The colors of love

Have we learned anything yet about love?   

How do I love thee? At least six are the ways.

There is no one type of love; there are many equally valid ways of loving. Researchers have consistently identified six attitudes or styles of love that, to one degree or another, encompass our conceptions of love and color our romantic relationships. They reflect both fixed personality traits and more malleable attitudes. Your relative standing on these dimensions may vary over time - being in love NOW will intensify your responses in some dimensions. Nevertheless, studies show that for most people, one dimension of love predominates.  

Answering the questions below will help you identify your own love style, one of several important factors contributing to the satisfaction you feel in relationships. You may wish to rate yourself on a separate sheet of paper. There are no right or wrong answers, nor is there any scoring system. The test is designed to help you examine your own feelings and to help you understand your own romantic experiences.

Studies show that most partners are well-correlated in the areas of love, passion and intensity (Eros), companionate or friendship love (Storge), dependency (Mania), and all-giving or selfless love (Agape). If you and your partner aren't a perfect match, don't worry. Knowing your styles can help you manage your relationship.

FOR EACH STATEMENT:

A = Strongly agree with   the statement 

B = Moderately agree with the statement     

C = Neutral, neither agree nor disagree

E = Strongly disagree with the   statement

Measures passionate love as well as intimacy and commitment. It is directly and strongly correlated with satisfaction in a relationship, a major ingredient in relationship success. Eros gives fully, intensely, and takes risks in love; it requires substantial ego strength. Probably reflects secure attachment style.

2. My partner and I have the right physical   'chemistry" between us.

4. I feel that my partner and I were   meant for each other.

6. My partner and I really understand   each other.

7. My partner fits my ideal standards of physical   beauty/handsomeness.  

Ludus

Measures love as an interaction game to be played out with diverse partners. Relationships do not have great depth of feeling. Ludus is wary of emotional intensity from others. and has a manipulative or cynical quality to it. Ludus is negatively related to satisfaction in relationships. May reflect avoidant attachment style.  

8. I try to keep my partner a little uncertain about my   commitment to him/her.

10. I have   sometimes had to keep my partner from finding out about other partners.   

11. I could get over my affair with my partner pretty easily   and quickly.  

12. My partner would get upset if he/she knew of   some of the things I've done with other people.

14. I enjoy playing the "game of love" with my partner and a   number of other partners.

Reflects an inclination to merge love and friendship. Storgic love is solid, down to earth, presumably enduring. It is evolutionary, not revolutionary, and may take time to develop. It is related to satisfaction in long-term relationships.

16. To be genuine, our love first   required caring for awhile.

18. Our love is the best kind because it grew   out of a long friendship.

20. Our love is really a deep friendship,   not a mysterious, mystical emotion.

Pragma

22. I considered what my partner was going to   become in life before I committed myself to him/her.

24. In choosing my partner, I believed it was best to love someone   with a similar background.

26. An important factor in choosing my partner was whether or not   he/she would be a good parent.

28. Before getting very involved with my partner, I tried to figure out how compatible his/her hereditary background would be with mine in case we ever had children.

Mania

29. When things   aren't right with my partner and me, my stomach gets upset.

30. If my partner and I break up, I would get so depressed that I   would even think of suicide.  

31. Sometimes I get so excited   about being in love with my partner that I can't sleep.

33. Since I've been in love with my partner,   I've had trouble concentrating on anything else.

34. I   cannot relax if I suspect that my partner is with someone else.      

35. If my partner ignores me for a while, I sometimes do stupid things   to try to get his/her attention back.       

Reflects all-giving, selfless, nondemanding love. Associated with altruistic, committed, sexually idealistic love. Like Eros, tends to flare up with "being in love now.'

37. I would rather suffer   myself than let my partner suffer.

39. I am usually willing to sacrifice my own wishes to let my partner   achieve his/hers.

41. When my partner gets angry with me,   I still love him/her fully and unconditionally.

Adapted from   Hendrick, Love Attitudes Scale
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 Bimbo biology 

What's an ideal mate? Men seek the young and healthy. Women vote for financial security and partners willing to share what they've got.

No surprise there, reports psychology professor Robert Cramer, Ph.D., and associates at Cal State. San Bernardino. They consider the results of their 150-person survey evidence of biological imperatives.  

Asked to rate the importance of assorted traits in an ideal partner, the men gave 42 percent of their points to attractiveness, youth, health, and sexual responsiveness.

The women gave only 27 percent of their points to the same traits. But they lavished a whopping 52 percent on intelligence, motivation, honesty,and earning capacity. Men assigned only 39 percent of their points to these traits.  

The results support men's and women's complaints about the opposite sex. Accusations that men want young, beautiful women are on target, as are male complaints that women are interested only in money.

Both interests are the products of evolutionary and biological drives to reproduce, says Cramer. "Behavioral scientists have rediscovered that biological models provide powerful explanations for a variety of social phenomena."      

Still, don't discount cultural pressures. They may yet push males to select mates who can bring their own economic resources to the relationship.
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Misery Loves Company: Do the two go hand in hand?

Does misery love company, or does misery make company equally miserable? Psychologists have long pondered whether couples and close friends are depressed in tandem because one person's mood poisons the well, or because people gravitate towards significant others with the same traits.

Segrin surveyed 153 dating couples and 170 pairs of roommates for three months. He concluded that women's emotional states - positive or negative -were unrelated to changes in their boyfriends' moods and vice versa. Moreover, couples that had been dating longer were no more likely to mirror each other's emotional states than were newly minted partners. "I was surprised by how similar the partners' moods remained over time. I thought there'd be much more fluctuation," says Segrin.

While this study focused on depressive mood, Segrin's results, presented at the American Psychological Association annual meeting, were the same for people with sunny dispositions. "Couples were as matched on positive affect as on negative affect. Happy people seek out happy people, and those who are down and out seek the same."
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Surveying revelers at a Toledo, Ohio, club. Madey found that at 10 p.m. unattached individuals judged the average attractiveness of opposite sex patrons as 2.3 on a scale of one to five. But their ratings zoomed to a spectacular 3.8 as closing time drew near some three hours later. The appraisals made by folks in steady relationships, however, barely budged over the course of the night.

Don't blame booze for the rosier late-night judgments: Surprisingly, studies show that alcohol doesn't affect how we view others' attractiveness. Instead, Madey suggests that as the advancing hours eat away at our freedom to choose a companion, we unconsciously inflate our opinion of potential partners to make ourselves feel better about our options ("They all look like movie stars," sang Gilley of his late-night lady friends). Whatever the explanation, those who keep the phenomenon in mind may avoid regretting their choice of company come the light of day.
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Frisky Business 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, and despite the danger of sexual harassment, there's a lot of loving going on in the office. The warming of the workplace reflects a much more wide-scale upheaval in the ways we work. Given endless work weeks, the reclaiming of emotional wholeness, and a new ideal of love as partnership, it makes a lot of sense to a lot of people--except the human resources department. In an age of full disclosure, it may be wiser anyway to meet under fluorescent light than candlelight. But don't look for guidelines just yet in the company handbook.

The first time i met my husband-to-be, I handed him my resume. I wasn't looking for a spouse--just a summer internship. But I ended up getting both, one five years after the other. I'm not sure when professional regard took on a personal demeanor. I can't name the moment our relationship changed from collegial to consensual. Perhaps it was when I noticed that his eyes matched the blue of his chambray shirt, or the afternoon I drove by the office just to see whether his car was in the parking lot.    

I knew it was reciprocal when he gave me a trilogy of tom robbins books, wrapped in a road map, as a going-away present before I returned to college.

I still have that note. It's stashed away in a closet with other mementos of our relationship--boxes of letters, our wedding album, our son's first lock of hair.

So finding   love in the office seems like a good idea to me.  

And I'm not the only one. Most offices are awash in romance today. According to several recent studies, about 80 percent of employees have either observed or been in a romantic relationship at their workplace. In a recent marriage announcement in the New York Times, the groom, who had met his bride at work on Wall Street, took time out from the proceedings to tell an observer: "If we think our employees aren't having romances, we're crazy. We need to come up with a productive way to deal with it. To say this can't happen is ignoring the reality of men and women."

Perhaps in this era, where singles are seeking full disclosure, it's wiser to begin a relationship under fluorescent lights rather than moonlight or candlelight. Secrets aren't as seductive as they used to be. There's a growing awareness of the dangers of making the wrong choices in bed, along with higher expectations about compatibility in marriage.  

"Not being into the bar scene, I was more comfortable meeting at work," said David Kamp, who met his wife, Karen, on the job at a defense contractor plant. "We had common ground to begin with; we didn't have to create it."

The emerging awareness of love at the office reflects a whole set of changing rules and relationships in the workplace. Companies that find a way to accommodate love among workers may be fostering the psychological health of modern men and women. The approach could have a positive impact on the competitive health of the company itself.  

THE GENDER SHIFT

With the sexual integration of the workforce (now 46 percent female), an increase in age at first marriage, and longer work hours, the office has become a natural place to find an intimate confidante, sex partner, or suitable mate. Sociologist Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., sees this as a healthy move--backward.  

"The new news is old news," says Schwartz, professor at the University of Washington. "There was a time when men and women were linked economically as well as for emotional survival. Now we think of couples as just emotional units. But before that, they were a survival unit. Well, the world has taken another rotation, and we're back to being economic partners-by preference as well as necessity."

Lisa Mainiero, Ph.D., a management consultant and professor of management at Connecticut's Fairfield University, began researching women in the workplace several years ago. She found tons of material on career entry and advancement. But "what women really wanted to know was whether they should be dating the good-looking man in their office. It's as if they were saying, 'Now that we're here, let's look around.' "

The gender revolution in the workplace has mirrored a shift in gender roles at home. Being economic partners on equal footing, and sharing similar work loads and job demands, brings interdependence to marriages. It takes the pressure off men to be the sole providers and gives women more rights and respect.

As ready as employees may be for this next epoch in the sexual revolution, human resource managers are agnostic about the value of romance at work. The prevailing corporate attitude has long been that office romances are nothing but trouble, a swampland of favoritism and nepotism, sexual harassment, and fatal attractions. For decades, the professional literature on love at work has focused solely on the negative impact of such relationships.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead asked flatly in 1978 for "incest taboos" against dating in the workplace. "A taboo enjoins," Mead wrote. "We need one that says clearly and unequivocally, 'You don't make passes at or sleep with the people you work with.' "  

A former editor of the Harvard Business Review, Eliza Collins, declared in 1983 that when love blossoms between executives, it can "break down the organizational structure" and should be treated as a conflict of interest between the couple and corporation. She concluded that a senior manager should ask the employee least essential to the company to leave. Unfortunately, she admitted, that would most often be the woman. Where love has broken out, it's often been on the sly, to avert such a punitive response.

So why   isn't office dating verboten and flirting a firing offense?

Because corporate honchos have discovered a simple truth: You can't outlaw love. The new gender balancing of the workplace makes it virtually inevitable. As journalist Leslie Aldridge Westhoff, author of the book, Corporate Romance (Random House), puts it: "Corporate romance is as inevitable as earthquakes in California."  

Executives are becoming, if not enthusiastic, at least accepting. In a 1994 survey of 200 chief executive officers conducted by Fortune magazine, three-quarters said romances between workers are "none of the company's business." And more than half said they're seeing more married couples at the office than they were 10 years ago.

Love transforms. It can turn recluses into socialites, grumpy critics into team players, and sloppy, disorganized employees into models of efficiency. Romances that have been encouraged and supported by colleagues can bring vicarious energy to the office. And if the lovers span departments, another positive can be improved communication and coordination between those departments.

"In most cases, romantic relationships between employees are perceived as having no impact on the day-to-day work habits of the participants," found James Dillard, Ph.D., a professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin. "If performance at work is perceived to change, relationships are more likely to show positive change than negative change."

An office provides the perfect environment for attractions to form. Coworkers have similar traits and goals, are familiar and accessible, and share in each other's excitement, frustrations, and celebrations. It beats 1-900 chat lines and Aunt Nora's offer of a blind date, at the least.

Taking a look at why we're more likely to fall for colleagues, and the consequences of acting on those percolating emotions, may help us figure out whether workplace romance is worth the risks. "You've got to weigh the costs and benefits and then just say, 'OK, I'm talking about a partner for a significant portion of my life--I'll chance it and take the consequences,' " Way says.

Propinquity can be either physical, such as desks being located near each other, or functional, as in working together on a project. It can even be occasional or incidental, such as running into him in the snack bar or elevator, or being sent with her to the same seminar. Repeated exposure leads to familiarity, which leads to trust, which leads to. . .well, you get the idea.

And, computer courters claim, it's safe--there's no physical contact until an emotional connection's been made. Of course, computerized love notes may not be completely private; employers have the right to monitor the message system. And clever coworkers can gain access to office mates' mail.

Enter your coworkers. You've seen the pictures on their desks, the relationship they have with their ex-, the way they handle pressure. You know their favorite foods, the kinds of jokes that make them laugh, the name of the dog they had in third grade.

Corporate offices have replaced singles bars as a prime mating market and are usurping churches, neighborhoods, social dubs, and family networks as the way couples meet. College is the only other place where we are brought together with so many like-minded peers. But since more marriages are delayed until after graduation (the median age at first marriage is now 24.5 for women, 26.5 for men), colleague relationships are taking the place of coed mating.

oSimilarities. We tend to work with people who are like us in many ways--similar social class, education and income levels, interests, attitudes, and values, with the corollary being that "like attracts like."

"I found that there is a positive side. Until then, there had just been a negative impression, based on bad experiences with hierarchical relationships."

"Today's office romances are very different than the 'powerful boss seduces beautiful young secretary' variety of the past," says Maureen Scully, Ph.D., who focuses on organizational work ethics as an assistant professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of colleagues working together on intellectually stimulating problems. There's the aphrodisiac of cooperation."

Biologist Phil Crow, 46, first met his wife, Janet, as she was dissecting the spleens of fetal mice in the northern Virginia laboratory where they both worked. "I was very impressed with her technique," he recalls. "You have to realize the mice were the size of a bean, and the spleen was the size of a pinhead. It was amazing to watch."

Then the couple discovered how much they had in common: They had previously lived within a mile of each other in the Washington, D.C., area. And, in a scene right out of 101 Dalmatians, they had a matching set of golden retrievers--Angel and Roca. "They say people have dogs who are like them," Bettys said. "It was definitely a positive--here's a man who likes the same animals I do."

"Physiological arousal can come from a myriad of work factors, such as time deadlines, physical exertion, extreme temperatures, dangerous working conditions, competitive demands and other anxiety-provoking situations, and can be mislabeled as sexual or romantic feelings for an opposite-sex coworker," says Charles Pierce, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany. He presented a study, "Attraction in the Workplace: A Model of Organizational Romance," at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society in July.

In other words, work is a turn-on. You shower, dress up in a power suit, go to a place where you are valued for your ideas, energy, and ability to get things done. You hang around other people who are also at their best and brightest. Then you're thrown into situations that get the adrenaline flowing.  

Office romances are especially common in professions where employees are expected to spend long hours together under intense circumstances, and sometimes depend on each other in matters of life and death.

 Hospitals, police stations, newspaper offices, and law firms are hothouses for love. L.A. Law, Homicide Life on the Streets, and E.R. may turn up the melodrama, but some of those simmering sexy subplots are reality based.  

"You get turned on by competence, by being a team that wins, by being better together than separate," says Schwartz. "That's very erotic and compelling."  

Conversely, romance can add spice to jobs that have become routine. Having a crush on a coworker can perk up an employee's productivity, studies show. Romance brings emotions back into the cubicles of corporate sterility.

Architects Joe and B.J. Barnes, married for just over a year, met while working on several projects together in a New York firm but didn't start dating until they'd been coworkers for two years. "There was a strong social group in the office, and we'd go out for drinks, Mets games, the firm softball team, and parties on the weekends," said B.J.

Some companies also reward top employees with business soirees, out-of-state conferences and conventions, health-club memberships, even cruises. Food, travel, and camaraderie forged through accomplishment and celebration can provide the backdrop for a developing relationship. If a potential romance has been held in check by a conservative corporate culture, business travel might suspend office norms and let the lure of a strange city and anonymous hotel rooms breathe life into boardroom fantasies.

For upwardly mobile singles compelled to work nights and weekends, finding someone you want to date can be a time-consuming, nearly impossible feat. "If I didn't date at work," said Patty Waiters, a single marketing consultant from Santa Cruz, Ca., "I might as well not date."

Cyndi and Kevin Renckens, who met while working in financial services for Martin Marietta, share the half-hour drive to work twice a week. "Life gets so busy, commuting offers us a great time to talk and not have any outside distractions," Cyndi says.

They also provide emotional support to each other during the day. "Just seeing her at work can lift my spirit," Kevin confides.  

o Biology. Employees are not only socially motivated but biologically primed to become attracted to coworkers. Hormones flow in the office as well as outside it.

On-the-job romances involve varying degrees of intimacy, passion, and commitment. They may range from one-night flings to long-term marriages. But all have a sexual component, unlike the deep friendships, mentor relationships, and unrequited crushes that also develop at work.

These office romances are far from platonic, and the participants don't seem to have grasped the concept of delayed gratification: a quarter of employees say they've had sex on the premises of the workplace. Another 18 percent claim having had sex with a coworker during work hours.

To call a deep relationship that involves love and marriage potential an "office romance" tends to trivialize and oversimplify the phenomenon, finds Marcy Crary, Ph.D., an associate professor of management at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., who is an expert on male-female relationships in the workplace.

"Most of us have been socialized into thinking of intimacy and work as two separate compartments in our lives; intimacy takes place at home, work at our place of employment." But in a study of attraction and intimacy at work, she reports in Organizational Dynamics, real life is messier. "For many, the realities of day-to-day experiences belie these rational arrangements of our worlds."  

Indeed, in the 1990s, the proliferation of home offices and office romances are signs that the boundary between work and home is not as rigid or impermeable as it once was. The elements that Sigmund Freud, more than 50 years ago, said make up a healthy individual work and love--have become overlapping spheres once again. Integrating the fragmented parts of our selves promises to bring emotional balance to our lives. And for singles, it's legitimizing the only place left to look.

For her study, Crary interviewed professional men and women, primarily in their 30s and 40s, about their experiences with attraction in the workplace. She received such a detailed description from one woman that she included it in her article as an exhibit: "First, I'll find myself noticing something about his physical appearance. Then, I'll ruminate over some personal data about him. The person may appear in my dreams. I begin to ask him questions about himself, watch how he is with other people, perhaps get in conversations with friends at work about who's cute or not, and think of him, perhaps giggling at his joke more. I'll initiate more conversations with him. I may covertly pass on information about my availability. I move into a more personal state and seek contact with him outside the workplace."

Office romances tend to develop in predictable stages. From her interviews with more than 100 executive men and women around the country, Mainiero has identified four common stages:  

Fantasy. A sudden romantic interest in a colleague develops; it may result in dressing up, daydreaming, and working harder to try to impress the potential lover.

Renewal. The relationship enters a stable phase; concentration on work returns. The couple feels comfortable and secure with one another and gets into a routine.

As workplace couples negotiate such personal landmarks, they must also worry about their status as employee and coworker. About two-thirds of workplace couples try to keep their relationship a secret. But most office couples are known to be an "item" long before any formal announcement. While employees might prefer to keep their romantic involvement quiet, colleagues tend to be incredibly sensitive to even subtle changes in the behavior of someone in their work group. After all, keeping attuned to the office's hidden alliances is critical to employees' corporate survival, and gossip can spread faster than a global memo.

Even at work, everyone loves a lover. Coworkers tend to be most supportive of an office romance when they sense the couple is in love and headed for commitment, concludes Robert Quinn, Ph.D., an associate professor of organizational behavior at the University of Michigan.  

In a survey of 126 professionals, reported in Administrative Science Quarterly, Quinn looked at the "Formation, Impact and Management of Romantic Relationships in Organizations." He detected three types of motivation:

oEgo Motives. Employees seek   excitement, adventure, or a sexual fling. The trouble comes when   expectations don't match.

Reports Quinn: "When two participants are perceived as being sincerely in love, the relationship has a different meaning than when the male is perceived as always looking for his next conquest and the female is thought of as being on her way up the organization."

The corollary is, not every office romance goes smoothly and not all company couples are looked upon favorably. Hierarchical romances, extramarital affairs, breakups, and sexual harassment are the litany human resource managers recite to support a skeptical view of workplace romance. Supervisors want things to run smoothly, and emotional issues can gunk up the gears with sticky situations and tangled obligations.

If the relationship breaks up, the lower status employee may be forced out of a job or feel emotionally unable to work for the ex-lover. If the relationship endures, jealousy and resentment among coworkers may surface.  

Coworkers who believe they were passed over for promotion due to such a relationship can claim "paramour preference" in court. When two peers are dating, status issues don't come into play. But when a manager is sleeping with an employee he's also supervising and evaluating, it disrupts staff morale and becomes a human resource director's nightmare.

Colleagues become alienated or envious, believing that they won't receive the same consideration or attention from their boss as his or her lover. Even if a lover is given a deserved promotion, it won't be perceived as such.

Cunningham left the company, and later wrote about the experience in Power Play: What really happened at Bendix? "That I happened to be the most convenient pawn around was merely coincidental. My fortunes were inextricably tied to Bill's. If he fell, I went, too. Probably my biggest error was ignoring all the warning signals in the name of duty or loyalty."

As more women move into management positions, the boss in a hierarchical work romance is as likely to be female as male. The part of the hardened editor having an affair with a bright young reporter in the movie, The Paper, was played by Glenn Close, not Robert Duvall.

"We have a young crew here, most in their mid-20s, and I know dating happens. There's no policy, nothing formal about it," says Kelly Candelaria, a human resources officer of Ticketmaster's Los Angeles office. "Except that there's no dating your boss."

Mark, a grocery store manager for a large Florida chain who asked that his last name not be used, moved in with one of his cashiers. He had to switch stores and took a $10,000 a year pay cut. "I kind of admired that they made me move, rather than her," he said. "But it's taken me about three years to get back up to the salary I had then."

"Levels of tolerance toward affairs seem to depend on three factors," says Mainiero. "How discreet the affair is, the motives of the couple having the affair, and the level of conservatism in the company." She cites the case of a man whose wife had been committed to a state mental hospital who began an affair with a woman in his small real estate office. The other employees were pleased that he had found some happiness and supported the relationship.

o Breaking Up. It's always hard to do, but it's even harder in the office. Continuing to see an ex-lover day-in, day-out can be torture, a constant reminder of the failed relationship. There's no such thing as escaping into work. A coworker breakup can create a war zone in the office, with employees taking sides.

Mainiero suggests that both parties sign a contingency plan at the beginning of their relationship. Such a document should contain general guidelines for how to rationally handle a breakup, including agreeing to "avoid emotional scenes at the office" and "continuing to act professionally with each other as colleagues."

An office romance is distinguished from sexual harassment in that it is jointly desired. Mutual attraction can be fickle, however, and charges of sexual harassment may emerge later.

On a cautionary note: Women who are involved in an office romance and then later file a sexual harassment suit against their former dating partner may be seen as less innocent, and the accused treated with more leniency, than in cases where there was no previous consensual relationship. In a 1992 survey, 98 M.B.A. candidates asked to judge a hypothetical situation of sexual harassment viewed the woman as more complicit, and the man as less guilty, if there had been a prior romance.

Companies will go to great lengths to avoid sexual harassment suits, since they often involve moral scandal, negative publicity, and--more importantly--big bucks.  

The Navy, after the spectacle of Tailhook, put together a 64-page handbook full of rules and regulations for on-the-job conduct and, in fact, have set up a toll-free "sexual harassment advice line" as an emergency romantic reference.

COMPANY POLICY

"With the changing nature of the work force--opposite-sex work teams and working more days of the week--it's human nature," insists psychologist Charles Pierce. "How can you put a policy on it when it's going to happen?"

When problems related to office romance do surface at work, companies are taking an increasingly progressive attitude. In the late 1980s, they proved more open to taking positive action, such as discussing the relationship and providing counseling, than in the late 1970s, when reprimands and transfers were more common.

Only one company of the 245 Ford surveyed had formal policies against single employees dating each other. Just 2.4 percent had formal policies against married workers having affairs with other employees--although more managers said they would ignore the former more so than the latter. By contrast, 43 percent of the companies had formal rules about displaying nude pictures or obscene cartoons at work

As a manager, Ford says, he'd do his "best to discourage dating at work. It inhibits a sense of professionalism and builds an indulgent company culture."

Indeed, observes the University of Wisconsin's James Dillard, there were historical forces that desexualized the work-place--religious morality, the idea that workers must be efficient and logical, with control over their emotions"--the Mr. Spock model of man. But management thinking has moved away from the puritanical notions that workers must be saved from their baser animal instincts.

The corporate culture--its personality--defines how companies respond to workplace romance. Companies that are slow paced, conventional, and conservative tend to discourage office dating, whereas fast-paced, dynamic, liberal companies take office relationships in stride.

In the new, global economy, companies that are flexible and adaptable may well be the ones that survive. Anything that increases employee satisfaction decreases costly employee turnover. On-site daycare, quality circles, flextime, job sharing, holistic health plans, stress-reduction seminars--these are all signs that companies are becoming more progressive on social and family issues, because they have to. The social amenities a company offers, and a sense of community engendered among employees, already have become drawing points for attracting new talent in the most highly competitive markets, like that of software development.  

Companies that are progressive about social and environmental issues tend to have enlightened views about office romance as well. Ben & Jerry's, headquartered in Waterbury, VT, is the home of Rainforest Crunch, on-site childcare, and winter solstice parties with subsidized hotel rooms so no one will drink and drive.

Even in settings as conservative as law firms, office dating is not uncommon. "You're talking about people who don't have anything but their job," says partner Don Steele of employees in his Los Angeles law firm. With 80 associates in the firm, he says, dating is inevitable, but "very carefully done." Sexual harassment issues are a concern, and attorneys are well aware of the potential liability issues involved. The relationships that do form, like the one between a senior associate and her coworker husband, tend to be "solid, not the spicy stuff on L.A. Law," says Steele.

Long before women entered the work force and romance became an issue, the rules and roles of power were inscrutable and arbitrary. Favoritism and hidden agendas were established parts of the office scene. Deep friendships and old loyalties have led to many a questionable promotion or inflated annual raise. Female employees have long contended that promotions are handed out on the golf course, and that fraternal bonding over happy-hour beers excludes women who are trying to find equal footing on the corporate escalator.

The reality, says Goodman, is that there are "all sorts of political and personal alliances in the corporate power structure that are untinged by sex."  

Love looks benign by   comparison.

1. Don't play kissy face on company time. Constant touches, back massages, cute nicknames, and making out in the hallway leave coworkers embarrassed and bosses with questions as to your professionalism and ability to concentrate on work assignments.

3. Read the fine print. Know your company's written policies and unwritten norms on workplace dating, extramarital affairs, nepotism, and married couples working in the same office. Find out what the reaction was to previous company romances and how they were dealt with by management.

5. Have clear boundaries. Make sure that you and your lover are seen as individuals at work. Don't blur personal and professional lines in the office. And never carry over a fight from home to work.

PROFILES IN ROMANCE

Before Susan met Jim Bradford, she had a firm rule against dating guys she worked with. "I had set a policy never to date law enforcement officers. But I talked to Jim a long time at a squad party and found out we had a lot in common--family interests, bike riding, running. This guy was not just a police officer, he was also a really nice person."

Jim and Susan dated for a year and a half before getting married. Their coworkers were shocked when they received the wedding invitations.

"We were careful to keep our private life private," says Susan, 31, an environmental deputy and hostage negotiator for the Hillsborough County (Florida) Sheriff's Office. "At work, we only talked to each other if it was work related."  

Jim, 29, a   property detective, says he was attracted to Susan's well-rounded and   up-beat personality right away.  

Now he finds there are definite advantages to marrying a fellow officer. "Susan understands what I go through at work. We can debrief and vent frustrations. She knows about the job stresses and the police subculture," Jim says.  

The only rule at the Sheriff's Office is that dating or married couples can't work out of the same district. While Susan admits she and Jim worry when each hears that the other is out on a perilous call, they realize that's just part of the beat.  

"We accepted when we went into this job that it was dangerous," Susan explains. "I know Jim's cautious. I don't overreact. And I understand when he's called out in the middle of the night."

Andrew Wolfram was working at a New York City firm as a summer intern when he met Chandler, an architect at the firm. "Our desks were so close, our chairs would bump into each other," Chandler says.

"I met most of my friends or past lovers at work," says Chandler, 35. "It's the place I form most of my relationships. You get to know a person when you're with them eight hours a day."

In a way, it was easier for them to conduct an office romance than for straight couples. "Being the same sex, there wasn't that male-female kind of power thing," explains Chandler. "Traditional male-female roles don't exist in same-sex relationships. It was more egalitarian."

"Being an architect is different   from being a stock-broker--you don't put it down at the end of the   day," says Chandler.

Martha Rand thinks work is a wonderful place to meet a partner. "You learn whether or not you're a fit--you're not just pretending to fit, as you are on a date," she says. "And even when you get past the infatuation stage, you still have something to talk about."

"I was very impressed with Joel professionally," says Martha, 30. "He epitomized some of the qualities I wanted to develop."

Joel said they went out of their way not to be too social in the office. "We never held hands when we walked in together. It just didn't seem the thing to do."

The internet leaves plenty of room for deception on both ends. On the sending end, anybody can describe himself falsely, although I'm not sure why he would-if a flesh-and-blood meeting is the ultimate goal. Sooner or later there has to be a reckoning. This aspect of the internet has received a lot of attention, maybe more than it deserves.  

More intriguing is the deception that occurs at the receiving end of email. It's there that the power of emotions and belief and need can commingle to deceive one into believing that a real and durable relationship exists purely in unverified words.

Part of the problem is that you read email in private. It's just you alone with your own psyche, its dreams and its hungers. Many of the usual brakes on human behavior are absent. There are no friends around to reality-test against. Your mind is free to run away with itself.

And there is in fact something about the my turn/your turn rhythm of exchange of email, and the slow revelation of self it allows, that is exciting. I think of it as slow dancing at the cyber cafes - It's truly seductive.  

All the more reason why critical faculties should go online as well as hopes and dreams. Hopes and dreams are not enough to build a relationship on anytime, anywhere, on or off the internet. Colonel Saleh isn't the first to dupe women; it started long before the internet was ever conceived.

I am concerned less with Saleh than I am with the women he toyed with, although there has to be some psychic flaw that would encourage someone to a) spend that much time online and b) get his kicks by deceiving, and thus harming, others. It's called sociopathy in the psych biz. I'm not sure that it's punishable by court martial, as his contacts are now demanding.  

The sad part may be that the wooed women were drawn from tallpersonals.com, targeted because they were guaranteed to be needy, placed by the accident of height in a Darwinian social universe that made them less sought after as potential mates. And of course, that would have given them a whole lot less practice at love and a lot less knowledge about it.

I consider myself a romantic, but romance for me isn't glass slippers and overwrought declarations, as it seemed to be for Saleh's conquests. "He made us feel like goddesses, fairy princesses, Cinderellas. We had all found our Superman, our knight in shining armor," said one disappointed bride-to-be.  

Maybe it's because I have had long-term experience with the real thing, enough to know that love isn't about finding Superman. Superman doesn't exist. We love in spite of someone's flaws. It's much sexier and allows moments of unalloyed transcendance.

I would throw up if any guy said to me, whether to my face or in an email, as Saleh reportedly did to his correspondents, "You and the thought of you have created a desire so deep within my soul that I cannot fathom a time I will ever be without you." I would be embarrassed to tell another human being that I might actually have fallen for such a line. I would wonder about the sanity of any guy who proposed to me online without ever having met me.  

Most of all, I don't want someone who can't live without me; I want someone who can live without me but chooses not to. Someone with a stronger sense of self than Saleh's messages suggest. That's what real love demands.

If Saleh's declarations didn't seem overblown on their own merits, there was a dead giveaway to deception. He told at least one woman that as a result of parachute jumping he had actually shrunk from over six feet to about five foot nine. I'm sorry, that's just a howler. Still no suspicion?  

I suppose that I am truly annoyed at Kassem Saleh-but mostly for giving internet dating a bad name. Online daters are not all losers longing for Superman. I demand a personal apology.

I not only think posting an online personals ad is a great idea, I'm actually doing it. I'm a 60-year-old widow who is busy working, volunteering, living a life. I had a great long-term relationship; I know how good love can be. I want to go through life with a partner.  

By the time one reaches adulthood, one is hopefully spinning down some reasonably interesting, possibily individualistic, path in life. You have some special facets you'd like to more or less align with someone else's interests. So the pool of possibilities shrinks considerably. I just don't encounter that many eligible males now in the course of a day. The intelligent use of the internet opens up possibilities of people who might live a block away but whom I might not ordinarily encounter.

Before I leapt online, I researched personals sites, read ads posted by males and those posted by females. Most were boring (is there a guy who doesn't want to cuddle by the fire, walk barefoot on the beach or believe in "chemistry," whatever that is?)  

I wanted my profile to work hard for me, to entice the kind of guy I might actually like-while screening out unsuitables. A good profile, I decided, provides an accurate picture of a person, in words.

I have met a few extraordinary guys. There are definitely some world-class guys out there. So successful was the first profile I posted online that I urged a newly divorced friend to follow suit. I drafted her profile, an appealing-and accurate-verbal snapshot of her. Four months ago I was matron of honor at her wedding.

I am now back in the market, and I've posted a new personals ad. I like to think it captures my essence, conveys my wit and spunk-demonstrates it rather than my having to declare it-and so keeps away the humorless and the insecure.  

ROAD-TESTED.   HANDLES WELL!! I've been around the block but I'm in excellent condition. Maybe even better than new. Powerful, smart and very lively engine. Fully automatic, .... You get the picture.

Warped Romeos need not reply.

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MATING

"SWM ISO SWF. Want   mate for French films and fine wine. Seeking mate who seeks same. " What   does this personal ad say about the man who wrote it?  

More   than the fact that he likes Truffaut, says Douglas Raybeck, Ph.D., a   professor of anthropology at Hamilton College in New York, who recently   examined a group of personal ads to see how people used tiny spaces to   convey a full portrait of themselves. "People employed their ads as   meta-statements about the kind of person they are," he says. For   example, many ad placers wrote that they enjoyed walks by the beach though   their Utica, New York, town is 170 miles from the Atlantic. "They are   likely suggesting they are the kind of person who is in touch with   nature," he says, rather than literally meaning that they stroll the   shore daily. Similarly, twice as many men as women described themselves as   honest. "Men could be more honest, but more likely, they are simply   registering that this quality is attractive to women," says Raybeck.  

Personals placers aren't exactly defying defined cultural   roles; most women wrote ads seeking economic security, while men sought   younger, attractive partners. Only when it comes to physical expectations do   personal ads seem to be flouting convention. Despite today's thin beauty   ideal, a number of women declared themselves "full-figured, noted   Raybeck--and virtually the same number of men said they were seeking the   same.

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Men often misinterpret a woman's innocent   smile or compliment as a sexual come-on--but why? Gender stereotypes imply   that men are socialized to oversexualize the world. But research suggests   there are real evolutionary reasons that men and women get their signals   crossed.  

In two studies reported in the Journal of Personality   and Social Psychology, Martie G. Haselton, Ph.D., and David M. Buss, Ph.D.,   both University of Texas-Austin psychology professors, asked over 500   college students to picture themselves on a date. The students then used   imagined acts like holding hands or giving compliments to rate their   companion's and their own sexual interest and level of commitment.  

The researchers discovered that men tended to overestimate   women's sexual interest, while women underestimated men's   willingness to commit. But interestingly enough, both men and women were   more accurate in rating women's commitment levels, and when asked to   imagine that the sexual target was their sister, men rarely misread sexual   intent.

Buss, who explores jealousy in his most   recent book, suggests scientists rethink the notion that human psychological   mechanisms are always designed to be logical. "We're arguing that   they're designed to be biased," he explains, particularly when it   comes to issues of trust.

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ATTRACTION

Men, don't assume that new woman likes you simply because she listens to you. In fact, her "come hither" signals may be misleading. That's the conclusion researchers at Vienna's Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Urban Ethology recently reached. In their study, appearing in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, 45 male-female pairs of strangers who thought they would be rating videos suddenly found themselves alone when the experimenter left to take a phone call.  

For 10 minutes the couple's interactions were secretly recorded and then examined for women's "courtship" signals such as hair-flipping and head-tossing. "Rejection" signals from both parties, such as avoiding conversation, were also measured, along with how much each person spoke. Later, each participant rated the other's attractiveness and their own interest level in dating that person.

"One of the surprising facts in this study was that women do not send clear rejection signals," write the study's authors, led by Karl Grammer, Ph.D. "A woman sends sexually explicit signals without having much interest in the man." This behavior may encourage men to reveal more about themselves, the authors suggest, allowing women to verify their initial impressions. What's more, women used subtle signals such as nodding to direct the flow of conversation, and they avoided contact with men only if the men talked too much initially.

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It's no surprise that people who are   sensitive to rejection shy away from asking others out on dates. But as a   study shows, they also tend to think they've been rebuffed when they   haven't been. And this misunderstanding, ironically, can actually lead   to the very rejection they fear--even if they're already in a long-term   relationship.  

Columbia University psychologist Geraldine   Downey, Ph.D., has demonstrated just how ingrained this mind-set can be.   Downey recruited college students for a study supposedly looking at how   people form first impressions. Each person was assigned a partner with whom   they were to have several one-on-one chats. But after the initial   conversation, Downey told the students that their partner--in reality, a   research assistant--didn't wish to continue the experiment. While most   people cared little why their partner had split, rejection-sensitive folks   were likely to feel responsible for the departure, expressing concerns like   "I worried that I had bored him."

Such assumptions can   carry over to intimate relationships, damaging the chances for long-lasting   success. While you might expect insecure individuals to be meek when   conflict arises with a lover, they're actually more likely to lose their   cool, say spiteful things, or threaten to leave, reports Downey. As a   result, couples in which one partner is rejection-sensitive are more likely   to break up within a year than other dating duos. Fortunately, Downey says   that partners of insecure people can help them overcome their problem by not   taking their overreactions personally and by not responding in kind when   they become hostile during disagreements.

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Lost loves. First loves. We all have them but, given the opportunity, what to do when the possibility of reunion comes up? A psychiatrist offers her story, as well as what to look for.

It is my belief that most men and women carry around, throughout their lives, the image of someone they loved in the past but with whom they did not ultimately join their lives. Someone they continue to wonder about through the years, sometimes almost obsessively--particularly when things are not going well in their lives--and sometimes not at all. Still, that figure haunts them and makes them wonder how different their lives may have developed with that other companion. At times they pine and long physically for the presence of this first and sometimes only real love.      

As a practicing psychiatrist, I know that many of us dutifully accept the idea that most marital problems stem from unresolved conflicts in family relationships that developed long before our current partner had any influence on our well-being. But we also continue to hold an emotional, perhaps primitive, and certainly powerful belief in the fusion of two souls in love.

I became interested in the universality of the "road-not-traveled" relationship when, after a silence of 30 years, I remet and married my first love and one-time fiance, Warren Bennis, the well-known organizational management expert who founded the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. I began to wonder why some people reactivate an old love affair when life gives them an opportunity, while most do not. I started collecting other people's stories while I continued to live out and understand my own.      

Most of what I have learned about the reuniting of sweethearts--whether after a separation of one year or 30--seems to be equally crucial for sustaining intimacy in long-term marriages as well. Above all, I have found, reconnecting with an old love is not just another date. No matter what age the principals, it is a psychological recapitulation that can trigger grief, anger, resentment, fear, guilt, shame--and joy.

Such a reunion inevitably involves a review of life from the time of the original love relationship to the present. It may lead to powerful insights into your own emotional history--a reexposure to something that has been both deeply appealing but also possibly disturbing. Both the pleasure of union with an idealized love and the remembered pain of its ending are released into consciousness once more.  

Anticipation of the reunion is enormously exciting. It encourages an amazing leap across time, back to a feeling of being intensely alive. It is an attempt to recapture the self at a period when everything in life lay ahead and activates a whole chain of "what-might-have-been" thought.

The success of romantic reunions depends on the resolution of past problems. But it also hinges on the current availability of the pair. Yet even if they are committed to others, some form of reunion can still be of value. What follows is a discourse on my own experience with love regained, interspersed with what I call "The Rules of Reunion"--practical advice garnered from both personal and professional conversations about this remarkably universal phenomenon.  

There was a pile of mail on my desk, and in the 10-minute break between patients I riffled through it. I stopped breathing when I read the name on a wafer-thin blue envelope.

"Any chance you can have dinner with me on Oct. 13? Yours, Warren." I stared at the familiar handwriting of a man unforgettably extraordinary, the one who had made me feel that love for him was what he valued beyond anything, who had inscribed in the wedding ring he'd bought for me "Memento Amori" (remember to love). In retrospect, an admonition? Memory shot back 30 years. I stood in my surgical greens in the emergency room at Boston City Hospital reading his telegram ending our relationship three days before the wedding. I tore up the hundred words he proffered as explanation. He had become hard and stony with me lately. I had had a premonition that something eerily bad would happen but tried not to personalize. I attributed it to generalized prenuptial angst.      

Twelve months later he got married, closing off the possibility of any reconciliation and making it clear that it wasn't marriage itself but marriage to me that had been the problem. With that rejection I knew that what felt like devotion could be temporary and contingent. What you relied upon could be gone in a flash. I was wounded in some permanent way.

After that, I kept a lot more of my thoughts to myself. I kept my guard up, you couldn't let down for a moment, couldn't speak openly, had to continually censor yourself, gauge the impact of your words before you said them. And you certainly shouldn't move in with the man you hoped to marry.  

We'd met four years earlier, at the home of an academic in Boston's Back Bay. I was a third-year medical student. Eight years my senior, Warren was already a professor of management at MIT Before long, I saw very little of my apartment. When I finished at the hospital, I usually drove straight to Warren's. If I met him someplace, I'd follow him home in my little green MG. At the stoplights, I'd ease up and give his bumper a love tap. We spent four years together.

We had believed we would be saved from disappointing lives. Unlike our parents, we would be adored by our children because we would be their champions. We thought sex was very important and spent limitless time encouraging each other. We loved Japanese movies of the time. After a film Warren would race up and grab me with a samurai leap and a hiss. I would fold up with laughter. We danced around his apartment. We rushed out to buy the latest albums. And we decided to live together at a time when it wasn't done.  

Why did he want to see me now? I detached from the present and became a consultant to myself to cut free of my own feelings. He was in his mid-60s and always a self-observer. He could be doing a life review and revisiting the women important to him, pulling themes of relationships together, looking at the whole canvas. He could be wanting to make amends. And, oh yes, he could be wanting to start an affair. But it seemed too risky to find out. I couldn't risk rejection again.

I knew from mutual friends who'd sketched in the rough outlines of his life that, after being divorced from his first wife for a long time, he'd suddenly married a woman they didn't like.      

Though so many years had passed, Warren still meant so much to me. Those critical years when we were together were passionate and stimulating. They had become my template for life.

Dinner with him? Back then I'd planned to make dinner for him every night for the rest of our lives. Now I was afraid that one dinner would just start me up all over again.  

Three days later, I left a message that I'd meet him for dinner at his hotel during his impending visit to Washington. When he opened the door to his suite, we stared at each other, mutually surprised at what we saw: two white-haired people! My robust, youthful, pipe-smoking lover was replaced by another man--manicured, slender, significantly older. He guided me smoothly into the sitting room and conducted our meeting like a TV interviewer.

As I began searching anxiously for my old familiar friend, he talked about his life, the 20 books he'd written (he placed two right in my hands), the conferences he chaired. He was here in D.C. to preside over a forum for Business Week. My life suddenly felt skinny.  

I found myself responding unenthusiastically and reluctantly to his polite questions about my life and children. I heard myself reporting mechanically--and endlessly--about a recent barge trip I'd taken in France. This wasn't the way I wanted it to go. Where was the mystery, the unfolding? I feared we'd never speak in any way that would draw us close.

I heard him say that he had many happy years after our time together but that he'd never recovered such passion again. The words were stiff, awkward, spoken without emotion. They were not an invitation. We ordered BLTs and, after a few bites, I looked at my watch and saw that it was time to go. Quietly he walked me down to get a taxi. In the silence he simply smiled and, through the otherwise packaged persona, let out a sigh. That was the first glimpse of my old lover.      

OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS, BETWEEN patients, I thought about him, and dropped him a note: "Id like to stay in touch and not lose this friendship of our youth now that we have made this effort. In the old Forest Street language, I might have proposed 'the wine has been opened and must be drunk.' In the context of our present lives, the metaphor must be modified. I simply doubt that we will get another running start. I remain, your Amazed Grace."

He did not respond. That didn't fit. He'd been a university president. They answered their mail. Months later in a conversation with mutual friends, I learned that Warren had some surgery and was laid up for a while. It gave me the courage to try writing again. At worst he would be flattered. Just a few lines: "Was our getting together meant to be a one time thing?"     

Five days later a letter arrived by Federal Express. "Strange, so strange. I thought/felt that you were pushing me away when we met in October, that you couldn't wait to leave. I was mesmerized--again--and wanted you but thought, well, the slow flat barge you described was emblematic of the life you were resigned to lead. Or that I seemed to have settled for." He had not received my earlier letter. And barely two weeks before, "for too many reasons to recount now, my wife and I separated. In truth, I didn't want to continue life on a flat barge. I don't want to make too much of a cute metaphor but I want to see you and hold you." From that point on the Federal Express man was Cupid to me.

THE RULES OF REUNIONS  

#1. A reverse "Lost Horizons" effect occurs. There's a recapturing of the past that is felt as a reexperience of youth. Some people describe a sexual reexplosion in which the partner is a sort of a physical composite of their youthful and present selves, thereby enhancing the experience.

Each partner may have reached the fruition or completed form of the wonderful outlines suggested but barely developed many years ago. Once potential qualities such as generosity, responsibility, competency, honesty, confidence, and the ability to be nurturing may now be clearly established. Perhaps your old lover looks even better to you now than before.  

ON VALENTINE's DAY 1991, WARREN wrote "what I meant to write" earlier: "That my fantasy was for us to chuck all ties and run away together. That I have never loved anyone but you."

The words brought an early spring to Washington. Nothing was tedious or hard for me. My violin playing started to improve. I had infinite patience with difficult patients. I would wake with some sappy old song from the Fifties in my head. I knew my expectations were getting way ahead of me. From my long clinical experience, I knew all too well about the half-life of passion and the unrealistic overvaluation of love objects. But I consciously suspended some reality checks and allowed the neurotransmitters of love to flow as long as they could. After 50, you learn to seize such treasures. I was in sufficient contact with the pains of the world in my everyday life.  

#2. There are stages of reunion. Periods of moving very close alternate with periods of needing some emotional distance from an old love. The intense closeness following the "miracle" of finding each other again will normally require breaks during which a move apart must occur. This is a predictable and necessary part of the process. Your old sweetheart may wait longer than you want between communications or might cancel a date because the reconnecting may be too much too soon. Don't personalize the need for periods of separation along the way as being a rejection of you. Let your old love know it doesn't mean you are rejecting him or her either.

What's more, past loss, whatever the cause, is often not worked through emotionally. Unanticipated anger or sadness from the loss of the old romance may suddenly interrupt a pleasurable moment, leading to self-doubt and "Am I crazy?" thoughts. Along with the pleasure of being loved by the former rejecter, reunions activate resentment. The rejecter may become fearful of retaliation for the damage done. It can be a tumultuous time of unexpected swings between joy and anger.  

If you need to slow down the reuniting process because of overwhelming feelings that things are moving too rapidly, write letters as a substitute for visits. This is a form of communication that is thoughtful and not impulsive--a reflective process, and it is positive. If you know yourself to be very impulsive, write your thoughts in your own private diary first and wait for a few days before you communicate.

IN THE OLD DAYS, THERE was a rhythm to our relationship that I believed would save us from boredom and impatience at the inevitable accumulation of small, selfish acts. We were both wholly committed to our work. Warren was going for tenure at MIT. I spent an infinity of hours at the hospital. All the time apart would surely keep us longing for each other indefinitely. Back from our individual adventures we were then eager for marathon conversations. These invariably began with true interest and genuine warmth at his kitchen table. And ended in the bedroom.      

Remembering our old pattern of declaring our intimacy a triumph and then immediately pulling away into separate spheres made my frustration between letters that much more tolerable. Besides, I knew what I couldn't accept 30 years ago; you can't force life.

Warren eventually wrote me again, but he was not passionate. He spoke of his need to get reacquainted. "How do I tell you jokes and share the banalities of my existence, the everydayness? Isn't that a big part of intimacy?" He wanted to know who we were now. He wanted to know about the everydayness of my life. If we were going to be passionate about each other again, what about compatibility? Could we actually live together? And what had happened to us in all those years in between?  

We wrote long letters recapturing the past and filling in the blanks. But we put off actually meeting. Four months later, one of Warren's frequent speaking engagements brought him to Washington, and we agreed to get together.

There was the merest embrace, followed by talk of things we liked to do. When he murmured something about the hopelessness of a bicoastal relationship, I ran through my repertoire of entertaining observations about life. For a while we sat and stared at each other in silence. When at last we spoke, it was of the bad things that had gone on in our lives since.  

He had faced difficult surgery. I had married a brilliant man, deeply intense (as close a clone to Warren as I could get, only much more adventurous and, unfortunately, much more crazy). There followed a long, dark slide into psychosis and death. I talked about the terrible effect it had on me, dwarfing the pain of Warren's rejection. I learned, perhaps, things that I might not have learned otherwise--how to exist in current time and space, how to recognize, value, and welcome any opportunity for positive experience. To stabilize myself and my children, I had married again, but there was an emotional void.

Warren spoke of his distress at the failure of his two marriages. They had supported his needs and his career. But ultimately they were "strangers," and the relationships were "never enough."  

After that, we spoke by phone several times a week, but our conversations were more selfconscious and clumsy than our letters. Knowing that Warren planned to have some routine surgery and that I had an upcoming trip to London, I asked him to call me there. Thousands of miles apart, we grew close; we took chances and spoke more openly of our growing attachment.

A West Coast visit was approaching. I was going to spend a few days with relatives. Then with Warren. Now, we could no longer rely on the past to hold us together. We had to find out if the people we had become jibed with what we truly wanted. Had we developed into what our younger selves would have wished for each other to become?  

#3. The original problems will always be reactivated. The conflicts that caused the original breakup are absolutely integral to the basic personality and character structure of each partner. In the intervening years there must have been a learning from life, a basic individual growth process in which one has dealt with this core issue, before the reunion can succeed. This is the case whatever the problems that led to the breakup in the first place. Problems that may come between lovers include self-absorption and inability to give appropriate attention to the other person's growth and well-being; excessive ambition; fears about competency; guilt and suspicion about sexual enjoyment; unmanageable competition with the loved one for worldly achievement or other goals; projected inferiority ("anyone who loves me can't be worth much"); personal rejection because of overvaluation of wealth.

It takes years to do this work on the   self. It can't be a last-minute homework assignment.      

Having learned from other relationships is a major requirement of successful reunions. Unsuccessful marriages in the intervening years can teach a person a lot about the fragility of keeping love alive. Over the years, many formerly emotionally isolated men and women who have had real worldly success may be able now to tolerate more intimacy. Achievers have had enough recognition from the world; performers grow more concerned about coming back to an empty dressing room. They have objectively achieved the success they always wanted and recognized it doesn't solve all problems.

The passage of time has to bring the courage to look the original problem in the eye. Be assured that the outcome will be essentially the same today as it was years ago unless a different way of behaving has been built from having struggled hard with these issues in the years between. One indisputable sign of the accomplishment of real change is to find your old love being grateful, rather than jealous, of the intervening relationships that have given you wisdom.  

WARREN WAS ALWAYS A VERY AMBITIOUS man. His sights were set on the big time and I can't count the hours we spent discussing the strategies of his getting ahead in the academic community.

I grew increasingly serious about my own career in medicine. I became the first female surgical resident accepted into Harvard's residency program. In our final year together, I was pursuing a full-fledged career in surgery--although I later switched to psychiatry. I was something of an outlaw, a strong and passionate woman beyond the usual social prescriptions of the day. Then, as now, I felt free to make up my life as I went along. Warren, as a man, was more bound by rigid social expectations. He wanted a wife devoted to helping him.      

When it came down to converting our romance into a life partnership, Warren turned away from the emotional side that had given him so much pleasure. I was not available to Warren on a daily basis to back him up in the social arena of Cambridge academic competition. A wife with her own career was not seen as an advantage at that time. If a man and woman were to both be successful, the man's success had to come first.

Though we never discussed it at the time, I was happy to have a life outside the relationship. I felt that the more roles we brought to our relationship, the richer our life together would be. The very things I thought made relationships work were the things Warren enjoyed but felt were not sufficient. He couldn't allow himself to express this directly.  

#4. A review of the original breakup must take place. Reviewing the reasons for the breakup of the old relationship may be painful or at least difficult. But it must take place between the sweethearts. If you can't do this, don't start anything with an idea of getting back together.

In reviewing the relationship history, avoid being accusatory. Using blame or being judgmental may well be what started the trouble years ago. The best approach is to make liberal use of the "I" position: "I felt rejected and unwanted because I did not value myself" (not "you destroyed my life").      

Romantic sweethearts rarely if ever split by mutual rational agreement. Cold words may have been the outward form of ending, depending on the cultural background of the parties, but they are an obvious disguise for tumultuous passions at the time. They must now be openly acknowledged.

Amends must be made. The original rejecter must articulate sorrow for inflicting pain without accepting total responsibility for the breakup. Usually, blame has been placed, unfairly, on one partner, the designated "rejecter" who stopped the relationship from going forward at that critical time in the past. There is thus a split of the lovers into "good" and "bad" Such a distinction is essentially false and diminishes the true complexity of relationships. As long as such a distinction continues, healing of the relationship is impossible and a real partnership is unattainable.  

The partner who broke off the relationship may, in fact, have been experiencing emotional rejection from the other party at the time. Though being told "I love you," the partner may have felt otherwise in his or her gut, and the only way of showing any hurt at all may have been to stop the relationship entirely. Now, the rejectee must own up to having abdicated responsibility back then by appearing the victim and not admitting the strong negative feelings that were in the relationship. Thus, layers of self-deception may be peeled away in the process of making amends.

THE CLOSENESS AND intimacy I cherished in our relationship, it turned out, Warren feared as a sign of dependency--his. Privately, he was facing a growing crisis, one his analyst helped frame as a choice between saving himself or saving me. Having to reveal this in person, he felt, might actually keep him from breaking off the relationship--a sign of the passions beneath.  

So he sent a telegram instead. That stunningly impersonal document crushed me so hard it set off a full-blown panic attack. For Warren it officially launched a three-decade-long flight from intimacy. He achieved everything he ever dreamed. Still, he felt isolated.

The enormous amount of success he has achieved over the years has changed him. it has allowed him to be more creative. It has made him more sure of his instincts. He shows his feelings of love. He is no longer afraid that intimacy means dependency. Nor does he fear dependency.      

#5. There must be consensus about the reasons for the original breakup. A shared idea of why the relationship failed back then must gradually emerge. This is essential for a reconciliation that can endure. One person can't just convince the other of his or her point of view. In answering the inevitable "If you're so smart why didn't you marry him/her back then?" both sweethearts must agree that it couldn't have been forced at the time.

Old lovers must not only develop a shared view of why the relationship failed, they must also come to agreement as to why they couldn't make it work at the time. A joint recognition must occur that each was stumped by specific personal problems and behaviors. Each partner must reach a deep understanding of what was truly irreconcilable about past behavior. Only a fool expects different results from the same repetitive behavior.  

Because this is a deep process of self-understanding, it takes months, not days, for each partner to accept the validity of the reasons it failed in the past. Out of this shared view comes a perception that neither was the exclusive victim. As both persons air and relinquish their long-held private versions, a new joint construction of their emotional realities comes into being. This shared vision is a strong foundation for the future. It takes time, but forgiveness also occurs.

IN THE COURSE OF VISITS TO THE WEST Coast, Warren and I often went out to dinner with his friends. "This is the woman I should have married 30 years ago," he would introduce me. And we would launch into our story. Through these public tellings and retellings in a setting of social approval, we developed the objectivity to assume the responsibility for our failed love. Just as important, it helped us construct a shared view of the reasons for failure.  

In telling my story, I ultimately recognized a scenario of neglect. I grew to understand that I had frozen Warren out. While he included me in the social side of his academic life, I kept him totally separate from my medical life. Focused on my own needs, I was sure that being a stimulating partner, rather than a nurturing one, would keep us going. I couldn't even imagine that someone so richly endowed as Warren needed anything. But he was not being taken care of emotionally. Our marathon talks were gratifying, but they were periodic. Then I'd spin off into my world again.

There were, in retrospect, things we could have done to protect our long investment in the relationship. We who believed so strongly in therapy could have taken ourselves to a therapist--together. Then, too, Warren could have taken the adult-style responsibility for telling me that he needed care.  

Having learned the art of existing in the present, and having the confidence that comes with achievement, I was able to let go of the past. I could accept what happened years ago and move forward. Many people in my place may have had such hurt feelings that they would have needed to punish their ex-lover--even though doing so would spoil their new shot at happiness.

#6. There are specific characteristics of people who rekindle an old love. I have come to understand that not everyone is suited for rekindling an old flame. Love is an expansive and optimistic feeling. People who choose to reactivate old love appear to be optimistic and action-oriented throughout their lives. They are, by definition, risk-takers. Romantic and poetic qualities seem to be long-established traits among those who pursue reunions. At the very least, they must no longer be afraid of the adventurous path of love.  

#7. Commonly, important issues arise among family. Intense reactions are often not limited to the two principals involved. Children also experience significant reactions, and you can count on these regardless of how old they are or whether or not prenuptial agreements guarantee their inheritances. It may come as a surprise but the "child" of 40 can be as deeply upset as a teenager.

As in any recoupling, there are the routine fears of loss of love and loss of financial inheritance. But the reactivation of a love that predates the other parent brings up a specific set of additional problems.  

It ignites an anxiety that can roughly be summarized as, "If you had married him/her back then, then I wouldn't have existed." It is experienced as a deep threat to the self, and it must be addressed. This can best be done once you yourself have arrived at an acceptance that the sweetheart relationship was "not meant to be" in the past. The discussion should include the positives of the marriage and family you did make. Children never hear this too often.  

There will be devaluation of a parent for having made a "big mistake" in life. The loss of faith in a parent's judgment can destabilize the parent-child relationship and lead to a kind of role reversal-if the parent agrees with it. Better that it should lead to a healthy discussion of recurring human fallibility and of growth throughout the life cycle.

#8. Friends pose another set of issues. Among dear friends who know your life story, you can expect to feel embarrassed in telling them that you and your old flame are back together again. "Are you doing that cockeyed thing again?"  

On the other hand, wise friends can also function as monitors this time. They can help prevent the repetition of sudden endings and encourage the sweethearts to defend what they are doing and be more reality-oriented. Talking candidly to friends as you go along helps you to think more clearly and can keep you from slipping into a dream world.

#9. Don't repeat The Great Gatsby. It did not have a happy ending. Gatsby, remember, did not get the girl. He forced Daisy, the love of his life, to tell Tom, her husband and the father of her only child, that he meant nothing to her and that she had loved only Gatsby, never anyone else.  

Resist the lure of invalidating the sweetheart's other important relationships that have occurred during the intervening years. It is not wise (or necessary) to undercut the significance of ex-spouses!

The emotional intensity of separated lovers finally getting what they have long wanted may ignite a childlike wish to undo the loved one's past. Like Gatsby, a long-lost lover might force statements and actions to gain emotional primacy over all others. Such demands are not only childish, they can be disastrous! You can never make up for years of being apart. There were valid reasons for the failure to unite years ago. Mature people understand that they do not have a monopoly on a partner's attachments.  

#10. Sweetheart reunions need a warning label. They are poison for "women who love too much" and their male counterparts! A sweetheart reunion can restart a once-uncontrollable obsession successfully put aside by dint of tremendous effort, perhaps even years of therapy. Reunions are not for people who can't get unstuck once they love someone. (Check your track record to see whether this is true of you.) They can reactivate a pattern of making another person, rather than yourself, the focus of your life.

#11. Good things can happen to old flames even if they don't reignite. Even when reunion with an old love is a disappointment, there can still be positive developmental results. While many people carry around the image of a past failed love, for some it fuels a perpetual flame of fantasy that becomes more alluring than the real-life relationship they are in. They make comparisons that disadvantage their everyday relationship and indefinitely postpone making the best of it.  

Sometimes the best way to let go of a past unsuccessful love is to go back and have an actual reunion. This process can be a way of dosing the circle or writing the last chapter, and thus freeing oneself from a lifelong fantasy. The result can be greatly enhanced enjoyment of present life. Even an unsuccessful reunion can promote wisdom and a sense of completion in one's own life.

By setting up a meeting with an old love you may find out how much you have grown and changed over the years. First of all you can get a look at what your past romantic love is like in the light of today's reality. You may get some real shocks. Physical changes may turn you off. Or when you sit down and talk you may find that what once looked like creativity and imagination can now be recognized as childishness, emotional instability, or actual craziness. Some traits look different with time, others are the worse for wear.  

As you get to know one another in the present, big differences in judgment can become clear. What was fondly remembered as insightfulness or analytic skiff may now appear to be negativism and bitterness. What flourished as moderate competitiveness may be transmuted by time and outlook into an all-out war between the sexes. Your old sweetheart may feel that contract and negotiation are the only bases of connection between the sexes.

In such cases reunions make it obvious that a life together could not have worked. And in the process, you have learned something about yourself.  

THIRTY YEARS AGO, THERE WAS NO closure with Warren. The resolution for me was having the opportunity to have it happen again. Our capacity to enjoy our new relationship is what gives it a happy ending. Today Warren and I are married and living in California.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Top experts weigh in on everyday questions:   Can we be in love with more than one person at the same time?

Robert J. Sternberg, Ph.D.,  

Yale University; President,   American Psychological Association

Yes. I have argued that relationships are built upon stories of love, such as a fantasy story (prince and princess), business story (business partners), travel story (travelers through life) and collector story (collector and collectee), among many others. I think it would be difficult to be in love with two people at the same time with the same story. But it is quite possible to love two people via different stories. Given societal norms, such multiple loves are likely to create conflict. Stories are hierarchically arranged, from more to less preferred. It is thus likely that the person with whom you are in love, who is higher in the hierarchy, or possibly to whom you are already committed, will supplant the other person. 

Drew Pinsky, M.D.,  

MTV "Loveline" co-host,   Chief of Service, Department of Medicine, Las Encinas Hospital, Pasadena,   California

People are quite capable of being in love with more than one person. Yet the clinical reality is that a healthy individual who is emotionally, spiritually and sexually available for love will find complete satisfaction in a dyadic relationship. Unfortunately, the kind of empathic attunement that's possible in a dyad is unusual these days. More commonly, individuals dissociate parts of themselves from their primary relationship. People suffering from fractured emotional lives-narcissists and borderlines, for example-would say they are capable of being in love with more than one person. The more interesting questions then become: What is revealed about individuals who are in love with more than one person? And how have such choices contributed to family dysfunction?      

Mary Hotvedt, C.M.F.T., Ph.D., 

President,   American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy

In the passive sense of love-the feelings we experience in ourselves-many people would say they have been in love with two people simultaneously. Often this happens to a person's own surprise and results in painful internal conflict. In the active sense of love-caring for the other-loving two becomes far more difficult. Cultures that permit polygamy have very clear rules about balancing the treatment of spouses. In our monogamous culture, few people who love two people in this way are open about it. Secrecy itself brings about imbalance and confusion-it compromises honesty. Even if a person who loves two is honest, few would opt to be one of two.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can Two People Fall Deliberately in Love?       

    Top experts weigh in on everyday questions.  

Albert Ellis, Ph.D.  

Albert Ellis Institute

Yes, you can make yourself deliberately fall in love with someone you presently like but do not really love, but not easily. Usually, you strongly favor a few traits of your beloved, such as beauty and intelligence. And you firmly convince yourself that your beloved uniquely possesses them and fall in love with that "special" person. Because of your distinct prejudices, you have great difficulty falling for anyone else, however much you like them. But if you work hard at convincing yourself that another person has uniquely outstanding traits and will lead you to certain bliss, you may fall in love with him or her. Don't, however, count on it.  

--------------------------------------------------

Robert Milardo, Ph.D.  

University of Maine; President, International   Association for Relationships Research

Romantic love, commitment and all but the most fleeting passion share one important feature: Each is created with intention. Romantic love may feel magical, but we learn to love in a deliberate fashion. Can we learn to love just anyone? Not without entirely recreating ourselves, our personal beliefs and attitudes, a process that would be unlikely. One needs shared core beliefs and attitudes, a simple foundation on which to build.  

Learning to love another person is an adventure, but it is not about scaling mountains. Rather, it is negotiating the ordinary business of life. Love is becoming intimate, learning things that few others know or care to know about one's partner.

-------------------------------------------------- 

James Morris, Ph.D.

President, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy 

The answer, of course, is "Yes, it happens every day." Yet our culture persists in the belief and promotion of an idealized romantic notion of love that makes the pronouncement, "We were made for each other." It is as if we have little to say in the matter-either love finds us or it doesn't. These romantic falsehoods tend to obscure the actual work involved in creating love between two people. This work involves shared commitment, responsibility, fidelity and mutual respect. When we say that people "fall" in love, we would do well to think more in terms of "choosing" and "creating" love together.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Human beings crave intimacy, need to love   and be loved. Yet people have much trouble doing so.

It's clear from the many letters I get that lots of folks have no idea what a healthy relationship even looks like. So I'm using this space as an attempt to remedy the problem.      

From many sources and many experts, I have culled some basic rules of relationships. This is by no means an exhaustive list. But it's a start. Print them out and pin them up on your refrigerator door.

Choose a partner wisely and well. We are attracted to people for all kinds of reasons. They remind us of someone from our past. They shower us with gifts and make us feel important. Evaluate a potential partner as you would a friend; look at their character, personality, values, their generosity of spirit, the relationship between their words and actions, their relationships with others.      

Know your partner's beliefs about relationships. Different people have different and often conflicting beliefs about relationships. You don't want to fall in love with someone who expects lots of dishonesty in relationships; they'll create it where it doesn't exist.

Don't confuse sex with love. Especially in the beginning of a relationship, attraction and pleasure in sex are often mistaken for love.      

Know your needs and speak up for them clearly. A relationship is not a guessing game. Many people, men as well as women, fear stating their needs and, as a result, camouflage them. The result is disappointment at not getting what they want and anger at a partner for not having met their (unstated) needs. Closeness cannot occur without honesty. Your partner is not a mind reader.

View yourselves as a team, which means you are two unique individuals bringing different perspectives and strengths. That, according to relationship expert Diane Sollee, M.S.W., director of SmartMarriages, an international effort to teach relationship skills to couples, is the value of a team-your differences.      

Know how to respect and manage differences; it's the key to success in a relationship. Disagreements don't sink relationships. Name-calling does. Learn how to handle the negative feelings that are the unavoidable byproduct of the differences between two people. Stonewalling or avoiding conflicts is NOT managing them.

If you don't understand or like something your partner is doing, ask about it and why he or she is doing it. Talk and explore, don't assume.      

Solve problems as they arise. Don't let resentments simmer. Most of what goes wrong in relationships can be traced to hurt feelings, leading partners to erect defenses against one another and to become strangers. Or enemies.

Learn to negotiate. Modern relationships no longer rely on roles cast by the culture. Couples create their own roles, so that virtually every act requires negotiation. It works best when good will prevails. Because people's needs are fluid and change over time, and life's demands change too, good relationships are negotiated and renegotiated all the time.      

Listen, truly listen, to your partner's concerns and complaints without judgment. Much of the time, just having someone listen is all we need. It opens the door to confiding. And empathy is crucial. Look at things from your partner's perspective as well as your own.

Work hard at maintaining closeness. Closeness doesn't happen by itself. In its absence, people drift apart and are susceptible to affairs. A good relationship isn't an end goal; it's a lifelong process maintained through regular attention.      

Take a long-range view. A marriage is an agreement to spend a future together. Check out your dreams with each other regularly to make sure you're both on the same path. Update your dreams regularly.

Never underestimate the power of good grooming.      

Sex is good. Pillow talk is better. Sex is easy, intimacy is difficult. It requires honesty, openness, self-disclosure, confiding concerns, fears, sadnesses as well as hopes and dreams.

Never go to sleep angry. Try a little tenderness.      

Apologize, apologize, apologize. Anyone can make a mistake. Repair attempts are crucial-highly predictive of marital happiness. They can be clumsy or funny, even sarcastic-but willingness to make up after an argument is central to every happy marriage.

Some dependency is good, but complete dependency on a partner for all one's needs is an invitation to unhappiness for both partners. We're all dependent to a degree-on friends, mentors, spouses-and men have just as many dependency needs as women.      

Maintain self-respect and self-esteem. It's easier for someone to like you and to be around you when you like yourself. Research has shown that the more roles people fill, the more sources of self-esteem they have. Meaningful work-paid or volunteer-has long been one of the most important ways to exercise and fortify a sense of self.

Enrich your relationship by bringing into it new interests from outside the relationship. The more passions in life that you have and share, the richer your relationship will be. It is unrealistic to expect one person to meet all of your needs in life.      

Cooperate, cooperate, cooperate. Share responsibilities. Relationships work ONLY when they are two-way streets, with much give and take.

Stay open   to spontaneity.      

Maintain your energy. Stay healthy.

Recognize that all relationships have their ups and downs and do not ride at a continuous high all the time. No relationship is perfect all the time. Working together through the hard times will make the relationship stronger.

Make good sense of a bad relationship by examining it as a reflection of your beliefs about yourself. Don't just run away from a bad relationship; you'll only repeat it with the next partner. Use it as a mirror to look at yourself, to understand what part of you is creating this relationship. Change yourself before you change your relationship.      

Understand that love is not an absolute, not a limited commodity that you're in of or out of. Says Sollee: It's a feeling that ebbs and flows depending on how you treat each other. If you learn new ways to interact, the feelings can come flowing back, often stronger than before.

    ---cute ang story kaso nakakaiyak din--
 
”Cool off muna tayo...,?sabi nya. Medyo 
natagalan akong sumagot. Napabuntung-hininga muna 
ako ng malalim bago sumagot na, “O, sige! Walang 
problema sa akin...cool ‘yan!?Hindi ko na 
naintindihan masyado ang mga sumunod na sinabi 
nya hindi dahil sa lakas ng background noise sa 
linya ng telepono; sobra lang napuno agad ang 
utak ko ng mga bagay-bagay na patungkol sa aming 
dalawa.
 
Ang naaalala ko na lang ngayon ay yung sinabi nya 
na medyo kailangan daw nya ng space. Putek naman! 
“Long distance na nga, pa-space-space ka pa 
dyan.?Sana sinabi ko iyon sa kanya. Para naman 
naramdaman nya na naghihimutok talaga ako...na 
pa cool effect lang yung “O, sige!Walang problema 
sa akin...cool ‘yan!?na linya ko. Space daw, o! 
Space my ass! I- space nya kaya lelang nya. 
 
Gusto na lang niya talagang bumitaw sa relasyon 
namin. Well, kung iyon ang gusto niya eh wala na 
akong magagawa doon. Ano man sigurong pilit kong 
ipaglaban sa kanya, at ano mang pilit kong 
ipadama sa kanya kung gaano ko siya pinaha- 
halagahan, eh wala ring kwenta dahil hindi na nya 
iyon mararamdaman. Deadma na siya, ‘kumbaga. 
 
Natural lang naman kasi sa isang tao na hindi 
madama ang ipinadadama ng isa pang tao kung ayaw 
na lang nga nya talaga doon sa isa. At kapag 
dumating na sa punto na iyon, panahon na siguro 
na tigilan na ang lahat ng kabaliwan. Simpleng 
lohika lang naman: “Eh, ‘di kung ayaw na nya sa 
akin, ayaw ko na rin sa kanya.?
 
Sana nga ganon na lang kasimple ‘yon, ‘no? Para 
naman makatulog na ako ng mahimbing sa gabi. 
Para naman maka-concentrate na ako sa mga bagay 
na dapat ko munang gawin, tulad nitong final 
exams na darating. Pero ganon pala talaga iyon. 
Kapag natutunan mo na talagang mahalin ang isang 
tao ng buong-buo, pati yung kaliit-liitan nyang 
kulugo sa hinliliit ng paa, mahirap talagang 
maging lohikal lang. 
 
Natural lang na maging emosyonal, ibig sabihin 
hindi maiiwasan ang mag-emote at mapaiyak, kahit 
konti. Lalo pa at kapag naaalala mo yung 
masasayang sandali ninyong dalawa. Kailan nga 
lang ba yung holding-hands pa-sway-sway pa 
ninyong paglalakad sa dalampasigan ng Boracay? 
Yung pag me-make out nyo sa sinehan habang 
nagbabakbakan sila Mr. Anderson at yung 
sangkaterbang clones sa Matrix Reloaded?
  
How about yung pagkain nyo ng sandamukal na 
fishball sa may Sunken noong huling bisita nya 
sa UP? Yung pagpunta nyo sa Anito? Haay, 
nakakamiss lang talaga! (Lalo na yung Anito 
part...) At nakakaiyak din. 
 
Bu-hu-hu-hu! (Napahagulgol na naman ako ng ‘di 
oras.) Nakakaiyak lang talaga, eh. Kasi naman, 
bakit kaya may mga taong hindi marunong tumanggap 
ng pagmamahal? Sa tingin ko naman, ginawa ko ang 
lahat para lang mapasaya siya. “Sinuportahan ta 
ka,?‘ika nga. O, baka naman hindi sapat ang 
ginawa ko. “Saan ba ako nagkulang, kuya??
 
Heniwey, hokey lang. Hindi ako dapat nagluluksa 
sa pagkawala niya. Bah, ako yata ang lalaki! 
Bakit kailangan kong magpaawa sa kanya? ‘T*ng 
ina! Kung ayaw nya, wag nya. Sus, eh ang dami 
kayang babaeng nagkakandarapa sa akin. Sino-sino 
nga ba? Well, ‘andyan si Yvette na malaki ang 
dyoga, si Isa na panalo ang wetpaks at tsaka si 
Kristine na anak ni Ma’am Bautista. (Sexy momma 
si Mrs. Bautista!). 
 
Dapat nga pala magdiwang ako dahil ngayon pwede 
na akong mag-flirt galore! Yey! Libreng-libre na 
ako at ang aking konsyensya.Liberating, ‘kumbaga. 
Mapaplano ko na ngayon yung mga gusto kong gawin 
ng hindi na kailangang isipin pa kung saan siya 
ilalagay. Gimik galore kahit saan ng hindi na 
siya inaalala pa. Isa pa, pagod na rin ako eh. 
Lagi ko na lang siyang sinusuyo. Lalo na kapag 
dumarating ang period nya. ‘Langya parang tigreng 
wala sa sarili! Hindi ko talaga alam ang 
evolutionary significance ng PMS sa human 
species. Bakit kaya hindi na nasanay ang mga 
babae sa period nila, gayong buwan-buwan naman eh 
dinadalaw sila noon simula noong dose anyos sila? 
Aahh, heto na naman ako...Kung kailan nag-e-emote 
eh, saka nag-iisip ng mga walang kapararakang 
bagay. Mabalik nga tayo kay ex. Oo, ex na tawag 
ko sa kanya kahit cool off lang gusto nya. 
Uunahan ko na siyang i-dump. Aba, hindi nya ako 
maiisahan, wais yata ito, ‘no! Hindi naman kasi 
ako naniniwala dyan sa cool off, cool off na iyan,
 eh. 
 
Ano ‘yan radiator ng dyipni na kailangang 
palamigin kada byahe? Hindi naman yata tama ‘yun. 
Tsaka yung karburador namin, eh hindi pa nga 
talaga nag-iinit, so ano ang kailangang palamigin 
doon? Isa pa, yung cool off na iyan eh katumbas 
lang naman ng “pumanaw na siya?na ipinapalit 
sa “patay na siya? Euphemism lang ‘kumbaga. 
Kung tutuusin ay ayaw na nga nya sa relasyon 
namin. Eh, ‘di kung ayaw na nya, eh ‘di ayaw ko 
na rin. 
 
Pero sana nga ganoon lang kasimple ‘yon. Pero 
hindi, eh. Kahit ibigay pa sa akin ni Lord ang 
babaeng may pinakamalaking dyoga at pinaka-
 panalong wetpaks sa balat ng lupa, tanging si ex 
pa rin ang iisipin ko. Naiiyak na naman tuloy 
ako. *hikbi*

Rose

Red roses were her favorites,
her name was also Rose.
And every year her husband sent them,
tied with pretty bows.

The year he died,
the roses were delivered to her door.
The card said, "Be my Valentine",
like all the years before.

Each year he sent her roses,
and the note would always say,
"I love you even more this year,
than last year on this day.
My love for you will always grow,
with every passing year."

She knew this was the last time
that the roses would appear.
She thought, he ordered roses
in advance before this day.
Her loving husband did not know,
that he would pass away.

He always liked to do things early,
way before the time.
Then, if he got too busy,
everything would work out fine.
She trimmed the stems,
and placed them in a very special vase.
Then, sat the vase beside the portrait
of his smiling face.

She would sit for hours,
in her husband's favorite chair.
While staring at his picture,
and the roses sitting there.

A year went by,
and it was hard to live without her mate.
With loneliness and solitude,
that had become her fate.
Then, the very hour,
as on Valentines before,
The doorbell rang,
and there were roses,
sitting by her door.

She brought the roses in,
and then just looked at them in shock.
Then, went to get the telephone,
to call the florist shop.

The owner answered, and she asked him,
if he would explain,
Why would someone do this to her,
causing her such pain?

"I know your husband passed away,
more than a year ago,"
The owner said, "I knew you'd call,
and you would want to know.

The flowers you received today,
were paid for in advance.
Your husband always planned ahead,
he left nothing to chance.

There is a standing order,
that I have on file down here,
And he has paid, well in advance,
you'll get them every year.

There also is another thing,
that I think you should know,
He wrote a special little card...
he did this years ago.
Then should ever I find out
that he's no longer here,
That's the card...that should be sent,
to you the following year."

She thanked him and hung up the phone,
her tears now flowing hard.
Her fingers shaking,
as she slowly reached to get the card.
Inside the card, she saw that he had written her a note.
Then, as she stared in total silence,
this is what he wrote...

"Hello my love,
I know it's been a year since I've been gone,
I hope it hasn't been too hard for you to overcome.
I know it must be lonely,
and the pain is very real.
For if it was the other way,
I know how I would feel.
The love we shared made everything
so beautiful in life.

I loved you more than words can say,
you were the perfect wife.
You were my friend and lover,
you fulfilled my every need.
I know it's only been a year,
but please try not to grieve.

I want you to be happy,
even when you shed your tears.
That is why the roses
will be sent to you for years.

When you get these roses,
think of all the happiness,
That we had together,
and how both of us were blessed.
I have always loved you
and I know I always will.
But, my love, you must go on,
you have some living still.

Please...try to find happiness,
while living out your days.
I know it is not easy,
but I hope you find some ways.

The roses will come every year,
and they will only stop,
When your door's not answered,
when the florist stops to knock.
He will come five times that day,
in case you have gone out.
But after his last visit,
he will know without a doubt,
To take the roses to the place,
where I've instructed him,
And place the roses where we are,
together once again."
Author Unknown