Mating Habits of the North American homo sapiens

Does everyone I know have relationship problems, or is it just my imagination? No, not everyone, only those who are in a relationship. Members of my family, my small circle of male friends, my co-workers. It must be the mating season. Or the unmating season.

So much hinges on timing, so much depends on readiness. Let's say you meet a really beautiful, fantastic person who answers something deep inside you, and the feeling is mutual. There's physical chemistry, there's an intellectual connection, there's a spiritual phenomenon that's hard to explain but impossible to deny, and if you're really lucky, there's a time and place to be together and have some common experiences. Maybe, just maybe, you discover that you care deeply about the same things.

An amazing time. You might as well enjoy it, because it doesn't happen every day, and I'm not sure it happens every lifetime.

In how many ways do the stars have to align for this to work - even short-term? Is one person or the other, or both, at a point in the trajectory of their life where they're able to make a major decision about the direction of their life? At what point is a growing, changing, autonomous individual ready to start operating as half of a couple? When do you start making long-term plans? At best, a person can know what they might be doing in one or two or five years. When do you start remodeling, renovating, or revisiting those long-term plans?

What makes it complicated is that nothing is ever evenly balanced and equally shared. The romantic/erotic picture takes on more shades of blue when love is unrequited, or when one flame burns hotter than the other, or one light shines brighter than the other, or one is ready to make commitments and the other isn't. The variations on those themes fill works of literature, and usually someone gets hurt.

Should I go the autobiographical route? The short version goes something like this. High school sweetheart goes away to K College and, to her parents' enormous relief, meets a guy who better meets their standards. Good for her, bad for me, or so I thought. I saw her at a class reunion 20 years and two kids later; she was divorced and I wasn't, so who's to say.

Kind of like "Groundhog Day," I guess I had to make that mistake a few more times before I got it right. There was that girl from Canada whose parents didn't approve, and they were right, it wasn't meant to be. There was another girl from high school, but that was something different, more like an intimate friendship; we still communicate, but she went her way and I went mine. It wouldn't have worked.

There was someone pretty remarkable the second time around in college, when I was ready to discover there are more kinds of fish in the sea. So my education continued for quite a while, as I explored different waters and made enough mistakes with other people's feelings to last a lifetime, sometimes receiving pain and sometimes inflicting it. I'm probably still working off some of that karma. Is that just the way it works - when it doesn't work? Does it even out in the end?

I have several close acquaintances who are going through relationship transitions. That sounds cold, clinical, and impersonal. They're going through some shit with a lover, okay? Nah, that's not it either. They've got some issues. Who doesn't? They're in a world of pain. Too dramatic. Things are not working out. Understatement. Mid-life crisis? Cliche.

I'm not naming names, and I'm not disclosing incriminating details - or else I won't have any family, friends, or co-workers left. There's the guy about my age whose wife abruptly left him after 30-some years. There's another who has had a few girlfriends since splitting with his wife several years ago. And another who's been divorced for ten years, and his most recent and most healthy girlfriend just moved in with him. Is there something in the water? Everybody I know needs healing, and I wish them all luck.

None of these stories is over, of course, and some of them are already novel-length sagas, not adolescent coming-of-age tales. The awful truth is that there's no formula, no rule, no magic key to working them out. Dr. Phil, Rev. Rod, Judge Judy, my Dad, and every other self-appointed Source of Great Wisdom will quote you a simple rule that makes it all clear. They're either lying or deluded.