When You Get the Thorn and Not the Rose on Valentines Day

There is a seemingly innocuous but actually torturous event which occurs in middle schools and high schools all over the country.  At least, it happened back in the olden days when I attended.  As a fund-raising event, Student Councils would sell valentines that kids could buy and have sent to their special someone, to be delivered during classes.  Everyone would know who had a valentine.  And who did not.  I was always in the “did not” category.

As an adult, Valentines Day is still a troubling holiday, some years more than others.  I can’t believe the upcoming film is actually entitled “Valentines Day.”  I’ll probably see it because of the fabulous cast.  Usually, however, I don’t watch movies thinking that sitting on a thumbtack might be less painful.  Every holiday has its insiders and outsiders.  There are people who don’t have a warm family to visit at Christmas, or who have lost a parent before Mothers or Fathers Day. The outsiders of Valentine’s Day are, of course, those of us not in a relationship – or who are, but unhappily.

Where did this holiday come from?  Is it straight from the boardroom of Hallmark?  Not quite, although with rise of mass greeting cards, Valentines Day comes just behind Christmas in terms of cards purchased.  There’s a legend dating back to the Roman Empire about old St. Valentine, although the legend has been cobbled together over the centuries.

According to National Geographic, the roots lie in the festival of Lupercalia, when men “stripped naked, grabbed goat- or dog-skin whips, and spanked young maidens in hopes of increasing their fertility.”  This continued for 150 years after Christianity became the official religion of Rome, but then Christians successfully replaced it with the festival of St. Valentine.  Legend has that Emperor Claudius forbade men in the army to marry, but Valentine performed marriages in secret, earning him the death penalty.  Another branch of the legend suggests that he fell in love with the Jailor’s daughter and sent her a letter, signed “from your Valentine.”  The courtly love of the Middle Ages embraced associating Valentine with romantic love, and in 1913, the first Hallmark Valentine card was printed.

However, Valentines Day for many is not about romantic love but about loss.  The loss of love, the loss of even what you never had – all the ways, that, when you stand next to the happy Valentine couple, you feel inadequate and a bit shafted by the universe.  If there’s one thing that should’ve taught the philosophers that the soul/body dichotomy was false, it’s heartbreak.  Anyone who has had this feeling knows that it involves intense bodily reaction.  Nausea, tightness in the chest, insomnia, apathy, tiredness, depression and more.   Author Neil Gamen writes:

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

There’s really only one thing that can be done to deal with this holiday.  We go back to the festival of Lupercalia.  Only this time, the women get the whips.

My new website – no, not this one

Well, my friends.  In an attempt to stand out a bit in the midst of this less-than-ideal job market, I now have a professional website in addition to this blog.  Or perhaps I should call it an I-would-like-to-be-a-professional website.  I need a job – NYC, Jersey, or Philly – and I’m looking for networking opportunities.  So check it out – www.jenbayne.com – and as my mom would say, Be safe and Be careful.

Looking for God in All the Wrong Places?

Tragedies like the one in Haiti bring out all sorts of religious questions and assertions. My last post made it clear what I thought of the tragedy as a curse, but let’s now ask the opposite question – is God involved in saving lives?

The question of God’s action in the world is one that has troubled me for years – and not only me, but a good many people throughout history, if they take a moment to try and put absolute goodness and absolute power into the same equation. However, I always found that the answer most give to that equation was “mystery” which was never very satisfying. If there is a God, S/he allowed humans to develop brains, and I don’t think that S/he meant for us to stop using it at the most important moments. The following comes from parts of a paper I wrote several years ago. It’s a longer post than usual, so I thank you in advance if you make it all the way through. It starts with a quote:

“God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get along very well without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who makes us live in this world without using him as a working hypothesis is the God before whom we are ever standing. Before God and with God we live without God.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison

Where in the world is God? And what is God doing? It is often taken for granted that God acts in the course of natural and world history to bring about the divine will and purpose. God is said, perhaps above all, to be personal in God’s engagement with humankind, responding to prayer and guiding the course of individual lives. The idea of God’s action in the world, however, is challenged on a number of fronts. One challenge comes from the sciences: what does it mean for God to be active in a universe constrained by laws and limitations, however open and indeterminate they may be at some levels? The second challenge is theological: if God is active anywhere, why does God not appear to be active everywhere? If God parted the Red Sea to save the Israelites once before, why not save 6 million of them from the concentration camps? The theodicy problem is exacerbated by the theological challenge because if God is seen to intervene in the natural processes in any way, God’s action appears very capricious. But to say that God does not intervene is often seen as a flight to deism.

Three models of divine action include: double agency, non-interventionist special divine action, and uniformist action. There are other models, but these capture the possibilities and problems.

Double agency: As Austin Farrer states, this position believes it is simply not our job to try and figure out the “causal joint” between infinite and finite. All good in the world is caused by God. All bad is not. Advocates of double agency want it both ways – God is active directly, and only in good acts.

Non-interventionist special divine action - This mouthful of a phrase suggests that God is active at the quantum level. Since God knows the full range of outcomes, God can intervene at that level and let the effects ripple upwards. Still, one wonders why God didn’t mess around with Hitler at the quantum level. Others in this category suggest God acts at the mental level – but again, Hitler! Stop! would seem appropriate.

Uniformist – This position posits that we must reject a radical dualism between God and the world, and as such, must acknowledge the real presence of tragedy and evil as part of God’s creation. Maurice Wiles suggests that God’s action in history is really in the manner of “retrovidence” – we look back on human history and see patterns, or try to sort out the religious meaning of events. That is, God’s action in the world is a matter of our cultural and contextual interpretation.

The third position allows us to look back at events in the Bible, or another text, and say that people were writing about events in their time as they interpreted them – or wanted to interpret them. There is no “causal joint” at all. The universe is so structured as to create novel, emergent levels of order which, although constrained by lower levels, can act causally downward. That is, humans have choices.

I suggest that the world is created by God and upheld by strong general providence. God is personal and present to creation, but does not act in the manner of special divine action. God acts by proxy – God sets up the universe with both order and freedom so that self-determining creatures will emerge who can perceive this spiritual layer of existence and participate in the project of life, discerning and conferring spiritual meaning on it.

Where in the world is God? Everywhere. And what is God doing there? Waiting to see what we will do with it.

God is buried under the rubble in Haiti with Her children. We are the ones who must act.

The Gospel of Hate: Haiti deserves better than that. So do we.

Technically I support free speech. Some days, however, my patience for our equal rights wears thin. This morning I sat down with my morning cup o’ joe and popped open the computer to find out what was going on in the world. The Haitians, as we all know, are suffering terribly. They don’t have the easiest time of it when natural disasters don’t strike, much less when they do. We don’t know the total devastation yet, but Secretary of State Hilary Clinton estimates that three million have been affected, and tens of thousands are dead. In the picture below, Haitians are buried to their chest in rubble.  In the midst of such devastation, surely every heart is moved.

Well, maybe not everyone’s heart.

As you may also have heard by now, Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh have not hesitated to set forth their own pronouncements on the matter. Robertson said his show that the earthquake was punishment of God:

“[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you get us free from the prince.” True story. And so the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” They kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free.”

Now, such ignorant statements wouldn’t be worth listening to – except that millions of Americans do, and believe him. Now on to Rush. Last May Rush had this to say about Clinton’s appointment as special envoy to Haiti:

“I’m just gonna tell you, if I was named envoy to Haiti, I’d quit government. Envoy to Haiti? You can’t even pick up a prostitute down there without genuine fear of AIDS.”

Now, I don’t know why Rush is interested in picking up prostitutes, but is he is, he might just remember that many US cities have higher AIDS rates than Haiti. But in regards to this week’s tragedy, he is more concerned about finding a reason to bludgeon Democrats than help the Haitians.

“This will play right into Obama’s hands. He’s humanitarian, compassionate. They’ll use this to burnish their, shall we say, “credibility” with the black community — in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It’s made-to-order for them. That’s why he couldn’t wait to get out there, could not wait to get out there.”

And

“That place, Haiti, has been run by dictators and communists, and how long is it going to be before we hear Obama and the left in this country say that what we really need to do is reinstate the communist Aristide to the leadership position down there to coordinate putting the country back together? The Haitian economy is entirely dependent on foreign aid. They produce nothing. Zilch, zero, nada. And it’s been that way for the longest time. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who you will next hear, was on MSNBC Live this morning, and she essentially says that Haiti and its current plight is our fault. I knew it wouldn’t take long for some Democrat to get there. The question she was asked was this: “I want to know if you can put into perspective how difficult it is when you talk about there not being much infrastructure to begin with, how challenging that makes the relief effort now?”

Yes, Debbie, how dare you point out that having a poor infrastructure is a problem. You are quite obviously a communist. He also suggested that if you donated through Whitehouse.gov, your money would never go to Haiti. His show, like Robertson’s, is also quite popular with millions of Americans.

Well, it’s time to use my freedom of speech.

Shame on you. Shame on you both for promoting a gospel of hate, for blatant rascism, and utter lack of compassion. You need to retire, because your prejudices have hardened beyond repair and you are hurting our country. If I thought God were vengeful I’d warn people to give you a wide lightning-strike berth. However, I believe that God is much more compassionate than I or you. So, rather than waiting for God to step in, I will use my freedom of speech to counter yours.

First, I am filing an FCC complaint against you.

Next, I am writing your employers:

For Rush:
Mark Mays, Chief Executive Officer
Clear Channel Communications
200 East Basse Road
San Antonio, TX 78209
Phone 1-210-822-2828
Lisa Dollinger, communications and media: lisacdollinger@clearchannel.com

And I will also email Rush at ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Pat: He is the Founder and Chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, and while I don’t expect him to listen to me, I will write him here:

http://www.cbn.com/contact/feedback.aspx

My words may fall on deaf ears, but I think the price of free speech is that we have a duty to use it for the greater good when it is poorly handled by others.

An analytics addiction

It never occurred to me when I started this blog that I would have to ponder the use of sex in attracting readers. Don’t worry, dear reader (esp if you’re my mom), this isn’t about me per se, but what I’ve learned about getting hits on your blog. In the few months I’ve been blogging, I’ve learned that posting pics of naked women and apes having sex will get you traffic. Most hits have come from the Lizzie Miller post (“The Girl on p. 194″), and then the water on the moon post – and the Catholic post, interestingly enough.

I posted my web entries on Facebook, and while I can’t tell who is actually clicking on it, I can often get a sense of how quickly people are responding. When I post pictures with the blog that are shocking or unusual, the response is almost instantaneous. Other pics result in a slower trickle.

The Lizzie Miller post has 3 times the hits of the next closest post, and 35 times more than the lowest (about abuse of animals in the circus – apparently my readers are hard-hearted bastards not so much into animal rights). Most people, who aren’t just friends kind enough to click the link I post on Facebook, hit my blog by searching for something like “beautiful women’s bodies.” Which, actually, makes me pleased that they are hitting the Lizzie Miller post. Though on the other hand, I can hardly be the first site to come up for that phrase, so a lot of people must REALLY want to see LOTS of pictures of beautiful women’s bodies.

The water-on-the-moon post comes from people googling things like “water on the moon,” oddly enough, so my readership is also a conglomeration of sex fanatics and astronomy nerds. Which is fine with me.

A number of the hits on the Catholics post seem to have come to me almost by accident, from WordPress suggesting things to people who take the opposite view of me on gay rights because we have the same tags. On the other hand, I have also developed some cybercontacts as a result of the post.

According to my stats, the readership of the Lizzie Miller post went up in hits by 13,200% the week of Christmas. This is the second lesson I’m learning – you can do anything with stats. The percentage is that high because that particular post had 1 hit the week before, and 138 the week after (most came the day after Christmas). But it’s so impressive-sounding to say “Yes, the readership of my post increased by 13,200%” (yeah, the math doesn’t exactly seem right, but that’s what the analytics says, and I like it, so that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it).

So even though my corner of the web is tiny – more like a mote of dust in the corner – it’s been an interesting study so far. I’d like to have a real blog hit on my hands, so I’m off – to write a blog entry about Catholics having sex on the moon. You won’t believe the pictures.

Dance it out with the confidence of a cockatoo

Last night I was pirouetting through the apartment – curtains drawn, of course, because engaging in balletic moves at 32 is a great deal more ungainly than at 16. I started thinking about why people dance. Why do I dance, why does anyone dance? I enjoy both the highly disciplined, elegant lines of ballet but also find that a fairly unrestrained boogie to Lady Gaga is exhilarating. When we’ve had a particularly bad day or week or month, my friend Lisa and I proclaim that it’s time “to dance it out!”

I did not find much information on my morning google. There is some speculation that dancing is a byproduct of vocal imitation and learning. That is, we listen to a sound and move parts of our body to speak, namely our tongue and lips, and moving the body is an extension of that capability. Another article speculates that reward centers of the brain are connected to the motor areas, such that music and dancing are uniquely pleasurable activities of the sensory and motor circuits (that sounds a bit circular to me, that we like to dance because we feel pleasure at moving and watching others move, but perhaps you, dear reader, can explain it to me).

Humans, it turns out, are not the only species that dance. 14 species of parrots, and possibly one elephant species have been been given the Dancing Scientists Seal of Approval. Check out this video of Snowball the cockatoo:

Now, not all parrots are great at dancing – and neither are all humans. Or, at least, many don’t think they are good at dancing. Dr. Peter Lovatt, of Hertfordshire University in the UK, investigated dance confidence in 13,700 people. He found, first of all, that most people think they are better dancers than other people of their age and gender. Secondly, there is a great difference on how dance confidence grows in men and women. The highest levels of dance confidence are found in girls under the age of 16, who do so for fun. There is a sharp drop in the teenage years, when they start dancing in front of the opposite sex and dance becomes part of sexual selection. From there, dance confidence in women increases until the age of 55, when it starts to decrease.

Men, however, don’t have an early childhood spike. Instead, they tend to show a steady increase through middle age, then plateau until the age of 65, when they experience a rise in dance confidence.

So, what I’ve learned is that I’m somewhere in the middle of my dancing confidence, and that I feel pleasure in my motor and sensory neurons when engaged in the activity.

Hrm.

I will add that for someone who lives so much in her head, dancing provides a sense of the actual unity of body and mind and a lifting out of mental circles into a sense of being fully present in the moment. I wonder if that’s how the cockatoo feels?

On belief in an old white man who knows if you’ve been bad or good and metes out rewards and punishments accordingly

I’ve been lying to Jamie lately. I’ve been encouraging the idea that a large-ish old man in a red suit who lives at the North Pole can fly around the world in one night and give presents to all the children. Being a child, he has many, many questions. So in order to keep up the myth, I have to fabricate many things – how Santa knows where he is, that Santa will receive his letter, that Santa will get in his house even if there is not an available chimney. Oh, the tangled webs we weave. Jamie appears to believe in Santa, and everything I and others tell him. On the other hand, he will have nothing to do with mall Santas (Santa-on-a-train is okay), so I have to wonder what he really makes of it all.

It’s been interesting for me to observe my mental contortions on this. As I generally don’t lie, they come rather haltingly across my lips as I tell them to my own child. Why do I do it then?

Because I want Jamie to experience innocence and appreciation of magic and miracle. It is a special property of childhood that can be revisited, but never experienced in the same way as an adult. I don’t recall my own fall from Santa-innocence being a bad experience. I don’t even remember how it happened. I just knew at one point that there was not a Santa, but rather my parents stayed up late putting out gifts. However, I made the decision to pretend there was a Santa anyway. Instead of feeling deceived, I felt part of something that even though not true, contained something that I wanted to be true. I never once thought Santa really gave coal to children. He was for all children, everywhere.

I wonder if the revelation of the truth of Santa is relatively painless due to the fact that there is someone to take over the agential role. Parents may not have magical powers, but wielding a credit card and staying up late, they manage to do the job.

So, turning to the other Eye in the Sky, God. It strikes me there are some parallels. The ability to see all, the power to declare it good or bad. The fact that it is parents who teach children the stories and answer their questions. For me, the fact that Jamie learns things I know not to be true, having learned that sacred and actual history are not the same thing, and certain artistic liberties have been taken in the first.

There are also some differences – all adults agree that Santa is not real, but will kill each other over the question of whether God is, or who S/he belongs to. There is an ocean of difference between the rewards and punishments – presents/heaven and coal/hell. And while we don’t wield the coal stick too often (I never mention being good for Santa in June, for example), but the hell one is often waved around rather indiscriminately. Santa seems more approachable than God – after all, he’ll show up at your convenience at the local mall – while God is harder to connect with sometimes, because God doesn’t have skin on and doesn’t leave presents (and don’t email me about Jesus having skin and about crucifixion/resurrection as a present. He hasn’t been seen with skin in about 2000 years, and the latter story scares my child, rather like a mall Santa Claus).

It occurs to me that we could learn a lesson from the Santa story and the lies we tell. Somewhere in us, even if just for one night, we believe that all children in the world deserve magic and love and gifts. We could also stand to learn that if we can be Santa in the world to our children, we can be others things, too, like God with Skin. And maybe that if we fail to act like God with skin on, then for all intents and purposes, there is not one in a child’s life. And what we believe about that Being should surely be at least as good as what we believe about Santa. At the very least, we should believe that She is for all children, everywhere, and that it is our job to take care of them.

Working for peanuts?

Elephants are fascinating.  They are enormous, brilliant.  I love that they are groups led by single mothers – that is, they are matriarchal, with adult males leading mostly solitary lives, and checking in every now and then to mate.  If I could have an animal as a avatar for being a single mother, I might choose the elephant.  So wise-looking in her careful, wrinkled walk.  They take care of orphaned elephants, and exhibit grief at the death of others. They exhibit self-awareness, and can recognize their own reflection in a mirror.  They are reported to exhibit care and empathy for species beyond their own.

They have no natural predators, with the exception of certain lion prides that have taken a cotten to them.

I distinctly remember visiting the circus as a kid.  I thought it was fantastic.  There were all sorts of animals, acrobats, and cotton candy.  It didn’t occur to me to wonder how they got the elephants to stand on their heads, or the tigers to jump through hoops of fire.  If asked, I would have guessed with a lot of treats.  I assumed a cooperation between humans and animals, that somehow elephants did not mind piling up on top of each other in exchange for applause and peanuts.

But the truth is that elephants don’t do tricks in the wild for fun.  In captivity? Well, at the moment the Ringling Brothers circus is on trial for allegedly using bullhooks and electric prods to train elephants.

Check out this website and judge for yourself.  As for me and my house, now that we have been educated on this matter, we’ll choose animal-free circuses in the future.

Why I love Twilight. And probably shouldn’t. And totally do anyway.

Actually, let’s start with the middle part.  Here’s the first reason I shouldn’t love Twilight: 1) It’s about teenagers.  And I’m 32.  And not only am I 32, but I like to maintain the facade that I’m a 32-year-old with life experience who is by no means idealistic about things like love.

Moving on.

Bella is an awkward teenager who has moved to a new town.  She’s a bit of a loner.  Not anti-social, exactly, but just – not the same as everyone else.

There there’s Edward.  The vampire who doesn’t kill humans, but thinks he is a damned soul.  A monster, no matter what he actually says or does.  Just believes himself to be inherently bad.  And can’t believe – but desperately wants to believe – what Bella thinks of him, that he’s a good soul. When he suggests he’s a monster she replies, “You’re not. I can see what you’re trying to put off. But I can see that it’s just to keep people away from you, it’s a mask.”

Bella and Edward appear to be soulmates.  There is no explicable reason – after all, soulmates aren’t supposed to be rationally calculable.  Rather, there is just something about Bella that Edward is drawn to. And something about Edward that Bella is drawn to.  This is reason #1 why I am drawn to the story.  The idea that there is someone out there who is destined for you, for no other reason than that they are for you.  It’s not that you are necessarily especially smart or good-looking or charming.  It’s just that you’re you, and no one else can be that.  Edward: “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you.  And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.”  Bella: “What a stupid lamb.”  Edawrd: “What a sick, masochistic lion.”  Edward is super-protective of Bella, often from a distance.  But whenever she is in danger, he is there to protect her. She, for her part, has figured him out and understands him in a way no one else does.

Edward, believing himself to be inherent trouble for Bella, tries to discourage her from her interest in him.  It’s a rather half-hearted discouragement, because he’s really, really attracted to her.   Reason #2 to be drawn to the story: because it would be nice to think that if you are rejected by someone, its because he thinks he is bad for you and he is trying to protect you, not that he is just rejecting you.  Reason #2 to stay far, far away from Twilight – because rejection is usually a sign that – as the movie playing on my tv right now points out – “He’s just not that into you.”  As this movie points out, we often learn as a kid that if another kid hits you or insults you, it’s because he or she likes you.  Not that he or she is just being jerky.  In an effort to protect our friends or children’s feelings, we easily come up with half a dozen reasons why there are extenuating circumstances to the situation.

In addition to containing these soulmate and anti-rejection themes, Twilight has the audacity to actually carry them off well, between the way the filming is done, the music, and the acting.  The characters rarely do more than kiss, yet the chemistry is overwhelming.

So, even setting aside the whole vampire thing, the movie is unrealistic.  And I totally love it.  Because the world may not have that kind of passion, but it really should.

What kind of relationship do you deserve?

If humans are such social creatures, and our evolutionary survival has been dependent in part on our ability to exist in society, how can fear of intimacy and relationships be such a widespread phenomenon?  I have had so many conversations in the last month with people who reflect on how they have sabotaged relationships out of fear, or who have been into someone who feared intimacy and vanished, either physically or emotionally.  When social intelligence is one of the most significant features of our species, why is it so common for human primates to come close to a reproductive/social possibility and then run petrified into the jungle?

From what I’ve read (in my brief internet search – not in, say, a psychology master’s program), people have strongly held beliefs about what kind of relationships they deserve in life.  These beliefs largely come from childhood and are reinforced throughout life, but particularly hurtful adult experiences can also affect what people think they deserve.

You’ll never get as unconditional a love as you’ll get from a child, and yet so many throw away this gift and tell their own children that they are worthless, stupid, ugly, or any other number of hurtful things.  Children develop a strong core of shame and fear of rejection.  They develop a strong sense of what kind of relationships they deserve in life, and as adults tend to be attracted to people who will follow a familiar pattern.  Combine a strong fear of rejection with a belief one doesn’t deserve a great relationship, and a powerful toxin is concocted.  According to one article:

rejection, to people with shame, feels like annihilation. Annihilate means “to destroy completely.” [People] can feel like they will be annihilated, completely destroyed if they get rejected. So there is no way, with that feeling that they are going to risk rejection and get annihilated.

How do people sabotage relationships?  There is a nice variety of options available for this kind of self-torture.  Be critical, distant, controlling.  Silence and lose yourself to avoid conflict.  Constantly distrust the other person.  Sabotage other areas of your life so you have an excuse not to engage – for example, your career or health.  Look down on people precisely for being interested in you, viewing it is as a sign of their weakness or self-deception.

The kicker is that relationship sabotage is usually an unconscious endeavor, leaving both parties angry and confused in the end. I was particularly struck by this list of signs that one might be a relationship saboteur:

1. You have a history of relationships in which one partner wants more while the other wants less.
2. One or more important relationships in your history has ended because you or your partner got scared.
3. You have been involved in more than one relationship in which awkward limitations have been placed on intimacy.
4. You have a history of becoming involved with inappropriate partners.
5. In all your important relationships either you or your partner have done something to create or maintain distance.
6. Your most intense romantic feelings have been directed toward partners when they appear to be pulling away from a commitment from you.
7. You have a history of becoming involved with, or obsessed by, partners who are emotionally, circumstantially, or geographically unavailable.
8. Within a relationship your responses tend to be highly unrealistic and extreme – overly romantic, overly critical, overly involved, overly detached.
9. You have a history of becoming involved with people who have more difficulties with commitment than you do.
10. You look at friends who have solid commitments and think that they have compromised in a way that you wouldn’t.
11. You believe that any difficulties you have with commitment will be resolved once you meet the “right” person.
12. The time intervals between your important relationships are often extreme.
13. You have difficulty reaching any decision that limits your further options.
14. You become acutely uncomfortable when you feel someone is closing in on your or invading you space.
15. In your head you always maintain psychological space and a possible way out of every situation.
16. You gravitate toward professions or employment conditions that allow you flexibility in terms of time and space.

People have to make a conscious choice to work on loving themselves, to learn how to treat themselves as their parents and others ought to have treated them.   This is probably one of the hardest things people can do, because so much has to be engaged and untangled – the shame has to be confronted head-on in order to push through it to a new place.

It strikes me that in order to fulfill the Golden Rule we need some kind of platinum rule: Figure out how to love yourself.  Full-stop.