I will have to disagree with this statement.

Without hope you’re not vulnerable. If you’re not vulnerable, then this will lead you to build up walls around your heart.

And then if that happens, you will not be open to finding love. In fact, you might never find it. If you’re not willing to see it and believe in it, then you will never know love when it comes along.

Sometimes disappointing relationships happen to us. But when they do, there is an opportunity to grow and learn from the situation and not put walls in place.

I have high hopes for all of us to find love.

Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see.”

—By High Hopes

Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

It’s a saying we’ve all heard at one point or another, and it can relate to a variety of situations:

• job prospects
• personal life choices
• relationships
• you name it

I’ve followed that advice all my life. I plan everything I can and try to have at least one or two alternative plans just in case that first one doesn’t work.

It’s a smart way to go. No one wants to be left high and dry.

But when it comes to matters of the heart, is the safe, well-planned route always the best one to take? I find myself straddling that very question right now.

I can honestly say I would be incredibly blessed to spend my life with the man I’m currently dating. It’s been a while now and even though we live apart, we are closer emotionally than ever. We’re at the point where those “talks” are becoming more and more common. You know the discussions when you discuss finances, kids, buying a home versus living in an apartment first.

My gut and my heart tell me this guy may just be worth taking a risk for. That’s about the time my head joins the conversation. In the next year or so I’ll have to make some pretty big decisions about my work life.

If this man is “the one,” it will involve a move and some very narrow job options on my end. That is my decision, and something I’d always planned on doing even before we started dating. Our relationship just speeds up that process.

I’m excited about the possibility, but I can’t help wondering if I’m “putting all my eggs in one basket.” There is no ring on this finger, the “ifs” are not yet “whens,” and I’m still waiting for a few special words to drop months after we started dating. I FEEL so much love in our relationship, but should I be paying closer attention to those technicalities? Am I being naive? Am I getting caught up in the romance and butterflies and talks about the future?

When it comes to relationships when do you stop needing a backup plan? When is it okay to go all in and not only place your eggs in that basket but throw them in with such enthusiasm and excitement that you’re cleaning up runny egg yolks for days?

If you’ve got the answer, I’d love to hear it!

Everyday!!!

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” -Albert Einstein

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.” –Ambrose Redmoon

I was getting in the shower the other day. Yes, my creative process is pretty random. And couldn’t help but think about how many of us drive ourselves insane over relationships.

When things are great we’re “crazy in love.” But when they’re bad, we’re just plain crazy!

Ups and downs are a normal part of any relationship. But I’m talking about the relationship with more downs than ups. These are the ones that really throw your mind and heart for a loop.

Most of us know what true heartbreak feels like and if you don’t, consider yourself lucky. It’s a sickening feeling that can leave you stunned, numb, devastated and sometimes hopeless. It turns your world upside down. You promise in that moment your sobbing your eyes out on the floor or staring at the ceiling that you’ll never allow this to happen again. You’ll lock your heart up and throw away the key.

I know several people who can do that. They consider themselves guarded and have a hard time opening up or letting others in because of the pain in their past. I’ve experienced enough pain for a whole slew of people, yet I’ve never been able to keep my heart under lock and key.

Once I decide I like someone, I’m head first regardless of that ever-present threat things could fall apart. Sure I have my insecure moments in the process, but it doesn’t make me walk away. I stay and invest time and emotion to find out if this person is right for me.

By Einstein’s definition, it’s pure insanity.

Why do we continue to pursue relationships when we know pain is a real possibility? Why do we date the same type of guy or girl over and over, hoping this one will be different?

I’d like to think it’s because of that second word up there. Courage. Based on that quote from author Ambrose Redmoon, it takes a brave soul to emotionally invest in another person knowing it could lead to heartache.

If you’re like me, don’t fight your insanity. Embrace it.

Not everyone is capable of opening his or her heart and doling out love, even if the recipients don’t always return the favor.

You could even go so far to say you can’t be courageous without being a little crazy.

Jon is one of those fellas and the main character in this Tale from Sip and Go Girl.

I was shopping in a grocery store on a Sunday afternoon after church. Near the front of the store, a man was signing up people for newspaper subscriptions. He was staring at me. He watched me walk to and he watched me walk fro and then he watched me walk to and fro again. He didn’t look familiar and I couldn’t figure out why he was staring at me.

As I left the store, the guy was outside the doors and he greeted me.

Turns out he recognized me from an online dating profile he saw more than one year ago. Jon asked me to meet him later that week at the shopping mall across the street. I thought maybe this was some type of sign from the Universe, so I agreed to meet him.

Jon and I met that following week. He bought me a meal at Panda Express– an Asian style fast food place– and then we walked around the mall for maybe 45 minutes.

He was totally enthralled by the mall kiosk that sold plastic covers to protect cell phones from scratches. He wanted one for his television set and talked at length with the employee about getting one. He said he spits on the TV. The kiosk doesn’t sell plastic that size.

During our afternoon, I told Jon I was going through a life change and was planning a move out of state before the season ended.

We parted ways in the parking lot and I went home wondering why I went on that sip and go.

Later that day, I received a text message from Jon.

“Please delay your move. Give me just a few more dates. I will change your mind and you will stay in town.” He told me I was the one and he wanted to prove it to me.

I wondered where he felt that magic because I sure as the Dickens did not. I told him I was flattered but I didn’t think the same thing.

I didn’t hear from Jon until months later when he sent me a text message to wish me happy holidays. I responded and said the same.

“Are you still living in this city?” he asked.

I told him yes.

He immediately offered his company to provide holiday “cheer.” I said no and that I was taking a dating hiatus. I didn’t want to date.

Jon told me that if I hooked up only with him, it meant I wasn’t dating. It meant I had a boyfriend. He would be my one and only. I told him no.

He then told me that he was quite the lover.

I realized what the Universe was telling me five months prior. “Know when to turn someone down and mean it.”

She was sitting relaxed in her office chair, looking up with a smile as she recounted each event with diligent accuracy to make sure she didn’t miss any detail. But she suddenly stopped and said, “It was a perfect weekend, and I’m really happy. But I did something bad. I broke the rules.”

I looked at her with raised eyebrows and a smirk until I realized she wasn’t talking about THOSE naughty rules. She was talking about the rules we read in self-help books or on dating websites. Those are the rules that tell women to play hard to get, don’t say yes to the first offer, don’t text him back until at least 30 minutes have passed, and don’t wear your hair pulled back because he might think you’re uptight. That last one I made up but I’m sure some book somewhere actually says that.

Some words of advice are helpful when the time comes to “play the game.” If you’re looking for a serious and committed relationship, playing hard to get never really hurt anyone. There’s definitely something to be said about holding back on the physical stuff, especially in the beginning.

However, it’s possible to be so focused on the “rules,” that you lose the spontaneity and excitement that often comes with a new relationship. I had a girlfriend in college who would bring her book of “rules” to the dining hall after a date and we’d all sit there and go over them all to make sure she was making the right moves. In hindsight, it a tad obsessive don’t you think?

When it comes to dating, there’s really no right or wrong ways to do it. No official rule book can guide you through the process. So maybe the best way to navigate through the beginning stages of a relationship is to take the best from both worlds. Set some guidelines for yourself but be open to compromise. Maybe by creating your own rules, you’ll enjoy the journey and the outcome that much more!

And that meant we spent several hours at a weekly farmer’s market talking about Karl Marx, free market enterprise, and general tenets of post-modernism rather than exploring cool booths and being among jolly people.

Steve and I had met via the online dating website I was using. He contacted me and we struck up a simple conversation. After he discovered I had a master of art’s degree in communication studies, he started asking me intellectual questions and began telling me about what books he read.

He also asked me about various theories and what areas I had examined as a scholar.

Karl Marx. Probably missing out on the farmer’s market too

I was wrapping up a recent boyfriend-girlfriend relationship and thus it took a few weeks before I agreed to meet him in person. In the meantime, I did a rare thing for me: I gave him my cell phone number.

Every once in a while, I’d receive a clever sardonic text message regarding topics including poststructuralism. That’s the group of theories whose central concern is the opposition of certain meaning or truth in discourse. Discourse is the message structure in communication.

Steve and I finally agreed to meet one Sunday morning at an outdoor shopping center’s weekly farmer’s market. Although my goal for setting up sip and goes was still meeting new people and having a chat, I was kind of looking forward to this sip and go. I had never been to this popular market and could spend the morning outside in very nice weather looking at handmade items and locally grown produce.

We met near a booth with spiced nuts, exchanged pleasantries, and I started to say, “Shall we walk around?” But he lept into my sentence and said, “Let’s go into the lobby of the hotel here and talk.”

I was crestfallen to leave the perfect temperature of the outdoors, the hustle and bustle of the visitors and the vendors. It was a lively venue with nice energy.

We went into the dark lobby and sat on a large couch.

“Is Marxism dead?” Steve asked. And thus the conversation began.

Critical Theory is more popular in Europe than the United States. Why?

Foucault. Yay or nay.

A couple hours slipped by and I finally said I should do my errands. Sunday afternoon tended to be my grocery shopping day.

We left the hotel lobby, walked in the general direction of our cars.

“So never really answered. Are we really in a post-modern era? Or no?” He asked as we got closer to my car.

“Hard to say. Thank you so much Steve. I’ll look you up on Facebook,” I replied simply.

I didn’t take comprehensive exams at the end of my graduate program. I had opted for the thesis so I could research and write. My sip and go with Steve solidified that decision for me.

I’ve seen those couples and known two of them quite well actually. You can imagine I was recently stunned when both pairs split. Both couples were engaged to be married and from the outside, they looked perfect. I’ll admit I even envied them at times and assumed life couldn’t get any better for them.

As cliché as it sounds, it just goes to show things aren’t always what they seem.

The lack of passion behind closed doors….

Turns out both couples lacked passion. That’s the “it” factor differentiating friends from lifelong lovers. They spent several years together, lived together, but somewhere along the way someone started living a lie in those final years. They knew deep down it wasn’t right but they were too scared and hesitant to make a clean break.

Now, they’re all back at square on and looking to other relationships for hope and guidance as they navigate the single waters once again. All I can tell them is to remember the lessons of their own experiences.

The fact is that reality often happens behind closed doors.