Trite sentiments and fixing people
Posted by Richard Mankhey
A recent conversation with my friend Aimee, in which she was unloading emotional
turmoil about her situation with her fiance, made me realize I either need to read
"Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" again or figure out the fine art of
"what to say to people who've recently experience a highly emotional situation"
such as a break-up or death in the family.
I mean I can do small talk but I also try to be sensitive to the other person's
situation, whatever it might be. For instance, I'm talking to Person A who
just broke up with their boyfriend. I think to myself "Person A has already
heard all the banal and overused(and frankly annoying) phrases from everyone
around him (though they mean well, they should think before speaking). So I'll
just give Person A my best wishes and think happy thoughts for them."
I still think I'll go back to "Men are from Mars..." because as empathic as I try
to be, I found myself trying to solve Aimee's situation (as many men do, we "fixers"
,we) until she said "I don't want to be fixed, I just want to bitch".
Okay then. That I can handle. 
12 reasons you are totally missing out by not calling me
Posted by Richard Mankhey
1. I’m a decent (that means “clothed”, right?) stable guy with a good job, balanced morals, a penchant for serendipity, a good collection of friends, and an entertaining sense of humor. I went to good schools, had loving parents, and know my way around a formal dinner setting. I’m a good speller. I’m house-broken.
2. Dogs love me, and I can seduce most cats in about 15 seconds. Children think I’m funny and crazy and generally want to talk to me.
3. I look great in a suit, though truth be told I really don’t like dressing up. But I’ll do it if I have to and probably enjoy it.
4. In the event that you do call, and we do go out a couple times, I can’t rule out an incredibly passionate affair, which is quickly displaced and required to be held across an ocean (Southern Europe, perhaps?), and then I quit my job and follow you around and we buy an old farmhouse in Vermont with great skiing nearby. We spend some holidays and winters up there when we’re not in DC or NYC or Shanghai, wherever your work takes you, having extraordinarily passionate…um…conversations on snowy evenings after a long meal and two good bottles of wine, inviting friends to stay for long weekends, drinking coffee (even though I generally dislike it), heading to Montreal occasionally to laugh at the Quebecois (it’s not French, seriously) and enjoy the rich cultural chaos of that city. Meanwhile, I’m writing an amazingly intricate (or crap, doesn’t matter) novel, and you’re making tons of money. Also, we have a couple cats and not a single dog and possibly a feral hedgehog who keeps eating the plants around the house and two lesbian neighbors that provide us fresh vegetables, local gossip, and all the inside scoop on indie bands playing in the area. (We might have children in this fantasy, but that’s negotiable.) We get into fights about who does their share of the gardening or the laundry, and then have more great um…conversation to make up. The bartender of the local gay bar wants to hate us, but can’t bring himself to do so because we’re actually decent, cool guys and a lot of fun.
5. But, really, it’s just a fantasy - I’m also totally cool with a cheap, meaningless affair if you want. No-strings multi-orgasmic, safe um…conversation for three hours twice a week. Totally down with that.
6. My French is questionable and my Spanish excellent, and I can converse convincingly in Russian. I know what to do in an airport when your bags are lost, scribbled on, torn, confiscated, searched, peed upon, and/or eyed suspiciously by pissed-off underfed airport workers.
7. I eat anything. I don’t make a big fuss about choosing a restaurant, and I can almost always find something that I like, but I will *always* ask for my dressing on the side.
8. I’m great with mothers, good with fathers and brothers and sisters, and can usually even coax conversation from the sullen 16-year-olds. I get along well with my family, have the World’s Best Mom, and know how to deal with the normal and the crazy (I have both!)
9. I require no ET-OH whatsoever to do a smashing job of virtually any song you care to throw at me during a cutthroat game of Karaoke Roulette.
10. I don’t have swine flu.
11. I am willing to lay money down on the fact that I know enough about people that I can pass all of your friends’ “Tests” without leveraging what I know about people.
12. I can still recite one of the poems we had to memorize in 6th grade: W.E. Henley’s Invictus - and while it’s quite a dark poem to give to 6th graders, I think it’s great and try to remember it when I need to be kicked in the slats and actually do something. I still (mostly) control my fate, dammit.
So, take control of yours. Call me.
And all the constellations shine down for us to see
Posted by Richard Mankhey
As I was walking to the metro this morning I was thinking about recent conversations I’d had with my mom. Granted, I have many different kinds of conversations with my mother (i.e. via text message, Twitter, e-mail, Facebook posts, etc.); this one in particular was a Skype conversation with webcam.
As I always end our communications, I signed off with an “I love you!” and smooched the camera…or in the case of a text message it’s a bunch of X’s and O’s depending on how many characters I have left before reaching the 160 character limit…
But my thoughts this morning were about love. Love in general, love in particular…vague love, thrilling and piercing love, love unrequited…and I recalled learning about the specific kinds of love during a 6th Grade Health/Sex Education module. We learned about the degrees and contexts of love and how you can have love for family, friends, potential romantic partners, lovers, and human kind.
To update that notion a bit (and refresh my memory), I did a little research Googling and discovered the following:
“Love” in the Greek, is expressed by five distinct words having much more precise meanings:
- Desire – Attraction (epithumia)
- Longing – Romance (eros)
- Belonging – Affection (storge)
- Cherishing – Friendship (phile)
- Selfless Giving – Christian Love (agape)
As there are many kinds of love, there are many languages and ways to speak it; what feels like love varies from person to person and is unique to each and every individual. Gary Chapman has gone so far as to write a number of books on the “Languages of Love” that seem to encompass the various ways people give and seek love to and from one another.
In fact, there is a fun little quiz that will tell you what YOUR language of love (or the way you feel most loved when it is expressed a certain way) is: Language of Love Quiz. Additionally, there is a quiz for your Language of Apology on the same page, which seems to be related. My “Primary Love Language’ is ‘Words of Affirmation’. Interesting…I feel that’s remarkably accurate. My ‘Language of Apology’ is a little harder to determine, but I think I’m leaning towards “Requesting Forgiveness”.
All in all it sounds a bit “Men are from Mars”-ish to me, but if so, I think it’s because both thought camps have something very important in common: There should be frequent and varies expression of love between family, friends, and lovers. It’s an on-going process that requires deliberate effort by both parties/partners.
Just as important is the implicit advice to realize that everyone is unique and it takes effort to understand what ‘Language’ speaks most strongly to the other person, be they a friend, mother, partner, or lover.
It might seem that I’m getting a bit far away from my original topic, which was thinking about saying “I Love You!” to my mom at the end of a conversation, but in developing my thoughts and learning abit more about various expressions of Love and how some people place more weight on one or more than I might, I was able to find a key to my inner self that has been eluding me for quite some time.
I am fortunate to have grown up with a loving family (Belonging) and many loving friends (Cherishing). As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and attending services and Sunday school I learned the importance of Christian Love (Selfless Giving) and volunteering.
It wasn’t until I became older and more aware of myself and sexuality that I realized my attraction (Desire) for other men; I somewhat equate that with lust, also, but not in its most carnal form. I think the edges are softened a bit. Still, growing up in the Midwest and even on reaching college, I feel that my experience with love beyond family, friends, and the church was limited to this one of Desire.
It took me quite a bit of exploration and experimentation to find what I thought was romance (Longing), and in effect, it frightened me somewhat because it was the closest thing to the Love I’d wanted to find my whole life…and also the one I was most unfamiliar with and indeed, truly afraid of because to me it represents the core of the sin that I’d been taught homosexuality is. For some reason I’d been able to get past the “…he who lies with another man…” part in scripture without any issues, but to take the next step into true, deep, gut-wrenching longing for another person was something I just couldn’t do…or didn’t know how…or didn’t WANT to know how. I feel safe in the company of feelings of Attraction and Desire, but I have to admit that when Romance wants to join the party I feel the urgent need to take my leave and go home.
So this was the key to my inner self I discovered…some will say they’re “Committment-phobes”, whatever that means…but I don’t think it quite captures my hesitation. I don’t quite know how to tread the waters of possessing Longing for another man; I have a hunch that there’s no manual or instruction book that can really assist, but if I take a cue from a few paragraphs back from Mr. Gary Chapman, the not-so-secret-and-all-too-common-sense secret seems to be simple communication.
Now why has my instinct always been to run away? I’m constantly amazed at the good advice we give ourselves (that we very seldom follow). Going forward, I’ll try to follow this good advice: There should be frequent and varies expression of love between family, friends, and lovers. It’s an on-going process that requires deliberate effort by both parties/partners.
Yes, a reiteration…but practice makes perfect; and I could use more than a little practice in this area, I think.