Net Cotton Content

This Old Heart

Hearts age physically. They also age emotionally.

Neither is particularly pretty.

*******************

A couple years ago, the old man spoke. 

We were at lunch, the only lunch we ever shared.

"May I Tell You A Story?"
He didn't say why he wanted to tell it. But, as he shared, his motive appeared: he was processing a brutal fact of his life. 

Here is the story, a story of love and loss. He said:

At college, back in the '60s, I was in love with a young woman. She was a delight and we were soulmates.

As we faced graduation, we mutually decided to let our careers take us to different cities. We intentionally discontinued our relationship, one thing led to another, and we fell out of touch.

So far, a frequent story. He continued:

A few years passed and I was transferred to a different city, placed in an office, seated at a desk, and — at the very next desk — there she was. Imagine that! What a coincidence! Kismet? I don't know. There she was. And she was as delightful and well-matched for me as ever.

But, while we were separated, she had married. She was happily married. But here I was. There she was. And she was married. Happily married. I understood.

The old man raised a finger, to stop me from commenting. He continued:

Time passed.

One or the other of us eventually left the company and the city. 

More time passed.

It happened again. This time, I was traveling and we bumped into each other. Just like that. Can you believe it? A complete coincidence, again. What are the odds? Anyway, we were suddenly together. And between us: all the old feelings of admiration and longing. We chatted with heart, and a fact was quickly revealed: she was available, she had divorced.

But now I was married. Happily married! And so on. The situation had reversed to the same effect. Our conversation was limited by propriety; our meeting and parting, to a genuine embrace. 

Time passed. Again, we lost touch.

He paused. He continued:

That phrase — "but I was married" doesn't convey the value of my marriage. You know of my marriage. Legendary. The envy of others. But, more than that, the treasure of my life. The font of our children. My wife, our love, were, to me, everything.

I had met his wife. I had heard about their love. I nodded.

He was quiet. I waited. Then:

As you know, my wife died several years ago. Cancer. Untimely. Awful.

And, so, naturally, I have increasingly wondered, where is my friend, my college girlfriend, that woman who I thought was my soulmate, but never knew because our good lives interrupted us?

I don't know. I just don't know. I can't find her. I don't know where she is.

We sat quietly. He clearly feared the worst. That she was gone. Dead. Or disappeared.

I muttered something about how — now, with Facebook — that won't ever happen to my children and their lovers, how people of the social networking generation can be gone but remain easily found.

I wondered why the old man didn't pay a private detective $100 to find his lost friend. If I suggested this to him, I'm sorry I did. The idea is too obvious. If he had done it, it obviously hadn't turned up anything. If he hadn't done it, he had a reason. Perhaps his reason was old-fashioned mores: one just doesn't do that. Or perhaps he placed True Love in the hands of Lady Kismet.

We all know this pain.
The ache in the heart. A pressure in the chest. 

I've seen it — and felt it — in childhood. In high school. In college. Beyond. 

She said "no." Or "no more." Or "you? really?" Or, worse nothing of all. Once she spoke Russian.

I don't think any of their judgements were wrong. Each was following her heart, as she must. (And, to be fair, at times, I was the one saying, "no." Those times don't hurt as much. Huh.)

Still, when my infatuation wasn't met in kind, I was left, holding my bruised heart, not knowing what to do, feeling humiliated, embarrassed. This seems pathetic, that I should have had the maturity with which to address the challenge: distraction, learning, recovery, renewed adventure.

I chose only distraction, the weakest of the alternatives. I placed my broken heart in the trunk of my car and drove on. 

What is the cure?
I thought I knew. Here's what I thought were the cures: 

• Time. Doesn't it heal all wounds? It doesn't. Decades pass, but heartache merely goes cryogenic, as easy to thaw as a frozen meal — Heart: Ready To Eat.
• Next. Isn't new love, a true love the antidote? It isn't. The perfect marriage — of which I know, for mine, if not perfect, is surely the least imperfect — isn't a cure. The new relationship is a heart transplant, not a heart repair. The old heart lies beside the photograph, still beating its retreat in the trunk of the car, good for little else. Except, of course, to remind us we are alive.
• Maturity. Don't we ever grow up? Not I. Another widowed friend in his 70s recently spoke of the pain. His heart was freshly broken. Not, this time, by bereavement. But rather by a week of dinners, on a vacation that had to end. "How dear," I thought shallowly. "How real," he felt deeply.

We are all freshman at the senior dance. We are all at summer camp.

Is this is a high-class heartache? 
After all, many of us are so contented in fruitful relationships.

But there are those whose heartache is based on loneliness. We must respect their sorrow. It must be greater. But from here, with these hearts on the floor, we can't tell.

We're looking at old hearts in the trunk, pained that we cannot live two lives at once. Driving on.

Will someone please call a surgeon
Who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart
That you're deserting for better company?
I can't accept that it's over... 

 

I wish us all strength and a fullness of heart.

Spousal Recruitment, Retention and Attrition

About 18 months ago, I gave a dinner speech to a national assembly of undergraduate business students at The Ohio State University. (You might remember "MBAs In Heat.")

Well, ever since then, the idea of that speech has been percolating, growing, gnawing.

I've been wondering:

• Why do we teach business students how to make money, but not how to preserve their assets through intelligent marriage maintenance?
• Don't widely-accepted business strategies and practices work at home, as well as they do in manufacturing or service businesses?
• Isn't our national divorce rate a measure of our educational system?
• Is there truly nothing we can teach students that might help them pick, retain and — if need be — jettison a spouse in the most intelligent way?

Cold-hearted?
I know that last phrase — "jettison a spouse in the most intelligent way" — doesn't sound all that romantic.

But, really, it is.

Money can't buy you love, but a lack of love can sure lose you a lot of money.

I think we can agree that money could be a good measure of doing marriage right: falling in love with the right person, developing that relationship so it blossoms, and — if everything turns to mud and wickedness — ending that relationship in the right way and at the right time. Fail at any of these skills, and there is a huge economic price to pay.

It's not about money,
And, of course, there is an emotional price to pay for failure — or dividend to reap for success. Live beautifully — in love, holding hands — and your prosperity is potentially economic and certainly emotional.

Consider David Brooks this week in The New York Times on "The Sandra Bullock Trade," in which he argues:

If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled.

Mr. Brooks is right. It's not only about money. But I wanted to get your attention. And I know how you love money.

And, I know, if you think I am helping you chase money and yet all you end up with is love and happiness, then you won't be disappointed.

So, here we go.
I'm going to start writing a book — in installments on Net Cotton Content — called:

Home HR

No. How about:

Going Spousal

Naw. Pick one, any one:

Marriage CEO
Marriage Management
Love And Marriage
You Know You Want It
Grabbing Asset

I don't know.

I guess all I know now is the subtitle: spousal recruitment, retention and attrition.

I could use your help.
As you read the installments (like the preface, above), which will come occasionally (like all good things), feel free to suggest titles, as well as edits small and large.

Suggest anything. Win my gratitude. And, better yet, help someone marry right and stay rightly married.

When MBAs Mate

Listen.

We met in an MBA program.

Was it love at first sight?
Yeah, yeah. Sure. Sure, it was. Whatever.

We were two MBA candidates. What do you think?

I'll tell you this. It was no acquisition. It was a merger of equals.

And more than a pooling of assets. We combined balance sheets.

That's true love, MBA style.

So What?
Here's what: now I teach business students.

But I don't want the students to apply their lessons only in business.

Of course, the skills developed in B-school are useful in B. That's the whole idea.

But the skills developed in B-school are also useful in M. As in Marriage.

Where is this going?
Surely, we — as the faculty of the next generation — can do more than stand by while our students learn how to spend 14 hours of day at work, and 4 minutes a day (if that) at work on their marriages.

Don't we want them to get rich — not lose half their assets in one day in divorce court — and then leave their fortunes to their alma mater?

Is there truly nothing we can teach them?

So I want to teach a course called...

Avoiding Asset Split: A Spousal Recruitment and Retention Program (for MBAs in Heat)
On Saturday evening, I presented this idea in the keynote speech at the closing dinner of the Nationwide Insurance/OSU BizQuiz, a national gathering of 200 or so of the top business school undergraduates at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

Want to hear it? Click here to download the audio file.

Enjoy, you lovebirds. And may you multiply, compounded annually.