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I recently met Natasha, a petite fifty-year-old woman, who told me the following story.

“When I was seven or eight years old,” she said,” I ran extremely fast.  I often won races, but I was mostly interested in the three-legged race where I ran with a partner and one of my legs was tied to hers.”

“I did that when I was a kid,” I said.  “It can sure slow you down.”

“That depends on whether or not you have the right partner.”

“I was pretty slow,” I said, “so I always picked the fastest boy to run with me.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t do too well.”

“Actually, you’re right.  I didn’t.  How did you guess?”

“Because,” she said, “you chose the wrong partner.  If you’re slow you don’t want to be tied to the fastest runner.  You want to run with a partner who has a stride most compatible with your own.  I’m small, so it wouldn’t have worked for me to team up with the tallest girl in my class.”

“So did you usually win?” I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

Natasha smiled.  “Every time,” she said.

After our meeting I began to think about relationships. We always look for a partner who meets certain criteria – tall, short, older, younger, with children, without children.  We have our conditions, and that’s a good thing.  For example, I’m not comfortable learning a foreign language, so I wouldn’t consider a woman who didn’t speak English.

But our standards for a relationship often fail to include a few essential values.  My friend Kevin, for example, wanted a woman who was thin and who would join him in activities, even if she didn’t like to do them.  In this way, he thought, she “proved” her love by doing things just to please him.  Although he had many relationships, not surprisingly, none of them seemed to “stick.”  He didn’t include what, to me, is the most important requirement of all – that his partner care deeply for him.

Years ago Stacie asked me if she should marry Tom.

“He’s really cute, a good companion, great with my kids, but he’s not an intellectual.”

“Is sex good,” I asked?

“Terrific,” she said.

“Then marry him.  Companionship and being good with your kids are a lot more important than discussing Sartre or Camus at the dinner table.  You can always find intellectual stimulation by taking a class or talking with your friends.”

For me the one essential I cannot do without is compatibility.  Do you like going to bed at nine pm?  Watching TV (and what shows)?  Seeing movies together?  Going dancing.  Eating meals at home or going out every night?  Taking vacations together – at the beach or hiking the Appalachian Trail?  Do you spend money carefully?  Do you enjoy laughing at my jokes?  Repeatedly.

Every couple is going to be different in many respects.  Often an introvert does well married to an extrovert who will blaze the trail in social settings.  You certainly don’t have to be the same, but to enter into a relationship which will endure you do need to be compatible in many areas which are important to each of you.

As for Natasha, for many years, she’s been happily married to a six foot six inch professional basketball star, proving that, in the three-legged race of relationships, compatibility counts. And Natasha still laughs at all of his jokes.

Alan

Years ago I saw a play three times in one week. It was written and directed by my friend David Beaird. I have forgotten the title, but I remember the essence: to solve a difficult and urgent problem use the “Four C’s.

OK.  What are the “Four C’s”?

Imagine that you’re flying in an airplane and are lost. If you don’t solve the problem you will die. What do you do?

1. Confess. Confess that you are lost. It’s like alcoholism, or a miserable marriage. You have to first admit that you have a problem that you need to solve. Although this seems obvious, most of us prefer the comfort of feeling that we are in control of the situation. That can be a mistake, sometimes a big mistake. At age sixty-five my mother discovered a lump in her right breast. She didn’t tell anyone for ten months. That turned out to be a very bad idea.
2. Climb. Climb as high as you can, both to give yourself more time to solve the problem and to open yourself to a broader perspective. By climbing higher you might see an airport. Or a thunderstorm chasing you. Perhaps another airplane. You want to access as much information as you can. My mother should have seen a doctor.
3. Contact. Contact a ground station. Ask for help. “Houston, we have a problem.” You have to publically admit that you need help. That step is difficult for many of us, unless we are in serious pain. To paraphrase Proust, “We listen to pleasure. We obey pain.” Isn’t it better to solve the problem before you double up and become immobilized? A close friend of mine was experiencing financial problems. She was having difficulty making her mortgage payments and fell further and further behind. When she finally made an appointment with a financial advisor she was in serious risk of losing her home. Jim Henson, fifty-three years old, creator of The Muppets, died of organ failure because of a strep infection. Quick action could have saved him. He didn’t want to be a bother to people, and declined the suggestion of his family that he should go to the hospital.
4. Commit. Commit to a course of action. You will have limited time before your airplane runs out of fuel. Then the engine will stop and your airplane will crash—with you in it. You have to do something. You have time for only one maneuver. It’s like the Aesop’s fable of “The Cat and the Fox.” One day the hunting dogs began to chase both a cat and a fox. The cat immediately climbed up a tree to safety. The fox used many strategies: double back and forth, ran through a stream to throw the dogs off his scent, hid in a burrow. Nothing worked for the fox (no relation to me), who was eventually caught. Moral of the story: one trick, when it works, is better than many that don’t work. So commit to your course of action—it’s time to perform.

There it is. Memorize the Four C’s. Or write them down on a notepad or in your phone. And think about the situations in which you can use the Four C’s. When you need them it may be too late to look them up.

Confess. Climb. Contact. Commit.

Alan

Gordon, a friend of mine, recently told me this sad, then happy story about his marriage to Louise.

“Alan, I used to walk around feeling like I weighed more than a thousand pounds.  Most of that was anger.  For some reason I had this crazy idea that if I was super angry for long enough Louise would give me what I wanted.  Every time I was upset I would walk around the house with a mad-on for days, or weeks.”

“Yes, I noticed that a few times when I visited you.”

“But Alan, I found that being angry is no fun.  It colors the world rotten.  And it’s painful. As I said, I finally understood what was really going on with me was the absurd belief that if I hurt hard enough for long enough Louise would cave in and give me what I wanted.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I said.

“Exactly, and when I really thought about it, that idea didn’t even make sense to me.  But that’s how I felt for many years.”

“So does this story have a happy ending?”

“I think so.  I finally told Louise that when I appeared to be upset and withdrawn to just say to me, ‘Gordon, you seem upset.  If there is any way I can help, please let me know what it is.’”

And what did she say?

“She said, ‘Fine.  I can do that.  Then what should I do?’”

“Then just leave me alone. My anger will dissolve.  As much as I want it to last forever, I never manage to carry anger around for more than a few weeks. But I want to let go of it a lot faster than that.”

“So how did this deal with Louise work out?”

“That’s the good news.  It worked out great.  Even though my anger used to hurt me a lot more than it hurt anyone else, it also felt wonderful.  I felt justified.  But starting from the day of my talk with Louise, with her help I was able to just let it go.”

“You know, Gordon, my father has a theory that no one has to feel negative emotions from the neck down, and that you always have a choice.  That idea must be working for Dad, because he is in a good mood almost all of the time and he’s more than 101 years old. I think my dad, and you, may be on to something.”

Gordon smiled in agreement.

I now suggest that, for all of us, when we are burdened by all those heavy pounds of anger, we simply apply what Gordon and Louise discovered – to just let it go. I even practice this myself.  Today I choose not to be angry, and I never am for long.

Over the past few years, Gordon has lost a lot of weight, and most of that was anger.

Anger is a lonely job.  Fortunately, no one has to do it.

Alan