The New Englander's Guide to A Fulfilling Love Life

These people got it wrong.

Last night a friend of mine asked me for some advice on a relationship she's trying to get into.  I won't say who she is so that I can say, publicly, that she had been making some stupid decisions regarding how she was going about this thing (sorry darlin' for when you read this!).  In a nutshell she had created a relationship around a cute form of playacting, so that neither party had to fully commit to the relationship.  This gave both of them an out when it started getting to serious by going "hahaha, isn't playacting fun, but it's all just for fun!"  I've realized through self reflection and from reflection of conversations I've had with friends in my life, that many of us do this exact thing at the initial stage.  We create a simple out in order to protect ourselves from actually feeling anything or from feeling any pain.  The problem with creating this out, is that when one party really starts to feel more, the other is never sure if it's playacting or might possibly be really interested.  That is a very very stressful place to be, it causes a lot of anxiety, and more often than not, causes the confused party to take the out to save themselves the possibility of being hurt and humiliated.  I am very guilty of this same problem at times, but it's always easier to offer advice rather than follow it.

That being said, I was trying to find an analogy to help her understand an alternate method of approaching the situation, and how to solve the problem of the pesky "out".  In my incoherent, very often nonsensical ramblings, I stumbled across what is absolutely the best analogy I've heard for how to live your love life to the fullest.  I would like to share it with you all now, I call it "The New Englander's Guide to a Fulfilling Love Life".

I posted this on Facebook last night, but here I'll try and say it a little more eloquently and less from the hip.

Taking the step towards a real, honest, fulfilling relationship is like getting into a frigid, cold ocean in New England.  Everyone in the world makes it at least initially up to their ankles.  From here, the population of the earth splits into two types of people.  The first type of person, everyone is guilty of considering.  Absolutely everyone is tempted to wade in slowly.  This makes the most logical sense.  By slowly allowing your body to get used to the cold until you are all the way in you never have to experience the cold in an overwhelming way.  It seems like a way to cheat your way into experiencing the full ocean without having to face the fear of the initial shock.  There is one problem with this method, however, and itaffects 99.99% of people who choose this method.  These people always make only halfway.  As the cold spreads up their legs, a relatively non-sensitive part of the body, they are lulled into a false sense of security in that their body is easily capable of dealing with the cold water.  However as soon as the rigid water reaches their crotch, and the ocean interacts with quite possibly the most sensitive part of the body, it's too sensitive for them.  These people jump upwards and backwards, anything to avoid having to feel in the most sensitive parts of their body.  They return to thigh level and announce that this is far enough, and that they never really wanted to go into the ocean in the first place, just "get their feet wet".  They will continue to stand, content and proud in themselves that they went even this far with such a challenging feat.  They will splash around, laugh, talk, and have a great time comforted in the fact that they are "in the ocean" even though they are less than halfway in.  They will, at least a few times briefly submerge their sensitive crotchal region again just to prove that they can, that they are brave enough.  They will scream, and laughingly run back to the safe depth, and tell their friends about how wonderful it is to go into the ocean.  The problem is that they're submerging such a sensitive region for all the wrong reasons.

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