RELATIONSHIP RULE #1

Oh, come on. As if it's going to be that easy. That's the bad news. The good news is that you're not the first to think so.

Today I declared to a friend that I'd learned that, in relationships, "Actions speak louder than words". It felt monumental to write out in an email and push "send". I felt like the scientist who discovered, I dunno, that cells divide. I had discovered The Truth. But the truth is that I was just finding ways to make myself feel productive on a Monday. In a typical friends-of-Lilly(tm) rapidfire email exchange, he agreed that he would subscribe to my rule, which caught me off guard. I had to go back and correct my mistake before I became Her Befuddled Guru of Messy Relationships. I went back to the chalkboard with this tidbit:

"you can learn the rule as many times as you like. I learned the rule years ago, and never implemented. i like to *say* i will implement, because it makes me feel that i've learned something. if it were easy to apply rules to matters of the heart, there would be no heartbreak, everyone would be settled down, and books like "He's Just Not That Into You" wouldn't sell zillions of copies. It's not stuff women don't know ("if he doesn't call you, he isn't into you"; "if he tells you he loves you but you haven't met a single friend, he isn't into you", "if he sleeps with you and disappears for a month, he isn't into you"). we know it. we just forget in the face of romance or a cutie or a few martinis. everyone does. and so spins the wheel."


It's almost like, as a society, we have a wicked case of willful amnesia.