I smile. Grimace, really. "A Yahtzee?"
"Yeah. A Yahtzee."
I've had a few close friends go through intense breakups in the past year. In addition to the money dropped on wine, flowers, and takeaway (the ends of relationships are an awful lot like the start, aren't they?) I've spent a lot of hours helping them dissect What Happened and Where Things Went Wrong.
It's been surprisingly cathartic, despite the fact that I'm alone.
It's nice to know that the things that worry me (being alone forever, how to meet other people, how horrible my boobs look outside of a bra designed by the Army Corps of Engineers, that relationships are the one part of my life that I can't seem to figure out) are things that worry other smart, successful women. It's remarkably comforting to know that we're the same kind of crazy.
Tonight we're talking sexual compatibility and the head trip that comes when you're with someone who gets under your skin in ways you couldn't have imagined. It's also the part of my relationships that goes south the quickest, and for reasons I never would have anticipated.
"Yeah." I respond. "I do worry about it."
***
My brain gets in the way.
I'm no MENSA candidate, but I'm no Prince Myshkin either.
Maybe it's not so much my brain, but my curiosity that gets me into trouble. I'm sure the fact that I have a little bit of an obsessive personality also causes some problems, but I hate hanging everything that's wrong with me on that one aspect of my brain chemistry.
Anyway, my brain tends to get in the way.
If I'm reading something that genuinely interests me Ryan Gosling could be doing a striptease in my living room and I wouldn't notice. I have a tendency to say "Just five more minutes" when I'm working on a project. I get unbelievably excited (we're talking jump-up-and-down excited) about historical events and when I finally understand things like orbital velocity or the Doppler Effect.
Anyway, my brain tends to get in the way.
If I'm reading something that genuinely interests me Ryan Gosling could be doing a striptease in my living room and I wouldn't notice. I have a tendency to say "Just five more minutes" when I'm working on a project. I get unbelievably excited (we're talking jump-up-and-down excited) about historical events and when I finally understand things like orbital velocity or the Doppler Effect.
My brain gets in the way most during dating.
Anxiety is constantly trying to shank me with thoughts like ohgodwhatifhe'saserialkiller? Depression has kept me from bothering to engage with anyone. Trying to find the off switch for what's going on in my head when I'm with someone has kept me tied up for hours.
Being in my head can be problematic.
My brain its at its most combative and angriest when I'm out with someone who, well, isn't up for either some conversational jiu-jitsu or casual conversation about . . . well, who cares? My interests range from cryptography to bicycle repair to Motown, so it doesn't take much to keep my attention.
But there's gotta be something.
Intelligence, or lack thereof, isn't just a dealbreaker. My (reptile) brain wants it, needs it as much as the evolved brain that's in charge most of the time. I'm not talking about, I don't need someone with a 1600 SAT. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to find a guy who can help me see constellations or understand the Arrow of Time, well, sexy as hell. Intelligence--curiosity and an adventurous spirit, really--is hopelessly knotted together with, well, some more basic needs. My brain gets in the way, and the only way to slap it into submission seems to be finding something, someone, really who can engage it. And that submission, finding someone who can keep up, keep ahead, keep under my skin has always been the tricky part.
I keep coming up a few numbers short of a Yahtzee.
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