читать дальшеThink about “I Say a Little Prayer”: “The moment I wake up / Before I put on my makeup, / I say a little prayer for you.” Come on. Really? What the fuck? You should be saying a little prayer for yourself, so you can get through the day. If you’re going to take a minute to pray, pray that you get to your job on time without getting hit by a bus or getting mugged, or that nothing happens to you on the subway or crossing the street. This idea that you have this love, this love in you, and you say a little prayer for him every morning before you do anything else… it’s not really real. It’s kind of wonderful to be in that heightened state, but it’s not real. Maybe I just look at it as a prelude to problems, because at some point you won’t be so infatuated or giddy or oversexed, and you will be sorely disappointed. Which is when you start saying a little prayer that this person will just go away.
For me, these are the worst songs to listen to if you are looking for love. I blame these songs for messing me up, for setting me up to fail. Don’t get me wrong. They are all great songs. I love these songs. They just send the wrong message.
***
All these songs send the wrong message. They make you weak and want to wallow, and love isn’t about being weak and wallowing.
Ever since that movie Jerry Maguire came out, with that line where Tom Cruise tells Renée Zellweger, “You complete me,” people have wanted to believe in the mushiness of “you complete me” without realizing how bad a situation that is. It may be fantastic screenwriting—it’s a great line—but in real life, it’s a disaster. If they complete you, they can deconstruct you as well.
Are you a fully realized person? Well, who can say? Only you know if that’s true. But no one you meet is going to make you complete, a fully realized person. You have to be one before you start any of this relationship shit.
читать дальше Otherwise, you’re like a goiter attached to somebody, at the whim of how they are feeling. “You complete me.” That’s such a weird phrase to me. It’s almost like you don’t have sense enough to do shit on your own. “You complete me.” Like, I go to bed, and I’m leaking somewhere because the valve that you are is not there? These visuals are just bullshittian things, and maybe that’s part of the problem.
People keep looking for someone to complete them, but that’s work you have to do yourself. No one else can do it for you, and if your work isn’t complete before you get married or get into a relationship, the relationship will seem a bit shaky, like you’re kind of a ghost, a phantom. It’s like you’re not really there. For someone else to come and work on you as though you were an unfinished painting doesn’t seem right. You have to be a complete person before you can commit to anyone else. And the idea that we are walking around as a half person, I find bizarre. Well, think about it. Who are you? Do you have the things you want in your life? Are you okay being alone for a time? Do you have the patience for it?
If you’re a complete, whole person, you have the patience to wait for the right person instead of living with someone who isn’t for you. Do you have the confidence and faith to wait?
You know when the right one comes along, because you say, “Oh, I could walk with this person side by side, because I know who I am. I know what I like and what I don’t want. I know what I will take in my life and what I won’t take in my life. This person seems to have a similar feeling. He knows what he likes. He knows who he is.” When you come together you’re not clashing and fighting and saying, “You’re not giving me what I need.” You know what you need and you can tell that to the other person. And the other person can say, “I can do that” or “I can’t do that.”One question I hear from time to time is “How do you know when to pursue sex with somebody?” I don’t think they’re asking about the “don’t have sex until the third date” rule. I think they’re asking, “How do you know if you want to have a sexual relationship with someone?” Some people might say, “Isn’t it obvious?” No, not always. We’re human, so like everything else we’ve talked about, there’s no one easy answer.
We know from these long-term marriages that there can be strong love without sex. We also know it from how we interact with people every day. Listen, I have loved so many men whom I’ve had no desire to have sex with.
читать дальшеIf I were to have sex with them, it would change everything. It’s not money that changes everything, Cyndi Lauper, it’s sex.
Sex changes everything.
Sex makes people nuts.
Sex makes people possessive.
Sex makes people boastful.
Sex makes people lie.
Sex makes people turn into assholes and bitches.
Because, for some reason, as we talked about earlier, the mythology of a relationship says that sex lasts with one person and one person only, and it lasts forever, and that you should not want any deviation from that. You’re not supposed to see anyone else as a sexual being. You’re not supposed to have lustful thoughts in your heart. It’s terrible. Sexual desire becomes like a jail. I base my opinion here on my own relationships. I have been there and done that.
I’m a really sexual person. I really, really am. I’m not so much now, because I’ve come into my own, and I realize what’s right for me. Still, I have not avoided booty calls when they have presented themselves, and I’ve made a phone call or two here and there. In my experience, though, sex makes people nuts. There are so many beautiful people in the world that sometimes you look over at someone and he just gives you a little tingle, like Tinker Bell.
If you admit this, people immediately get very uptight with you.
“Why do you have that smile on your face?”
“What are you looking at?”
“What are you doing?”
It’s like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, he’s hot. I just got a little moist. It doesn’t mean I’m not moist for you.”читать дальшеI believe in soul mates, but I don’t believe that you have to have sex with your soul mate or that you have to marry your soul mate. But let me ask you, what does that mean, to have a soul mate? It’s a connection. And it can mean different things to different people. There isn’t one hard and fast definition. And I think you can have a lot of soul mates; there isn’t necessarily just one.
I have four soul mates right now. They are people for whom I would give my life. But I wouldn’t have them come live with me in my house. I don’t want to marry them. They are married to other people anyway, thank God, so they don’t want that, either. Theirs are relationships that have endured many wives and husbands, and all those people came to terms with the fact that I’m here, and I’m friends with their spouses. Everybody involved knows I’m not going to run off with their husband. I’m not going to take. I’m not going to touch. But this person, your partner, has been my friend for a long time, longer than you’ve been together. You will have to deal with it. Periodically, I’m going to call. I will be respectful. That’s what friends do.
So a soul mate is not necessarily a person who you would go run off with, or marry. It’s just great to have someone who can talk to you without judgment, someone who cares about you and accepts you just the way you are.
The word soul mate means different things to different people. Besides, we connect with different people for different reasons. Only you will know what a soul mate feels like. You may have to cop to the fact that your soul mate doesn’t look the way you think he should. So when you find him, you go, “Oh, my God. It’s you?”
A lot of people think there is just one soul mate in the world for them and spend their lives looking for him or her. They think if they try hard enough, they will find “the one.” They find someone they connect to and think, “You’re my soul mate. Let’s have sex and let’s get married and be in love forever.” But that isn’t usually how it works.
I have a lot of friends who don’t understand how I can be friends with people I’m not in a romantic relationship with anymore. It’s because it’s not that I hate them. There was something about them I liked to begin with, I know them well and they know me well, and just because we’re not romantically involved or didn’t meet each other’s expectations, it doesn’t mean we have to hate each other.
I’m a different kind of fish, because I know when I’m done. In the past I was never able to go cleanly. I would always think, “I need to set it up so I can get out of here, and nobody will come following me.” So I would let stuff linger for a couple of years before I made a move. Just because I was lazy. I knew that the relationship was over, and I was just going through the motions. So I would leave all the toys for people to play with, so I could get out of there and leave them happy with the toys.
Sometimes you have very long relationships, and then they are done. I had one for six, seven years. And then it was done. It was just done. “Gee, look at the time, got to go.” It’s hard to let go, but you have to move on when you get to the point where it is clear the relationship just isn’t working. It isn’t making either of you happy, you aren’t having fun anymore, and you’re not growing.