Do some relationships have a “use-by” date? Is some love ever-lasting?  Is a divorce or a break up an example of a “failed relationship.”  If I have one date with someone and then realize that person is never willing to have a second date - they don’t call, they are evasive, they give me a fake phone number at the end of the date - have I failed?

I was talking to Wendy Strgar, CEO of Good Clean Love, a line of earth-friendly, all natural, love and intimacy products.  Wendy’s interest extends well beyond making earth-sustainable products to making love sustainable. Wendy has a lot of great ideas to revitalize relationships, to spice-up relationships, to help people make their relationship sweet and sexy and successful.

At the other end of the relationship spectrum, I interviewed Ian Coburn about his failures to find relationship. Ian has some great insights into the attitudes and behaviors that increase the likelihood of getting a date and of getting a second date.  He’s a funny guy and his advice all comes from his personal failures, which makes the advice feel more “real” than some other dating experts I’ve encountered.
And on next week’s show I talk to Julia Allison and Mary Rambin, hosts of TMI Weekly, a lifestyle video-cast, about dating and sex in the world of upwardly mobile, successful twenty-somethings.  They’re two beautiful, successful women, both looking for love, but finding dates, and often not even finding dates.

I’m wondering, is all love some version of the same basic thing, like all light is fundamentally the same.  And like light, sometimes when we love it’s a candle - beautiful, romantic, but temporary.  And sometimes when we love, it’s a star - also beautiful and romantic - maybe not everlasting, but certainly lasting beyond our human experience of time.

Last year I interviewed Brian Swimme, cosmologist and author.  He talked about the attraction found throughout the known universe - gravity, electricity, atomic strong and weak bonds.  Swimme talked about love as that fundamental universal attraction made conscious.  If I understood him correctly, he speculated that perhaps that was our human “purpose”, to turn this fundamental attractive force into love.

I was interviewing Ian Coburn, author of “God is a Woman: Dating Disasters“, and he suggested that perhaps men and women often have so much trouble understanding each other is because men are, in general, more literal, and women, in general, more behavioral.

Ian is a “recovering” stand-up comic who has written a pretty good handbook about dating.  Instead of talking about his “successes”, Ian writes about his “failures” with women, and what lessons he learned.  Ian’s observations come from his experiences in the dating world. He’s a funny guy, so it’s a funny book, and it gave me a lot to think about.

Ian suggested that men need to pay attention to a woman’s behavior more than her words.  He’s not suggesting that men ignore women’s boundaries.  He understands that “no” must mean “no”.  He just notices how often, while on a date, a woman will say something like “I’m taking a break from dating.”  In the past, he would believe her words and not pursue more dates.  Weeks later he’d see the same woman now happily dating some other guy.  His “aha”?  He would have been better served to pay attention to the woman’s behavior, the fact that she was actually on a date while saying she wasn’t interested in dating.

On the other hand, Ian finds himself consoling female friends when, while on a nice date, the guy says something like “I’m taking a break from dating,” and then drops out of sight after the date.  His advice to women?  Believe the guy’s words, not his actions.

What do you think, is it a gender thing?  Do you believe the words or the behavior?

A dear friend just passed along a video clip that brought a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye.  It’s titled “Are You Going To Finish Strong?“  It’s about perseverance and believing in yourself.  Watching the video reminds of the Confucian saying:  “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.”

I am ever amazed at the strength of our human spirit.  Watching toddlers learning to walk, they fall down onto their diapers 10 or 20 times a day for months - hundreds, maybe thousands of times.  And yet, after all that failure, somehow, most of us eventually walk, run, jump, skip.  At one of my workshops I watched a participant, unaided, gracefully sit on the floor, and just as gracefully, unaided, stand and move about the room sharing hugs.  No big deal, right?  Well maybe no big deal for me, but this participant had only one leg (his left leg having been amputated).  I asked how he ever learned to sit, stand and move so fluidly.  “Because I had to,” he replied.

We have our heart broken, yet we love again.  We re-marry, knowing the uncertainty of love in this uncertain age, and the pain of divorce.  We raise children, even as we try to heal the wounds inflicted on us from our own childhood.  We start new careers, even though our last career wasn’t so very fulfilling.  We risk intimate connection knowing full well that our vulnerability is sometimes the path to feeling strong and whole, and sometimes the path to feeling like a doormat.

Somehow, with just a little encouragement, so many of us learn to “finish strong”.  Will you?

I interviewed a courtesan for my podcast, Rebecca Deos, and it got me thinking about why people hire courtesans, escorts, and the like.  What could be worth so much money (hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars)?  I know some of it is about sex without fear of rejection, yet every escort I know, and I happen to know more than a few, tell me stories about customers who were hiring something much more than uncomplicated coupling.

My friend and mentor, the late Stan Dale lived in a geisha house for the better part of a year about 50 years ago.  He told me: “Living in the geisha house was the single most important event in my [then] twenty-seven years.  [Before I lived there ] I thought I knew everything about sex. [But at the Geisha house] there was no ’sex,’ intercourse…What I learned was sense and reverence…when I got back from Japan, I had learned to look at life in a whole new way, and had learned about reverence, which is how a high geisha treats her clients.”

I dream of a world where every human being was trained in the arts of the Geisha, the courtesan, the high-priced escort. A world where we would learn to look at each other with eyes that see each others’ wisdom, beauty, sexiness, creativity.  A world where we could learn about our bodies and our sexuality, learn to celebrate our senses, free ourselves from shame and fear, and learn to integrate love and intimacy into our sexuality.

As Stan once said “When people get a chance to touch heart, body, and soul, it’s an opening to feel the magic of their humanity.”

It was a pretty typical urban scene.  The setting: a weekday morning at rush hour in a Metro station in an upscale neighborhood in Washington, DC.  A young guy in jeans, a long-sleeve tee shirt and a baseball cap finds a spot where there’s good foot traffic, takes out his violin, puts the case open for tips and begins to play.

He plays, extremely well, for about three quarters of an hour.  Approximately 1,100 people, mostly mid-level bureaucrats on their way to their government jobs, pass him, hurrying to work.

What would you do?  Stop and listen?  For how long?  Risk being late to appreciate a street musician?  Drop a coin or a dollar in the case and keep walking?  Ignore him?  Does it matter how good or bad he is, how well he plays?

It turns out the whole scene was arranged by the Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an assessment of public taste: In a banal setting, at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

The violinist was the world-renowned classical violinist Joshua Bell.  The songs were some of the most celebrated masterpieces of classical music.  The violin is one of the most valuable in the world today (A Stradivarius that Bell paid $3.5 million for).  The acoustics in the station were surprisingly good.

Any guess about what happened?  Do you think a crowd gathered?  How much do you think he earned?

In the 45 minutes that Joshua Bell played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for awhile.  About 20 gave him money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  When he finished playing silence took over.  No one applauded nor was there any recognition - to be completely accurate, one woman recognized him, had seen him in concert, and left a $20 tip. Not counting that $20, he collected $32.17.  Yes, some gave pennies.  (”Actually,” Bell said with a laugh, “that’s not so bad, considering. That’s 40 bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn’t have to pay an agent.”)

Watching the video and reading people’s comments is painful and fascinating.  I keep wondering what I would have done?  How much beauty do I miss each day? As I was trying to think of some clever ending to this piece I stumbled on this quote, which is exactly what I wanted to say.  “There’s beauty all around our paths, if but our watchful eyes can trace it midst familiar things, and through their lowly guise.” -Felicia D Hemans.