The Ignorance Prescription:
My Guide to a Healthy Romantic Relationship
2005

We are the person the other fantasizes about while they’re supposed to be working. We are their hope for a brighter tomorrow. We are he or she who makes the world a somewhat sparklier place to be in. We even make buying peanut butter at the supermarket a tingly experience. We can do no wrong, all our odors are pleasing in every way, and the skeletons in our closets are very securely locked away. We have verve. We add levity to our someone special’s step. Our mere heartbeat and breath causes arousal.

That’s what we are in the beginning of love. Birds sing just that much more sweetly. Thong bikinis fit just that much better. It’s a good thing.

A couple of dates later we inevitably have sex. Pelvises thrust, birds sing more than ever before, the world becomes even more sparkly.

And then, it happens.

It. You know what I’m talking about here. It’s the talk. The purging of all our past secrets. The picking through each other’s lives with a fine toothed comb and a magnifying glass. And also the inevitable let down and dimming of the inner light. Yes, it is a sad fact. New lovers may start out shiny and new, but relationships mature, too much information is shared, and then it’s a slow descent as the magic withers up and dies a long horrible death. Life can become nothing short of night of the living dead. That person that once made your very cells stand to attention might now become the day’s worst dread; a limp body to watch Survivor next to at night; a scathing and scabby memory of the dream they once were.

I am a firm believer that the downfall of the greatest relationships stem from the precise moment past lovers are discussed.

As you might know, the beau of all beaus came into my life not long ago. He is definitely my life beau, my soul beau. He is perfection. He is the ultimate. The one I had longed for through my previous night of the living dead. The first time I touched this man, when I felt his skin, it was the first time in my life when I had this sensation like his skin was my skin, and there was a feeling of home, and likeness, and like we were two halves of a whole who had been searching for each other for an eternity. I called him my twin, because I really felt he was my other half.

Knowing how relationships even as wonderful as this can deteriorate into complete and utter hell in a relatively short amount of time, I set up ground rules in the very beginning.

“If we are to preserve this feeling,” I said, “this feeling of passion and vim and joie and vigor, then we are going to have to bend the rules of nature a bit. We are going to avoid the obvious pitfalls. We are going to steer clear of the things that ordinarily turn lovers like you and me into each other’s worst nightmare.”

He looked back at me with a sweet and very nervous grin.

“Rule number one,” I continued. “We are not going to have that talk. Ever.”

He knew what “talk” I was talking about. THE talk. The talk that comes when you’ve both had a couple glasses of wine and the mood strikes and you begin delving into each other’s pasts. Questions like: How many lovers have you had? Have you ever REALLY been in love before? Have you really ever enjoyed sex before, or was it just blah blah blah blah blah before you met me? These kinds of discussions always end in feelings of repulsion. The answers are never never satisfying. What we want to hear is that all others before us were disgusting, torturous and miserable to be around, terrible lays and inconsiderate, emotionally abusive sons of bitches and a-holes and that not a day was enjoyed ever ever ever before the day they laid eyes on us, wonderful us, heavenly us.

Unfortunately it’s not true and so even hearing the right answers isn’t satisfying. Better to think like a lawyer and never ask any questions you don’t really want to know the answers to.

It was a girlfriend of mine in L.A. who had first warned me about having the talk. “Don’t ask any questions,” she had said. “The answers will haunt you.” In her case, she resisted asking the questions for a long time, then one day couldn’t stand it anymore and went tearing through her beau’s things until she found all the answers she wanted, and more. Too much more. Afterward, the thrill was gone, and she could never find it again. He felt betrayed, she felt humiliated and it was all over but the lawyers’ bills. When they made love, all she could imagine was her beau making it with all the gals in the photos she had found. Yucko. Who the heck needs that?

I want my beau to stay shiny and new, and I want to stay that way for him, too.

So far, it has worked. We have retained every bit of the verve. We still shine to each other. Neither one of us thinks of the other making it with someone else, ever.

Of course, some tiny details of past lives do come out here and there inadvertently once in a while. One time, for example, while perusing some books on a shelf, I found some loopy cursive inscriptions on a few title pages. But I knew better than to ask any questions. And I never will. I just raised an eyebrow, told myself that I was better off for not knowing, that I was psychologically healthier for it. Later, I spit on the books, shoved them into the garbage, and gave them the finger before sending them on their way to the incinerator.



Tell me about your deepest darkest moments of jealousy from YOUR healthy romantic relationship! Secrets submitted anonymously are fine. Next edition, look for them right here on bimbopolitics.com. Send your shameful jealous horrors to jacooz@bimbopolitics.com.