Pollen alert! Life’s major contagion is in the air, quite literally the flights and fancies of the birds and the bees. Spring has sprung and love is wafting thick as arrows from a flock of cloned Cupids all firing at your castle walls. If you opted for just chocolate on Valentine’s Day, this may be your reckoning. One snoot full of passion pollen and you could catch yourself doing the funky chicken in front of the mirror while you comb your eyebrows.

Not me, of course. Way, way too sophisticated for that. Blahaha! Oooh…wazzat? Sharp pain left ventricle. My aorta, my aorta – I’ve been hit! Arrow sticking out of my holy white bod. Old arrow. White feather fletching.

Actually I do suffer pangs. Especially if I go back and read old emails about relationships. Those would be pangs of regret for omissions.

See, it’s this way, I used to include some Q&As in Sullygrams, mostly as spillover from another column I was writing (go to my author’s website archives for both). A lot of email came in for that, mostly about relationships due to the fact that a couple of the essays were about the love of my life. There were even people who wanted me to do a monthly column about relationships! (And probably others who just wanted me to stand still long enough for them to get off a couple of shots…)

Anyway, I dodged and hemmed and hawed a lot to avoid turning into a clown version of Dear Abby. But much of the poignant email that came in still haunts me. Rending stuff. And an absolute education in human nature for this here writer. Believe me, I profoundly appreciate the sharing and I didn’t mean to ignore anyone who had the courage to reach out.

There is love you can make happen, and love you can’t make happen. Either way romantic idealism is my catechism, my encyclopedia – holy Romeo, my whole library! So, I’m just gonna pretend here that it’s not too late to respond. Nice general responses. Because while every human drama is unique, the conflicts are universal – enough so that you can almost give one-size-fits-all advice – and despite not writing about relationships in a long while, I still get some of these emails. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

So here are some straight-talk things I should’ve said (and some things I did say in a couple cases with an email response):

[…to a woman who went into great detail about how much she gave to her husband, who wasn’t very demonstrative in return but that was how it was meant to be, and insisted she was happy and fulfilled]:  But you wrote me. You sound hurt. Are you asking if I think you’re cheating yourself? Despite your descriptions, I cannot know where the balance is between giving and taking in your marriage. If you have doubts, and if answers or change are possible, they will happen with communication between you and your spouse. I only know that love is a zero-sum game, no matter which values you plug into the equation. Each unique relationship works that out to mutual satisfaction that only they are able to judge. No other bottom line is possible for sustainable compatibility.

[…to people caught in sex triangles (as opposed to love triangles)]: Robbing Peter to pay Paul? It doesn’t matter whether Peter or Paul are fooled, you aren’t. You lose. Very painful inside. But you probably know that. If it is a love triangle, make sure you can handle “happily ever after” before you start “once upon a time.”

[…to someone second-guessing their past]: Why punish who you are now for who you were then? And why do you think the person you are now is any more valid than the person you were then? Different needs, different wants, different things you valued yourself for – it’s like trying to wear clothes in a size and style that fit you a quarter century ago. No basis for judging the fit or style now. You were a different individual back then but no less valid. Trying to revise who you were then in order to fit the things you currently value yourself for just leads to bitterness and rationalization. Love and understand who you were; love and understand who you are. They morphed into each other, but each served its own purpose for its time and place. We don’t get a re-do of every stage of our life in order to reconcile what we became with what we now see as better or worse in our past. If we did, it would mean we lived a life with no adventure of discovery, no enjoying the rewards (even if conflicting with current rewards) that came with different aspects of ourselves. We would simply be one-stage protoplasm and forfeit the whole meaning of growth, change and transitioning that constitutes living.

[…to those agonizing with doubts or paranoia]: The difference between a nightmarish reality and a potent but imaginary fear is sometimes difficult to sort out. A perceptive mind just makes it worse, because everything is more vivid and you see more patterns, contradictions and ambiguities. But there is a stark difference between living in defense mode vs. growth mode. Defense mode stifles pleasure, inhibits gain, and often results in a status quo that is stagnant. When defense dominates it becomes demanding and irrational to a point where its stress is worse than the fears. Like depression, it can be a Catch-22, because suspicion defeats the trust needed to overcome suspicion. There is a realization you can make, though, that may help if not prevent that state of mind, and it is this: you say that your worst nightmare is being betrayed, and that’s your red line? You’re already betrayed. Because love is what you give, not what you get. Giving is the part you control. You don’t control what you get (if you did, what you got would come as appeasement to your demand instead of being sincerely given). And if your focus is mostly on incoming proofs of your worth (getting), that beast is always hungry.

Of course, when is love perfect? Perfection itself is a stress. Especially if you see yourself as having to maintain quality control in order to be worth something in the eyes of another. Sooner or later you lose market value through physical decline or arrested development or the randomness of circumstances or simply the old saw of familiarity breeds contempt. If that isn’t offset by bonding that comes with shared history and sheer habit, then stress and the resulting self-hate may eat you up. And that leads me to this final generality…

[…to the uninspired and the bored]: Sex is easy when it’s not complicated by love. Better still with love as long as it’s not betrayed. But sex with betrayal becomes sex without love over time. Be grateful if the sex is difficult or impossible. It might mean love still matters. Walk the virgin of your perfection to the edge of the volcano and see if you wince.  If you do, then give her a push. Then binge a little.

No right or wrong choices here. Just the math. Like I said, love is a zero-sum game. If you fail the dream, it is also true that the dream fails you. You might aspire to it once, might have the potential to reach it once, but whichever person you choose to be eventually becomes the right one to justify whatever choice you make. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Me, I dust off my dreams regularly – all the time, in fact. So, only the most unlikely dreams need apply. Impossibilities are like non sequiturs in my life. And the more impossible they seem, the more inevitable they become, as if driven by destiny. Tsk, tsk…such an incorrigible romantic. I make no apologies. Where’s my map of pie-in-the-sky? Ah, here it is. Oh, yes…“first star to the right and straight on till…”

And this month’s photos below: #1 My spring smile; #2 my friend Ashley’s spring smile; #3-7 Crow-Hassan’s spring smile; #8 the Sisters of Spring smiling; #9-10 Elm Creek’s spring smile; #11-13 moi smiling just because I always smile…

Your turn!