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When we started reading BlogHer Contributing Editor AV Flox's piece on BlogHer.com, "Learning To Fly (Or, "Trying To Date Again After Divorce)", we (or this reader, anyway) expected the usual, trenchant commentary on all things love and relationships--her "beat" on BlogHer.com. What we didn't expect was to fall into a vivid, sensual memoir that somehow managed to give a voice to women still reeling from broken relationships.
Flox begins with a conversation with her post-divorce lover, someone who is ready to be more of a presence in her life. But she's not ready.
I explained I preferred to spend time one-on-one. Lovers are kind of like start-up ideas. You don't share them until they've crystallized and are off the ground. I don't want to spend the discovery process playing Virgil to a Dante newly navigating the spheres of my life or, worse, trouble-shooting the issues that often result from adding more variables to the relationship equation.
I've always been like this. Friends are forged in a great furnace, they are solid and light as titanium, complete with that impressive fatigue limit. Lovers are like spiderwebs—gorgeous structures of spirals and radials, powerful in their own way, of course, but delicate, too.
We follow Flox into her spider web, which at times is exhilarating and erotic, and other times deeply analytical. Flox has goosebump-inducing, passionate sessions with her lover, and confusing, circular debates:
“It doesn't feel like we're really dating,” he tells me. He doesn't feel integrated into my life. He wants to go places with me and the people I know. He wants the whole experience. I want the individual experience. I analyze the situation in terms of needs, needs that everyone has, but which differ from person to person, and go met or unmet.
He objects to the description of the situation as a question of needs.
“It's a reaction to your behavior pattern,” he says.
“But it originates in your need,” I say. “Which is not being met.”
“I feel like you're putting this on me.”
“I'm not putting this on you or me,” I say. “I'm saying you have a need, which is not unusual, but which nevertheless I am not meeting.”
“I prefer 'dynamic.'”
I sigh. “I feel we're debating the emotional equivalent of the double-slit experiment. Particles or waves? Both!”
Flox's post doesn't offer up advice for the newly separated, or empty words of hope. She's only providing an account of herself, someone not defeated by a relationship and willing to be taken up like a piece of flotsom into this sea of emotion until she builds her own vessel and can navigate it with certainty.
For her fearless approach, and some really amazing writing, we congratulate AV Flox for being the BlogHer of the Week.
Thanks to everyone for continuing to send in your nominated posts.
Remember to nominate individual posts, not entire blogs, and keep them
coming! If you want to check out all the BlogHer of the Week posts, check out the BlogHer of the Week archive.
Best,
--Jory
For Elisa, Jory and Lisa
BlogHer Co-founders
