The verb “cultivate” has lost, in recent decades, its roots in farming. Tilling the soil for planting or nurturing a crop before harvest has been replaced by advancing a relation to a person, such as “I’m cultivating a relationship with my financial adviser.” A deep engagement has been replaced usually by a shallow, quick connection.

When I talk to people during the summer who know I’m a professor, they often think I’m on a three-month vacation. And though I don’t go to school everyday to teach, attend meetings, or hold office hours, I do work most days. I’ve come to think of my work this summer metaphorically as “cultivating relationships,” though I’m trying to have the cultivating be in the spirit of what farmers do. This summer, in addition to preparing classes and reading generally to keep up in my academic fields, I’ve been overseeing three St. Olaf interns who have been working on local niche-market farms, and much of my interaction with them has been a mix of listening, discussing farming, being in the fields with them or eating food together. I’ve also attended, out of state, my son’s graduation, a friend’s wedding, and two family reunions (on each coast); I approached all of these a bit more thoughtfully than is typical of me, wanting to partake in and contribute to the spirit of each particular event.

We often think of a relationship as primarily a love interest, and in the early stages of a relationship, we rarely think of cultivation. We talk, we go to a movie or dinner, we make love, we see friends. We are caught up in the romance of the relationship. My middle-aged love affair has certainly been romantic, but I realize now that I have lived it in a way I was unable to when I was young, as a human connection that needed engaged nurturing – cultivation in all the sense of the word.

Thanks for reading. Live the questions. – Mark 

Why do divorce or marriage statistics set off such loud alarms in our society? Why do we get so flummoxed by people not marrying who we think should marry, such as teenage moms, or by people wanting to marry who we don’t think should be allowed to, such as gays and lesbians, or by middle-aged, long-married ostensibly successful people who are getting divorced in record numbers?

While divorces overall in this country have declined significantly in recent decades, the numbers of those in middle-age who are divorcing after long marriages is going up and has become our latest soul-searching category. And this fact has gotten the attention of numerous cultural commentators, particularly since Al and Tipper Gore announced their split. Some commentators, such as Deirdre Bair who wrote in the New York Times, seem matter-of-fact about this; Bair recommends not feeling threatened or scared by the growing number of older marriages ending – let’s wish the Gores, she says, and others presumably, enjoyment in their “third age.”

In speaking of a third phase in adult relationships, Bair is following Margaret Mead’s idea that every woman needs three husbands: one for youthful sex, one for security while raising children, and one for joyful companionship in old age. Such a belief challenges the importance of the “till death do us part” promise of so many marriage ceremonies, as well as the desire for many people to stay in relationships through the stages, through the ups and downs and all the changes. Many cultural commentators, implicitly or explicitly critiquing Bair’s ideas, have decried what they see as an easy acceptance of divorce.

Long-term marriages that end in divorce have their particular personal reasons relating to the two people involved, but the divorces also occur in a social context, an elaborate web of possibilities and expectations. Should middle-aged people seek “joyful companionship in old age” if that means ending a marriage? Or  should “till death do us part” be taken literally in nearly all cases unless there’s abuse involved? If you think there’s a middle ground between these positions, what would be acceptable reasons for looking elsewhere in middle age?

Thanks for reading. Live the Questions – Mark

 

I met last week with my first book group, “Ladies, Literature, and Libations.” Fourteen of us talked for three hours! (About the book, about online dating, about having new adventures in middle age.) I had a blast, and the women said that they were going to recommend me for some radio shows (Talk Radio 107, Lori and Julia’s show, was mentioned). I was gratified that they all had read the book carefully and had personal and thoughtful responses to it.

After one book group member asked whether any women had ever cried on a first date (I said I didn’t remember anyone doing so), we discussed at length how much a person should reveal when. Many of the group members had done online dating, and several discussed how men they had just met would describe in great detail how their relationships had gone wrong, completely ignoring that they were on a date trying to get to know the person in front of them. And discussion of that led to talk of how a person even knows if he or she is ready to begin dating after the end of a relationship.

I believe that there are no answers or timetables, except for the most general kind, but I find myself, when asked a question about dating, reluctant to generalize for the most part. I have had moments (not last week with the book group) where someone attending a reading asks me straight up for advice. I say that I am not a professional relationships expert, nor a sociology professor who studies online or middle-aged dating – I’m just one person who went through all this, thought about it a lot, and turned his experiences into a book. I do believe that the book can help people understand something, not by following any advice but by reacting to something particular that they are experiencing through my story. And this belief of mine brings up what we think the power of literature can be, how stories that we hear or read can shape human understanding.

So here’s something to think about and talk about with your friends or lover: do we learn more from hearing other people’s stories and absorbing them and using them slowly as we move through our lives, or learn more from direct advice, how-to solutions that we then try out? As always, thanks for reading. Live the Questions – Mark

Jon’s Guest Blog [from Mark... after my last blog, Jon wrote in the guestbook and I invited him to be a guest blogger on the site; readers, please let me know if you'd be interested in writing here]

“Why am I doing this?” It was a few days after my first date with Stephanie, whom I’d met via an online dating site. In fact, she was the first person I met after starting the dating service a few weeks before—my first foray into dating two years after the end of an eight-year marriage. We met at my favorite coffee shop in St. Paul, and I left feeling pretty excited. A middle school teacher, Stephanie was attractive and fit, a good conversationalist, and she seemed warm and empathetic. She brought her Chihuahua, which was surprisingly cute and mellow. After an hour of good conversation she stood up and said, “It was nice meeting you! Let’s get together again, maybe for a walk and dinner.” “Sounds good,” I said, “I’ll be in touch.” I sent her an email the following day—no response. Thinking that something must be wrong I sent her another email a few days later—no response. Oh.

Online dating in middle-age can be frustrating and painful. More than once I’ve been ready to throw in the towel. But I persist. I think the reason is because for me, long term loneliness is worse than the figurative cuts and bruises I get dating. Isn’t that the unspoken truth about us middle-aged daters? We may have busy lives, filled with jobs, children and activities, but we want to live our lives in a partnership, not as a solo venture. It’s that intense longing for partnership that propels us into the dating world, yet at the same time we know that there is nothing worse than desperation. The paradoxical goal is to love yourself and your life—you’re a happy, desirable person just the way you are!—yet be sufficiently unhappy with your life alone that you are willing to put your neck on the chopping block again and again. 

For me the key has been to focus on the process and stop worrying about the results, trusting that if I do the process well enough long enough, good things will happen in their own way. I stopped thinking about dating as the equivalent of job hunting—hard, unpleasant work, justified only with the payoff of landing a good job (or mate). Now I think of it as one more thing I do, a hobby, like running or yoga or playing guitar. I try to cultivate the Zen master within, embrace the paradox, take the middle way, live in the moment. I’m learning to be a good dater, and I think that is making me a better person, too.

 

The trap with this approach, I recently discovered, is that it’s easy to fall asleep at the wheel as you float through dates with Budda-like sublimeness. I was recently on a lovely second date with someone I like very much, and when it was over I realized that I had missed the perfect moment for a first kiss. Somehow in focusing on the process—the pleasantries of the date itself—I had forgotten why I was doing this in the first place. Not for kisses per se, but to find the partner I want to grow old with. I need to remember that desire, that goal—only I need to forget about it too, just be myself in the moment. OK, I’m still learning. God I hate paradoxes!

As I’ve talked to people about my book, I’ve been asked often what the key to success is for online dating. My first response is to say that I don’t really know, that I’m not an expert in this field, not a professional. When the questioner probes more, I’ll say that I only know my own story, what worked or didn’t work for me, and that I can’t really generalize my experiences to all people. And I believe that – I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing a “how-to” book even if I did consider myself a professional. 

But here’s what I do know about success: we do best psychologically when we define it for ourselves. In other words, success at dating could be measured only by finding The One, and marrying that person and living happily ever after, but that’s way too big a burden. Success in online dating could be, however, much more modest: writing a good profile, meeting a few people for a few dates, and just enjoying the sense of being “out there,” of trying. Is the goal only to find a partner, or is it to learn about oneself and know that one way to do this is to meet other people, and learn about them? Could success be measured not by the number of dates or the possibilities of a relationship but simply by one’s readiness, readiness to enjoy life and be in relationship to someone? After all, one’s own readiness is all that we have in our control. The rest is up to everyone else, and a matter of luck and serendipity, to some extent.

So here’s one piece of advice: define success yourself, make it about what’s under your control, and make it modest. Here’s a second piece of advice: focus on the process itself, not the result, because if you can create a good process for meeting people and feeling good about your dating life, then you will have a greater chance for success, however you define it.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to reply or argue in the Guestbook. Live the Questions – Mark.

My first post in a while. People who blog regularly must do it as a discipline, a habit even, the way running or working out becomes habit if you do it for several months. So what have I been doing instead? My son, Nat, graduated from college in upstate New York, and so we went to his graduation and stayed three nights. We met his friends, attended a few parties, drove around the countryside, talked a lot. The ceremony was beautiful, and Lisa Kudrow gave the graduation speech – she’s an alum of the school and on the board of trustees.

Nat’s graduation was in the middle of St. Olaf’s exam week, and so I returned to heaps of papers and exams. This blog is supposed to be about relationships, and we assume that means human ones, but I do have a relationship to my work (usually good, sometimes a bit vexed), and for a week or so there my work relationship had the highest priority.

I’ve also spent much time with my garden. If you garden in a northern clime, you plant nearly everything shortly after the frost-free date, because our growing season is short. So when it’s mid to late May, you put in your garden if you want to have one. And I did, and the garden is beautiful right now. I like to think that non-human relationships matter to many of us, and so a blog about gardening is, in a sense, about relationships. I have a relationship to my vegetable and flower beds that have come from years of careful tending. I form a relationship as I put in new seeds and plants in those beds and dream about when, later in the summer, they will provide meals. I have a relationship with beauty when I cut two vases of Siberian Iris from my perennial garden, as I did yesterday. All these non-human relationships take time, particularly at this season.

Thanks for reading. Live the Questions – Mark

 

A month ago I heard someone described, somewhat mockingly, as a “cheerleader for love.” I had never heard the phrase before but immediately thought “I’d be happy to be called that.” I wouldn’t cheer for the star quarterback to throw a touchdown, but I could cheer him on to love someone well and deeply and kindly (at least if he were a good guy). Is there anything more important than love, not just romantic love but love in all its guises and behaviors? I think not.

I recalled the phrase this afternoon when I was listening to my Jackson Browne records. In the past few days, I’ve played nearly all his records that I own, along with albums by Dan Fogelberg. If you’re under 45 and reading this, you might not know who they are, but if you went to college in the 70s or 80s you likely do. Both wrote beautiful songs about being young, sensitive, and romantic – song after song about unrequited love, or love that was disappearing into emotions that couldn’t quite be articulated, or about friendship, longing, or the wonder that this world can be. There’s never been a more beautiful song about the end of love than Browne’s “Late for the Sky.” Listen to David Lindley’s slide guitar on a Jackson Browne melody – it’s exquisite. And hearing this music now can reverse time and make me feel as if I were 20 years old again.

I loved these singer/songwriters intensely for a few years, playing their records over and over. By the time I was 21 I was on to Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, to a different sound and sensibility that still speaks to me directly. But these hours on two dreary May afternoons have been lightened. Even though Jackson Browne and Dan Fogelberg wrote mostly about losing love or being unable to get it, they were, I realize, cheerleaders for a readiness to love. It’s difficult to keep past youth that delicious vibrancy like a just-rung bell, but it’s not, even in later years, a bad thing to be reminded of what we once felt.

Thanks for reading. Live the Questions – Mark 

I have a new appreciation for bloggers who post every day or week, who keep to their task until it becomes a habit. I missed getting a blog done last week, as I was heading out of town to an academic conference in Duluth and had barely enough time to do my teaching.

I’d like to return in this post to a subject – money – that I had brought up earlier in the context of how we assess someone’s desirability. Films, television, books all suggest that a man with average looks and personality but a large salary can attract numerous attractive women, and some of those women will want to marry him. We can argue about whether or not this is right, but the story is a common one. A friend, talking about this to me, posed a related question: does a woman who makes a lot of money get the same interest from attractive men?

We each had a personal example where this did not seem to be the case, though such situations are complex ones and in a blog I run the risk of reducing complexity to simplicity. Colin and I both noted that the women we were thinking of traveled on business frequently, were skilled and comfortable in wielding power, and in these and other ways didn’t fit our culture’s notions of femininity. And their potential male partners would have to sidestep beliefs about masculinity, about being in control and being the provider. But aren’t there numerous men out there who would be happy to date a woman who was more powerful than they, who earned perhaps three or five times the income? Men who would see such a woman as desirable because she had these characteristics? If so, would these high-earning women see the men as less than desirable because they were accepting a reduction of the masculine role?

An iconic scene from the famous film Pretty Woman has Julia Roberts get a Cinderella make-over on Rodeo Drive thanks to the credit cards of Richard Gere, who is a wealthy trader of “mergers and acquisitions” – does this scenario work in reverse? Would men be comfortable getting “dressed” to be the ornament on a woman’s arm? Would women be uncomfortable buying everything for the man-ornament?

Readers, what do you think about the particular complexities of well-to-do women dating or being in a relationship with a man earning far less money than she? I’d love to hear from people who have personal insights into these matters or speculative ideas – please write in the guestbook. Thanks for reading.

Live the Questions. Mark

What makes us decide that we don’t just want to date the person we’re seeing, but we’re falling in love and that we can imagine spending a life together? In the wonderful and quirky independent movie, 500 Days of Summer, the main character, Tom, meets a girl whom he immediately gets a crush on. They like the same music, he tells his little sister, the same painters, the same literature; he can talk to her about anything. His twelve-year-old sister’s reply? “Just because some cute girl likes the same crap you do, that doesn’t make her your soul mate.” 

But over months, hanging out with Summer and making love and sharing their big dreams and small pleasures, Tom loses any defenses he has. “I love how she makes me feel, like anything is possible, like life is worth it,” he says to his friend, realizing that he’s fallen in love, even though she’s told him that she doesn’t know if love even exists. When Tom tells Summer that he wants to know what she feels, and asks whether she’s just going to wake up some morning and decide that their relationship is done, she tells him she can’t promise him anything about the future or her feelings. No one can, she says. And sure enough, they break up soon. Months later, they see each other at a friend’s wedding and she invites him to a party. What he discovers there is that she’s engaged. He’s crushed.

When he runs into Summer again, he tells her that he can’t believe she fell in love and got married so quickly. “You never wanted to be anybody’s girlfriend and now you’re somebody’s wife,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand that. It just doesn’t make sense.” And Summer tells him that it “just happened… I just woke up one day and I knew.” When he asks knew what, she replies, “What I was never sure of with you.” And then Tom, who always believed in Destiny and True Love, reveals that he now believes in none of it, that it’s “bullshit.” And she tells him no, that he was right before and she was wrong: “It just wasn’t me that you were right about.” 

Here, in a moving scene in a thoughtful movie about love, these two characters suggest that love is incomprehensible, unplannable. We can be in a relationship that we like, but we know we don’t want it to be permanent; then one day, with that person or someone else, we suddenly realize that he or she is “The One.” But is this everyone’s experience, or does love seem to come sometimes when the loved one fits the checklist, has all the qualities we’ve always wanted? And when we rely on our gut instincts, can we be led astray easily, mistake love for something else that we’re needing?

As much as Summer’s “I just knew” appeals to me as the reason for moving toward commitment, the phrase also seems inadequate unless behind it lies considerable introspection, experience, and self-knowledge, considerable self-honesty and the ability to make (usually) the right decisions. Should we bring some balance between head and heart? I guess I just don’t know. What do you all think?

Thanks for reading. Live the Questions – Mark

In my last blog, I used a film that came out this spring, “She’s Outta My League,” to ask about how we

respond when potential partners are significantly different in socially defined physical attractiveness.

Sometimes this attractiveness is thought of in terms of curves and muscles, sometimes in beautiful faces or even height (too tall for women, too short for men). Thinking about such matters can feel awkward, because when we’re considering a potential partner, we’re also estimating our own desirability. Though most people do gravitate to a relationship with someone who society judges is similarly attractive, many of us favor an assessment that takes in the whole person.

When we’re trying to be realistic about our own level of desirability in a holistic way, what qualities do we even include in the consideration? Sexiness, money, interesting personality – yes, most people who are dating talk about these as important, but how do we measure? Some qualities we can’t measure quickly: there is the

sexiness of a pretty face or hunky body, but nearly all people dating will tell you about the sexiness of attentive lovers, no matter their looks. And some qualities, such as how fascinating or not we are, seem knowable only

by the person being affected (we can’t measure this for ourselves). And then there are the innumerable

qualities that matter a great deal to some but not to others: are we kind, generous, flirtatious, strong, funny?

Are we a good listener? Do we like to take control? Do we have interesting hobbies that the potential partner would like to be part of?

So what is attraction when we go beyond the physical, when we’re sorting out all the qualities of character that we generally like or don’t like? How much do we think rationally about someone’s salary, or lovemaking or cooking skills, or ability to listen? Do we set aside rationality when we’re either beginning a relationship or already committed to one? Or do we just follow emotion, unexamined? I’d love to have a guest blogger who wants to follow up on these questions… please let me know in the guestbook if you’d like to write something. Thanks for reading.

Live the Questions – Mark

On Independence Day 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved to his cabin on Walden Pond to live simply and “front the essential facts of life.” On April Fool’s Day 2010, I sit down to write my first blog, hoping that life won’t pass me by.

I already live fairly simply and do live in the country and know that I’ve fronted some of the facts of life. So why would I begin a blog, when it might be the last thing the world needs? In my head, I hear Dionne Warwick’s voice that all the world needs is love, sweet love, and I wish the world had far more of that, but I’m going to add a blog about relationships, about online dating, about trying new things.

My son Nat claims that only a few years ago I didn’t know how to turn on a computer, and I think he’s exaggerating, but he probably didn’t make that up out of nothing. So one thing that I’m accomplishing by having a website and a blog is to make myself learn about current technology. But that’s for me. For you readers, I’d like this blog to be something else, a place where together we can puzzle through some of the mysteries of love and dating and living life well, or a place where you can read about issues that I raise and go away and talk about them with friends or partners.

So here’s my first topic. I saw the trailer for a new film this month, “She’s Outta My League,” and the movie looked silly but got me thinking about why this motif – nerdy guy with no confidence dating hot girl – makes for laughs. Perhaps such movies fuel a fantasy (for guys) that despite their average qualities, they can get the “10.” But such a plot serves fantasy far less than it serves ridicule and humiliation, reminding average guys that in the dating game they shouldn’t step outta their league.

Online dating, because of the sheer numbers of potential partners, can create this situation repeatedly. We are shown an income range and profession; we see photos; we hear about vacations in Europe and interests in gourmet cooking. Should I write this person? Is he or she too good for me? Below me? I once was in a lengthy email exchange with a gorgeous woman who had a second house in the Canadian wilderness, flew her own plane there on weekends, and took her rifle along because she was a hunter. Her second job was as a professional photographer, and on her website I saw photos of famous athletes who were clearly former lovers. And I was writing her? And why? (It took numerous emails, vague talk of getting together, and then silence to have me finally wonder why in the world she was writing me – ah, vanity.)

A question for all of you: how do we feel when we go out on a date with someone who we like but who seems out of our league (above or below) looks-wise? What do we do? Or, if we’re happily coupled, what do we say to a friend who describes something like this?

I have yet to get the “Forum” page ready to have visitors exchange views there, but I will soon. Please feel free to go to the Guestbook and ask questions that I can address or suggest topics for me to write on. I want to have voices with different points of view here, so let me know if you’d like to be a guest blogger. Thanks for reading.

Live the Questions -- Mark