Category: A to Z Challenge 2021

M is for Moving, Memories, and Endless Miscellanea  (Or, How Much are My Memories Worth on Nextdoor.com?)

Published on by Pam4 Comments

I just sold my house—it closes next Friday, barring any disasters (and god only knows disasters may still occur) I’m moving out. I’m not buying another house. I’m not renting either. Nor have I taken a lover. Yet. No. Rather, I have a few weeks house sitting and then I’m hitting the road.

To accommodate this pared back lifestyle, I have had to shed about five layers of previous lifetimes. I have lived here for 23 years. I’ve raised two kids, had two partners of some duration, watched my mother decline into Alzheimer’s disease while she lived here for two years, and I’ve had one adult child boomerang back and re-launch. I’ve had at least two roommates (never good idea for me).

Some memories should be let go

We’ve had, collectively, about twenty cats, many rabbits, three dogs, half a dozen lawn mowers, four paint jobs outside, too many to count inside. One SpongeBob themed bathroom. Tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of technology—so much tech. I was an early adopter. I counted about ten iphone boxes and a half dozen old iphones in various states of repair. In the first culling of belongings, I disposed of eight hard drives, three laptops, seven monitors, miles of cables, generations of mice, and every conceivable keyboard manufactured since 1983: ergonomic, wireless, Bluetooth, light touch, typewriter-like, PS2, USB, beveled, unbeveled. Tiny. Huge. Light. Heavy and as unwieldy as your first futon.

In short, I have fully inhabited this house for 23 years. And lived well. And not so well. But it is time to let go and let god. LOL. No. LOL. Gotcha. But, my work here is done. I have come, done, conquered. So, I had an estate sale for myself last Saturday. One life is winding to a close, and another is unfolding before me. And so, here I sit on my sofa no one wants, listening to Spotify’s recommended daily allowance of curated music, on a television I sold but am keeping until Friday, pondering the value of those few belongings that remain. The remains of these days, if I may.

There’s a tabletop’s worth of various crystal drinkware. Somehow, I’ve learned that crystal drinkware is worth something and am thus loath to part with it. Ditto the embarrassingly bougie Guy Buffet print. Etsy claims it is rare and pricey. So even though I don’t like it, I still have it. It belonged to my grandmother. She had fabulous and expensive things. In the 80s. They aren’t all that fabulous in this century. And the Adderley bone china from England. The sterling.

There’s a garage full of  . . . how does one even begin to describe what ends up in a garage like mine? It defies explanation: antique copper fire extinguisher, about 45 gallons of partially used paint, roof tiles, golf bags full of old clubs and spiders. One petrified Razor scooter, three unopened cans of tennis balls. No one here has played tennis in a decade. A package of a dozen golf balls, unopened. It’s been at least two decades since golf last happened.

Part of me wants to just call the junk removers, pay them and be done. But this other part of me needs to see my belongings off to their next lives. I’ve sold what I could and now I sit amidst what I couldn’t or wouldn’t. This collection of Useless Things I Still Own is no less random than the garage contents: dozens of old journals, my baby book, a scrap book full of papers from my elementary school days, including my science fair grand champion ribbon from 7th grade. A now-outlawed single-use plastic grocery bag full of matchbox cars, a large stuffed SpongeBob and SpongeBob fleece blanket, the jewelry chest my grandfather made me when I was ten, six crystal beer glasses, my camping equipment, a locking four drawer filing cabinet for client records and child custody papers. A captain’s chair. An antique side table.

I decided to leave the dish soap behind

Which brings me to the sub-heading topic on this blog post: Or What Are Memories Worth on Nextdoor.com?  I made a tidy sum at my garage sale, and I gave away so much. I trust that whoever got what, got what they needed at the right price. The primary mission was not to make money so much as to responsibly recycle as many of my possessions as possible. Ultimately, trips to the dump were inevitable.  Still, I have more than I need or want. Currently, my chosen memories and sentimental attachments are worth approximately $115/mo in storage and the untold goodwill of a couple of close friends (and my ever-generous brother), plus about $200 invested in new jumbo/durable plastic totes for said belongings, one trip to Oregon to stash my kayak, bicycle (road, not mountain), random electronic things like my wireless router and cable modem, clothes, books, kitchen things . . . stuff I won’t need in the near future.

Clearing one’s home of nearly a quarter century is no small task. When I began this essay, sitting in my mostly empty home, I was still two weeks from closing (I did not know then that we’d hit a tiny snag—one easily resolved but one that caused me some angina nonetheless). I thought my house was empty, but getting every last thing out the door was like Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox about going halfway out the door and then half way and then half way and theoretically you could continue going halfway and never get out the door. That was my stuff—I got rid of half, then half, then half, then half . . . and it just never ended. Pamela’s Paradox.

I closed the door behind me for the final time on Saturday morning, August 13th.  I felt lighter immediately, and not so much freed from the past, but free to find my own way into the future where new memories await. And that, my friends, is worth it all.

L is for Letting Go (and Hot Lava)

Published on by Pam4 Comments

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began

                        –Mary Oliver

Hello, Dear Readers. This week has certainly been one full of lessons on Letting Go. It’s funny—as I make my way through the alphabet, ever so slowly, I have realized that each blog presents itself when it’s time. And not before.

So many things have converged in the past week, from family shit to online dating adventures, to the possibility of moving, to health concerns (not mine). As we emerge from this pandemic, like so many light-deprived moles crawling out of our long dark tunnels, blinking at the bright sun and shrinking from the intense heat (seriously, it was over 100 degrees here last weekend—that is not normal), we can only hope that the future is better, but it has not been a stellar re-entry back into the world.

The first lesson in Letting Go has to be that life is not going “back to normal.” What was before lockdown last March will not be returning. We have to let go of a “return to normal” and adjust to moving forward into something new. A friend invited me to a movie this week, at a theater. Inside. I’m not ready yet. And from the looks of the news headlines—shootings, forest fires, climate change havoc, declining vaccination rates, increased political polarization—it seems we should all just continue staying home. There needs to be a global Letting Go of the status quo. We cannot go on like this. I have no answers. Just a sense that if we don’t let go of what was, we will not be able to move forward, collectively.

On a more personal level, I have decided it is time to Let Go of my house. I put it on the market a couple of weeks ago. I don’t have a set plan yet. I just know that I’ve been in this house for 23 years, it has served me well, and now I no longer need it. When I was a kid, our family moved around a lot—I went to four different high schools—and when I landed in Bellingham 40 years ago to attend college,  I immediately put down deep roots. Maybe I didn’t even decide so much as just instinctually grounded myself here. I needed the continuity. But now, that need has subsided. It’s time for adventure. It’s time for me.

I spend my weeks urging clients to take care of themselves, reminding them that no one benefits if they aren’t getting their own needs met, that we can’t fill up others if our own wells are dry. Occasionally I remember to heed my own advice. But Letting Go of my home has repercussions beyond just me. My adult kids have feelings about me selling. Of course they do. I understand. My parents divorced and sold their home 20 some years ago, evoking all kinds of feelings of loss for me. I’ve had to Let Go of an intense urge to take care of my girls and to “do better” by them. But, Letting Go also means letting go of the past, of old wounds, of old habits, of old feelings that keep me trapped. Keeping my house is not going to heal the wounds I felt 20 years ago.

Letting Go means no longer being a place of refuge for others, and at times, I feel guilty for closing that door, but if not now, when? This house has been a refuge, a sanctuary, and now it feels more like a burden, a weight, an unnecessary commitment. Too much for me. I can’t wait. Some days, I am pursued by the specter of Alzheimer’s—it got my mom by 65 (in retrospect, it seems to have started there). She’s been robbed of her final decades—I cannot wait for it to get me too. I have to Let Go and Get Going into my own future.

Letting Go of my home also opens up a new range of possibilities—a life on the road, of Airbnbs in cities that call to me, of the possibilities of meeting people beyond the confines of this state, of opening myself, my life, my world up to more, bigger, different. Letting Go of what I thought work and the future held and embracing uncertainty.

When I work with clients who want to move forward but can’t seem to let go of what feels secure, I use a metaphor of the monkey bars. Remember hanging there, suspended over the “hot lava” your best friend breathing down your neck behind you, urging you to let go of the back rung in order to swing forward? The fear of falling, the knowledge if you didn’t let go, you’d eventually succumb to gravity and fall to the ground and be consumed by the metaphorical lava or crocodiles?

So, you took a deep breath, summoned your courage, and Let Go. Into the unknown, flying unsupported for one terrifying moment, the specter of death, of failure, of pain fleeting, until your hand met the cold, smooth metal and you were again safe. Ready to do it again, and again until you reached the end. Triumphant.

you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver, from Dream Work

K is for Keeping On (and Kayaking, of course)

Published on by Pam5 Comments

The sun is shining and the days are getting warmer. We may be about to emerge from our cocoons, and I’m reminded of last spring at this time when the world seemed like such a scary place. I stopped going to my office. I stopped going running because the trail suddenly filled with scads of people who were no longer going to work. Two of my best friends were trapped in Vermont, one was in the hospital. I met with clients all day on Zoom and then in the evenings, bewildered and disoriented, joined friends for virtual happy hours. Gone were side conversations and incidental run-ins with acquaintances.

I renewed my relationships with my neighbors, slowly, over the weeks as we dared to leave our homes, stunned, frantic, scared.

At Baker Lake last summer

Eventually, I felt safe enough to go mountain biking, joined similarly isolated friends in outdoor meals, taking advantage of the improving weather and longer days. We gathered, carefully distanced, on decks, in yards, at the parks, still stunned, still disoriented. I spent hours plucking dandelions from my front yard and grooming my aging and cantankerous cat, Mittens, ducking back indoors to see clients on Zoom, urging them to not panic, assuring them they wouldn’t be trapped back home with mom and dad for too much longer. What did I know then? What did any of us know?

Baker Lake, Summer 2017

We knew we had to keep on. I kept on by throwing my hat in the online dating pool. I kept on by doing jigsaw puzzles and by hauling out the old Wii Fit. I went kayaking. I’ve already written here about how kayaking seemed a reasonable and safe first date in a plague. I watched ducklings from my kayak, monitored the lily pads’ blooming, spied on the great blue heron, and the parade of goslings. Kayaked at midnight to see the bioluminescence and did it again the next night and again a week later. Sat on the water in our kayaks and talked for hours with new friends and old.

I want to return to that feeling—the satisfaction of meeting someone new, of making a connection, of being in my boat, on the water, in my own skin, keeping on. In the face of a pandemic. In the face of a return to whatever normal will look like, in the face of a future that only unrolls a moment at a time.

So, I keep on. Working from home. Dating. Kayaking. Looking for The One. Making the most of the lessons I learn along the way.

What keeps you keeping on, Dear Reader?

J is for Jeep

Published on by Pam1 Comment

I drive a Jeep, not a Subaru. I put that in one of my dating profiles—I think it says something about my sense of humor, my personality, my interests, my activity level. My straight friends didn’t really understand it, but I guess that’s to be expected. Lesbians drive Subarus, apparently. I do not know why. I also have a personal belief that professors drive Subarus, particularly Foresters. It’s just a belief.

Anyway, I digress. I traded my old Jeep in a week before I went on my second online date last summer. For the first date, I had my old black Jeep Wrangler, four doors, heated seats, remote start, electric door locks. Basic stuff. I could fit my kayak in the back, no problem.

But then my old Jeep died—it needed several thousand dollars’ worth of work, so I opted to trade it in. For my second date, I drove the new Jeep. Two doors, Bikini (that’s the color, a metallic teal green), no remote start, no automatic windows, no seat heaters, no automatic door locks, but I do love it. I have to take the top off to get the kayak in there, but so far, it’s totally worth it (I tell myself).  Even when the bicycle rack makes getting in the back of it impossible. I can put up with a lot.

Our modes of transport say something about us.  I’ve started getting to know one woman who drives a Prius. My first date had a Highlander, I think. That screams practical to me—conservative. A little boring. The woman I dated for six months had a slightly sexier hybrid hatchback. Sporty and practical. I met another woman who drives a Prius—I haven’t gotten to know her well enough to know how it reflects her really and talked a while with someone who has a Kia (ditto).

It’s interesting what people project onto our car choices. I have judgments about Prius drivers—practical, environmentally oriented, frugal, cautious. Usually, a car reflects something about its owner. I think the Jeep suits me—it accommodates my toys, reflects my spirit, mirrors my ambivalence about costs, and certainly says something about my impulsivity. One friend could not understand how I could have possibly bought a new car without doing a week’s worth of research. I decided in a moment. It could have been the color, the decal on the hood, the shape. Definitely the shape.

I think I have a large capacity to adapt, so practicality doesn’t always rise to the top as a priority for me. That seems to apply to both my vehicle choices and my penchant for falling for women who aren’t always a perfect fit. Consider my straight friend’s non-negotiables mentioned in a previous blog: has to live within 25 minutes, must have been married once before, must be within a certain age range. I can’t work within those parameters. Not only do those constrictions leave me with about three options to choose from, they don’t allow for spontaneity or chemistry.

My Jeep and I have chemistry. I adore my Jeep. It makes room for my messes, my things. So many things. Yes, locking the doors manually is a pain in the ass, but it’s totally worth it. We understand each other. If I manage to find a woman whom I adore, I think I can overlook distance or age or quirks that might make me crazy. I do believe previous long-term relationships are important—at least one that lasted a decade or more. But that seems reasonable enough, like expecting the Jeep to have four wheels, even if I have to crank the windows down the old-fashioned way.

I is for Intimacy in Isolation

Published on by PamLeave a comment

Some days online dating feels impossible. It’s strange enough, perusing potential partners like so many shiny toys in the Sears catalog. These days, I feel estranged from even myself after 14 months in relative isolation. How can I possibly bring my full person to a relationship if I feel like I’m losing my grasp on who I am?

As humans we rely on others to mirror ourselves back to us. Those smiles from the barista, the attention from the grocery clerk, the smiles and nods from casual acquaintances that we used to get throughout the course of our days all serve to remind us that we are okay, that we are seen, valued, known, important.

We are not getting much mirroring these days. Even now, as we are out and about more, we still have masks. We can’t see smiles or subtle shifts in expression. For those who live alone (like me), we have limited reflections. Those who live with their partners or families probably feel trapped in the same recurring roles—parent, spouse, cook, caretaker, a Zoom square in a field of Zoom squares.

Granted, I have not been as isolated as some—I spent the first five months of the pandemic alone at home with only a couple of others “in my pod.” And, two of my best friends were trapped on the east coast until June, while several friends of a certain age understandably pulled far inside their shells, shutting out most of the world, and many still remain there, unsure what the vaccines mean in the long run.

Once I started dating in July, I kept it appropriately socially distanced—kayaking, getting together outdoors—for a while. But when I started seeing someone seriously, we didn’t stay isolated from one another for long. We both worked at home, alone and felt safe enough to be close. By August I had reached the limits of my tolerance for isolation. I needed hugs and touch, kisses and hand holding. Someone to embrace in the morning. That intimacy certainly made a difference. For a bit.

Don’t rely on a broken mirror for an accurate reflection

But the isolation had taken a toll, and it definitely made dating weird. I’d not dated in 20 years, and here I found myself meeting virtual strangers and relying on them for mirroring. After years of circulating comfortably amongst a wide circle of people, suddenly, I was primarily with one person who didn’t really know me or my world fully. 

No longer could I get the reliable feedback I’d come to rely on from my people—my primary mirror became someone who I’d known only a few weeks. In The Before Times, I would have had both the familiar old as well the new reflections. In The Before Times, my people would have gotten to know the woman I was dating as well and could have given me informed feedback. I may not have lost myself as I did. I may not have relied so heavily on a broken mirror.

A good friend often reminds me that we can’t know what we don’t know. Once we know better, we can do better. As I continue to forge new relationships out of the thin ether that is the internet, I must remember that I am known and loved by many, even if we’ve not seen much of each other this past year. I must remember that the reflections I get back may not be completely accurate. I must not lose myself in my quest for intimacy during isolation.

H is for Hard Lessons

Published on by PamLeave a comment

Wow. I had a very challenging few days trying to figure out what I wanted H to be about. There are so many great and fitting H words: Honesty seems like the obvious choice, but there were so many more. I couldn’t quite bring myself to a place of full vulnerability for what I wanted to say about Helping. I learned a very difficult lesson this year about my penchant for wanting to help. And yet, I am a helper. I have always been. Anxious attachment. Need to be needed. All that is true. So, honesty. I always tell my clients that vulnerability is attractive. Perhaps I’m right?

Here are a few of my H lessons.

H is for Help. Helping is my love language. Not everyone enjoys being helped. I did not know this.

H is for Hiking. Apparently, all lesbians on dating sites love to hike. This feels daunting. One woman I met online and had a few lengthy phone conversations with admitted to being a Bad Lesbian because she did not enjoy hiking. I liked her.

H is for Humor. Apparently, all lesbians on dating sites would prefer a mate with a good sense of humor. Not everyone appreciates my sense of humor. When someone is struggling with a jar lid or anything really, I generally say “Need a butch?” My ex-wife laughed and laughed at this. Most people do. Not everyone though, I’ve learned. Huh.

H is for Dueling Hot Flashes. Two post-menopausal women. One bed. Lotsa heat. Just sayin’. And not always the good kind.

H is for Hunger. I have a hunger. Everyone else on the dating sites does too. We disguise our need with carefully curated photos. We thumb through our digital collection, stopping only on the pics where we have no wrinkles, we’re doing that activity we said we loved, we’re at the beach or on the mountain. No one is just on the sofa with Netflix on the tv and a can of Bud by their recliner. But a lot of us are there or somewhere equivalent. Especially this year. We hunger for connection. We are ravenous. Insatiable.

H is also for Hope and Heart and Home. I try to remember that it’s not good to be hungry at the grocery store. Not to be crude, but it’s a good metaphor. Right? Hear me out (that’s another fantastic H word: Heard. Being heard is so important, as is Hearing). I have to remind myself that I need to go in already satisfied with what I have. I must be clear on who I am, what’s in my heart. I am already home . I am enough. My heart is full.

And yet . . . I remain hopeful.

H is for . . . Holding Place

Published on by Pam1 Comment

Hello Dear Readers. And thank you for checking in. I am struggling to get this H blog written. I’ve got a lot of drafts, but nothing ready for prime time yet. So many options: hiking, honesty, help, hope, humanity, holding space, humor . . .

Nothing says lesbian dating like Hiking. And everyone is looking for someone with a great sense of Humor. Honesty plays a critical role in online dating, or at least it should.

My default love language, the one I speak in, is Helping, which causes more problems than one might think.

Hope springs eternal or I wouldn’t even be attempting this.

Oh, and Hot Flashes add an especially lovely wrinkle to dating someone new. Hormones too, at this age, get involved.

How to choose? How to choose?

I am on the Horns of a Dilemma.

Thank you for Holding Space while I Hone my options.

G is for Grace

Published on by Pam2 Comments

I am a huge proponent of grace—granting it, receiving it, asking for it . . . holding someone new with an open palm, adopting a stance of curiosity and inquiry.

I used to have a silver bracelet that had Grace engraved on it—I bought it as a reminder when I was in IT support, to remind myself that not everyone was comfortable with technology and to arrive as a helper, not as a scold or know-it-all. I attempt to take the same approach as a counselor, subscribing to Carl Rogers’ approach of “unconditional positive regard.” Making no judgments, being accepting and supportive.

The bracelet got lost somewhere in the past five years, perhaps because I no longer need the reminder, the granting of grace coming more naturally now. It’s a testament to neuroplasticity—we truly can rewire the connections in our brains when we practice, when we work on getting those neurons to fire together.

My favorite beach to be washed up on

Grace is helpful, perhaps even necessary, when getting to know a new person, especially when online dating. We all arrive here, washed up on the shores of Zoosk and Match and Bumble and Tinder, refugees from a sunken ship, tossed and thrashed by the latest relationship storm. Some of us have been here a while—we’ve made our huts and gathered our coconuts, surveyed the landscape and spelled out SOS in the sand with whatever we could find. Others of us have just arrived, storm-tossed and disoriented, wondering what happened, still reeling, shaking the water from our ears and the sand from our eyes.

Getting to know another complex human being within the parameters of online dating seems nearly impossible at times. All of the intricate details of our lives distilled down to “likes” and “interests,” a few carefully curated photos, and 500 words. We are all putting ourselves out there, but not our whole selves, only the parts we’ve deemed good enough. Good enough to attract another. Good enough that we don’t scare anyone away, good enough that we manifest another good enough person.

So, when we “meet” i.e. send a heart, initiate a conversation, we do so carefully, continuing to put that best self forward, bolstering the good, diminishing the less than optimal parts of ourselves. We can’t do that forever though. At some point, we have to get real. We have to admit that of course we do actually watch television, sometimes for hours on end. We don’t always eat “clean” (whatever that means), and yes, we were athletes, hikers, bikers, kayakers, travelers at some point in our lives, but maybe that’s all been a bit ago.

We say we’ve been in therapy, that we’ve been over our ex, that we have done our work—and all that is so great. Sometimes we forget that we continue to be works in progress. Thus, grace.

Grace for the broken parts, grace for the half-truths, grace for the “I’m still figuring this part out,” grace for the ongoing relationship with the ex . . . grace for the extra weight we carry since hitting menopause. Grace for the getting to know you process. Grace for our journeys.

And then we can decide. How does this person show up?

Most importantly, do they afford me the same grace?

F is for Fear, Fantasy, and Failure

Published on by Pam5 Comments

What keeps us in something longer than we know is good for us? Friends, I know so many smart, educated, brilliant women who have stayed in relationships far longer than warranted, far longer than was safe, physically, emotionally.

The reasons we stay are as varied as our individual lives, but I would posit that we stay because we are afraid to fail, terrified to admit we haven’t lived up to the cultural fantasy of what marriage and family should be.

I know that fear ruled many of my relationships, one set of fears put me there and another set kept me in them beyond the “best by” date.

I’ve found myself explaining my past a lot lately—funny how potential partners want to know what happened, really, that a gem such as myself should suddenly be single and available now (LOL, I really crack myself up).

What drove me to settle down at 23 and become a parent before I turned 30? Fear. Fantasy.

How did it come to be that I put my need to be loved above my children’s needs in my next relationship? Fear. Fantasy.

How, pray tell, does a 58-year-old still grocery shop and eat like a five-year-old with a credit card? Fear. Fantasy. Seriously.

Dates, even phone dates, have so many questions. And rightly so. We all have arrived in this same space, these boxes on the internet where we are all putting our very best hiking-boot-clad feet forward, vying for the last Fine woman out there. Trying to remember what landed us here and worrying that the others all have the exact same traumas and baggage, fearful we will miss the obvious warning signs.

We are afraid, or at least I know I am. Of one another. Of scammers. Of being alone into our dotages. Of more disappointment. Of being hurt yet again.

We believe the fantasy is possible (and we should, we have to). I desperately want to believe. We want someone to wrap ourselves around on a lazy Sunday morning. Someone to smooth our hair from our foreheads when we struggle, someone to tell us it is okay, that we are okay. That it’s going to be okay.

Humans are wired for connection. We do better in relationships than we do alone. Studies show, that just like children can best self-regulate when a parent functions as a secure base, so do adults in solid relationships. But it takes more than fantasy to create relationships that allow us to flourish. It takes a belief in ourselves as deserving.

Just another suburban soccer mom

I settled down at 23 because I was afraid my parents would never accept me if I wasn’t as “normal” (i.e. as close to heteronormative, though in 1986 that was not a thing) as possible. How better to convince them with than a wife, a nice house, a good job (well, speaking of fantasies), and a couple of kids? It worked, too, btw.

I believed the fantasy that I could live as less than authentically myself in order to fit in. And boy, I gave it a good run.

Fear drove me into my next relationship as well. Fear of so many things, but mostly fear of never finding happiness again after losing custody of my children. I was so afraid I’d miss out on their lives that I failed to notice entire bouquets of red flags. And fantasy kept me there—the fantasy that I could sublimate my needs indefinitely in order to create an illusion of success and happiness. I did that well, too.

And it wasn’t all bad. I have my girls—the reasons I kept on keeping on through it all. I had some fun. We threw some epic parties. I made terrific friends along the way—I found my people, and my people helped me find my way.

I learned I am okay exactly how I am. I was okay before the pandemic. I am emerging from it intact. If I come out of it with a partner, so be it. If I don’t, that’s okay too, because I am Fine. Better than fine. Fabulous.

E is for Expectations, Enthusiasm, and Exuberance

Published on by Pam10 Comments

If there is a perfect metaphor for how I have been showing up in my online dating life, it would be Tigger. I am Tigger. Tigger is me in a new relationship: bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!  Check out this clip of Tigger meeting the other creatures from the 100 Acre Wood for the first time.

It’s me! I show up with high expectations, unbounded enthusiasm, and what is possibly an excess of exuberance.

This approach did not work well for me in my first serious online dating relationship (hereby referred to as MFSODR) last summer. Partly because she didn’t have a good background in all things Pooh-related and could not fully appreciate my metaphor, but primarily because we had extremely opposite attachment styles. My anxiety showed up in an orange and black striped outfit, cute ears and a penchant for being noticed. The more I bounced, the more she backed away, like Rabbit into her hole.

In fact, this afternoon I had a conversation with another online dater, and our talk has me rethinking an earlier and ongoing conflict MFSODR and I had about boundaries:  She thought I had none. I couldn’t understand why she was so defended. I wore my heart on my sleeve, but I’m not sure I ever caught more than a flash of hers.

So, maybe it is too much to expect someone I hardly know to meet the Tigger in me so soon. Further conversations with women I’ve met online indicate as much.

“I think you’ll find that most women on here (the dating site), have extreme boundaries,” my new friend said after I’d explained my tendencies toward Tiggerness. “I think you’re going to find it rough going.”

But why must I dampen my newly rediscovered enthusiasm? Why should I hide my exuberance or lower my expectations? Maybe I shouldn’t.

Human beings are wired for connection. We are meant to be in relationship. Perhaps, we have taken our fear of dependence too far and have idealized those who don’t get too attached, those who seem to source internal validation effortlessly. In short, we need one another. We need intimacy, to truly show up for one another as wholly ourselves.

I spend my days counseling folks to show up as their authentic selves, to be vulnerable, to reach toward rather than turn from.

There are enough scary things out there—we shouldn’t fear showing up exuberantly for those with whom we desire closeness.

The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful things
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs
They’re bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is I’m the only one

Tiggers are cuddly fellas
Tiggers are awfully sweet
Everyone el-us is jealous
That’s why I repeat and repeat

The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are marvelous chaps
They’re loaded with vim and with vigor
They love to leap in your laps
They’re jumpy, bumpy, clumpy, thumpy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is I’m the only one
I’m the only—

Ouch…