a different type of romantic

I remember the first time I wanted to be a writer.  I must have been in second grade.  I asked my mom what sort of book she would write if she were a writer.  Mom waxed moony-eyed and got a goofy grin.  She said she would write a book about being stuck alone on a desert island with a handsome man.  Like Dad?  Yes, like your dad.  And there would be romance.  Oh, I said, which is about all a seven year old could say to such.

I remember thinking at the time how commonplace my mom's fantasy life was, and how impractical.  But Mom, I wanted to say, my knowledge of terrain types bubbling to the fore of my concerns, deserts don't have water. You would die there.  I also thought it sounded lonely and boring, which of course it would have been.  Even in my child's mind, I knew that the story would be interesting for reasons other than those my mom named.  But Mom, there are probably lions there, or sicknesses, or heat.  You will have no food.  Your partner would seem more competitor, a burden on limited resources.  Too thirsty for kissing.

Given my early mistrust for its most facile premise, it's not surprising that I am not very interested in the romance genre.  Using other people's genitals as catalysts for one's personal growth may be common, but I find the behavior unappealing.  One can set out in a new direction without developing shallow and physically intense attractions to strangers.  The rigorous habits of asceticism serve well for accomplishing actual positive change.  Discipline matters more to long term happiness than one's ability to form and eventually get burned by unworthy attachments.

Yet there is a prudent impulse even in the desire to sleep with new people in awkward circumstances that so marks the romance genre.  An instinct preserved, if you will.  Even in the form of the cheapest thrill, we have not lost the understanding that intense physical experiences are opportunities for changing our minds, that the change of body and mind, habits of body and habits of mind, go together.  Perhaps this understanding explains the cultural craving for romance, the desire, though so often perverse and unsustainable, for novel flesh meshing.

Trouble is, the craving for fulfillment only grows as cheap thrills become habitual.  One might grow to resent spouse, friend, religion, quotidian rituals, as obstacles to the transforming sexual experience that never materializes.  I have seen a woman grow bitter toward her husband for not being a well-endowed and somehow extraordinarily skilled and athletic sex partner back when they were both slender and could have done those things in her books (without injury and ice packs).  Instead of more intense and satisfying sex, the desire for sex dried up, a casualty of the despair that set in when it became clear that there would be no satisfaction.  I have watched women jump right into bed with men with nothing more to recommend them than a decent frame and good manners.  I always feel like my seven year old self, then, knowing from the first twinkle in the woman's eye that she will just wind up unhappy, whether in hours, days, or months.  He can't give you what you seek.  Changing your life has to be your choice.  A new partner with mutual goals can certainly help, but romantics of the eye twinkle/desert island/romance novel/sex with strangers variety don't generally inquire into mutuality.  There is no long term plan.  No one brings water barrels to desert island hook ups.

And no one really changes from such assignations, whether real or imagined.  Unless it's for the worse, self hatred pushing its way into the world through unfaithful acts.  Each read, each hook up, takes the stream of self down a tributary, dissipates one's life away from the good.  To redirect a stream away from its habitual course, one must build strong boundaries.  No more going down that path. Some wall - self respect, for instance, or chastity - must stand guard against the misdirected impulse.  Even more intense than the fleeting physical pleasure is the moment of temptation resisted. Going round and round in circles through open doors does not get one going in the right direction, but one door closed, one choice - this way, not that - taken repeatedly can bring us round right.

And that's where reality comes in.  Because when love constrains a river, it grows deeper, stronger.  That a boundary would be the intense physical experience that changes one's mind seems counterintuitive to the romantic.  Yet, boundaries open us to the best and deepest of life.  To lay down the book, turn off the website, end the affair, leaves one free to dance, to walk, to dig in the earth, to take a look at those around one, at oneself, and really see.  Boundaries like the womb allow life to grow and make birth possible.  Like the new life of birth, all newness of life takes time to grow and develop.  Today a boundary, tomorrow a boundary, today a new habit, tomorrow a new habit, and so on until we find that we have come to the place of truth, casting off what no longer suits, and struggling into joy.