So you want a love story do you?

I know that there are few hard and fast rules on dating and love. The few being sort of the same as the Ten Commandments if you’re religious and sort of like the Golden Rule if you’re not.

My Rules:

Don’t be violent or crazy or careless with someone’s heart. You can prevent all kinds of fallout by practicing these rules. Try to be honest without being cruel. For now however, we live in a world where everyone seems to need a user’s manual to get through the day. It would seem appropriate there continues to be a growing cottage (or Skyscraper) industry for finding love.

For example, another article on how Women screw up their chances of finding long-lasting relationships with men. So many articles, so many different women and, so many choices. Many of these articles and books claim to have the answers for us.

There are the books that blame the psyche of the common man and, the books that will have you believe its all the fault of the woman; which is where this article leaned at times.

For instance:

“Allison’s take-charge attitude is what Patti calls the pickle jar effect. “We are so successful today, women. We’re fabulous. We work hard. We make good money. We parent. Sometimes what happens when we spend a lot of time alone, we forget to let them open the damn pickle jar,” Patti says.”

Sounds to me as if someone is saying you can’t have you cake and eat it too.

Again later in the article women are being told to “meditate”. So what do we do after we find ourselves? This is an ongoing process; isn’t it?

“Find your inner person,” Patti says. “Meditate. Because I’ll bet you if every one of you ladies in this room went to the most quiet place in your core, you’d know why you were single. I believe you all have your own answer. Find it.”

Finally, we’re given a metaphor for “go buy a dog if you’re lonely”.

“Take a new hobby up. Painting. Cooking. Dancing. Say, ‘This is what I’m going to do this year.’ Okay?

As I read the article I felt very little and then I thought about it a bit more. I began to feel irritated and angry that blame was being placed on one side. Maybe this is an effort to get women to take responsibility for their relationships and behaviors or on the other hand the article is just another solid example that men really are dumb and we have to work just a bit harder to get what we want; an argument I’ve never agreed with.

That rant over lets move on to the actual issue.

Love is hard to find.

We have profiles on the internet, secret email relationships, text messaging lovers, Netflix queues with a hundred or more movies, full-time careers (not just jobs anymore), children, ipods, online grocery shopping, gyms for female’s only. Then you go home by yourself, open your wine, pop in a crime drama on DVD and become afraid of riding the train to avoid a murderer so you resolve to take your car. Later that night you watch the local news and you’re warned against the dangers of the internet, online dating, banking fraud, bacteria in the gym shower, crack pipes in the sandbox and the pizza delivery guy.

Suddenly you find yourself utterly alone. You haven’t had a date in six months, you haven’t left your house since you started telecommuting to save on gas money but, you’re lonely and you’re looking for love.

So you make a list.

A list of things you want and things you don’t. But, because of your fear you don’t answer the 20 emails on your dating profile because they either have one fault that is now a “deal-breaker” or, they’re obviously out of “our league” or, you’ve decided they’re probably lying anyway and that picture is definitely 10 years old.

You’re still alone?

We all are looking for our love story. In fact I could use a serious love story in my life as well. Who knows maybe its right there in front of me right this very instant but I’ve spent my evening on twitter, or writing this blog post. All the while Dr. B is working at his CAREER. We are too fucking busy or afraid to just allow love stories to happen to us.

We have goals, dreams and to do lists with plans that are fighting for space and yet, we still expect potential mates to fit in the middle. We’re not allowing things to happen naturally and we’re not allowing space for natural discovery of another human being.

Step one: Breathe in. then. Breathe out

Step two: Leave your house

Step three: Look around

Now tell me what you see out there.
Baby steps

Now you must excuse me I’m off to watch a DVD from my 129 dvd deep Netflix queue.