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The art of seduction | page 1, 2
I am a well-employed man, 34, and hope to be married,
but I have noticed a pattern of monogamous long-term relationships. A woman
pursues me,
and I allow her into my life, feeling not really that interested. But it's
better than being
alone. A year goes by. Two. Three. I am neither in love nor really unhappy.
Work
takes most of my time. I do not make promises, and if the subject of marriage
comes up I am honest. The most recent has been a very good friend. She would
be
a very steady mate. I truly like her and would almost rather sacrifice my
hope of
happiness than subject her to pain. (Somehow I think that would be less than
the optimal proposal of marriage.) Do you have any advice? Does one need
to hear bells to be happily married? Yawn Dear Yawn, You sound like a drone, to be perfectly frank, and a drone is not
likely to fall
head over heels in love. A drone needs to mate with another drone, and make a
marriage of
polite disinterest, in which the partners service each other sexually and do
not interfere with
each other's career trajectory. If you want to escape the drone existence,
there are ways, but
that's a separate problem; droning probably suits you well enough. If
this seems severe,
it's because your second sentence is so smug and reprehensible. If you had
told these women
the truth -- that you weren't really that interested but, heck, you'd allow
them into your
life, generous guy that you are -- they would have walked the other way.
Don't even think
about marrying this woman. Don't consider it for two minutes. If she is a
good friend, you
ought to warn her about yourself. Dear Mr. Blue, Re: MFA programs -- do the school names or ranking matter much
toward getting published? I was accepted in a program this fall. Should I
apply to a higher-ranked program for the following year? Intuition tells me to get over the
politics of
envy and just get the writing done. What's your opinion? Curious Dear Curious, The rankings of MFA programs as a factor in publication is a
topic that
interests me slightly less than the mating habits of cutworms. Maybe it
matters in the
publication of poems, there being so little demand for poetry, but I don't
know, I don't care
and neither should you. Be a writer, and leave strategy to politicians. Dear Mr. Blue, As of last November I had spent five years alone. Then, she came
along. She said I was intriguing. She said I was warm and gentle.
Soon, she said she loved me. And I loved her too. A month ago she said it was all a mistake. She said she wanted to love me
but couldn't. Before all of this I was lonely, yes, but I was content. I had
accepted that I might go through life alone. Now that calm has blown away. I
am angry at
her for misleading me, though grateful to her for waking up my heart. Now I'm torn. I don't want to risk love, but I don't want to risk
loneliness either. Torn Mr. Blue Garrison Keillor's column appears every Tuesday in Salon Books.
Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue. Dear Torn, You should be grateful to her. She did you good, as much as she could do, and then she chose not to deceive you, a second good turn. She didn't mislead you, she simply led you toward an adventure that couldn't be completed, and left you with some good memories, I trust. You can go through life alone and still have a wakeful heart. Whether you do, or whether you find someone else, cherish the memory of love. As someone once wrote: All of the lovers and the love they made, Dear Mr. Blue, I can never tell whether a woman is interested in dating me, or just being friendly. Now I'm interested in a co-worker. She's beautiful, smart, funny and so friendly. How do I avoid making an unwelcome advance? Clueless in N.C. Dear Clueless, A workplace romance is tricky; you're sailing along a rocky shore indeed, and there are wrecks on that shore. If she is directed by you, if you're above her in the pecking order, it's especially tricky. Among colleagues, there often comes an atmosphere of trust and friendliness and emotional intimacy that is all very professional but that can easily be mistaken for something else. This is especially true for colleagues who must endure a good deal of stress: The intimacy is only to make life bearable. You should bend over backward to avoid making an advance. Let her make the advance. And make sure it's unmistakable. Dear Mr. Blue, I am at wits' end. I am 32, married to a wonderful 30-year-old woman. I think we have a good relationship, but there is one problem, and that, of course, is sex. She just isn't interested. When it happens, it is passionate, and she seems to enjoy it -- she says she does, but her libido is extremely low. Sex is very intermittent, less than once a month, and we've had a few unfortunate arguments on the subject. I know you can't convince someone they're in the mood, but what can you do? I love her very much, but the situation is making me unhappy and crazy. Desperate Dear Desperate, Anyone can sympathize with your unhappiness, but don't let unhappiness direct you. You know the old saying, "Women are looking for a reason to have sex, men are looking for a place." Don't confront, don't argue, don't discuss. Court her. Be kind. Be kind beyond kindness. And try to find a simple physical language, starting with hand holding and kissing and embracing, that brings you together in tenderness without pushing her. You can't push. You can't bully someone into loving you. It is all a matter of enticement, delicacy, intimation. The simple pleasure of touching, stroking, caressing is the start of it all, and perhaps you need to go back and rediscover that pleasure, not as a step toward an end but as a delight in and of itself. Dear Mr. Blue, I'm 65, but thanks to a good gene pool I look 50. I've been married three times and have had three serious living-together arrangements. I'm well educated and have been an engineer, a sales manager, a lawyer, a law school professor, a car salesman and so forth. Presently I am working off and on as a computer technician, wanting to be a writer but not writing, wanting a meaningful relationship but afraid that I will mess it up again. It has been two years since I dated or had sex. I left law when I started having heart attacks. I had quadruple bypass surgery two years ago, which solved that problem. But it seems to me that God has given me a pass, and now I want to spend my remaining years doing something meaningful and creative. Writing is something I do well, but the compulsion to write doesn't seem to be there for me. I lose interest quickly. I'm aware that my fear of rejection is what keeps me from initiating relationships or writing something creative. If I could figure out what to do, I'd "just do it." Bummed out Dear Bummed, A writer is not someone who wants to write. A writer is one who writes. Just as a swimmer is one who swims, not one who sits on the shore and imagines what it would be like. Life itself is good enough, without trying to force oneself into a calling. Living each day can be a meaningful and creative act. I am a writer who's written a ton of stuff, but I have friends who, though they've never published a word and whose obituaries will be shorter than mine, have led lives every bit as meaningful and creative. They are more aware than I, more generous, livelier, they only lack that little engine of ambition that propels some of us a little too hard. Don't covet a compulsion, don't try to outsmart the fear of rejection: Live as boldly as you can today and a little more boldly tomorrow. Courage. Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue.
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