Relationship Advice

If you like someone and they’re not married or dating someone else and you are pretty sure they won’t murder you, tell them.

If you are having problems in your relationship, fix it in these four simple steps!
Step one: Open your mouth and say words to your partner that explain that there’s a problem and that you are concerned.
Step two: Listen with your ears to what they say in response.
Step three: Take what they say into account and formulate a calm rebuttal.
Step four: Repeat as necessary.

If you can’t take those four steps with your partner, find a new partner.  If you can’t take those four steps with your partner because of hearing loss or vocal problems or other barriers, communicate your problems in the way you usually communicate other things.  If you can’t take those four steps with your partner because they live in space or are fictional, I get it.  Long distance can be hard.

Say you make a mistake.  Open your mouth and say, “I am sorry for making that mistake.”  Sometimes that can help.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  If you stabbed someone, likely it won’t help and you should probably be in jail.  Don’t get mad if you’re not forgiven right away.  Especially if you stabbed someone.  Sometimes, like stab wounds, relationships need time to heal.  Once you apologize, ask what you can do to fix the situation and try not to do it again!

What if you don’t want a relationship?  That’s okay.  There’s nothing wrong with you.

If someone does not want to be with you, say, “Okay” and then leave them alone.

It’s okay to take time apart if you or your partner is very upset.  Just don’t go full Ross Geller from Friends about it.  Actually, this whole article can be summed up by doing exactly the opposite of everything Ross Geller said or thought or responded.  Kid wants to play with a Barbie?  Cool!  Want to own a monkey illegally?  Probably not your best idea.  You make a mistake?  Own up to it.  You’re angry?  Don’t scream, take time to calm down.  You want to sneak up on people and scare them?  Not your most likeable move. Date an ex student of yours?  REALLY ROSS? REALLY? The only thing he ever did right was like dinosaurs.

Ways That My Love Life is Like Geordi La Forge’s

Every time I make a real connection with someone, they only stick around until the end of the episode.

The last time I dated someone, it was a simulation of a real person that I programmed in the Holodeck.

I was in love with this murder suspect who I knew was innocent, and once I cleared their name they were super cool about it.  I only fell in love with them because I watched their video diary without their permission trying to get clues to the murder.

That’s it.  That’s my whole love life.  And Geordi’s, through all seven seasons.  Kind of sad for both of us.

I Want

I want to move to Paris for a few years, not because I want to move to Paris for a few years but I want to want to move to Paris for a few years, because that’s what all great writers want.  I want to drink whiskey from a flask and be world-weary and wry.  I want to roll my own cigarettes or tap them out of packs or keep tobacco in a little leather pouch for a pipe.  I don’t want to smoke.  I want to roll up my shirtsleeves and get into a brawl.  I want to be Hemmingway.

I want to be a pirate.  Not the kinds you see in movies but sunburnt and tired all the time with a soreness in my arms from hauling rope and a constant rolling pounding in my head.  I want to be a cowboy.  Aching legs and campfires and getting soaked when it rains.  I want to be a shepherd, resting my hand on the head of a ewe, pushing her wool this way and that to check her skin and making sure fly larvae don’t burrow into her nose.

I want to make the earth around me grow green.  I want to make art with the ease of exhaling. I want to go on quests and fight the dragon, hand clenched around a sword.  I want to be exhausted at the end of the day.  I want the lines of my body to be powerful lines, full of purpose, coiled with potential.

I want to be a cyborg.  I want to taste electricity.  I want to be kind.  I want bare feet on cold cobblestones.  I want truth. I want to live in a cave and drink rainwater.  I want love.  I want to want. And want.