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A Cry Heard Round The World: Kim Sun-Il died desperate and alone, but he did not die unheard.
Looking At And Longing For Mars: Reflections on a childhood dream.
A Robot May Not Harm a Human Being. Is The Opposite True?: Thoughts on the future rights of artificial intelligence.
Long After The Boys Of Summer Have Gone: What makes a relationship work?
Winter Of Our Feline Discontent: What the cat wants, the cat gets. But what DOES it want?
To Tell The Truth: There may be no honor among thieves, but can't we find it even in a few good men and women?
Should The Human Brain Retire?: We know that we cannot win forever. We know that machines will continue to improve. So why don't we let the human brain retire gracefully now, with honors?
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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:40 PM
Sat - December 20, 2003
Long After The Boys Of Summer Have Gone
"When you realize you want to spend
the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as
soon as possible."
—Harry, "When Harry Met Sally"
—Harry, "When Harry Met Sally"
Good
news!" my friend, Kate, told me last weekend, "I finally broke up with
Dan."
Dan, her boyfriend of two years, is a gentle soul who doted on Kate almost to excess. He has a masters degree in public policy and a job at the U.S. Department of State. She moved to Washington, D.C. to be nearer to him a year ago. Since then, they had been inseparable.
"This is a good thing?" I asked.
"You bet," she said. "Dan was boring. I need someone more dynamic and ambitious. The thrill was gone, and it had become painfully obvious that he wasn't Mr. Right."
As she explained a decision that obviously relieved her, I tried to share her enthusiasm. Instead, I felt like an eyewitness to a traffic accident. Kate, 38, has never married. Friends tease her that she never remains in any relationship that would have her as a member. Of a slew of past boyfriends, Dan is the first she's dated for more than a year, and the only one—as near as I can tell—who has treated her with dignity and respect.
"There's a certain feeling you need in a successful relationship," she continued. "You need to be excited about seeing someone. You need to have passion. I didn't feel passion any more, and there were a lot of things about him that bothered me. I have high standards. I need someone who transforms my life, not just someone who fits into it."
I don't know whether Dan was the "right" man for Kate, but I believe that Kate—and a number of my other "choosy" friends—are dead wrong about what will make a relationship successful. You have to have passion, of course, but passion fades. You have to have things in common, yes, but you don't have to share an identity of interest. You have to enhance each other's lives, but you can't expect another person to magically transform yours. Even if a relationship does transform your life, change is likely to occur slowly, like a patina forming on iron, rather than a volcanic eruption.
Many people, I've found don't believe these truths at all. Although they feel comfortable making friends and meeting new people, they are convinced that very different rules apply to romantic relationships than to any other form of social interaction. It's as if they've accepted as reality movies and television shows that condense the growth of relationships into 15 second vignettes of happy couples riding rollercoasters, throwing bread to pigeons, and cozying beside Courier & Ives wood fireplaces. Where friendships ripen slowly, they believe that romantic relationships emerge fully grown from the womb. Where familial relationships build trust over time, they want romantic partners to know them intimately (but instantly!) and to trust them implicitly. Most of all, they believe in the power of love to transform toads into princes and princesses, a belief that reassures them as they repeatedly choose partners whose histories of heartbreak, infidelity, and torment would frighten any impartial observer.
I don't know everything that makes relationships work. But I learned when I was single that asking myself the right questions about relationships made me more successful at finding ones that met both partners' needs. Here are some questions that I shared with Kate last week that I found complimented asking myself whether I loved someone or not:
1. Could I see myself cleaning grout with my partner? Relationships aren't always filled with unbridled excitement. Sooner or later you're going to going to spend time with your partner attending to the routine business of life: washing dishes, picking up groceries, and selecting dishware. If you're addicted to excitement, rather than to the other person, the ride you're on is likely to end quickly.
2. Does my partner treat me with compassion and respect? A surprising number of people ignore whether their partners show them consideration, keep appointments, return phone calls promptly, or empathize with them during difficult times. Instead, they pursue relationships that are all about their partners' needs and feelings. Relationships of this kind typically end in heartbreak because well-intentioned ministrations cannot comfort partners whose emotional needs are legion but who look exclusively to others to meet them. Sooner or later, such partners grow restless and look (in vain) for someone else to magically cure their ills. Bonus question: How does my partner treat me when s/he or I am sick?
3. Do my partner and I share the same values? Republicans and Democrats, Catholics and Jews, Americans and the French (!) can happily coexist in relationships. But if your partner values accumulating wealth above happiness, or if the two of you define happiness very differently, you're headed for conflict, if not cataclysm because you disagree on a fundamental level about what is important in life. Another way to ask this question: If my partner and I reared children together, would we teach them the same lessons in the same ways?
4. Can we resolve conflict without hurting each other? Into every relationship a little rain must fall. How partners handle these inevitable disagreements speaks volumes about whether a relationship will succeed. Do you listen to each other or cast blame? Do you compromise or insist that one of you must prevail? Do you both feel comfortable expressing your needs to each other and do you feel secure that once your needs are expressed they will be met or at least taken seriously? Bonus question: Can you resolve conflict even when you are both agitated or must one of you always be the peacemaker?
5. How do your partners' past relationships affect you? We've all heard that folk wisdom about families which claims that offspring apples don't fall far from their parental trees. And we've all met the apparent exceptions: children of alcoholics who never drink, children of abusive parents who never abuse, children of impoverished families who succeed beyond reason or expectation. Granted, these children did not emulate their parents. But I have yet to meet a person whose emotional outlook hasn't been affected by his or her closest past relationships. Understanding the nature of these relationships, how your partner views them, and what expectations about human nature s/he drew from them will go a long way toward understanding how s/he will act toward you and the lens through which she may view your actions and inactions.
6. Does my partner let me be myself? Kate felt bored with Dan because he failed to "challenge" her. A little excitement is healthy in a relationship, but I wonder whether she isn't addicted to an unhealthy level of unrest? I've found that my happiest relationships—including my present marriage—have been with people with whom I didn't have to play a role and for whom I assumed no symbolic meaning ("You will be the father figure I never had..."). Freedom to be yourself and nothing but yourself may not be exciting, but it is healthier in the long run.
7. Does my partner judge me? Closely related to question #6 is whether your partner continually makes value judgments about you—and why s/he feels compelled to do this. Are you hopelessly inadequate or too perfect for words? Is your partner recreating some authoritarian relationship from his or her past? Although we all prefer relationships that favor flattery to insult, in my experience even partners who idealize others are setting the relationship up for failure. No one is all bad or all good. If someone sees you that way, they aren't seeing you. They're seeing an idealization of you that exists only in their heads. When the idolizing ends, the relationship often ends too.
8. Is your partner emotionally stable? Elizabeth Taylor is a gifted movie actress and Liza Minelli is a talented singer, but their history of relationships suggests instability. Having emotional issues doesn't make someone undesirable or a bad person. All of us are working through traumas of one kind of another. The question is: Are your partner's traumas the kind that interfere with a relationship (or conflict with your own), and is s/he on the path to recovering from them? Supporting each other is certainly essential, but since no one can cure another person's ills, the real question is how your partner is changing, not whether you can change him.
9. What do you want from a relationship and how will you recognize it? It's surprising how many people never try to quantify what they want in a relationship by writing down a list of qualities they seek in a partner and ranking them in importance. I don't advocate treating dates like a Gallup pollster, but if you're trying to hit a target, doesn't it help to know how to recognize it? Related question: What don't you want and how will you recognize it?
Dan, her boyfriend of two years, is a gentle soul who doted on Kate almost to excess. He has a masters degree in public policy and a job at the U.S. Department of State. She moved to Washington, D.C. to be nearer to him a year ago. Since then, they had been inseparable.
"This is a good thing?" I asked.
"You bet," she said. "Dan was boring. I need someone more dynamic and ambitious. The thrill was gone, and it had become painfully obvious that he wasn't Mr. Right."
As she explained a decision that obviously relieved her, I tried to share her enthusiasm. Instead, I felt like an eyewitness to a traffic accident. Kate, 38, has never married. Friends tease her that she never remains in any relationship that would have her as a member. Of a slew of past boyfriends, Dan is the first she's dated for more than a year, and the only one—as near as I can tell—who has treated her with dignity and respect.
"There's a certain feeling you need in a successful relationship," she continued. "You need to be excited about seeing someone. You need to have passion. I didn't feel passion any more, and there were a lot of things about him that bothered me. I have high standards. I need someone who transforms my life, not just someone who fits into it."
I don't know whether Dan was the "right" man for Kate, but I believe that Kate—and a number of my other "choosy" friends—are dead wrong about what will make a relationship successful. You have to have passion, of course, but passion fades. You have to have things in common, yes, but you don't have to share an identity of interest. You have to enhance each other's lives, but you can't expect another person to magically transform yours. Even if a relationship does transform your life, change is likely to occur slowly, like a patina forming on iron, rather than a volcanic eruption.
Many people, I've found don't believe these truths at all. Although they feel comfortable making friends and meeting new people, they are convinced that very different rules apply to romantic relationships than to any other form of social interaction. It's as if they've accepted as reality movies and television shows that condense the growth of relationships into 15 second vignettes of happy couples riding rollercoasters, throwing bread to pigeons, and cozying beside Courier & Ives wood fireplaces. Where friendships ripen slowly, they believe that romantic relationships emerge fully grown from the womb. Where familial relationships build trust over time, they want romantic partners to know them intimately (but instantly!) and to trust them implicitly. Most of all, they believe in the power of love to transform toads into princes and princesses, a belief that reassures them as they repeatedly choose partners whose histories of heartbreak, infidelity, and torment would frighten any impartial observer.
I don't know everything that makes relationships work. But I learned when I was single that asking myself the right questions about relationships made me more successful at finding ones that met both partners' needs. Here are some questions that I shared with Kate last week that I found complimented asking myself whether I loved someone or not:
1. Could I see myself cleaning grout with my partner? Relationships aren't always filled with unbridled excitement. Sooner or later you're going to going to spend time with your partner attending to the routine business of life: washing dishes, picking up groceries, and selecting dishware. If you're addicted to excitement, rather than to the other person, the ride you're on is likely to end quickly.
2. Does my partner treat me with compassion and respect? A surprising number of people ignore whether their partners show them consideration, keep appointments, return phone calls promptly, or empathize with them during difficult times. Instead, they pursue relationships that are all about their partners' needs and feelings. Relationships of this kind typically end in heartbreak because well-intentioned ministrations cannot comfort partners whose emotional needs are legion but who look exclusively to others to meet them. Sooner or later, such partners grow restless and look (in vain) for someone else to magically cure their ills. Bonus question: How does my partner treat me when s/he or I am sick?
3. Do my partner and I share the same values? Republicans and Democrats, Catholics and Jews, Americans and the French (!) can happily coexist in relationships. But if your partner values accumulating wealth above happiness, or if the two of you define happiness very differently, you're headed for conflict, if not cataclysm because you disagree on a fundamental level about what is important in life. Another way to ask this question: If my partner and I reared children together, would we teach them the same lessons in the same ways?
4. Can we resolve conflict without hurting each other? Into every relationship a little rain must fall. How partners handle these inevitable disagreements speaks volumes about whether a relationship will succeed. Do you listen to each other or cast blame? Do you compromise or insist that one of you must prevail? Do you both feel comfortable expressing your needs to each other and do you feel secure that once your needs are expressed they will be met or at least taken seriously? Bonus question: Can you resolve conflict even when you are both agitated or must one of you always be the peacemaker?
5. How do your partners' past relationships affect you? We've all heard that folk wisdom about families which claims that offspring apples don't fall far from their parental trees. And we've all met the apparent exceptions: children of alcoholics who never drink, children of abusive parents who never abuse, children of impoverished families who succeed beyond reason or expectation. Granted, these children did not emulate their parents. But I have yet to meet a person whose emotional outlook hasn't been affected by his or her closest past relationships. Understanding the nature of these relationships, how your partner views them, and what expectations about human nature s/he drew from them will go a long way toward understanding how s/he will act toward you and the lens through which she may view your actions and inactions.
6. Does my partner let me be myself? Kate felt bored with Dan because he failed to "challenge" her. A little excitement is healthy in a relationship, but I wonder whether she isn't addicted to an unhealthy level of unrest? I've found that my happiest relationships—including my present marriage—have been with people with whom I didn't have to play a role and for whom I assumed no symbolic meaning ("You will be the father figure I never had..."). Freedom to be yourself and nothing but yourself may not be exciting, but it is healthier in the long run.
7. Does my partner judge me? Closely related to question #6 is whether your partner continually makes value judgments about you—and why s/he feels compelled to do this. Are you hopelessly inadequate or too perfect for words? Is your partner recreating some authoritarian relationship from his or her past? Although we all prefer relationships that favor flattery to insult, in my experience even partners who idealize others are setting the relationship up for failure. No one is all bad or all good. If someone sees you that way, they aren't seeing you. They're seeing an idealization of you that exists only in their heads. When the idolizing ends, the relationship often ends too.
8. Is your partner emotionally stable? Elizabeth Taylor is a gifted movie actress and Liza Minelli is a talented singer, but their history of relationships suggests instability. Having emotional issues doesn't make someone undesirable or a bad person. All of us are working through traumas of one kind of another. The question is: Are your partner's traumas the kind that interfere with a relationship (or conflict with your own), and is s/he on the path to recovering from them? Supporting each other is certainly essential, but since no one can cure another person's ills, the real question is how your partner is changing, not whether you can change him.
9. What do you want from a relationship and how will you recognize it? It's surprising how many people never try to quantify what they want in a relationship by writing down a list of qualities they seek in a partner and ranking them in importance. I don't advocate treating dates like a Gallup pollster, but if you're trying to hit a target, doesn't it help to know how to recognize it? Related question: What don't you want and how will you recognize it?