I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Friday Flash, I share an epiphany or aha moment from the past week.
I’ve largely finished the first draft of my nonfiction book Reckless Romance: Finding the Love and Intimacy You Crave at Midlife, and the next step will be to revise it. Then I’ll hand it off to one or two trusted readers, likely my mother and Ray.
I feel somewhat bad that I put down my Things Men Gave Me project for it, but at the same time, I believe writing a nonfiction book suits me better than memoir. I have always leaned towards essayistic writing less than narrative. A nonfiction book will be easier to market and sell than a memoir. And I am using pieces of the memoir as examples of the principles of recklessness I’m writing about, so the work will still be used.
I know I’ll get back to the memoir someday, but the last story I published made me feel somewhat vulnerable and scared of what might be next. One of my friends who is reading the stories keeps asking me, “Why haven’t you written about X yet?” Because I’m not ready to!
I have a restless creative style, always hopping from rock to rock like a frog crossing a river (or maybe just hanging out, not trying to get from one side of the river to the other). I cycle through projects and creative fields of expression according to my energy and whim. I haven’t painted in probably three weeks, and I don’t know when I’ll feel any inspiration to again.
This week, I also cycled around to another area of creative (though structured) expression: managing my investment portfolio. Each month on the seventh day, I review my positions. I have rules for adding and trimming to each sleeve and position. I spent some time updating those rules to ensure my primary goal of capital preservation and then secondarily to take advantage of uptrends in which I can make money. Sometimes, if my writing gets to feel too personal, focusing on stocks and bonds can get me back to a feeling of confidence and detachment.
In his 2009 book The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, the poet David Whyte argues that our theories of work-life balance are too simplistic, because balance is not what we should seek. He writes:
We are collectively exhausted because of our inability to hold competing parts of ourselves together in a more integrated way. These hidden human dynamics of integration are more of a conversation, more of a synthesis and more of an almost religious and sometimes almost delirious quest for meaning than a simple attempt at daily ease and contentment.
This is where I find myself: in an “almost religious and sometimes almost delirious quest for meaning.” I am fortunate that this is my only work now. I don’t have to get online for a tedious or tendentious meeting for a corporate job. I don’t have to take a shower and get myself to an office. Other than a few tasks of maintaining my house and my life (recently–estate plan update, aerating the lawn, getting my basement ready for a long-term guest arriving at Thanksgiving), I can just pursue my delirious quest for meaning all day every day.
The three marriages Whyte references are to self, to work, and to a partner. Whyte proposes they are “not actually separate commitments but different expressions of the way each individual belongs to the world.” He calls for working towards a “central conversation that can hold all of these three marriages together,” as an alternative to seeking some sort of work-life balance across them. I love that idea of a conversation across all aspects of my life.
But I want to expand his idea to many marriages, not just three. My work is not one thing. I have my memoir project, my painting, my nonfiction book writing, and, of course, my daily blogging here. In terms of relationships, my romantic partnership is not more important than my relationships with each of my children and the three of them together, my relationships with my other family members, and those with my friends.
Whyte says that neglect of any one of the marriages creates suffering, not because we should juggle better, but because each are aspects of one whole life. We should cultivate a rhythm of attention among the marriages. In terms of the three he identifies, solitude feeds relationship, relationship deepens work, and work clarifies selfhood.
I have a more complicated cycle than he describes perhaps. Things Men Gave Me represents my investigation of self and my work of writing narrative, Reckless Romance takes that and turns it into more writing work and a contemplation of romantic relationships, and my partnership with Ray is the romantic relationship that represents my current actual commitment to romance and love. And then there are other “marriages” that fold into this conversation too: painting for Things Men Gave me representing another way to process romantic narrative, my close family relationships that are never more than a text or a phone call or a dog walk away, and my daily blogging practice which is mostly an exploration of self but is also where I gather ideas and frameworks that will later appear in my writing–in my work.
Last night Ray said, “I think I am just your subject matter. You want to write about me.”
Well, yes, Ray, you are my subject matter. And the object of my affections. And the way I deeply understand what I am writing about when I write about love, romance, and intimacy. I also, of course, have twelve plus years of serial relationships (and a long marriage) that bring experience and knowledge to bear on it, but living it while writing about it is the best way to truly understand it.
In this way, my marriage to my work and my metaphorical marriage to my romantic partnership are in constant conversation with each other.
I felt frightened and worried yesterday about my relationship with Ray. I worry for the age gap of 12 years, especially as neither of us are young, so we are both potentially facing decreasing functioning as time progresses. This puts me in a role of caretaking that I didn’t think I’d take on any time soon, if ever. I noticed that Ray didn’t hear very well when we met, so I encouraged him to get hearing aids, and I went with him to the testing and setup appointments. This was not on my list of things I want to do within the first three months of meeting a new partner.
But it could be Ray in a caretaker role. There’s no guarantee that he is the one that will decline fastest. It could be me. I could show signs of early Alzheimer’s. I could be diagnosed with terminal cancer. I could get in an accident and suffer a traumatic brain injury. I could have a stroke. I do know that Ray is an excellent, generous caretaker and I would be lucky to have him around should I need that. He already takes care of me in ways I’ve never been taken care of before.
To work through my worries, I watched a useful video on age gaps in relationship. Coach Susan Winter discusses what happens when the problem a couple has is the age difference specifically, when one or the other partner feels anxiety about it. It could be the older partner, who worries the younger will leave him or her someday when they become unattractive through aging, or it could be the younger partner, who (like me), worries about what’s going to happen as the older partner ages.
She asks:
My question to you is, are you resilient enough to be able to take the ride? And are they worth it? Is what you are experiencing so rich, so fantastic, so vital that on your last breath on this earth, you’re thinking, didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but I wouldn’t have given that up.
Yes, my relationship is rich, fantastic, and vital. Would I give it up because I might have to be a caretaker? Or because Ray shows signs of aging that are sometimes uncomfortable to me?
Modern dating encourages the idea that you can rule someone out for a dealbreaker like being too much older than you (or younger). There are plenty of fish in the sea, if you catch one that’s not in the age range you decided is ok, then just throw them back! And then stop responding to people that don’t respect your age or other filters.
But it’s not that easy. It’s not easy to find someone that you have a good emotional and physical connection with and who lives ten minutes away (never discount the importance of geographic compatibility!) It’s not easy to find someone who doesn’t want to travel internationally but would rather take road trips and has a really nice truck to do it in. It’s not easy to find someone at my age who still skis, “my knees are bad,” “I’m worried about falling and hurting myself,” “I never much liked it,” among excuses I’ve heard. It’s not easy to find someone who has good taste in home renovations, clothes, and food. It’s not easy to find someone who isn’t grating or boring or arrogant.
I asked ChatGPT to take the nine principles of reckless romance that I”ve developed and apply them to my relationship with Ray, which I described in detail to the chatbot.
On every principle (which include things like “presence over control” and “alterity over sameness”), my relationship with Ray wins. This is reckless romance at its finest. Reckless romance is not easy. It doesn’t say, “there are plenty of fish in the sea, just go back online and find someone better.” That’s a trap. It’s not that you should never end a relationship once you’ve started it. It’s just that giving up a good relationship because it doesn’t fit somehow with respect to who you thought you should end up or because you fear that the future is going to unfold in ways you didn’t plan for and don’t want with is reckful not reckless.
I’ve added an epilogue to the book about my relationship with Ray, where I apply the nine principles (okay, where ChatGPT did… but I will rewrite into my voice). I’m not sure I’ll include it. I’ll see where I am when I get ready to publish it. Meanwhile, I feel so happy that my different metaphorical marriages are in conversation with one another.