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Love: Romantic Beginnings

Posted on 9/15/2018 12:54:39 PM by Marilynne Eichinger - 3 Comments
Topics: Art | Psychology of self

Richard and Marilyn

Mixed media on canvas/ framed/ 24”x 28” x 2” / $ 450

Love: Romantic Beginnings

My first romantic encounter happened when I was in sixth grade. While a safety crossing guard at a slow traffic intersection, a good looking classmate named Ralph stopped by each morning to keep me company. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do know that we had a lot to say to each other. The attraction blossomed to the point of organizing a mock wedding complete with bridesmaids and rabbi. Afterwards, in my basement rec. room reception, we ate cookies and played spin the bottle. The bottle never stoped my way to give us a chance to kiss, but it was soon obvious that one of the bridesmaids was more attractive to Ralph than me. That was the end of our romance, love affair and marriage.

Years later, when my future husband first kissed me goodnight on the lips, it was only a peck, but electricity soared through my body. Though the moment lasted a second, the memory of that kiss lasted a lifetime. I wondered what was happening to me, why I felt weak all over. We hardly knew each other, so I didn’t pretend to be in love, but he certainly captured my attention and I wanted to get to know him better. We spent the next many months romancing each other.

An explanation of the difference between love and romance that I read on-line says, “Romance is the expressive and pleasurable feeling from an emotional attraction towards another person often associated with sexual attraction. And love in best defined as a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection to pleasure.”

Romance is at its peak in the preliminary stage of a relationship, when people go out of the way to make gestures of fondness. It is not until they understand each other and learn to compromise that love deepens and takes over. Romance is important for it brings the couple closer to exploring boundaries. It is a time of wishful thinking, flirtation, and lust, but can also produce fake and unrealistic yearnings. It’s only when small daily acts of consideration and kindness occur that the carpet unfurls a path leading to love.

I have loved. More than once I’ve been romanced and then loved. And, though several liaisons ended by us going separate ways, my feelings of love for these men have endured to this day. I acknowledge how each relationship provided me with strength to tackle the challenges I faced at the time.

This summer, in my “Do You Need a Mother” booth at Shift Festival, many young visitors asked for advice of the heart. What I noticed is that they are impatient. They long for a love partner without wanting to go through the romance and relationship building phase. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. It takes a long time to build enough trust to communicate honestly. Romantic wooing is part of the deal and it stays as part of the formula of those in long term relationships. For love needs to be nurtured as much as a plant requires fertilizer.

I look back fondly to memories of romance—the time I was a newlywed in Europe, sharing a delicious meal, uninhibited by enough wine to let us dance, hug and kiss our way back to our hotel though deserted Parisian streets. —or when I was in Monte Carlo, hoping to cheer my injured husband by dancing before him to an orchestra that was playing in an empty restaurant. —or when the clock struck 12 on New Year’s Eve, 2000, and dressed in finery, my fiancé and I were at the top of the Seattle’s Space Needle watching fireworks exploding below.

Romances are pleasures and shared moments that propel us into deeper love. It is a tool that prolongs and reinforces the bond between two people. Taking time to reaffirm your appreciation and acknowledge how special your partner is, will only strengthen your relationship. Though love may deepen over time, it can also be lost if taken for granted. It is important to periodically renew your commitment, to play, to laugh and to share special experiences that remind you why you fell in love in the first place.

Do share some of your most romantic remembrances on my blog site.

Art is always for sale at [email protected].

Reference

Difference Between Love and Romance. retrieved from https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-love-and-romance

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3 Responses to Love: Romantic Beginnings

A key point of lifelong tension and confusion. One of my bouts of that illness was when I courted and married an admirable, intelligent and competent but culturally "hippie" style woman, hoping my inner Queer, my "Miss Prissy" Prim" love would fade away, until the two-year deceit made my squashed passions kind of burst out of the closet (not exploding violently enough to need legal or medical intervention). I frightened a few close friends, a few others were not surprised, and the two of us endured about one year of hell, but we now have a coolly respectful relationship, and I'm glad I got out of her way so she could marry that great guy and bring two more great guys into the world. I hope no one minds if I attach a longer second case. (To be continued, or ignored if one wishes).

Posted by Watt D (David Wright) · via eichingerfineart.com · 97 months ago

Remarkable though unimportant serendipity in the sync of today's post from Ms. Eichinger and my working this morning on the following latest version from an essay on which I've long, long, lifelong worked.

I was a prodigy in music, first chair violin in the school orchestra, and though one brave boy who studied flute faced up to school bullies by showing up every day in a white shirt and tie, and by age fourteen always walked mincingly with a subtle but obvious sashay, I dared not follow his bold example; I even pretended not to like him, even though I played dressup games in the secrecy of my locked bedroom. I had both daydreams and nightly dreams of courting a princess and singing love duets to the kind of sweet music I made sure people thought I agreed was "corny."

For too many years in my youth, I feared and denied my truest love because hippies and rednecks surrounded me in the 70's Southwest; everywhere I saw so much hostility towards the slightest inclination towards a taste for charm and elegance in self-presentation. I eventually learned what an understatement it is to say that I am not alone in having lived this dilemma. Lots of Queers came out from there.

For the first birthday party I attended in the new town where we'd moved, my European mother had assumed it was an occasion for me to put on a suit and tie... but I had an unpleasant shock when I arrived to find no one else had dressed up. I felt hurt and, coming home angrily, abused my poor mother with hostile derision, even though I could feel a deep desire to be hugged and comforted by her. Not long after that party, my own birthday arrived, for which the other parents made sure to dress their children in their best; but of course, wise to the local laws now, I made sure to wear ordinary casual clothes, and I didn't do the right thing and change but just sat there, all of us feeling even more awkward and confused. How delightedly and charmingly I could have expressed my sincere thanks to them, adding "Wouldn't it be nice if we dressed like this more often?"

Susan was a girl from a Catholic-Italian family I dated, a violist in the orchestra, who became an excellent string teacher in NM public schools. I now see that in her loving admiration of my musical talent there lived a calming and strengthening influence, and how easily came a strong desire to show my best behavior around her. Though she was physically unattractive, dumpy and pimply, she made up for it with neatly attractive, modestly dressy attire for school. I especially remember when her eyes shown as I wondered allowed, "Wonder how far it'd take us if we simply decided to pursue what's better and smarter, ignoring the mockery we'd get?" In a love letter, she confessed a little wish that I might call her Sue. My nose wrinkled as I read that, knowing no one at school had ever called her Sue, and I hid my true feeling: honor to be invited to use a special name that she'd dreamt of, likely from the old big-band tune "Sweet Sue, Just You." I loved how "Miss Sue" sounds just like "Miss you," and desired to carefully practice pronouncing the two S's in a row until they were amazingly quick yet distinct as I bowed to her. In the real world, in school, Susan and I were routinely mocked with labels like the Pansy and the Pig. I dumped her after two years, at age 16, with a sudden goodbye letter, written while smoking a joint. She came to my house and discussed the letter with admirable maturity and self-control, trying to learn what caused my decision, leaving disappointed in my lack of a real answer: I was tired of being hated for dating an ugly girl, and she was "straight," bourgeois and traditional (though never judgemental or dogmatic).
When I learned, many years later, how elegant and traditionally feminine a 19th-century figure Susan B. Anthony cut, I felt like a false association had been revealed and surgically removed: That there was no real link between dressing beautifully and wishing to oppress and enslave others like some Dixie plantation belle might.

Posted by Watt D (David Wright) · via eichingerfineart.com · 97 months ago

I don't want to try anyone's patience, but I need to add a later complexity in college, which led to my current far-from-elegant, scruffy, aging-hippy self-presentation.
Where I lived, the 'hippie-redneck' social stigma of the time was strongly enough felt by a majority of classical music students that a reaction developed to prove "We're not in orchestra just cuz we like to wear bow ties!" and many orchestra members seemed to try to outdo the Hippies, and later the Punks, in their deliberate slovenliness outside of formal concert performances. In my orchestral career, I was taken to task a few times for excessive carelessness in my concert attire.
One therapist accused me of "wanting to have it both ways." And one attempted romance left me with a brief children's poem by Theodore Roethke, which I can still write from memory, perhaps imperfectly:

The Kitty-Cat Bird, he sat on a fence. Said the Wren, "Your song isn't worth seven cents! You're a fake, you're a fraud, you're a horrid PRE-tense!" said the Wren to the Kitty-Cat Bird.
"You've too many songs, and none of them good. I wish you would act as a bird really should, or else stay by yourself out deep in the wood!" said the Wren to the Kitty-Cat Bird.
"You tweet like a robin, you grate like a jay, you squeak like a mouse who is lost in the hay! I wouldn't be you for even one day!" said the Wren to the Kitty-Cat Bird.
The Kitty-Cat Bird he moped and he cried. Then a real cat came with a mouth so wide that the Kitty-Cat Bird hopped right inside. "At last! I'm me!" Then he up and he died. What good taste had the Kitty-Cat Bird!
You'd better not laugh, and don't say "Poo!" before you have thought this Sad Tale through: Be sure who you are is really you, or you'll end like the Kitty-Cat Bird.

Posted by Watt D (David Wright) · via eichingerfineart.com · 97 months ago

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Love: Romantic Beginnings

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