There's something in the air this month, and it certainly isn't love.
Maybe it's the cold front that has hit much of the nation recently. The cool air makes my friend's cats frisky and annoyingly playful, and it strikes me that perhaps the cooling temperatures heat our human passions as well as those of our feline companions.
Six couples I know broke up this week, three of whom ended relationships of two years or longer.
And the orgy of relationship travails hasn't bypassed me, either. My girlfriend of eight months called in tears this week to confess that she cheated on me with a guy who poses for her camera.
Sigh.
Why is dating so hard? Why is it that we are both drawn to and repelled by those we choose to take into our hearts and into our lives and, with any luck, into our beds? Too often we choose lovers like a teen-ager decides on an outfit for the first day of school: by trying on everything in sight and then settling for something because there doesn't seem to be time to try anything else.
Sure, communication is vital to a relationship, and so are common interests and mutual respect. I learned this week that sometimes not even those are enough.
As one of the last unmarried or unengaged members of my group of college or high school friends, I don't have much room to speak, here. Historically, my floor has been littered with crumpled slips of paper with phone numbers in elegant female handwriting. Some of those numbers had smiley faces in the zeroes and represented a few good nights or even weeks. Others rang people who had never been to the bar where I got them and obviously reflected strike outs.
But whether the phone numbers on them actually reached the young woman in question or a complete stranger, all those little scraps or matchbook covers represented desperation. Two people went to a bar or to the personal ads to make a connection, however brief or shallow, and in most cases, all that lasted were those scraps of paper, thrown at the trashcan like losing lottery tickets.
Yet, sometimes those phone numbers do lead to love. Love isn't always enough.
My friend Olivia just broke up with her boyfriend of two and a half years. He had been living with her for two months, and he doesn't yet have enough money to move out of her apartment. Both have been in tears all week.
"I still love Joe," she said between sobs. "But we just aren't going in the same direction. I've worked hard on myself in the past few years, and I feel like I'm growing emotionally and spiritually. He still has a hard time paying rent. He thinks making progress is being able to afford milk that week."
Sunday, my friend Tim stopped by my record store with reddened eyes. He had just awakened to find that his girlfriend of two years had moved out, leaving only a note and a few unwanted CDs that he was now going to pawn for rent money. Tim's only warning had come the night before during lovemaking.
"She said, 'I lust you' instead of I love you," he said. "I don't know why she left."
Tim, who looks a lot like Olivia's Joe, didn't seem to recall his laughter the last week when he had stayed out later than he should have and was expecting to be in trouble with his girlfriend when he got home. He didn't seem to remember either his intention two days earlier to buy a rare CD instead of the milk and tampons his girlfriend sent him out to get.
I didn't remind him.
Running a record store, I get to watch a lot of couples relate. I also get to meet a lot of single women, and none of my friends understands why I don't go out with any of them. My girlfriend, I must say, lives 1,100 miles away in a state I moved from five months ago.
"Haven't you heard of the 500 Mile Rule?" my roommate and business partner, a 40-year-old bachelor, asks every time I turn down a potential suitor. "It states that if you're 500 miles from your girlfriend, nothing you do is cheating."
I never asked him if the same would be true for his girlfriend if she lived 500 miles away. Providing, of course, that he ever got a girlfriend.
I'm not too upset about what my girlfriend did this week. For one thing, I feel responsible. I am, after all, the one who moved away. I appreciate her honesty, and her tears were real. Plus, I know there's no way the guy could match me if not in prowess or support, then certainly not in arrogance.
It helps that Tonya moaned my name.
But I guess the real reason I'm not joining every single person I know and breaking up is that I understand what it is to be tempted. In the past six weeks, I've found myself hugging six different women and then pushing away even as my body screamed for a kiss, a touch, a caress. Through sheer stubbornness, I've managed to say 'no' where Tonya said 'yes.'
And I keep putting myself into temptation. Just as Tonya went skinnydipping several times or played games requiring nudity with guys she met in bars last summer, I am flirting with the women in the store. I am spending time with two new ones this week, both of whom I find immensely attractive and one of whom is looking for a nude, male model.
Neither Tonya nor I are doing this to spite each other. We love each other. But sometimes letters and calls and gifts can't compete with one night of physical validation. We're human. Tonya and I do communicate well and share common goals and respect each other immensely. Outside of her taste in music, we're perfect for each other.
I've learned this week that in our relationship, love is like real estate: The three most important factors are location, location, location. We have 13 months until we are reunited. Will we make it?
Her next photo shoot is this week. So is mine.
Todd Foltz is trying to be less self-absorbed, but he finds that women prefer narcissists to humble guys.