I brought you flours.

I have had several conversations in the past week or so (in person, via email, on Twitter and Facebook) that have, in some form or other, touched on the subject of romantic relationships - the potential for them, what to do in various situations once they've been entered into, whether this or that is worth putting up with, working through, fighting over, or fighting for - concerning myself, various friends, and even my mom. If the run-on nature of that sentence isn't enough to convey how dizzying it all is, then you are probably very stable, level-headed, and smug-married with boring friends.


This Wednesday's Stranger Than Fiction topic: Love.

Do you know the word stumblejohn? I didn't until recently, when I learned that that's the word for what I am when it comes to expressing matters of the heart. Harold Crick, for example, is a classic stumblejohn, though not an irredeemable one. He does manage to go from sitting alone while the beautiful Ana hates him with all her might on the other side of the window, to living happily ever after on a diet of cookies and love, and all it took was the constant threats of impending death issued by a disembodied voice to give him some perspective.

I'm not sure where Harold's hangups came from, but for me, I think it has to do with trying to balance the desire to be honest and take a risk that might be worth it versus the desire to not be exposed to heartache or embarrassment. Oddly enough, this holds true for both potential beginnings and endings, if the ending is one of those "we just grew apart" kinds of things. Sometimes the feelings that suddenly need to be discussed are our own; sometimes, the issue is that we're getting a vibe from someone else. Sometimes, it's a combination of the two, and that, my friends is the kryptonite of the quixotic stumblejohn.

To quote another fictional expert on relationship ruination, Greg House, M.D. issued one of my favorite lines when it comes to this sort of debacle. He said, "it might not be easy, but it is simple," or something to that effect, and I couldn't agree more. The simplicity lies in having to choose from one of only two options: speak up, or don't. The hard part comes after that. If you decide to speak, there comes the agonizing over choosing the right words to say exactly what you mean with the right levels of class and dignity. This is especially difficult if there's a friendship you want to preserve - whether you're wanting to remain friends after breaking up, or you want to remain friends in spite of the other person possibly not sharing your more-than-platonic feelings. If you stay silent, then you have to watch the opportunity pass you by and wonder what might have happened if you'd had a little more courage.

Harold, of course, gets it just right. Ana is a baker who deals in blunt honesty but has a sense of humor, so his one-two combo of "I brought you flours," and "I want you" is a solid win. Hell, that'd work on me.

Despite the title of their movie, this I feel is too strange to be anything but fiction. Harold and Ana are clearly a couple of messed-up individuals, but neither of them really seems to have any baggage. I just listened to the audio recording of David Sedaris's When You Are Engulfed In Flames, and in one of the stories, he hit on a point that pretty much sums it all up. Once you've experienced heartache, you are then officially in posession of Relationship Baggage, and your only real hope of a successful relationshp in the future lies in finding someone whose baggage goes with yours, so you can have a complete set.

I actually think that's a fairly realistic hope, and I suppose that's why I do eventually manage to muster just barely enough courage to speak up, even if my best efforts tend to wind up nowhere near as clear and sophisticated as I'd like them to be. Instead, the outcome seems to effectively be the same as if I'd tried to ask someone how many quarts are in a gallon, and getting a response informing me that the square root of 4 is 2. Both parties are most likely wondering what the hell the other is talking about, and not entirely sure where to go with it.

This is why it amazes the hell out of me when I realize that I actually know quite a few happily paired couples. I wonder what would happen if I go back to: