November 14, 2012
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Eavesdropping
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Starbucks lately. (It’s fifteen minutes between my door and a table at Stbx. It’s at least forty-five from my door to my office. Don’t judge.)
I’ve spent a lot of time unwillingly eavesdropping on conversations that really should be happening in private.
And I’ve learned a lot about the state of modern “dating” “relationships.” (I already love, respect, and feel grateful for my husband, but today I’m feeling particularly happy to be married at all, and especially to him.) The conversation currently happening next to me about the participants’ “relationships” keeps making me want to lean over and say, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Dating–or at least the version one gleans from the aggregated comments, observations, and descriptions of the denizens of Starbucks–reminds me a great deal of the Toddler Play Date years.
Back when I had time for those, I would take Isaac or, more rarely, Theo somewhere to play “with” another kid his age.
Toddlers don’t really ever play with each other. They play next to each other. (The kids’ pediatrician and all the parenting books call it “parallel play.”) Each is usually entirely self-absorbed in a game of his own making, understandable to none but himself, and with entirely idiosyncratic rules, goals, and standards of excellence. Hero of his own story, dictator of his own sovereign realm, creator of his own universe–whatever metaphor you choose, the reality is that a toddler is a seething mass of self-contained hedonism.
If they play “with” each other at all, it is only for a short time and only because each coincidentally chooses that moment to view the other as his toy.
But for the most part, they only interact to express annoyance when one trespasses on the other’s autonomous pursuits. (“MINE!”)
There is much to lament about “old-fashioned” relationships. There is much about so-called traditional understandings of marriage that is worth leaving behind.
But I really fear that the “new-fashioned” replacements are, at the very least, deficient in some important respects.
