How will I know?

Is someone always someone else's one?

Sometimes I wonder who wrote the book of love, or lust, or one-night stands. That anoynomous author is one twisted sister, whoever she is, but we all keep reading--the lonely, the lovelorn, the beloved.

In this day and age we have therapists and self-help books and The Real Housewives of New Jersey to guide us through the rocky terrain of relationships. For better or worse. We see all sorts of crazytown marriages and hook-ups and all that comes of this overexposure to how the othe halves live is that we are all too smart for our own good when it comes to choosing a someone to watch over us. And we are all too dumb to say what we mean and mean what we say when exchanging three little words. So mass hysteria ensues. And most troubling of all, we know damn well that relationships are hard work--but we miss the point that really they are kind of easy.

No man is an island. You didn't come into this world on your own steam. The second you popped out of the womb at least one other person was in the room with you. Is that what the Oedipus and Electra complexes are all about, not so much sicko Hamlet-style confusion but this innate need to immediately connect with a hand, a breast, a mouth? To find anew the very reason for your existence and drift into a dream, safe and warm and fed, to the strains of a dixie lullaby?

I have a sneaking suspicion that like in an arranged marriage, one can find a kind of contentment with just about anyone else. There are of course mitigating factors. Don't get with someone who beats you or shoots up in the baby's room or is butt-ugly and unemployed. But in reality, everyone has to adjust to being a two where there was once just a one. And is it really all that difficult to do so with someone you chose to get caught up with in the first place, rather than just spin around the barn in some insane square dance of podner-switching? Is it really of utmost importance to always look like Goldilocks for the porridge that is just right?

It's tricky. When someone professes undying love for you and you don't share or appreciate the sacrifice, does that make that person wrong? Or are you the one who failed the class? How far is too far to go? We all make the same mistakes. We confuse wanting to jump someone's bones with eternal devotion. We turn our noses up at a perfectly good match because we don't feel weak in the knees every second of every day and later regret it when said mate belongs to someone else, and is happy. We bail on partnerships of long-standing because we think we need to know what love is in order to do it better. We are too young to settle down and we got together when we were too immature and we realized what we truly wanted during a mid-life crisis and we didn't think about the ever after that comes after happy. So divorce rates are high--but still we keep taking the plunge.

And what happens when you find youself head over heels for a certain someone who isn't returning your calls? What is the difference between knowing why the caged bird sings and turning yourself into stalker jailbait? How the hell do two people ever manage to be in sync long enough to say I do? That is the B-side that never made it on the airwaves.

In relationships, is every man out for himself? Do the women and children always come first? How the hell does it all work. It says so in this book of love, or lust, or one-night stands that ours is a love that's true. But are we reading the same edition?