REPOST: How I found True Love (Just a tad Lengthy)
T. Gryn
years ago to soc.singles....with Gary's permission, I am reposting it.
There are a couple others by Gary that I will be reposting directly. I
hope you find them worthwhile reading.
Gary's webpage can be found at http://skybird.org/fnl/fnl/
====================
From: fl...@lopez.UUCP (Gary Bourgois)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: How I found True Love (Just a tad Lengthy)
Keywords: love in all its glory
Message-ID: <9...@lopez.UUCP>
Date: 31 Oct 89 05:44:27 GMT
Organization: Great White North/UPLink, Marquette, MI
Lines: 312
Well, pull up a pot of coffee and a bag of donuts (bear claws if you
like) this is gonna be a LONG one.....
I sometimes feel that my life is either a poorly written and
unbelievable novel, or a video game programmed by some sadistic
maniac. The sheer amount of "adventure" I have endured in the past
ten years is one reason I could never see much sense to Roll Playing
Games. My own life is so fraught with plot twists and cliff hangers,
that I prefer my diversions to be CALMING rather than STIMULATING.
I have found relationships to be bittersweet adventures, as I am sure
many of you have. Not one for casual ANYTHING, I go for QUALITY ...
Not quantity. Though I post here in soc.singles, I am not single,
really, and so for those who wanted me to write a happier story than
some of my others, here it is, but I will let you judge the factors
and whether it is a happy story or not....
Those who have read my posting (still available on systems that do not
expire messages ten minutes after they are written, like MINE does)
you might recall in "Letters to Myself #1, the Love Letter"... I sat
down to my old IBM Model "A" typewriter at my lakeside cabin,
determined to never be hurt by love again. That letter was only the
beginning of a quest for finding a true soul mate. Someone with whom
I could share my total being, come what may. At the time I wrote the
LOVE LETTER (A personal communication to be read if I EVER fell in
love again) I thought it would never be needed.
In fact, I began to set things up so that I would NEVER get involved
in a painful relationship again, as if such a thing were possible.
I became a monk of sorts. Living in a log cabin on a small lake in
the midst of the wilderness of Michgan's Upper Peninsula, with NO
neighbors, I had a lot of time to think. And so I devised "the LIST".
It actually was honed and fine-tuned over a three year period.
What I did was attempt to sketch out my IDEAL MATE. The first step was
a very long time of self awareness. Quantifying myself, my
personality, my quirks, strong and weak points, et al. Then I
proceeded to quantify the other half of the single being that I would
become with the ideal mate.
To this, I added traits that I would admire and appreciate, taking
into account my own weirdness.
I was not obsessed, mind you, but much effort went into finding
methods of finding the one person with whom I could find life long
happiness.
Psychology studies lead me to examine a number of personality tests,
as well as perfecting my skills at Grapho-analysis (Please no flames,
this IS a science used by MANY agencies, and even FREUD noticed the
correlation of handwriting characteristics and Personality).
What I ended up with was a THREE PAGE list of characteristics of "The
Ideal Mate", along with a battery of tests to eliminate the possiblity
of self deception (Love really *IS* blind, as I had found in my
hurtful past)...
My friends saw me as a purely cold calculating robot, and chastized me
greatly for my approach. My counter argument was that my list DID
keep me from being hurt for almost THREE years. Admittedly the list
also kept me quite alone. Not that I did not have friends, and not
that I did not have some very stimulating conversations with some very
interesting females, I most assuredly did.
I found that it was quite easy to give anyone whom I was interested
in, or that became interested in me, a very interesting date. We
would go out to dinner, followed by a visit to a friendly local and
quiet pub (it's gone now, *sigh* guess it was TOO quiet).. Instead of
the usual ploys that some men perform on a first date, the
conversation eventually came around to something like: "How would you
like to know more about yourself?". Never once did this question meet
with any resistance. And so began a ritual that I performed on many
interesting evenings.
I would first have the lady write a very specific paragraph on unlined
paper with a ball point pen. The analysis of this was always found as
intriguing (I have to admit I got pretty good at it), and was usually
90 percent accurate in finding MAJOR personality traits. (Trust me
folks, this is a lot better than "what's your sign")...
Grapho-analysis (as opposed to graphology) is a pretty exact science,
and for those who were interested (some were) I would even get into
the psycho-motor reasons as to WHY the characteristics were present in
the script...
This was followed by a number of other personality tests that I had
gleaned from some good psychology books, including a surprisingly
accurate symbol test, which I also used as a compatability test.
While my friends protested, this proceedure worked at stopping me from
going down quite a few dead end paths. My dates and I concluded the
evening knowing more about one another than most people would know in
perhaps a year of dating. Once all ones cards are on the table, and
the souls are bared (as usually happened) there are no more pretenses.
I was never one to try and impress someone on a date. Trying to be
someone you are not is what gets most people dating into trouble
later.
It depends on one's motives. I was in my 30's, so had no more
interest in sewing wild oats. I had one goal in all of this. Find
the RIGHT person, or find NO ONE AT ALL. No more soul searing
relationships, where I got run through the meat grinder.
I was honest. In addition to discovering my date's personality, I
also quite frankly revealed my own. That resulted in quite a few good
friendships, in which both parties KNEW that nothing serious could
ever develop because of very deep founded differences (many of which
would not be obvious until it was "too late" and the blinders were on,
if not for the processes of the first date.
BUT... It sure got lonely. I made it a point NEVER to give into
emotional or physical desires if things came up lose-lose. My
personality is so significantly akilter that I required an equally
skewed mate, a rare bird, not given to materialism, who placed love
and loyalty first, who was strong in areas I am weak, but who needed
strength in areas where I am gifted. Finding a strongly independent,
yet fiercely loyal individual itself was a challenge.
I never began to think. Maybe my friends were right.
I was a bit foolish to try and quantify love, to eliminate potential
relationships just because they did not fit a formula on a paper (even
though it was totally logical NOT for a dreamer like me PURPOSELY
placed in a career guaranteed to earn VERY LITTLE MONEY, to be in
liason with a materialistic female (like the EX WIFE that started my
quest for someone with whom I WOULD BE compatable)...
And so I began to discuss this whole concept with friends. Almost
unanimously they said I was a fool.
I was about to can the whole concept, when one day, an old friend, a
lawyer whom I had not seen in a few years came to town for a visit.
He is a lifelong bachelor, and we discussed my rationalle for "testing
my dates" for compatability. Being a logical fellow, HE thought it
was a great idea. And thus encouraged, I dragged out the dog eared
yellow legal pad that contained the three pages of personality traits
and description of Ms. Right.
Then he said an astounding thing.
He said....
"I know this girl."
"Right." I said. "Yeah, sure."
"No really," He retored. "She lives up north in Alston. Everyone
calls her 'Ralphie', and she is pretty weird. She does not date
anyone either."
I listened to his description, and just laughed. He was basically
repeating my own list back to me. He then said how he had tried to
date her, but was flatly refused, though they were fairly good friends
after a year of talking... He told me some of the things she had said
about the males of her locality not being able to think, and one line
that made me laugh. He said she prefered bald men, because "their
brains fried their hair off".
I took this as a joke on his part, since I am Bald on top (A monks
pate), though wear otherwise long hair, which is now, and was even
then quite out of style...
He then proceeded to try and get us together. I refused to call her.
He went back North, and tried to convince her to call me, he said. I
did not believe him. I decided he was just playing a joke on me.
This joke proceeded for about four months.
Then.
November 2, 1980. It was the night Reagan was elected president. I
was videotaping the election coverage, and the phone rang.
On the other end a voice said "I called James Allen to talk about the
election, and he refused to talk to me, and he gave me your number
again and hung up on me...."
So we talked politics for a while, and it was positively stimulating.
She gave me her number, and I called her the next night, and we talked
again. It was all quite uncanny. Over the next month, we ran up
about $300 in long distance phone bills talking. Talking. Talking.
We were presented thus with a choice. Go broke from phone calls or
"meet one another and get it over with".
I was scared out of my mind. First of all, I had been conditioned NOT
to meet people with whom I talked on the phone. Being Short Fat and
Bald, but given a deep voice, and being a life long broadcaster, (see
posting: radio groupies) I did not want ANOTHER painful scenario.
BUT we all have to gamble.
SO during the first week in December, she rode to town with the
lawyer. At my door, there came a knock, and when I opened it, in she
walked. She was wearing THREE flannel shirts, AND a jacket, blue
jeans and had her hair hidden under a big weird flannel hat. I had
wet hair, tattered jeans, and a hastily donned sweatshirt with a weird
slogan on it, illegible through my wide suspenders. In short, we were
a dream couple.....
We went out to dinner.
Yes, I did it. I brought along my test book. All the symbol
diagrams, the association tests, the whole nine yards. We had talked
about politics, current events, and a bit about one another's past
lives on the phone, but now came the scary part. I had already taken
quite a liking to this very eccentric and extrememly sensitive and
intelligent lady. I knew that the tests would once again prove an
incompatability, and THEN I would have some
reasons to show her that we could never make it. That was my
intention anyway. so I gave her the tests. Much to my amazement, the
levels of compatibility in the most basic areas of Love, Money, Sex
and Creativity were 100%, something I had NEVER seen before., We went
through other compatibility tests I had garnered from psychology
books. Same thing every time. Same where we needed
to be the same, opposite where we needed to be opposite. After all of
my tests, she did something surprising. She gave ME a test! She
called it the Freudian walk where you were to clear your mind and
imagine you are walking along a path in the
woods and describe certain objects. Following that, she told
me what each of the objects represented, and she layed my very soul
out before me, including a lot of stuff that amazed me.
The friendly pub kicked us out at 2:30. We had been the only
customers for over an hour. The waitress wanted a copy of the tests
(she had been listening)...
Not knowing what to do, and not being one of those to "take her home
to my place", we went for a walk along the shore of Lake Superior.
The temperature was around 10F, but the conversation continued to be
so exciting that neither of us even noticed the cold. Being French,
and talking with my hands I found myself with Numb fingers. So she
offered to "share a mitten" with me. I felt like a teenager and my
heartbeat must have jumped 20 points at that point.
We talked about the universe. We talked about God, we talked about
life and all its meanings. It was if we had known each other all of
our lives,
Finally, around 5:00AM, we were both getting just too tired. By now,
she had missed her ride back north. So I took her back "to my place".
I made a bed for her on the couch in the hallway (My place happened to
be a recording studio, and I slept in the control room)... I said
goodnight, and as I was getting ready to go to slumberland, she held
her arms out for a hug.
That moment is chiseled forever in both our souls as "The Hallway
Hug". It had a profound effect on both of us.
Following that, I nearly ran through the two doors to the cot in the
control room, where my pulse finally slowed enough to let me sleep a
few hours. The following morning I awoke to find her talking to the
lawyer, who returned for her. He took her back with him that morning.
We both felt so terrible being apart, that she returned with her
sleeping bag three days later.
This time she was wearing a lovely dress made from hand sewn arabic
scarves. I had made sure my hair was dry.....
That was almost 9 years ago.
Since then, we have been through more than I had ever dreamed two
people could go through.
Some Truly Unbelievable years together, and far too many lonely months
apart for various reasons. Along the way, she came down with a very
painful disease (Systemic Lupus Erythmytosis), and thus can no longer
tolerate our Michigan climate. My cushings syndrome makes me unable
to tolerate a HOT climate... She has been through a Hurricaine that
blew her camper upside down on Padre Island, and that same month I had
not one but THREE fires in my home... (and we were both miraculously
spared when we could have been killed quite handily)... We have been
fiercely loyal (just like the personality tests showed we would be),
defending one another to friends who think we are BOTH insane to
remain together with all that goes against our having any relationship
with all the problems that have ensued...
In short, we are soul mates, even though this month, she left the
midwest again for South Padre Island, Texas... for at least five
months, where we will use up a lot of AT&T connect time, send a few
hundred audio tapes... I will bake and mail cookies, she will mail me
sea shells.... and we will do what we must do.
I will continue to be sysadmin of lopez, and likely spend some of the
long lonely nights posting to the net (as I am now), wishing that one
of the seven letters that the system status monitor shows came in
since I began this posting was from her, but knowing that there is no
USENET site she can hit from her camper on the beach...
Until the next time we meet. Logic dictates that I save the money it
would cost to go down for a visit, so that through our combined
incomes (we are both practicing peasants by choice) can go to bringing
her back in the spring (The truck gets only 7mpg)....
We have tried to figure out a place where we could both be together
forever. A place neither too hot nor too cold. A place where We
could both be true to ourselves and who we are as individuals, doing
those things that our fiercely independent natures require, and where
there would be a reasonable chance of some semblence of emotional and
financial security (there were some pretty SCARY years of poverty in
there)... At least the way things are, we are stable.... BUT both
lonely, and a bit lost. She is more than a little changed since the
Hurricaine, and the loss of both her parents, and I lost my job, had
three fires in my home (all this happened in one year. We grew. We
are still growing.
I miss her horribly since she left. It is going to be another long
winter
Elaine is one hell of a woman.
--
=Marquette MI: It's Not the END of the world,
but you can see it from here=
== Gary Bourgois flash@lopez (rutgers!sharkey!lopez!flash)
GWN UPLink ==
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