By Oct 2010, Judy and I were working our way through love dumb month number three. Hot on the heels of our return from Mendocino, I decided it was time to introduce Judy to one of my favorite hobbies—car racing. About twice a year, for the last 15 years, I can be found in my car driving circles round a race track—Buttonwillow, Thunderhill, Willow Springs, even the world-famous Laguna Seca. There’s nothing quite like the marriage of man and machine at 110MPH. Now, it was time to find out if my new love would join in for a little ménage-a-car.
Judy ate it up. She drove around the track with wild abandon, a little too wild. She was fast. Fast down the straight, fast into the corners, fast out of the corners. But this driving style is not exactly the way it should be done–it wears everything out. Predictably, by 3:00 in the afternoon, she was dead asleep in a chair in our track-side garage. She wore out the car, too. The front brake pads on the car were toasted, a feat I had never accomplished in my all my years of track time. In the end, it was really no surprise to me that Judy loved it. That’s just another part of this different type of relationship we share (I’ll talk more about this different type of relationship in detail as we get nearer the project unveiling. Stay tuned!).
A week after racing, Judy headed to China for business. It was sad and difficult for us to be separated. But we talked on the phone, killing one prepaid calling card after another, and kept up a constant stream of lovemails to each other.
From: Judy
To: TroyI miss you and am amazed that you and your love came into my life. How did I get so lucky? I was just landing on the fact that it seems surreal. I have been coming to these manufacturing shows for years and I just got this feeling while walking the showfloor that I am now a completely different person. Our love and relationship is more of how I define myself and my life now. I am an “us” more than an “I”. My gawd man, I have a ring on my finger!
And I love it, love you, love me, love us and am just flabbergasted that we have a relationship with everything I ever wanted. I thought this impossible.
….
From: Troy
To: JudyMy heart misses your touch, my soul your sweet presence, my face your amazing touch. It’s been such a short time with you to be so long without you. Yet the gift that you are in my life fills me – fills me with such happiness and love. I feel blessed beyond dreams.
I can’t wait to have you back in my arms, to hold you and tell you once again how much I love you. I can’t wait to make you my bride.
And with Judy in China, I finally had time to reacquaint myself with real life for a moment…the kind of moment where you actually pick up the phone to call your parents to tell them you’ve been engaged for a month. “Is there a picture of us? Well, sorta. Here you go, Mom.” And this is what she got. Don’t laugh! It’s the best of what I had!
Finally, after seven excruciating days apart from each other, Judy came home and we were off to our next love dumb activity – couples’ erotic massage.
Click here for Episode 11: Couples’ Erotic Massage
I love busting relationship myths. There are soooo many of them; such great fodder for blogging.
Today’s Myth: You and your partner are going to argue—that’s just how relationships are. So, since you’re going to argue, how will you do it? Better learn to fight fairly!
This belief is so pervasive, that when we started speaking of engagement, a therapist friend of ours suggested that we delay until we figured out how we were going to argue! By presumption, arguments and disagreements are anticipated and the way we fought would predict whether our relationship would survive long-term. How crazy is that?!
Arguments are a lack of understanding and misconception, an artifact of misalignment in the characteristics of the couple. What if we found a way to create pairings where arguments were not endemic to the relationship? Imagine that for just a second…
That’s what Judy and I were doing as we headed to the Howard Creek Ranch, a historic landmark in Mendocino. Nestled between the beach and coastal mountains, the main house was completed in 1871. It has passed through several families before coming to Sunny and Sally in 1974, when they purchased it and turned it into an B&B.
You know, sometimes the first trip away together for a new couple is insightful. Compacted together in the same space for an extended time, together with the duress of travel, often reveals personality idiosyncracies otherwise obscured by love’s newness.
Together, Judy and I enjoyed the isolation – no phone, no Internet. Just sun, steaks on the bar-b, great wine, some writing together on our book, and fantastic breakfasts prepared by Sally on a century-old original wood-fired stove.
The only thing that was revealed is how wonderful it was to be with my fiancé. No fuss, no arguments, no issues…no kidding.
They say that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. I disagree. I am a girl’s best friend. Why? Because I love rocks: Sapphire, tanzanite, black opal, benitoite, and especially diamonds. I love to buy and give rocks. That makes me a girl’s best friend.
Almost two months after our first date, Judy and I went to the Northern California Gem Show. Wandering around the floor was great. We had gone to the show under the auspices of searching for materials for a project at work. Very soon though, it turned into an excursion to find an engagement ring. It just happened. Hey, check out this diamond, then that ring. Our search slowly morphed from an interesting pastime to a bona fide endeavor. She had to see them all! We spent the entire day trekking from vendor to vendor.
By the end of the day, Judy still hadn’t selected anything, even though we had been to the equivalent of 50 jewelry stores. As we were having dinner at a restaurant on the way home , she looked at me and said, “Shouldn’t you propose before we go looking for rings?” She had a point. I mean, it wasn’t a secret. We had been discussing being engaged for a month now. But it did feel a little like the ref had thrown the penalty flag for illegal procedure.
When we got back home that evening, we walked above Capitola. On the cliffs overlooking the sea, I asked Judy to marry me. She said yes and squealed….and then squealed some more. Judy, at 48, was engaged for the first time! It was more like squeals of holy c$!p mixed with utter disbelief, more than just excitement.
The next day we returned to the show and bought the first ring we’d looked at the previous day: a beautiful D-color heart-shaped center surrounded by round brilliant-cut diamonds. The selection was a surprise in two ways: First, strangely enough, even after looking at a hundred rings, the first one was the right one. This became a theme that has consistently appeared in our relationship; and second, as a highly powerful woman, hearts had never been Judy’s thing; she’d never worn one before. But love was drawing something out of Judy that had long been repressed.
Blissfully engaged! Life was good…
Two months into our relationship, Judy coined the term “love dumb.” We couldn’t make it anywhere on schedule. Bills weren’t getting paid on time. We’d meet somewhere, leave together and forget to go back and retrieve her car (for like a week). We largely ignored our friends and family and spent happy hours planning our first romantic getaway to Mendocino for October. We played and made love, had fun and enjoyed being in that love dumb state, mostly oblivious to anything but each other.
But a couple of weeks after the Rob Thomas concert, we did make it out to a party hosted by one of Judy’s friends. Boy, was that a mistake. Talk about throwing cold water on a good thing. Oscar Wilde once wrote, “The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life”. We received a big bucket of that negativity at the party. We were obviously happy—okay, giddy—as we milled about meeting the party’s interesting cast. And then we ran into one of people Oscar Wilde was most definitely writing about. Her response to our uber-romantic story? “Enjoy it. It won’t last.” Wow! Right to our faces! Another said, “Oh, it’s new now. What you have now will change into something else later.”
This was supposed to be an enlightened crowd. What a bunch of nay-saying downers! Why couldn’t her friends be happy for us? Didn’t we have what they all said they wanted? Why did they have to rain on our parade? Was it sour grapes? Was it because they’d already given up long ago? Or was it just simple jealousy?
Perhaps it was just a natural reaction. The idea that love can be easy and fun is just not part of our relationship lexicon. Mature relationships are supposed to be full of work and compromise, right? Give and take. Push and pull. Ups and downs. And, eventually, over the decades, once you’ve beaten and battered each other into submission, the reward of good life and love Is harvested from all those relationships seeds you’ve worked so hard to sew into the hard-tilled earth.
What a bunch of bull. Poetic? Sure. A necessary fact of relationship life? No way.
I believe in something else, something different. I believe in relationships of ease and grace where friction and drama are relatively nonexistent. I believe in a deep love that lasts–the same deep love that Judy and I share.
Funny thing is, more than two years later we’re working crazy hard 7 days a week to bring this project to the world and guess what? We’re still pretty love dumb.
The naysayers are wrong. Love like this can last…
Click here for Episode 8: Didn’t You Forget to Propose?
Remember that talk I was having with Judy? The one where I told her she had a decision to make–that she could either trust the love and go with it or lose a unparalleled relationship. It only took her but a moment to decide. And just like that, she blew through her wall. Just one of a million reasons why I love her—she’s just amazing.
With our dance back in the swing, it was time to go dancing!
Rob Thomas was playing the Mountain Winery on August 15 (2010) to support his charity, Sidewalk Angels Foundation. I couldn’t believe it! Mega-performers usually select the 15,000 seat HP Pavilion as opposed to the intimate, outdoor 1,700 seat former winery (which has the best acoustics in the Bay Area). A quick look on Craigslist stuck gold…9th row, dead center. Woohoo!
It was a beautiful night, warm and clear. From its hillside perch, we could see the twinkle of the entire Silicon Valley. If you aren’t inspired to kiss here, you obviously have no pulse.
We didn’t know exactly what to expect as we found our seat. Strange, there were no drums on stage. Wait, not enough amps either. There was a full-sized piano, a slide guitar….and that was about it. Rob came out with just two wingmen, each carrying an acoustic guitar. OMG! We’re going to spend the evening with Rob Thomas, completely unplugged!
Rob played all the Matchbox 20 hits, with some of his solo work. ‘Smooth’ was just him and two guitars, “Unwell” was him solo on the piano. Unbelievable! He was charming…openly honest with his thoughts and feelings. It was such a pleasure to see a superstar who appeared to be just a down-to-earth guy. We felt honored to be there, under the moon and stars, listening to perfectly clean harmonies: a piano, a guitar, and one truly gifted multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter. And best of all, Judy looked at me and said “You have my heart”.
That was the beginning of our three-continent whirlwind romance…
Click here for Episode 7: The Suspicious World
Special Bonus! Rob Thomas performing Bright Lights, the last song of that evening. Click here: RT – Bright Lights
As you might imagine, a first date that ends with falling in love is already moving pretty damn fast. So by the third or fourth week, it was no surprise that Judy hit a wall. Since we started, we had both been moving steadily forward—going with the flow. We were having great times together playing hooky from work, driving around with the top down, drinking lots of great wine, and enjoying one, long seemingly never-ending kiss.
Inevitably, though, the head catches up with the heart and what generally ensues is confusion and doubt. Should I lean in? Should I get out? Is this real? Can I really have it all? Should I end it before he does? The questions roll in like a thunderstorm, unleashing a flash flood of fears that threaten to extinguish love’s flame.
This commonly held belief that we can’t have it all has been steadily built up by the influences all around us–divorce, the unhappy relationships of our parents or friends, the endless list of books on how not to struggle with our partners. The neurons that store these negative fragments exhibit the biochemical ability to block even the strongest of love’s impulses; so much so that even when the real thing shows up, our subconscious does its best to kill it.
That’s what Judy started doing. Doubts were creeping in. Where questions hadn’t existed before, now there was hesitation. The effortless fluidity of our dance was stunted. We needed to have the talk. (Episode 4, Are You His Girlfriend?)
But, not the talk you think. At 48, Judy had never found a relationship as powerful or effortless as ours. Every fiber of programming in her head told her that “deep, soulful, and easy” wasn’t possible, and even if it was at first, it certainly could never last. It didn’t matter that the experience she was actually having was different than anything she’d experienced before, it surely couldn’t be real. Judy knew there must be a fatal flaw. Surely the ease would devolve into disharmony, just like every relationship she had ever known before.
I explained that it was literally all in her head. The relationship she was experiencing was different by design. All she needed to do was have faith in what she was feeling. “You can have it all—just follow your heart,” I said. She could decide to embrace our love and get past her wall.
All she had to do is decide…
I love—no make that hate—the articles online dating sites offer in hopes that they will help their subscribers find a mate. I can’t decide which I think is more ridiculous: the content of the articles or the mistaken belief that these snippets provide a service. Spellbinding bestsellers like, “Pickup Lines for the Coffee Shop”, “When They Won’t Cut Ties to their Ex-Loves”, or today’s favorite “Twelve Ways to Know You’re Not His Girlfriend”. Oh, yeah. Check it out:
The article opens with, “You’ve been dating for weeks, maybe months. In your mind you’re his girlfriend….but you have a sneaking suspicion…” And then they give you their mindbomb list of items to check off:
- You’ve never met his friends or family. (check!)
- You’re not his date to major events. (check!)
- If you haven’t had the talk, you’re probably not his girlfriend. (check!)
- He never calls on the weekend. (check!)
- You’ve never seen his place. (check!)
- You are introduced as “my friend” or just by name. (check!)
- Last minute changes throw him for a loop. (check!)
- You’re restricted to non-prime time date nights. (check!)
- Talk of the future makes him squirm. (check!)
- He runs hot and cold. (check!)
- You get the late night, “Hey are you home? Can I come over?” call. (check!)
I’ve got one for you. How about “In your mind, you’re his girlfriend, but are you in your mind…or out of your mind?”
If you’ve been dating for weeks, let alone months, and you don’t know if you’re his girlfriend, you’re in the wrong relationship. It’s not that you’re off the path, you don’t even know where the path is.
It’s not your fault, really. Our parents didn’t teach us how to find love everlasting. There’s no manual to describe what you need to do. You must find the secret formula on your own… Mono a mono. Quid pro quo. Caveat emptor. And so dating websites write articles that focus on pick-up lines and dating, when the focus should be connection and relationship. In order to identify a match like Judy, we need to understand how to find connection. We need to know what characteristics create gravity. We need a list of items that automatically lead to a point where there is a ‘knowing’, instead of a lingering, amorphous question.
If “Twelve Ways..” is the best a dating site can do, is it any wonder that subscribers have a hate-love-hate relationship with online dating?
Just seven days after sitting in that Paris cafe, I was standing on Judy’s doorstep. I hate to admit it, but at that moment, I couldn’t quite recall her face, but I did remember her being beautiful, tall and lean. She was also a very powerful woman. She had lived for four months in a hut on the Red Sea, hiked through Africa alone (at times just miles ahead of a Ugandan civil war), run a high-altitude hospital at the base of Everest, and for 20 years, had been the CEO of her own very successful company. Judy imbued the air with a formidable presence.
A quiet table at an Italian restaurant near the ocean was the venue for our rediscovery—and it started, like most dates do, with some small talk: “What have you been doing for the last couple years…”? (If you’ve dated, you know the drill.) But with Judy, there was none of that usual awkwardness. We sipped wine and relished the incredible pasta and got to know each other again. Unlike the first time we dated, a real connection was forming. It was something deep and rare…but it wasn’t a surprise.
You see, I had sent Judy my online profile to read before our date. It was a profile whose genesis emerged from another first date that happened in Jan 2008 with Helen—a meeting that changed *everything* I thought I knew about dating and relationships. That date, too, started at a quiet table with the customary small talk. And then something happened. As time passed, we connected. And then connected more…and more and more. And then connection turned into gravity, pulling us together. It wasn’t attraction or lust. It was something much deeper, calmer, peaceful, soulful. Within 60 minutes we knew something very unique was happening. Within 14 days we were falling in love. By 28 days we were engaged. In the end it didn’t work out, but my life had been irrevocably changed. I knew that I could never live without that depth and power of connection again. Nothing else would ever do. And from that experience I built a new type of online profile, designed to find a different type of relationship.
So being with Judy was no accident. Even two years after our first meeting, my profile still resonated deeply within her. She was compelled to reach back out to me and now, here we were experiencing that very same connection and gravity—only stronger and deeper. Between the words and the transparency, the feelings and experiences, and the heart and soul, I had found what I had been looking for.
By the end of the evening, we were both falling in love…
Click here for Episode 4: No wonder people despise Online Dating
Even though I had just ended my relationship with Jill a couple of weeks earlier, I landed in Paris filled with excitement and expectation. What I hadn’t expected was her reaction to our breakup and me being out of reach. First it was one text, then the same text repeated 10 times….20 times…50 times! Emails were flying in, then phone calls. It was a blizzard of pain and sadness…and desperation. I did my best to talk her down off the ledge, but she had worked herself into a distraught frenzy. Nothing I said seemed to help. Her pain was palpable and familiar—something I too had felt in the past (even if I reacted differently). I felt deeply for her. In the end, all I could do was to beg her daughter to intercede.
There was a silver lining: The symptom for my nagging doubt now had a diagnosis—she needed our relationship more than she wanted it, whereas I wanted way more than I needed it. Being so unbalanced often creates issues…
Right in the middle of this madness came an email from someone I had briefly dated two years ago. Man, when it rains, it pours! Judy and I had shared three dates back in 2008. She chose another guy, but by some cosmic happenstance, that, too, had recently ended. I really liked Judy. She was beautiful, intelligent, and fun. She said she wanted to catch up. Hmmm… It sounded more like a suggestion for a date to me. It made no difference. Long ago I had learned the futility of trying to control circumstance. Her email was neither good timing nor bad timing—it just was what it was. Whatever it was, we agreed to see each other after I returned from Paris.
Hadn’t I come to Paris to start a book? Saturday morning, when the work week finally ended, I snapped up my iPad and eagerly headed out to find a quiet place to begin writing. On the way, I helped a sweet elderly woman move a new TV into her apartment (she turned out to be the City of Paris’ Ambassador to the City of Chicago—apparently they are sister cities) and walked the Seine from the Eifel to Notre Dame looking for that peaceful, inspirational place I had envisioned in my mind. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a quiet spot in Paris? It’s a freaking busy city! Oy! I finally settled for Le Bourbon, a sidewalk café across from the Assemblée Nationale.
Yes, this was the quietest spot in Paris—even though there was a group across the street demonstrating against something or another (it was all French to me). Maybe they were demonstrating against noise pollution, because other than the signs, there wasn’t even so much as a whisper coming from that direction.
A bottle of wine, chunks of bread and cheese, some welcomed shade and these words flowed onto pages:
July 10, 2010
The first words of this book find me find me sitting with my iPad at a sidewalk cafe in Paris. What better setting as an opening for a book on finding love? Walking down the Seine amongst the amazing Eiffel, Louvre, and Notre Dame, I find myself instead observing the couples – some embracing, walking hip to hip, some holding hands (if but by fingers to escape this unusual Parisian heatwave); yet others separated by feet as they walk down the dirt sidewalk at the riverside.
Looking across the street, I felt myself smiling as a young couple hugged and kissed, unabashedly, with a bubbly energy we all should know in love. Even the couple that just now sat at the table in front of me stare into each other’s eyes as they touch hands across the table and laugh. I’m smiling again…
Why is it that some are so in love that the world shrinks until there are only two hearts – aflame, together, joyously happy – while others seem dead to the romance that is unarguably Paris? Why is it that my own story finds me here alone in the City of Lights, just three weeks ago ending a relationship with Jill: lovely, loving, incredibly nurturing, sweet, and understanding Jill. How can one learn to know the difference between a relationship that is good and one mere words are powerless to describe? From whence comes faith to know that there is a superlative match, a extraordinary relationship for me…..and for you?
As a warm shower begins to patter upon the cobblestone road, without a doubt, I absolutely know that she exists and that we will find each other soon…..and by the time your eyes peer upon the last word of this book, I know that you will feel the same!
How prophetic that was!
By June 2010, it had already been two years since I had abandoned online dating’s algorithm. I hadn’t found The One yet, but I felt like she was closer–much closer. Unlike everyone else I knew who was still struggling in their search for a mate, my dates and relationships were getting stronger. Well, for the most part they were. Life with my current girlfriend actually wasn’t going that well. Our connection was strong, but there was something about it that wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t put a finger on it precisely. It was there nonetheless —a little splinter festering in my mind. Jill and I had broken it off once before and this second time didn’t promise improvement. Relationships, it seems, are much like last night’s dinner—just not the same reheated.
Back when things had been better between us, I had invited Jill to come with me on my annual July business trip to Paris, but now it didn’t seem like going together was a good idea. Instead, I decided to finally start on the book that had been percolating in the back of my brain. What better place than Paris to gather inspiration for a book about finding love? Extending my trip by a couple of days to begin writing seemed a much better plan. Too, it would give me a great reason to buy an iPad–just 2 weeks after it hit the market. The mental image of me sitting at a Parisian sidewalk café whilst pecking out a book revealing the secrets for finding love really sat well.
So iPad in hand, girlfriend not, I boarded a 4th of July plane for Paris. Little did I know the insane, life-altering enterprise on which I was about to embark…
The Death of Online Dating 