Relationship Advice – 5 Wise Answers to the Question: What is love?

Just after Valentine’s Day is the perfect time for this discussion while some of you are still basking in the afterglow.

People are so lost in, and confused by, what they consider to be love these days; it is time we sorted this out once and for all, and set the record straight.

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These might be the wisest words I have ever written:

Only fools believe sex and love are related!

Sex and its effects are temporary while “true love” lasts your entire life no matter what transpires.

Love is built or destroyed by the qualities of a person’s character.

Empathy, compassion, morals, scruples, intelligence, and integrity are reasons to fall for someone possessing most or ideally all six of these character traits.

Physical appearance, voice, scent, taste, and a knowing touch are reasons to have sex, but they ARE NOT legitimate reasons for thinking we are in love.

For far too many people, their idea of love speaks of “loving feelings” which are usually strongest after sex but weaken again with time. How many times have we seen or heard the words:

“I am SO in love right now!”

This is NOT love. If you need further clarification, my book offers science-based explanations of sex and its effects, as well as the biological imperatives which drive us to partner up. Don’t worry, it’s a light-ish read.

Just because you choose to be in a committed relationship, DOES NOT mean you are in love.

You cannot force love into a sexual relationship even if it comes with the added perks of companionship, convenience,  and security. You may “love” being in a relationship, but this IS NOT the same as being “in love”.

If you ever experience true love, you will find it is a CONSTANT CONDITION that can only be altered by changes in your partner’s character.

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Relationship Advice – Today’s Word is Feckless

feck·less – [ˈfekləs] – ADJECTIVE – lacking initiative or strength of character; irresponsible.

I must thank Shelby Kent Stewart {A great writer, author, and blogger. Find her and follow her.} for adding this new word to my vocabulary. Honestly, I don’t know how I missed this one as it is “right up my alley”, so to speak.

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Shelby has read and reviewed Ms. Creant–thanks for that, by the way– and queried, perhaps rhetorically, ‘Why are feckless women so drawn to me?’, which, after looking up the meaning, I pondered for some time. I came up with nothing concrete. To be conscious, you must be self-aware, and to be self-aware, you must self-examine. I flipped the question to read:

Why am I so drawn to feckless women?

And presto, answers began to emerge.

I have been saving, or attempting to save, damsels in distress for as long as I can remember. I always fall for the classic femme fatale types, and the results are ALWAYS the same.

femme fa·tale – [fem fəˈtäl]-  NOUN – an attractive and seductive woman, especially one who will ultimately bring disaster to a man who becomes involved with her.

You save them by whisking them away from their troubles, whether real or imagined, to a place of relative safety–usually your place–where you begin to explore all their damage so you might set about repairing them. At first they are grateful, and they show their gratitude by rewarding you with sex. This keeps you motivated to continue to care for them even though there is a voice inside you screaming: This is NOT the type of woman you want! You ignore the screams because you are busy with your new repair project. Before you know it, a year of honeymoon bliss has gone by, and somewhere along the way you uttered the words: “I love you.”, usually in reply to their having said it first. It is here where you have committed yourself, but the screaming persists.

They absolutely smother you with love and affection on a level you never imagined possible.

BINGO! There it is!

Once the fog of sex begins to lift as the honeymoon period ends, you begin to see how your repair work is coming along. You got them the help they needed to change their lives. You cared for them in every way you could think of. You encouraged them to get a job while building a career for themselves, so they would never be reliant on men again. You dropped everything important in your life, that you should have been focusing on, to assist them in rising like a phoenix from the ashes of their former selves. You are proud of yourself for your altruism. You consistently promote the idea that through awareness, growth, and change, they could leave their past behind to become someone truly fantastic–someone who could even silence the screaming voice within you. You want what is best for them, but in truth you are selfishly attempting to build what you have been unable to find.

Here, Shelby, is the revelatory bit.

What happens when you are working harder on them than they are on themselves?

Enter their fecklessness.

You notice only a minimal effort being applied to their life-building so you create a plan for them to follow, but because ‘Organization is hard.’, you end up doing most of it. They mask their lack of initiative with the cries of the consummate damsel in distress:

HELP ME! HELP ME!

SAVE ME! SAVE ME!

I’M SO VULNERABLE!

You discover their lack of character when they freely tell you how this man or that man is doing stuff FOR THEM in answer to their pleas for help. It is as though they think you might rush to join the herd competing for her affection. You point out this backsliding, as well as the list of previous mistakes they have made in similar situations , but it falls on deaf ears. Their irresponsibility is evident as they would much rather be cultivating and shopping the numerous offers they receive from men on the Internet, than focusing on the work you have been pushing them to complete. You are no longer a part of an easy solution; YOU are now the problem. The guys on the web are quick to reinforce this idea–manipulating easy prey–by telling them: ‘How different things would be if only. . . ‘

It should be noted how quickly feckless women fall in and out of love based on their “What have you done for me lately?” mindset. You and YOUR plan to make them someone worth knowing is abandoned in favor of immediate gratification.

 

I admit it, we are clueless.

It took me four decades, to finally have an inkling. You can get well ahead of the curve by reading Ms. Creant, or you can let time and experience be your teacher. It’s your call; but as one who did it the hard way, I assure you I would have much rather read a book, had one like this existed in my youth.

Author Truths for Beginners (Part 10)

What happens when there are more books than readers?

We are getting close.

Way to go mass media. Thanks to you, readership is in decline. Who saw that coming? The answer is everyone did, way back when it began in the1960’s. As is typical with the human species, we thought someone else would handle it.

When you couple media addiction to an educational system designed to disengage all but the most pliable minds, we find ourselves with a societal problem that goes way beyond the book marketplace; but I won’t go off on this tangent. Instead, we will get back to why it will suck to be you if you decide to become one of us.

Trust the picture!

Look how much fun authors have.

Your author experience will mostly be decided by your expectations, your attitude, your budget, your commitment, and your reviews.

If you hold onto the best parts of yourself and enter into this well-informed, you can navigate these treacherous waters to find yourself in a strange new world full of worthwhile people who make your day a bit brighter.

Before you say I always wanted to be an author, be certain you are a writer or at least a good storyteller. Writing skills can be learned, but the ability to create an original story, and tell it in a unique way that captivates readers is what makes some writers truly special.

Don’t hone your skills by laying out $6000.00 to try to make a success of a three-star book. Try to get some short stories published first. Who knows, if it turns out you are really good, you may find a publisher who will foot the bill.

I wrote this blog series to let people see into our world. Being an author is not all gala dinners, cocktail parties, and book signings as television depicts; far from, and it is definitely not for people who are wearing blinders.

This is a real get up and get to work business 90% of the time, which is why we can get a little bit nuts with the other 10%.

Not all of it sucks if you keep a sense of humor or act a little crazy.

There’s always therapy, various coping and escape mechanisms, or some combination thereof.

I see drunk naked visit to my therapist in that sentence.

She’ll love it!

I tease my muse, at the end of yet another week in author hell, that I am truly ready to off myself. I detail how I will use the shower curtain rod, or the closet bar, or the plant hook in the living-room to hang myself just as soon as I can find my old cub-scout knot tying manual so I can make a proper noose. The left side of my brain always ruins the moment with mental images of me sitting on the floor rubbing my bruised ass while covered in a shower curtain, or clothes, or plaster dust. This is not how an authors life should end. It should be outlandish and romantic . . .

He kissed her and turned to run into the burning building across the street to save the crying baby. He never saw the speeding liquor delivery truck as he took those final fate-sealing steps.

It’s a start. I’ll polish it up and spring it on her next week.

 

The End.

 

Who is E. A. Barker?
I am a just a boy…
Standing in front of a bookstore…
Asking them to love me.

All kidding aside, I am an occasionally serious researcher who wrote a book about life with women, without having much of the needed foreknowledge of the book biz I shared with you here. Due to unforeseen circumstances beyond my control, I also did not have the working capital necessary to execute the most basic of marketing strategies like the one outlined in this blog. Now, I try to help others avoid the mistakes I made. My book echoes that goal as well.

Ms. Creant: The Wrong Doers! is a non-fiction book chronicling one man’s journey to understand, cope, and make peace with our crazy existence.

The large print 8×10 paperback and hardcover versions of Ms. Creant are available through bookstores and libraries around the globe from Ingram Spark.

ISBNs
978-1-77302-134-8 (Hardcover)
978-1-77302-132-4 (Paperback)
978-1-77302-133-1 (e Book)

The e-book options are many, and all can be viewed at:

http://mscreant.eabarker.com

My website is also the place to find the most comprehensive list of reviews.

© 2018 E. A. Barker

Author Truths for Beginners (Part 9)

And the winner is . . .

NOT YOU!

Indie-authors cannot hang out with the cool kids.

Back in Part 7, I covered the book awards available to indie-authors, but there are other concerns about self-publishing which you should consider before investing in this game.

I was SO naïve going into this, I actually believed success would be about carefully edited quality words being packaged in a book worth keeping in a library. While all the these are important, the truth is self-publishing takes you out of the game. There are a number of mostly invisible barriers to keep pesky new authors out of the gated community of the mainstream publishing world.

They have carefully barricaded themselves in.

They are fearful, so they created an uneven playing field to keep us out:

• If you want to make any royalties at all, your self-published print-on-demand paperback or hardcover will be priced higher than similar offerings coming out of Ingram, even though you published with Ingram Spark. Being “a little pricey” is enough for many bookstores and libraries to look to lower cost books from better known traditionally published authors.
• Many mainstream publications will not review indie releases.
• Some mainstream publications will not review foreign releases.
• Legitimate literary awards will not consider indie releases because they did not go through an editorial selection process.
• Libraries tend to favor homegrown authors when selecting books and they often are influenced by opinions from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, or Booklist—most of which pay little attention to indie-releases.
• If you publish using an AMAZONIAN COMPANY to produce your POD books, it is doubtful you will ever make a sale in a non-Amazonian brick and mortar bookstore. I begged two different neighborhood bookstores to order a friend’s book for me but they refused. They would rather pass on a sale than support the entity that is crushing them. The hostility level is that high.

Sad indeed.

© 2018 E. A. Barker

Who is E. A. Barker?

‘I am a just a boy…
Standing in front of a bookstore…
Asking them to love me.’

All kidding aside, I am an occasionally serious researcher who wrote a book about life with women, without having much of the needed foreknowledge of the book biz I shared with you here. Due to unforeseen circumstances beyond my control, I also did not have the working capital necessary to execute the most basic of marketing strategies like the ones outlined in this blog series. Now, I try to help others avoid the mistakes I made. My book echoes that goal as well.

Ms. Creant: The Wrong Doers! is an entertaining non-fiction book chronicling everything we are not taught, but need to know.

The large print 8×10 paperback and hardcover versions of Ms. Creant are available through bookstores and libraries around the globe from Ingram Spark.

ISBNs
978-1-77302-134-8 (Hardcover)
978-1-77302-132-4 (Paperback)
978-1-77302-133-1 (e Book)

The e-book options are many, and all can be viewed at:

http://mscreant.eabarker.com

My website is also the place to find the most comprehensive list of reviews.