peace with your nature as a human being. I do not like going from one woman to another. I do not like having to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I will not die, sleep and have dreams of a real life that I miss out on by staying on the couch watching television. Like Teddy Roosevelt, I insist on getting in the ring and fighting, even failing, rather than be one of the cold souls who never knows what it’s like to fight for anything. More than that, I wouldn’t want to lose the good times I’ve had in several relationships, even if it means I must suffer the heartache of the end of the relationships. I’ve had my share of spectacular failures, but they were made spectacular by the intensity of the good stuff that preceded the end. The pain of the ending does not diminish the joys of companionship while it lasted.

I will never give up because to do so is to turn my passion for life against myself and for me that is a recipe for a slow and painful death.

C. You, me and us

For every couple there’s the three again. There’s you, there’s me and then there’s us; the “us” is like a third character all its own.

This is an incredibly important point.

You can be a very good person. I can be a very good person. The relationship can be shit.

Unfortunately, we tend not to blame the relationship, we tend to blame each other.

My experience as a divorce lawyer has taught me a good lesson there. Blame is the most worthless of activities when it comes to relationships. There’s usually plenty to go around, if it becomes necessary to someone. But, it’s a lose-lose deal. You blame me and I’ll blame you. Then, instead of any good feelings about someone whom you once cared about greatly, one is left with the bitterness of blame.

What about the dawg who runs around with other women?, you may ask. Isn’t he to blame?

Of course, his running around is not good. On the other hand, my experience teaches me that more often than not, whoever is running around it’s because one or more of the three things (in part A.) is missing. The relationship was sick before the running around killed it. It seems to happen most often when one or both of the parties are unable or unwilling to identify and articulate some other problem in the relationship. Does that mean I condone promiscuity? No, but it does mean I understand it for what it is. On the whole, adultery is merely the symptom of a greater problem.

If you think about people you know in relationships, the importance of the “us” third party becomes apparent. You know people you don’t understand how they can be together when you think of them as individuals, but you know the relationship works. He’s dull. She’s silly. As a couple, they are fun and they relate well. He’s a great guy. She’s a terrific woman. Together, they are a train wreck. Fire is good. Gunpowder is good. Together, explosive.

There’s also the “too much of a good thing” phenomenon. It’s like when you were a kid and had your best friend over for a sleepover and try to extend it to Sunday. By the end, you’re both grumpy and at odds. Sometimes, togetherness gets to be too much. Especially at my age. I’ve got times when I want to be alone and clip my nose hairs and trim my toenails and take a large, long crap and read a book. I don’t want company. My oh my but that’s a problem if you need some reassurance just when I need solitude. I love you, honey, I really do, but will you please get off my back? Again, it goes both ways.

At one time, John and Joy Reed Belt lived side by side in a duplex. That seems at times to be so very smart. As we get older, it seems smarter all the time.

D. Doing the nasty

1. Sex is so problematic.

It’s ruined so many otherwise good relationships and cemented so many bad ones.

Sometimes it really does seem like our parents, grandparents, siblings and all our former lovers are sitting at the end of the bed making comments while we make love.

Make love? Also when we’re just fucking. Yeah, I think that’s two different things, indistinguishable to the observer but obvious to the participants.

Sometimes you want to make love. Sometimes you just want to be good and fucked. Sometimes, it changes in midstream. Sometimes, it’s hard to say what you want, except that you know you aren’t getting what you want.

2. Sex can really kick up some strong stuff in us.

Most recently for me, here’s some observations … .

I understand you want monogamy. It’s a good thing since it tends to promote trust, a vital ingredient for a good sex relationship.

I don’t care about m0nogamy as much as I care about sexual satisfaction. I need monogamy, mostly, to have a sexually satisfying relationship.

However, it gets to be a trap.

If one is promised and determined to be monogamous, your partner has some control over your sex life. He or she can withhold sex and you are left without recourse. To go to another partner destroys the essential trust in the relationship, but your trust is impaired by their refusal to consider your desires plus your inability to make them have sex when you want it.

In my view, some sort of agreement to provide sexual satisfaction 24/7 must be a part of the mutual promise to be monogamous 24/7. In my view, sometimes you should gut up and have sex for the sake of the relationship, even if your heart’s not in it at the start.

Maybe that’s just me.

3. The most important sex act is kissing.

It’s the one we do the most often. It’s the platform from which all other sex acts are launched. If the kissing isn’t good, I won’t be happy. If the kissing is great, I’ll put up with a lot of downside in other areas.

Just about everything else can be worked out or taught or something. I don’t think you can teach good kissing. It’s either there or it isn’t. If I kiss you and leave you, it doesn’t mean you aren’t a good kisser, it does mean it isn’t the kissing I’m looking for and don’t know what else to do. I think it’s a real insult to tell someone they are not any good at kissing. It’s not likely true. Bad kissing for me might be good kissing for someone else. I like my kissing a little on the “dry” side. Not too much slobber, if you don’t mind. I like both light and hard kissing in its place and I like to work up from light to hard and then back off and start the spiral again at a slightly higher level.

I’ve had some great kisses.

I’ll never forget a kiss on an elevator, nor another on a dance floor. Those two women are long gone, but they will always be in my memory. I like the unexpected kiss. I like the highly anticipated kiss, the one you’ve been waiting for.

I rarely like the drunken kiss. It’s too bad so many women (men too?) can’t let go and kiss until and unless they’ve had a few drinks. I understand inhibitions, God knows, but I prefer to believe I’m being kissed because I’m worth it and not because you are out of your mind.

4. Everything is sex

If you’re doing it right in a relationship, everything is sex. Getting up in the morning and having coffee together is just foreplay for the next time. Going to the grocery together is foreplay. Cooking dinner together is foreplay. Quietly cuddling on the couch in front of the television is foreplay.

When the relationship is good, everything you do together is done with love and attraction.

As a result, both parties are getting the emotional fulfillment they need to make the sex really great. It builds the trust and caring and concern and everything else that’s necessary to really good lovemaking. It can also just build the lust needed for a good fuck. Couples should do both. They should make love, of course. They should also just haul off and screw the brains out of their partners every once in awhile, just to clean out the pipes and have fun. Both of those things are made better when everything is foreplay, everything you do together is sex.

5. The one night stand

Ugh.

You can find yourself in a place in your life where it seems like a necessary evil.

For me, it mostly leaves me feeling used and empty.

Once you’ve made love with someone you really care about, fucking someone you hardly know just won’t get it.

It’s like drinking to forget. It works for a night, but then there’s the hangover. Whatever you were trying to forget is just all that more poignant the next day. The gap between what you want and what you get is too great for me.

Will I do it again? Probably. Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Right now, however, nope. I’m not in a place in my life where it appeals to me. I’d rather go home to Sinatra than face that “how do you take your coffee” question in the morning.

E. Miscellaneous

1. Talking

There’s a saying heard at times in court that there are some bells you can’t unring. It’s the same with words. You can apologize until the world is level, but once some things have been verbalized, it’s always going to be there in the air between you. Oh, if I could only take back some things I’ve said to someone I love. The oddest thing about this phenomenon is that it doesn’t work the other way. A million “I love you”s won’t be any good if there’s a “I hate your fat ass” floating around.

2. Expectations

An expectation is merely a resentment that has not yet ripened. If you merely expect your partner to do this or do that or understand this or that, you will soon be filled with resentment at their failure.

3. Character flaws

We all have them. Your partner will also have them. Do you really want a partner who is “perfect”? I think the best we can do is look for a partner who has flaws we can live with and hope they can live with our flaws, whatever they may be. I HATE being treated like a second hand car that will be just fine once I’ve been washed, waxed and get a new carb kit. I am NOT a house to be repainted and carpeted and the kitchen cabinets redone. Please don’t treat me that way until you are perfect. Physician, heal thyself. Then, you can start work on me, as long as I don’t mind being hooked up with a saint. I don’t want a saint. I want a live, honest-to-goodness woman. I’m never going to be perfect. If that’s what you are looking for, move along. Start dating seminarians or something.

4. Hold my fucking hand!

I flirt. The lovely Juliet says I “clock” every woman who passes. Maybe so. Try just holding my hand. I’m not going to change some things about me, even if they are odious. But, if you hold my hand, the flirting and clocking is harmless. Let it go at that. Besides, I need the physical reassurance. It’s a two-fer. You take the sting out of my flirting and you also bind me closer to you. Is that so hard? Isn’t it better than a fight neither of us will win?

5. You can’t get it right

You aren’t perfect.

They aren’t perfect.

The relationship isn’t perfect.

Get over it.