24th May (Derek): Where are you going in love? Is that an unreasonable question? After all, you know where your career's headed. You can guess where your share portfolio will be in five years time. You even know which of your parents' diseases you're likely to get. I'm not asking, "Where is this relationship going?" The question is - looking at the herd rather than the wildebeest - what will your next relationships be like?
If you've had more than one partner have probably compared them. Was number three better looking than number two? Did number one have the best manners? As much as we're told how unfair making these comparisons are, it's only human to do so. Everyone's different, and we are bound to feel differently about the different people we're with.
Expanding on that, is there some way to forecast your next relationships based on past, and present, ones? If we could somehow graph our progress through this crazy little game called love, perhaps we could see a trend. Trends are used in all modern fields, from science to finance, helping us make rational decisions in these arcane subjects. We've been assured that romance is as important as money and physics. So why aren't we applying empirical disciplines to plotting the paths of our hearts?
Sociological studies have already shown that people with abusive partners tend to keep entering abusive relationships. Yet we refuse to go further than this. Perhaps we feel better confining these less-than-romantic findings to the outer suburbs; far from us 'normal' people, whose 'normal' romances are better defined by Meg Ryan, Birds Eye, and SUVs.
I was once told by an ex that I'd never be with anyone as smart/pretty/sexy as her. Going on faith of what she said alone, I figured I'd better kill myself now. The thought that there was nothing better around the corner kept me in control. Of course, I did find someone better, and though I stayed faithful, my relationship crumbled soon after. Eventually, I entered a relationship with someone miles above either of them, which got me thinking: if I could have predicted this upswing, then I wouldn't have wasted so much time allowing myself to be emotionally blackmailed.
So I've made what I call the 'Derek Girlfriend IndeX', or 'DGX,' where I loosely plot the quality of my girlfriends. Before you howl me down for objectifying (former) objects of my affection, let me say that I don't judge them by anything objective, like height or weight or bust size. The measure is purely subjective, based on how strongly I felt (and still feel, in some cases) attracted to them. So my very first would be an 8/10, miss '99 a generous 3/10, and the most recent ex - sadly - 9.5.
So, what does it mean? The data is very limited, but I guess I can safely rule out a straight downward trend. Otherwise, the DGX doesn't seem to lead to any firm conclusions. If my relationships are a (rather narcissistic) reflection of my personal growth, then I still don't know if I'm getting better or just older. It certainly doesn't support what I've been told: that I'll be hot property once I hit 35. (For what? Single mothers and ex-convicts?)
If there's one thing that the DGX does say, it's that downturns and upturns are equally possible. Funnily enough, the DGX runs almost counter to the health of the world economy. Miss '95 - a strong 8 - ended just before the Asian crisis. Miss lowest-score endured through the tech boom. All well and good, but my problem lies in the future. If the DGX follows the same 7-year boom/bust cycle, then all the current positive indicators point to a prolonged slump in my love-life. Will I have to go through 3.5 years of 'mediocre'-to-'toxic' before I again find 'special'? I don't know what's scarier, the possibility of negative movement, or declaring the DGX meaningless and leaving the next girl up to the forces of chaos.
You can see the dilemma, can't you? Where I think I'm going in love is not where I hope I'm going. I'd like to believe I can count on my experience (and maybe kung fu) to get me out of the tighter scrapes. But I'm forced to remain in the market if I want any chance of long term gains. Overall, would ignorance have been better? Possibly. Until the next Miss 3 enters my life, at least. But what if everyone thought this way? What if everyone spreadsheet-ed, mean-ed, and standard-deviation-ed their lovers? Perhaps they'd stop-loss and breed before their trendlines continued south. Or maybe they'd be too afraid to date. (Another way education can combat overpopulation.)
Love may be priceless - and as potentially devastating as nuclear physics; but perhaps we're better off remaining starry-eyed, never knowing - with mathematical certainty - the peaks and troughs our hearts will encounter.
As for that awkward question, "Where is this relationship going?" Answer: "The bedroom/The kitchen/Off the damn couch." Laughs guaranteed.
12th May (Derek) - Who needs people when you have broadband? It's hip, it's happening, and it's in the house! No more disconnects, no more picking up the phone and hearing seagulls getting tortured. Just ... shh, do you hear that? If you're very quiet, you might be able to make out a bubbling stream of pure bandwidth. Come to papa, baby!
It's funny how many 'experts' swarmed me when I was trying to it set up. "You should get a faster connection." "You should get a router/bridge/modem/thingamajig." "You should go with Company-X-node/net/space who are offering one million Thugabytes a month." Yeah well, I WORK in I.T., ladies. I KNOW mah shit. And mah shit is setting up a sexy, firewalled, 802.11-homey-G-wireless, internet-ready, MAC-locked, tax-deductible, home network. In four different languages.
Who wants to touch me?
(I also produced a business case to prove it'll be cheaper than dial-up, but that's not so sexy.)
I'm not saying there wasn't any pain. When I missed the alarm repairman, there was pain. When my brand new wireless adaptor wouldn't run in my motherboard, there was pain. And when my five year old network card kept screwing up, PAIN!
But I took the blows, and then I took names. Now, as I see our download quota slowly disappearing - exactly as projected; as I see the smiles on my housemates' faces while they hammer the internet from their laptops, I know it was all worth it.
The rest of you can 'meet,' or 'phone' (how quaint,) instead of video-conference. I know what I'll be doing when I get home....
(Sigh,) housework.