Day 40: Decisions, Decisions

Finally, here's an outfit from which I actually own something. Seeing a trend I could actually live with, I picked up white oxfords from Aldo a while ago. Since then, they have quickly moved up the ranks of favorite shoes and now are only competing against my Frye boots and fuchsia/purple Nine West heels. The oxfords get an A+ in my most important categories: comfort, versatility, and kick-ass-ness. Instead of slipping on sneakers, I choose oxfords. Instead of my go-to boots (there are only so many days a woman can wear the same pair of shoes without becoming bored), I throw on oxfords. I plan on wearing them with dresses come summertime. Okay, I'm shutting up about the shoes. Though this outfit is on the quirky side, it seems to make sense to me. Maybe it's the stripes, albeit in different color groups entirely. Maybe it's the metal/stone combo in the jewelry. Whatever it is, "I'm Just Lovin' It."

As an offshoot of something Miranda said a few episodes back, I've decided that jobs are like relationships. You complain when you don't have them, and you complain when you do. Though I'm teaching a few hours today and tomorrow, these are the final two days until I start my full-time job. I'm terrified. I don't know if it's all the new people, the new policies (and there are a million of them), or just the thought of not controlling my schedule until who knows when. I feel dread. The fact that the first month will be mostly manual labor (moving, pricing, organizing, lifting) to get the new store up and running doesn't help either. I should just work construction and get another $10 per hour. But I'm trying to stay (okay, get) positive. I'll be around fashion, people who like fashion, and discounted designer clothing. Can that really be so bad?

Do we have to choose in life, or can we really have it all? Carrie continues to cheat, launching her and Big's relationship into a full-on affair. Besides telling Samantha, she keeps silent and lives a confusing double life--splitting time between a tumultuous love affair with Big, who wants to leave his wife for Carrie, and a stable relationship with Aidan, who finally confesses his love for her. Charlotte comes face to face with her new mother-in-law's darker side when the latter requests that Charlotte sign a prenup. Unhappy with the terms, Charlotte decides that she wants to marry Trey enough to haggle with his mother. The two women negotiate, Charlotte signs, and the wedding planning continues. Samantha gets the flu and finds herself completely alone. She decides that no matter how much she has, without a man to help care for her, she has nothing. Five days of rest and healing later, she revokes her statement with true Samantha flair. Miranda dates a man from Chicago, participating in hot, nightly phone sex, until she gets put on hold and figures out she's not the only one he's "sleeping" with.

There are so many issues in this episode, I don't know where to start. After watching it, I went on a long walk with my little Snoopy notepad a friend recently bought me and took notes as I wandered. Things kept coming up. How can people stay in a relationships they even think they would be unfaithful to, much less are actively working to destroy? Is a strong physical attraction really to blame, or is it something deeper? Why would you want to move forward with a marriage you have such huge misgivings about (obviously this one hits home)? Is being with someone always preferable to being alone?

I thought first of Aidan and Carrie. Who knows if they would have made it, even if Big never came back into the picture. Carrie was already restless and wondering why she couldn't appreciate Aidan's lack of drama. Then, when Big comes back, suddenly that becomes the issue; the affair is more a way of adding spice to Aidan and Carrie's relaitonship than anything. Maybe that is a big sign that the two aren't right for each other, regardless of Big.

I thought of my relationship with Travis. For at least half of the time I was with him, I was fantasizing about the married professor, Dr. H. I told myself I loved Travis enough not to hurt him. Besides, I didn't want to hurt Dr. H's wife and children, either. However, I eventually cheated on Travis anyway with a man even worse than the professor. I can't help feeling I would have saved Travis and I both a lot of pain if I had ended things sooner. Also, if I was really honest with myself, I didn't care about the wife's feelings either. In fact, if Dr. H hadn't had kids and thus more to lose by getting divorced (making the chance of it less likely), I may have gone ahead and started something. I was completely selfish the entire time.

What is the point of this? The point is that, ideally, love is the opposite of selfish. What is love if not the actions we take daily? If love is shown mainly by action, if we want to perform an action that would hurt our partner (whether we do it or not), do we really love them enough to be with them? Can that be the gauge of whether or not we should stay together?

Then again, if we hold ourselves to this high standard, would anyone deserve to be with anyone? Like I mentioned last post, aren't there always going to be times when we're attracted to people other than our partners? Aren't we always going to hurt our mates, even if accidentally? In the end, none of us is perfect. Neither are we perfectly synced as couples. Sometimes, one person is more into the relationship than the other. In a week, the entire balance can flip. So how the hell do we know how much love is enough?

The other part of this whole mess is that when we're in relationships, no matter how shaky they are, we seem to find a way to convince ourselves of the good that's there--at least I have before. Maybe we just don't want to be alone, so we focus on what's going well with our partners. Heck, I though marrying an alcoholic, job-less Peruvian sounded like an okay idea, because at least he was passionate. I just kept trying to find the good. Like Charlotte, we may know that something feels very wrong (and it very well may be), but the thought of scratching everything and being alone seems unbearable. In most of my previous relationships, the things that drove me nuts early on and that I stuffed under the proverbial rug ended up being the deal breakers later on. We tend to convince ourselves that since no couple is perfect, we can live with the flaws we see. And you know what? We're right to do it, because it's true. If we didn't overlook some things, we would all be alone.

But, again, how do you know what's worth saving? How does Carrie know whether to choose Aidan or Big? One treats her like a queen; the other treats her well when it's convenient for him. However, her heart is clearly leaning toward the latter. How do we decide that even though we may love certain people, there are things we'll never be able to reconcile? I think that's the hardest point of any relationship, and the debate can drive you crazy. Hank is always saying that there's no "right" career. I'm not going to find the perfect job that will make me happy for my whole life. I just have to pick something I want.

Maybe partners are the same way, as unromantic as that sounds. Obviously you will gravitate toward ones you are happy with, ones that challenge you, hopefully ones you really enjoy, even love. Then, it's just a matter of making one choice and sticking with it--deciding you want to be with one person more than anyone else. Erma Bombeck once said that shopping for a bathing suit and choosing a mate are very similar: "Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow." Then maybe after you choose, when something cute comes along that you think you would also enjoy, you learn to ignore it. Your attraction to someone else doesn't have to "mean" anything larger.

Anyway, it's all a little sad, just because it's difficult for all of us. Something about this episode hits at the core of what it means to be human and a social creature. We are all doing our best to be happy and sometimes do/say/feel things we don't understand and later regret. Like Carrie, we can sometimes find ourselves in a big old catastrophe without really knowing how we got there. Even if you don't take action (like me with Dr. H), it still haunts you in a way. All that past relationship muck builds up and overlaps, affecting even the best of our current relationships. There is nothing easy about making hard decisions, and make no mistake about it: there are a lot of them in life. If I had the answers to how to make them, I truly believe I would be a much more peaceful person.

I hope you'll be back. I will.