Don’t believe the Hollywood hype, there isn’t just one person right for you, there’s many, and regardless of what type you most closely fit in with, you can’t give up that search for your someone special simply because you haven’t found them yet.

Don’t treat your love life like something supremely special and separate from the other experiences in your life. You’ve probably accomplished a lot, even stuff you may not think is really important or big, but to a lesser person than you, it’s big stuff. But don’t sell yourself short, and don’t sell your experiences short.

There’s a someone out there for you. Trust me, there is. I can’t scientifically prove it, but what with so many people being able to find their true loves and their meaningful relationships, why can’t you? What any other human can do, so can you. You’re the same as me and there’s no reason why you can’t do what I do. And no reason why you and I can’t do what some of the most accomplished individuals in history have done. They’re really no different from us, they just tried a lot of stuff that failed till they were successful. Success is there and you just have to keep trying for it. Sooner or later, success will be yours. And hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, there’s nothing worse than lost experiences because you’re too stubborn to try.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 1): An Introduction

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

Love and Relationships (Part 9): Don’t Give Up!

Please read Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person to help clarify some of the terms. Remember from Part 6 that the Relationship Virgin is: “a person [who] is so cautious of all the bad relationships they’ve gathered from sources other than themselves, that they have accumulated a list of exactly what they want in a mate and what they don’t want in a mate. They usually create an unobtainable perfect mate in their minds, and are scared away from ever beginning a meaningful relationship with anyone or they think no one is ever good enough to begin a relationship with in the first place…I don’t mean these people are physically virgins, but that they are too cautious with their love lives.”

The Relationship Virgin doesn’t quite need to make their ideal mate list if they haven’t already. He or she often over thinks and researches their knowledge of love and relationships through everything but themselves, such as friends, family, books, movies, magazines, internet, etc. And they’ll accumulate so much knowledge without the actual personal experience to back anything up that it becomes very convoluted in their minds about their love lives. This often comes with the Relationship Virgin having listed everything they want in their perfect mate, often so perfect, it is a bit unrealistic for them to ever meet them during their first attempts in the dating world.

You’ll often find many pre-teens in this category, usually females, though most of them get out of that mindset when they start dating different people and start refining their wants in their mates. On the other hand, I’ve known some who never get past that phase who go into their early twenties (or later, as The Forty Year Old Virgin would have us believe) with the same mindset, never having quite had any personal experiences to help refine their lists. In this early-twenties age range and beyond, the Relationship Virgin come in two different extremes, too, though most of Relationship Virgins I’ve observed usually lie somewhere in between both.

On one side is the Awkward Intellectual, who tries to reason their advances into the dating world and over-intellectualize everything so that they become very awkward in social settings and have trouble finding mates or even friends.

On the other end is the Stubborn Independent, who consciously or subconsciously believes they can’t get their ideal mate, so they believe their best course of action is to not date at all, often saying they’re not looking for anyone at the moment.

This isn’t to say that either the Awkward Intellectual or the Stubborn Independent are bad in any way, for most of my friends who fall somewhere between these categories, are some of the most interesting individuals I know. And they probably are so interesting because they’ve been so independent.

It’s not a bad thing to want to be independent either, or to be intellectual in the way you approach your goals, but I’ve noticed that many a Relationship Virgin, no matter where they lie in the spectrum often think relationships wouldn’t add that much to their lives, and they probably think this because they have such trouble finding a suitable mate.

Advice for Relationship Virgins

The solution here for the Relationship Virgin is to reanalyze any lists he or she may have about their ideal mate, and then re-substantiate their list with personal experiences, and cutting out the stuff that wasn’t personally experienced.

And if you don’t have a physically written list yet, write it out, I’m most certain that you have one in your head somewhere already, and you’ve been adding to it for many years. Then for each point on the list, draw it back to where you may have first been drawn to this point. Then determine if it’s something you actually experienced yourself, was this a trait your parents showed you and you know exactly what it feels like to experience it and appreciate it? Or was it something you gleaned from a friend, relative, book, magazine, or movie, where you learned some lesson that the source was able to share with you and you didn’t really experience it for yourself?

I’m not saying it’s bad to take advice from sources other than yourself, but you really have to evaluate what kind of lesson you’re grabbing from it. If a friend of yours is not particularly great at keeping meaningful relationships and shares all their dating secrets with you, don’t take everything they say to heart, especially if you haven’t experienced the same things as they have. Whatever proves to be useful for them in their dating realm and whatever proves to be a meaningful relationship for them is not necessarily going to mean a successful dating secret or meaningful relationship for you.

But your friend has had so much more experience at dating than you have, and they must have some useful information for you to use, right? Not necessarily. The only person who can determine the right way to find their ideal mate is you, and perhaps you don’t have much experience in it so you don’t have any secrets to the dating world, but that’s easily fixed with a few attempts at the dating world yourself.

The reason why so many people have so many tips for lesser experienced daters is because of people being too scared to even try. So even a person who is a very bad dater who may very well be a Clueless Lover and have no idea how to really find a meaningful relationship will have tons of experience to back their dating tips and share it with anyone who has less experience. But is this really the source you want to base your love life off of? Wouldn’t you rather be more independent and figure out the right way to find your ideal mate through your own smarts and trials and errors?

I know, it’s hard if you haven’t had any experience and there are those who want to share theirs with you, and there’s nothing wrong with taking their advice, as long as you’re smart about it. But if you’ve found that even after taking their advice, or being too afraid to take their advice, you’ve really not gotten far in the dating world, maybe its time to step up to the plate and try a few attempts of your own. You’re not that clueless, you’ve been single thus far, and you’ve done a lot already, there’s no reason why the dating world should be any different than anything else you’ve already tried and succeeded in.

I was very much a Relationship Virgin myself, but one of the first things I learned in my relationship was realizing that all my accumulated lists of things that I thought I wanted in a mate were really moot. They weren’t truly substantiated, and they were compiled from mostly movies and magazines I’d encountered.

But the stuff that stayed on my list was all stuff that I had truly personally experienced with my friends and relatives. Some of that changed as I better understood myself and others, but those points never left my list. And at first I thought I was lucky that my mate ended up having many of the points which I knew I wanted, and then many points which I didn’t even know I wanted, but I later came to realize that what I really was lucky in was not that I found my particular mate, but that I decided to commit to the relationship and throw my Relationship Virgin worries to the wind.

If it turned out that my mate and I weren’t meant to stay in a lasting relationship, the experiences I personally experience in the relationship will prove so valuable in my search for my next relationship (if I so choose to find another one), that I would not be scared to revert back to a Relationship Virgin. And that’s simply because I have the experience to back up what I want, and know that I’m not deluding myself with the impossible-to-find perfect mate.

Of course, that’s not to say I wouldn’t be very disappointed and sad to break up. After having learned so much in the short six years we’ve been together, I would be very saddened thinking what I would miss learning in the years to come without my mate sharing it with me.

Advice the Awkward Intellectual

So what if you’re an extreme Awkward Intellectual and you just can’t seem to meet anyone? Practice. I was extremely awkward as a kid, and that stayed with me throughout school, and even now I sometimes feel that social awkwardness tendency when I’m in new and unfamiliar surroundings. But I overcame that by practicing. And I had some pretty embarrassing moments trying to practice, but with each embarrassing moment, I learned more and I became less and less socially awkward. And practicing this is doing anything that you feel socially afraid of doing, may it be asking someone out, or even just talking to some people you’re acquaintances with but don’t really know as friends.

There’s no one way to do it right, you just have to find your own way, and you won’t find that way until you try and practice. And it doesn’t even matter if you fail, you succeeded in the fact that you were able to do it. A failed encounter means nothing in the long run. But even a lucky encounter may mean a lifetime of lasting meaningful relationship(s), whether that be a lover or a friend. So why not just go for it and keep trying different tactics.

I used this tactic during job interviews. It was very excruciating at first as I felt I was horrible at interviewing, but after many failed interviews, I eventually landed a few good interviews and got a job. Then I had to deal with a bunch of co-workers, strangers whom I had nothing much in common with. But I tried different ways of talking with them and I eventually got really good at making small talk (something I was absolutely not gifted with at all before) and even making phone calls (don’t even get me started on how awkward I used to be in this field!). And if I can do it, anyone can do it. At first, it won’t be easy for most people, but if you keep trying, you’ll get good at it, there’s no way to fail except if you don’t try at all.

Advice for the Stubborn Independents

Alright, so what if you’re not socially awkward and that’s not holding you back from a relationship. You’d just rather be independent is all. Sure, many Stubborn Independents make many reasons for not being in the dating world. And I’m sure many of them have good reasons for it. I won’t list them, I’m sure you have many of them to justify your single status.

But hear me out on this one point. Have you ever considered what you may be not gaining by staying single? This isn’t to say that you can only gain positive experiences by being with someone, but you surely do gain huge amounts of experience by simply dating someone who is totally not right for you (and think of what you’d learn from someone who is actually compatible with you!). You certainly can’t deny that having to deal with someone else most certainly ups the experience you will get than simply being alone.

I know a lot of Stubborn Independents who never even dabbled in dating, and they proclaim to me that they aren’t looking for anyone at the moment. To which, I think, if they really knew what they could gain from even a failed relationship (let alone a good one), they wouldn’t really say that. Why would you postpone the chance of finding a great companion who may prove to be the love of your life and be the one who helps you grow into a better person?

Sure, there may be some bad dates and you may feel like there is no one who will ever mesh with you, but if you postpone your search or never even look, what will you really gain from it? More time to learn stuff of yourself?

I’ve learned more stuff being in a relationship than being out of one. And I continue to learn more of myself everyday. And if someday I decide that I need to be on my own to learn more of myself, I can make that decision, but isn’t it better for me to do that after knowing the flip side of being single and being able to make that decision with the experience to back it up?

I think someone who’s been in relationships can make that decision better than someone who hasn’t properly experienced both sides yet. You wouldn’t say that your favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla if that’s the only flavor you’ve ever tried, right? You’d have to first experience chocolate and strawberry and rocky road and maybe even sherbet and frozen yogurt before you could really make that decision. I’m not knocking being single, it may be the best status for many people, but don’t throw out the possibility of being in a relationship (meaningful or not) until you’ve tried it!

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 1): An Introduction

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

Love and Relationships (Part 9): Don’t Give Up!

Please read Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person to help clarify some of the terms. Remember from Part 6 that the Clueless Lover is: “the individual who thinks they are looking for the right person, but truly has no idea who or what they want in a relationship, and simply keep failing at each attempt. We’ll call this individual the Clueless Lover, and I don’t mean these people don’t know what they’re doing in bed, I mean they simply have no clue what it is they want in a relationship.”

The Clueless Lover, who doesn’t quite understand what they are searching for in a lover, leads to two extreme categories, the Relationship Pessimist and the Player, but usually I observe clueless lovers somewhere in between the two.

The Relationship Pessimist is an individual who, after many failed attempts at relationships and not magically finding that perfect relationship that they want but can’t quite describe, becomes depressed and stops looking for dates.

The Player is an individual who has been dating so long but without success that they become jaded to the dating world and don’t look for the qualities they unknowingly want in a mate and just date tons of people, often having emotionally unsatisfying, but physically-heavy relationships.

Early in my own relationship, when I didn’t quite understand the Player, I was often intrigued by them, curious of how they seemed to attract so many mates, until I found out that many of these Players would become Relationship Pessimists and completely stop dating all together. Many a time, I noticed that a Clueless Lover will go back and forth between the Relationship Pessimist and the Player in a seemingly unending cycle between depression and aimlessly doing something about it. I guess there’s not much point to the ability of attracting many mates if you don’t quite know what you’re searching for. And while the sex may be great, that won’t lead to anything emotionally or mentally satisfying in the long run.

It’d be more valuable to have the skill of attracting mates who would prove to be lasting and meaningful relationships. But the real trick to growth for the Clueless Lover, is simply to figure out what he or she wants in a mate, and not to stop at the topical details.

Advice for the Player and the Relationship Pessimist

Knowing that you want a hot, smart and funny mate isn’t really going to help you find your special someone. For the Player, because he or she can easily go out to the dating world and find a date, they must be more specific with their desires in their mate. But I don’t mean in the sense of describing all the physical features in your ideal mate, I mean figuring out what truly makes someone hot to you. And don’t list out a bunch of physical traits like blonde, big boobs, green eyes, tight ass, six packs, etc. What turns you on isn’t just physical, it’s also someone’s character in all their virtues and faults. And yes, someone’s faults can be very attractive to certain people.

And this kind of list will help the Relationship Pessimist, too, in that it will help better show them that their special someone has qualities that is definable and capable of finding. Haven’t you ever noticed that people in lasting relationships usually think all sorts of stuff about their mates, about how their mates are the funniest or the smartest or the nicest? Some which seem unattainable, but really, they believe it with all their hearts, and believe it or not, you can have that, too, if you know what you’re looking for.

I can’t tell you what you would truly find hot and attractive in your mate, this is something each person really has to figure out on their own, but to recognize that you need to do this is the first step in finding that special someone for the Clueless Lover. I recommend trying to write them out, and then refining your list until you can’t refine it anymore. Then with your list of qualities in your ideal mate, use it as a means of figuring out who to go on dates with and who not to. You may have to go on a few dates to determine if someone really matches your ideal mate, and these experiences may change your list, but that’s a good thing. As in anything else, your ideals should always be changing to better fit what you really want as you learn more and more about what you really want.

But the biggest idea here is to know when to say no to someone who you obviously have recognized as someone who doesn’t match your list. In fact, maybe this is why all those online dating sites are so successful with their clients. Their clients have to narrow down everything they want and don’t want in a mate, and then the sites find ways of matching their clients with like-minded people who match the given criteria. These sites also help match people, which isn’t really a problem for the Clueless Lover, so I say, do it the cheap way. Spend a few hours figuring out what you want in an ideal mate, and then use it to say yes or no to dates and then use your dating experiences to better refine your list. I’ll bet that sooner or later you’ll find your perfect someone, even if you don’t believe you can right this moment.

They’re really not that hard to find, people are all sorts of types and qualities, and someone out there has the right kind for you, it’s just a matter of figuring out what you truly want in your mate.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 1): An Introduction

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

Love and Relationships (Part 9): Don’t Give Up!

This entry, and the ones following, are going to cover what I think many of my single friends misunderstand about romantic relationships. I write this for all the people who say they don’t understand why they can’t find love in their lives. And I write for those who, after having been misled by failed relationships or non-relationships, proclaim they don’t need love or aren’t looking for a relationship in their lives. This isn’t for those who have experienced successful relationships. I believe these individuals should already know what I have to say below (or some version of it), and could probably teach me a thing or two. But if you’re someone about to give up on finding love and developing meaningful relationships, I hope I can persuade you otherwise.

I think some of the biggest factors that keep people from finding or committing to meaningful relationships is simply not knowing what can be obtained from such a relationship. Not because they don’t want to be in a meaningful relationship, but because they don’t understand what a meaningful relationship is and how to favorably find a mate to share such a relationship.

FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON

Sure, there’s lots to gain from meaningful relationships, but what if you haven’t found the right person yet? My observations of myself and other twenty-somethings, I’ve found two different extremes that hold people back from finding the right person.

The first is the individual who thinks they are looking for the right person, but truly has no idea who or what they want in a relationship, and simply keep failing at each attempt. We’ll call this individual the Clueless Lover, and I don’t mean these people don’t know what they’re doing in bed, I mean they simply have no clue what it is they want in a relationship.

The second extreme is where a person is so cautious of all the bad relationships they’ve gathered from sources other than themselves, that they have accumulated a list of exactly what they want in a mate and what they don’t want in a mate. They usually create an unobtainable perfect mate in their minds, and are scared away from ever beginning a meaningful relationship with anyone or they think no one is ever good enough to begin a relationship with in the first place. I’ll call this latter individual the Relationship Virgin, and again, I don’t mean these people are physically virgins, but that they are too cautious with their love lives.

And there’s no shame in being one or the other, or even something in between. I simply give names to them to more easily identify these types, so that those who want to can try out the more appropriate advice I give for each type. In the next parts 7 and 8, I’ll explain in detail the Clueless Lover and the Relationship Virgin, and what they can do to find their right person.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 1): An Introduction

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

Love and Relationships (Part 9): Don’t Give Up!

How can relationships help us become more independent? Because our relationships with other people and how we deal with them says a lot more about ourselves than just observing how we deal and live with ourselves. And learning more about ourselves and our relationship with others is a key way in understanding how to be independent and even gaging how independent we are.

This was a lesson that took me years to really understand. At first I thought, yeah, I know how I deal with other people. I think before I talk to others, I try to not say stupid things and to have meaningful conversation with others. I always tried my best to do what I thought was helpful to others and I always aimed to be caring and thoughtful. But what I thought I understood in how I dealt with other people was a version of myself that I wanted to believe I was, not quite the reality of how I was really dealing with other people.

For you see, there’s a different kind of mentality that happens when all you deal with on a day to day basis is having to live with yourself and being accountable to only yourself versus dealing with someone else who is very close to you and having to live with him or her in your life and being accountable to not just yourself but your significant other, too.

After all, if you’re the only one who observes yourself and measures your successes and failures, wouldn’t that make your judging system a bit too subjective? If you didn’t like something about yourself, you could simply not look at that part of yourself, or even worse, subconsciously hide it from yourself, so you’re not even aware that you’re missing this vital flaw that you would want to fix.

When you have a significant other, you open your horizons and the observations made about yourself become more objective, because you have to account to someone who isn’t yourself. Suddenly, you have a partner in observing how you act and deal with others, and even how you deal with yourself. And suddenly, you have someone else that you can closely observe and give feedback for, too.

It was realizing this in my relationship that helped me make leaps and bounds in understanding who I truly was when dealing with others and myself. I realized I had a flawed perception of myself, and I wasn’t really showing others this independent person that I wanted to believe I was. And I couldn’t have realized this without my significant other pointing it out to me, so that I could work on them and better myself. Although it wasn’t always pleasant for me to hear these truths, I eventually saw them as wonderful pieces of truth which would lead to helping me be a better individual. And the feedback I was able to give in return was truly beneficial for my own growth as much as my love’s.

It’s like having an accountability system to keep you truthful to yourself, and I can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t want to have that in their life unless they were afraid of what they would find out about themselves. And yes, while it may be scary to find out unfavorable stuff about yourself, you still have that significant other to help you work out those kinks and make yourself more favorable to yourself and others. In the long run, it all becomes very worthwhile.

A WORD OF CAUTION REGARDING THE ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM

Now, I do want to caution that this significant other accountability system works best if your significant other and yourself are truly committed to making it work for yourselves. It most definitely will not work to its full potential if only one of you wants to commit to it.

I had a friend who had gone through many relationships and had come to the conclusion that she truly wanted a relationship in which she could grow and learn. On top of that, she was an immensely independent female seeking the same in her mate. At the time, she was going out with a mutual friend of ours, who said he wanted the same, but in almost every action he did, he showed that he really didn’t mean what he said. This really hurt her relationship with him and many a time, she would run to me, asking for advice in how to grow in her relationship with her boyfriend.

At the time, I wondered why she didn’t ask the same questions to her boyfriend, but in hindsight, I realize that if her boyfriend was open to it, she could have asked her boyfriend instead of me. And together they could have grown and learned so much from each other, if only they had both wanted that from the relationship. Needless to say, their relationship didn’t last past a few months, and their friendship is pretty much obsolete now.

It can be very harmful to be in a relationship where you seek an atmosphere for growth and learning but your mate doesn’t, but if you have the right attitude about your own progress, you can also learn an immense amount about yourself, as my friend did, for she took the knowledge she gained from her failed relationship and often applies it to her current relationships.

While you can gain so much with a partner who shares the same goals for the relationship, its understandable that finding such a mate can be difficult or may take some time to find. But while you’re searching, you might as well work as much on yourself as you can and try to more specifically shape your desires for yourself and your ideal mate. No need to waste the time you have before you’re able to find that special someone who shares similar goals as you do.

The more effort you put into working on yourself and figuring out what you want in a mate, the more you will find and/or attract mates who will be more to your liking. Doesn’t it make sense that someone who has his or her goals and desires defined has more of a chance of obtaining them? I’m not even sure how one who had no ideas what they want would achieve anything, except by sheer luck.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 1): An Introduction

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

Love and Relationships (Part 9): Don’t Give Up!

How can you be independent while being in a relationship? Don’t independent people by definition not need to depend on anyone else? Isn’t being in a relationship having to depend on someone else, therefore completely opposite? There is a lot of confusion among people, especially young people like myself, with how to negotiate our independent lives with our relationship lives. Perhaps you remember the Seinfeld episode outlining the eternal struggle between “Relationship George” and “Independent George” (here’s an excerpt explaining it), where George Costanza struggles to keep the two spheres of his life apart. While the show was abstract in exactly how this struggle might manifest itself, the episode works beautifully to illustrate how important people take their independence, and what efforts they put into maintaining it.

What is independence?

The United States of America, the country in which I live, talks a lot about independence and freedom, or rather they say the words independence and freedom, usually together. However, very little discussion actually goes on in this society about what independence is, what it’s not, and how it can grow smaller or larger. Freedom, beyond that, is often spoken of as synonymous with independence, so much so that there’s actually been a complete bastardization of the two concepts. We use the word independence when we mean freedom, and vice versa.

Independence is not freedom. Independence is more synonymous with Self-Reliance, which is the ability to have a self-sustainable wellbeing. Most of us young’uns living in the U.S. first experience independence when we go off to college or get kicked out of our parents’ house, and are for the first time in charge of what we do with every moment of our time and realizing that we have to feed ourselves or die of starvation, or at the very least, invite the Hangry Monster to be our constant companion.

Freedom, however, suggests the ability to act autonomously, without oversight or regulation. That’s the feeling that many of us college students get when we realize that we still need to listen to what our parents say, because it is still our parents who pay for our college educations, and someone has to front us the money to buy the food we put into our mouths. We have that independence to buy what food we want and to feed ourselves when we want, and to go or not go to class whenever we want, but perhaps we don’t have the freedom to decide exactly which school we study at or what majors we want to study. Or if you have a more freedom-loving parent who lets you decide what school you go attend and what majors to study, perhaps your freedoms are held back from the college institution you are attending, which often have strict rules on how to pass classes and what classes are needed in order to graduate.

Freedom is relatively similar to independence in many ways, but both are essentially quite different. One can have independence, but no freedom, such as in situations where your ability to move are stifled by governmental (or some other institutional) arbitration, but in which you live an altogether happy care-free life where you’re happy in your position and do not feel lack. For many youngsters, this may be like being a happy college kid, living up their new-found freedoms with your parents money, drinking at happening frat parties while under-aged, and experimenting with new and psychedelic drugs. However, these college kids still have certain institutions watching over them, such as their professors, parents, college police or the actual police, who punish them when they are caught getting out of hand with things such as not keeping up with their academics, over-spending on their credit cards, making too much noise at a party, drunk-driving, and many others.

You can also have freedom, but no independence, such as being weakened and lost in the wilderness, constantly relying on the kindness, strength and abilities of others to get you by. Independence can be said to be the power we give ourselves to act, and perhaps freedom can be defined by the power allowed to us by the world and by others. This is not so common amongst youngsters or most anyone, since almost everyone lives under some sort of institution, but you could compare it to those young Americans who backpack through Europe, and work at odd jobs in order to continue moving through the countries. These kids aren’t necessarily hindered in their freedom to travel around, and they probably get to bypass paying taxes and all sorts of other institutionalized hindrances (since they’re American citizens, not European citizens), but as they may not have much financially, they are at the will of those who will employ them on a short term basis or those who are kind enough to give them charities so that they can eat and have shelter overhead.

In short, independence has to do with you, your mindset and attitude of the way you relate to the world. Are you strong enough to act on your own, or are you in constant need of the help from others, running around completely blind? Independence is not something that you have to run towards or fight for, it’s more ethereal. Unlike freedom, independence can never be taken from us, we have to give it away. At least this is the case if we are aware that we have our own independence in the first place, but that’s a whole different article to write about (which I may write in the future). As for independence in the realm of relationships, this intro about independence will hopefully suffice.

The Myth of Independence

When I was single (I’m in the sixth year of my loving relationship), I was an extremely successful student throughout school and I was quite successful at anything I put my energies into, whether it be sports or personal goals. I promised myself that I would never become one of those needy people in relationships like I saw on television or in the movies. I would be independent, I would continue my successes with the strengths of my own willpower, and I would try to find a potential mate who would support my independence and never “interfere” with my goals. Of course, my experience was mostly from having watched relationships on television, where in order to create conflict and drama, sitcom couples would entrap their spouses with clever coercion. I was blissfully ignorant that, in fact, real-life healthy couples dealt with more complex issues that couldn’t be summarized in 22 minutes of commercially-interrupted episodes.

Beyond that, there are independent “ideals” that exist in our society, perhaps foremost being the hero, and even more so, the superhero. Superman, Spider-man, and Batman are independent powerful individuals, capable of single-handedly thwarting evil plans. They, usually, do not act with oversight or regulation that is imposed on them, and even more importantly, they’re best known as loners. They kill, maim, entrap, coerce, and even steal when necessary. In the world in which we live, it is nearly impossible to act with such independence, but NOT because of the world itself. We are social beings, with a feeling of responsibility to allow for the natural flow of societal barriers in dealing with crime and injustice. Very few of us are heroes, and the heroes we have are ironically often very specific in exactly when and where they’re heroes. After all, there’s an inherent paradox even in independence and heroics, why sacrifice for others if it’s unnecessary, and does sacrificing yourself not entail a betrayal of independence?

Real independence seems extremely boring in comparison, which is why it’s usually never talked about. Real independence is a lifelong journey, requiring no bold moves, no heroics, no great acts of charity or innovation, and even more confusingly, it can be done in the most warm comforting relationships. However, real independence is just as rare to find as a real hero, but it’s much more powerful.

Learning Independence

You can not learn to be independent without the help of another. It’s a key paradox of life. On our own, we lack the abilities to act with independent spirit in the world. When we are born, we are allowed guardians who look after us, who make sure our learning stage is not stifled by danger and pain. When we move into the world, we’re not independently capable of achieving our goals, so we make partnerships with companies, peers, and even strangers in agreements where we share money, products, skills, and time. In this stage of entering society, we are not independent, but we’re learning. We’re learning how to problem solve, we’re learning what it looks and feels like to be static and frozen with fear. We leave the nest with a gigantic set of unknowns, and we slowly cross them off, making mental notes on all our experiences. We make compromises here and there only to be able to peak into an important area of understanding that we need to learn.

In each of us burns a desire to be independent. For some, the burn is hot and wild, lashing out at others and at the world angrily. For others, the burn is only warm embers, barely providing much energy at all. We all have the yearning to be able to act without needing to consult with another person, we wish to be supermen who can exist as puppeteers of the world instead of being subject to its whims. But with all the baggage that gets added to independence, most of it is bullshit, excuses. “If only my boss would do this,” or “As soon as I get enough money I’ll do that,” or the most common “I’d never be able to do that.”

There are two components of independence. The first is the will to act. Without the self-created willpower to drive forward, to act confidently in reaching for a goal, you’ll require others to provide that drive for you. The second component is wisdom. You have a goal, now you need to see your way through all the steps and past all the obstacles, and that takes well-earned knowledge and experience. You can have the deadliest weapon in the world, but without the wisdom to aim it, you’re powerless.

Relationships for Independence

Wisdom and willpower are two things that a relationship is geared to help you learn.

Love, both in graciousness and in receipt, is the greatest willpower possible. Learning to love, learning to act on love, and learning to reason through love are skills you can only learn with the help of another. All other driving desires are weak and unsatisfying in comparison, disallowing a confident, self-reliant intent and action. Once you’re free to say “I’m doing this because I want to help,” and that desire comes from a mature inner self for totally unselfish reasons, you’ve discovered a world of independence and willpower that cannot be found outside of a loving relationship. And when that independence and willpower is reciprocated to you by your loved one, there probably is not other freeing feeling you will ever feel in your lifetime in the realm of relationships or even in all other realms of experiences. You will have discovered a powerful and extremely meaningful independence and a never-ending pool of willpower that no movie or television show will every come close to showing you. Perhaps it can only be discussed and shared properly by people who have already experienced such an independence.

Wisdom is an ethereal power, but it is grounded in the wisdom we have of ourselves. You do things a certain way that you’re not aware of, and you’ll continue to be unaware of those tendencies until another is kind enough to point them out to you. In short, you fuck everything up without any one else’s help.

The truth is, a successful and meaningful relationship will further strengthen your independence, not hinder it in any way. Independence is not the decision you make to be alone, independence is not the rejection of society. Independence is when you’ve been given gifts of willpower and wisdom that empower you to act confidently, powerfully, efficiently, and effectively. It is a state of mind, in which actions become nearly effortless.

Relationship Dynamic

Acting independently and being in a relationship are not mutually exclusive states, and beyond that, they reinforce each other’s power and satisfaction. Please understand though that not all relationships will allow you to become more independent. If you are in a relationship that does not help you grow, that stifles your creativity and which leaves you feeling angry, depressed, or afraid on a consistent basis, please consider changing your situation. Working towards conscious confident independent action does not require you to act alone, or be alone. Because, ultimately, love is selfless, a truly loving partner cherishes opportunities to help you become more self-reliant, able, and independent. This includes helping you become independent even of them and their aid to you, not so that you can eventually reject them, but quite simply for your happiness and well-being.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 1): An Introduction

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 3): Communication

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

Love and Relationships (Part 9): Don’t Give Up!

I’ll assume you have already decided that it’ll be cheaper and safer for you in the long run to have health insurance rather than not have it. Even if you haven’t already decided that, all the sites and health insurance salesmen you’ll be encountering will sell it to you quite well, so I won’t need to get into that here for you. I will say that when you’ve hurt yourself or become ill, the last thing you want to be doing is weighing the cost vs. benefit of making yourself better. Save yourself a great amount of that worry and get the insurance.

Ideally, the best way to not get fucked over by health insurance is to get a kick ass job that gives you group health insurance coverage and rates. However, if that’s not available to you, then the following should prove useful for you:

1. Don’t dare let yourself go uninsured for 63 days or more. And if you have never had health insurance before, get it asap, don’t dare wait till you’re sick or catch up to the next age group. And please, keep your health insurance paperwork in a safe place. Waiting will not help you, and the insurance companies make damn sure of taking advantage of people who have never had insurance before, or they’ve let time go by and somehow been uninsured for more than 63 days. According to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), 63 days break without insurance is allowed to you until you get your next health insurance plan to maintain creditable coverage for yourself. What is creditable coverage? It’s proof to insurance companies that you don’t have some preexisting condition for which they can deny you future coverage for care.

Insurance companies want to be safe from all the horrible sickos from taking advantage of them, so they’ve implemented a system that denies people insurance/care/coverage if they may possibly have these high costing illnesses. And even if you may not know you have some illness, insurance companies aren’t going to take that chance, if they see that you may have any gaps in creditable coverage (63 days or more), they will find ways to prevent you from getting certain benefits on the health plans you may be paying full price for, or worse, they will find some way to deny you coverage in the first place.

The way to bypass this is to get insured by any health insurance company you can as soon as you can, while you’re young and healthy. Even if you don’t care about what coverage you’re getting, just get something with the cheapest monthly cost. This is the easiest way to get under the health insurances’ wing, and ensure that no one can deny you future coverage for some illness they may possibly find in you.

When I switched insurance plans from Kaiser to Blue Shield, Blue Shield decided they didn’t want to cover some simple blood tests my doctor did on me during a regular physical. Keep in mind that these were simple blood tests that ended up telling me I was as healthy as I could be. Blue Shield’s reason? They said the blood tests were related to benefits for medical conditions that are determined to be Pre-Existing Conditions, and that I had not yet reached my 6-month waiting period from my beginning enrollment date to get any coverage for the blood tests. How that’s so? I don’t know, but hours spent on calling in and asking a million questions didn’t provide any clearer answers or changes in their decision. They told me since I hadn’t waited 6 months, the only way I could get them to cover the blood test was to show them proof of my prior creditable coverage. Thank heavens I had been covered with Kaiser for years before, and that I had thought to get temporary health insurance whenever I didn’t have insurance from the big companies. I showed them the paperwork I had received from my prior health insurance companies, and then my blood tests were suddenly covered.

I’m a relatively healthy youngster, and if they’re going to give me problems with coverage, you know they’ll give anyone a hard time. Give them less ammo to hit you with, get some coverage now, and hold onto those important papers that health insurance companies send to you. I didn’t know what they were till I needed to show them to Blue Shield. Prepare yourself for the worse, it may just happen to you.

2. Get to know the lingo that health insurance companies use. Every company is going to use them slightly differently to hide what their plans really are, but essentially they mean something like this:

- PPO (Preferred Provider Organization): A type of health plan that allows you to choose any doctor you want. You’ll usually be deciding if you want PPO or HMO (defined below). An easy way to think about PPO is that the insurance company gives you a huge list of doctors you can see, and you can choose any of them without getting permission from the insurance company first. If you’re young and healthy, this won’t matter so much since you won’t need to see many specialist doctors. Usually PPO is the preferred plan for older, ailing individuals who want to see the best doctors for whatever ails them. This plan is usually more expensive than HMO’s since you are given more choice.

- HMO (Health Maintenance Organization): A type of health plan where you have to see a doctor which you previously chose with your health insurance company, or you see a doctor that the insurance company chooses for you. You’ll usually be deciding if you want HMO or PPO (defined above). A popular HMO plan is Kaiser Permanente. Although you can still choose any doctor you want within the Kaiser hospitals, you can only go to Kaiser for care, you can’t choose a specialist outside of the Kaiser network. For the young and healthy, HMO’s will probably be a better way to go since they are usually cheaper.

- In and Out of Network: Even if you decide to go with PPO, there is a network of doctors/hospitals/pharmacies/etc. that the insurance company will give to you in order to keep your copays/deductibles/bills cheaper. Basically, if you stay within the network whenever you see a doctor, your benefits will more likely apply to you. If you go outside the network, the benefits will not apply, or you will have a different higher rate to pay. If you’re going to get health insurance, you might as well stay in network, so make sure if you have a doctor you know you want to see, that they are in the network for the insurance company you choose to go with. Doctors and treatments that are in the network are also called “preferred” and those not in the network are also called “non-preferred.”

- Premium: This is just a fancy word for what you pay insurance companies each month. You pay this amount each month, and the insurance companies will hold up their bargain and say you have health insurance with them. If you fail to pay this, then you will most likely be dropped from insurance coverage.

- Co-Pay: This is what you will pay your doctor or pharmacist or whoever is providing some care for you. This is usually a flat rate amount given to you by your insurance company. But be aware that co-pays vary depending on what health services you’re getting. Your office visit co-pay will most likely be cheaper than your ER co-pay, and there may be a different co-pay when you see an eye doctor or dentist. Just think of this as how much you’ll need to pay each time you see the doctor or get a prescription filled. How does it work? Say you see your doctor for a checkup and the full doctor’s fee is $250. Your co-pay is $40, you pay $40 to your doctor, and your insurance company pays up the rest of the $210. I suspect that insurance companies probably make us pay co-pays so that we don’t go see the doctor a billion times without a certain penalty of having to pay some money each time we see the doctor. And of course, whatever they can get us to pay, all the more profit insurance companies can make.

There’s also a thing called co-payment maximum which is similar to deductibles, but it only refers to your co-pay during a year. It’s basically the most you’d ever have to pay in a year in co-pays, but it’s most likely way too high for you to ever meet with only co-pays unless you are seeing the doctor on a daily or weekly basis.

- Deductible: This is probably the loosest word that insurance companies will use to try to trick their customers. So keep your guard up whenever you see this word. A deductible is basically how much you need to pay before the insurance company kicks in with the big benefits that they are advertising to you. Deductibles are usually annual, which means it gets set to zero at the beginning of each year. It’s a running tally of how much you’ve paid (and the amount has to be approved by the insurance company), and as soon as you’ve met that amount, the health insurance says you don’t need to pay anything anymore (unless they have a provision that says you still need to pay co-pays after your deductible has been met).

Oh yeah, and premiums and co-pays usually don’t apply towards your deductible. So if you’re only paying premiums and co-pays, it’s rare that you’d ever reach your full deductible and reap the full benefits of your insurance. Well, one way that you could reach that deductible limit is if you get into some big accident and get huge bills from surgery, ambulance, hospital stays, etc. Another way is by incurring a lot of specialized treatment costs that are deemed by the insurance company to go towards your deductible (such as the blood tests that I mentioned earlier, which they didn’t pay for, but the cost of which went towards filling up my deductible). Look closely at the benefits that health insurance plans offer, most likely, there’s a lot of instances where it says “No charge after deductible is met” or something similar. What it doesn’t say is that this type of treatment often isn’t really covered till after the insurance company has deemed that you have met your full deductible.

If you go for a cheap premium, your deductible is probably pretty high, and probably higher than you’d ever meet unless you do get into some serious accident or get some really bad illness. That type of plan only really saves you a good amount of money if you don’t go to the doctor very often, and only want protection against the costs of major medical needs. And watch out for different deductibles, for example if you have dental coverage, that’s probably got a different deductible than your regular health insurance coverage, so even if you meet your full deductible on regular health insurance, you still may need to pay an additional amount for dental work. Watch out for preferred vs. non-preferred deductibles, too. (The general rule is to stay within your network of service providers). If there’s a way for insurance companies to prevent you from meeting your deductible, you know they’ll do it.

- Co-insurance: Just another term for co-pay. It may refer to the co-pay you are liable to pay after your deductible is met. So basically, another way for insurance companies to get more money from you even after your deductible has been met.

- Co-pay vs. deductible: Although these two should be different, sometimes insurance companies will use the word deductible in place of co-pay. This may be popular in bundled insurance plans that offer dental or vision coverage. Whatever they say, just be aware that these two words mean you’re paying something. Even if you don’t expect to have to see the doctor, try to keep these co-pays and deductibles low if possible. You never know how much you may end up paying in case you do go see the doctor.

- Lifetime Maximum Benefit: The maximum amount of money that your health insurance company will ever pay for you in your entire lifetime. This is usually in the millions, so you don’t really have to worry about this…unless of course you get cancer or AIDS or some other life threatening illness which will most likely mean you’re spending a lot of health care money. It’s basically another safety pre-caution for the insurance companies so that they don’t let their customers bankrupt them, or lower their profits.

- Medical vs. Dental vs. Vision: Though the plans won’t outright say it, it’s most likely that your general medical benefits will differ from your dental and vision. Sometimes your health insurance may not even cover dental or vision. And not only do the benefits differ, but the deductibles and co-pays and maybe your premium may be different depending on how the plan is packaged, and how they’re selling it to you. Be on your guard, get as much information on what is covered in each of these three categories (medical, dental, vision) as possible. Although they shouldn’t be considered different coverages, these three are often separated into different categories and sometimes dental/vision coverage is bundled with your general insurance plan and they may be managed by a totally different company that’s independent of the health insurance company that’s providing your general medical benefits.

3. Read all the small print and try to grasp what they’re saying as much as you can before you sign up with a company. It’s all about small print for health insurance companies. That’s how they make money, and that’s how they get you. Someone on the phone isn’t going to tell you all the small print. Research using the internet. Go to the company sites and devote a few hours to reading and understanding. If you don’t like the internet, get the companies to send you all the literature they have. But don’t ever sign up with a company without at least trying to read the small print. It’s not fun, but it’s going to arm you with some prior knowledge of what your health insurance will be about. Even if you don’t fully understand it, it’s going to be useful that you at least tried to read it beforehand. You’ll later know where you may look for an answer if a problem comes up, and you’ll be able to gauge more readily if they’re trying to screw you a few months or years down the line.

That’s all I can think of for now. But if you have questions about finding or understanding health insurance, please leave a comment and I’ll try to address it.

COMING SOON: HOW BLUE CROSS TRIES TO SELL INSURANCE TO YOUNG PEOPLE

My parents always covered me under their work health insurance plans. It was great, they paid a little bit extra every month, and we all felt safer knowing that we were all covered under some group plan that offered awesome rates and low deductibles and co-pays. I heard of those words at the time, but I had no idea what they really were, and really, they didn’t affect me. My parents put up the money whenever I needed to see a doctor anyway.

Then I got to college and suddenly the college wanted to make sure I was covered with some sort of insurance. Simple enough, got some copies of proof of insurance that I guess my parents had somewhere, and voila, problem solved.

Then came graduation, and suddenly, I wasn’t eligible to be covered under my parents’ insurance plans. Well, that can’t be too hard, I thought, I was able to get a good paying job and find an apartment all on my own, insurance will be just like choosing which cell phone company I wanted to go with — research the prices, look at what they offer, and pick the best one.

Having been pretty masterful at my internet research for cell phones, cars, computers, etc., I went into researching health insurance with a lot of confidence. After an hour, that confidence was pretty much gone.

What happened? Huge teams of sneaky and malicious health insurance underwriters whittled down my mental reserves till my head was swimming in words that had confusing and differing meanings depending on which company I was looking at. Suddenly the words, “deductible,” “copay,” and “premium” were super important, and yet I had no clue what they meant. I tried to wrap my mind around all the possible scenarios. “So I pay a monthly premium which gives me a certain priced copay whenever I go to see the doctor, but when I met some deductible, I could stop paying the copay, but I’d still have to pay the premium, and my premium does or doesn’t count towards my deductible?”

The restrictions are difficult to understand, and they come without explanation. For example, I only qualify for copay at certain kinds of doctors, but when I go to them, the premium only sometimes counts towards the deductible. What happens when I have an emergency and I can’t choose a hospital or doctor on the preferred list, do I need to constantly tell people near me that if I suddenly go unconscious, they have to send me to a preferred hospital? What the hell is HMO and PPO? Why did these guys make so many words that I’ve never heard before?

From one service provider to the next, the plans were completely incomparable to each other. There wasn’t a standard PPO plan or deductible/copay plan that they all conformed to or attempted to compete on. Every company had their own system of packaging and terminology. Perhaps the health insurance companies were afraid people would wonder what the hell they were buying from them, so they invented dozens of words to throw around and confuse people.

Eventually I gave up. I just stuck with the company that my parents had me on all my life — Kaiser Permanente. Seemed simple enough, and since I’m young, it wasn’t too pricey per month. I paid their monthly premium of $134 for an HMO plan and with that I could go to any Kaiser hospital and see a doctor for a $50 copay. Sounded good enough for me. But for some reason, since I moved away from my parents in northern California to southern California, I had to go through some special process and get a new insurance number and fill out some lengthy paperwork. Fine, I did some paperwork, figuring anything was worth having the health insurance.

But then what happened? I didn’t fill it out early enough in the month so Kaiser couldn’t cover me until the month after the next, a full 50 days later. That means that even though I had the money in my hand, and had continuous Kaiser coverage my entire life, they refused to cover me, telling me to go elsewhere for a few weeks. Fine, I’ll go find some temporary insurance somewhere.

Luckily, my college alumni junk mail had some stuff about temporary insurance. So I filled out more paperwork and they approved me right away. Ahh, now I’m good and covered and I don’t have to worry about this shit anymore.

Then I realized I had no insurance covering my teeth! Kaiser doesn’t do that on their general health plan. Well, screw that, I don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars every time I want to see the dentist. I’m supposed to see him at least 2 times a year for cleaning. Oh, but if you pay Kaiser like $20 more a month, you get some dental coverage, though you’ll still have to pay some copay each time. What? Wait, so I have to pay at least $240 a year for my teeth? How is that a benefit when I already have to pay at least a hundred each time I go see the dentist? Why isn’t that covered in the $134 a month premium? That’s already $1608 a year, and that doesn’t include copays or my teeth? And on top of that, all the Kaiser hospitals aren’t even close to my apartment. This is when I started wondering why I decided to choose Kaiser in the first place. So I needed to go back to researching again.

Seems like laziness and health insurance don’t go together, so back to the confusing lingo and plans that don’t quite really tell me what’s going to be covered. I mustered all the brain power I could in reading the small prints on these health insurance websites. And I consider myself a pretty educated individual, I excelled in high school and college, graduating both with many top honors. But when I read this stuff, which I should hope everyone does sooner or later so that they know what’s up with their health plans, I felt like I was reading the US legal code, mumbo jumbo that only the most elite of lawyers could understand. It was like learning to read all over again, and having the vocabulary of a five year old.

Well, after hours of this, I decided to forget understanding exactly what I would get and just go with the lowest premium with what seemed like the most coverage that I could find. I’ll probably get screwed, but I’m in my early twenties, I’m healthy and the premiums seemed like the only loss I would have if I don’t see the doctors.

I eventually went with Blue Shield of California. It was the only plan I could find that actually covered both vision and dental for the low deductible of $1750 with only a premium of $125 a month. On top of that, it was a PPO, a plan that let me choose which doctors I wanted for only a $40 copay, and there were many doctors less than a mile away that I could see. Wow, why the hell did I choose Kaiser in the first place? This one sounds awesome, and I just saved myself at least $1,008 annually (this was based on premium alone).

Being pretty happy with myself, I switched over to Blue Shield and forgot about my health insurance.

But then a few months later I decided I wanted to see a doctor just to make sure I was healthy. My doctor recommended me some immunization shots, and I agreed. And no one asked me for any copay. That’s odd, at Kaiser, I always paid the copay before I could even see a doctor. Did they forget to charge me? I know I’m supposed to pay $40 each visit, that part I at least understood in the fancy underwriting. Oh well, if no one asks for money, I won’t go looking for trouble. And weeks go by. And then suddenly, I get a bill from my doctor and a claim from Blue Shield. Both demanding that I pay my doctor over $200. What the hell? I know I didn’t misread the underwriting that much! I spend an hour calling into Blue Shield and demanding they explain why the hell I owed $200. After going through what feels like secret code language, they say that their underwriters need to review the claim again. But I’ll have to wait a few weeks and see what they say. Great. Thanks for scaring the shit out of me with a $200 bill and now making me wait even longer to get a real answer.

So I wait another week and the claim is adjusted and the price they now say I owe is $40. Ahh, I see. I’m starting to understand why this whole health insurance business is pretty sleazy. The way they work is to overcharge you when they can and then if you catch it, they will correct their “mistake” for you. Well, I thought, that’s not too bad, I am getting a lot of coverage (so I thought at the time) so having to make a few calls every time I notice the bill is wrong isn’t too bad. I did save myself over $1000, after all.

But then a few weeks later, I cut my hand pretty badly on a broken glass, and I realized I needed to go to the emergency room. I’ve been to the emergency room before at Kaiser when I was younger for a somewhat similar injury to my hand, and they made me pay $50 before seeing the ER doctor. With this Blue Shield plan, it was $100. Not too bad, seeing as I could actually get to the ER pretty quickly since there was a Cedars-Sinai Hospital only a few miles away, and this was a hospital that the stars go to, they can’t be too shabby. And I was right, it was the best ER visit I’ve ever had. I was in and out in less than 1.5 hours. And everyone was super nice and attentive to me. I can see why the stars go here. You get treated nice, like a king. And the best part, no one asked me for any health insurance info, or copay or any financial matter till after all the ER care was given to me. At Kaiser, I actually had to provide a credit card to pay them $50 with my injured bleeding hand and actually sign the receipt before I got any care! This new method was much less stressful during my time of emergency, and I approved whole-heartedly.

Until my bill came in. Apparently, there’s an ER doctors fee on top of the $100 copay for the ER hospital fees. What? Why is there two separate bills? Why didn’t I catch this on the underwriting? So I looked back at the small print in my plan to investigate what this is all about and if they actually charged me correctly. What does it say in the small print? It says I don’t have to pay the ER doctor’s fee after the deductible. Oh right, my deductible is $1750, but wait, my premium doesn’t count towards the deductible, and neither do copays. And since I haven’t paid anything that Blue Shield deemed to go towards my deductible, I have to pay the entire doctor’s bill? I call into Blue Shield to get more clarification (as the small print sucks at any clarification), and they say, well, you did save money, we’ve reduced the doctor’s bill so you only have to pay $180 of it. Perhaps their small print should have said that when I go to the ER, I pay $100 plus doctor’s fee till I meet my deductible. It might also help to know that there’s absolutely no hope of meeting your deductible limit unless you have a major accident, and even then, you still might get stuck with big fees.

As I grimaced at the bill I was paying, I kept thinking about the Michael Moore film Sicko, which I’d seen earlier that year. Michael is right about the health industry, it’s pretty screwed up. Just to think, if the US had universal health coverage, all the health insurance lingo would be required to make sense, be uniform, and be clear about what you’re getting. In addition, with universal health coverage, I’d probably have to pay less than I already am, and they may completely do away with copays and deductibles, and hidden fees!

I’m not satisfied with my current plan, but I tolerate it because it’s generally not that much that I have to really pay. But seriously, I’d be willing to pay a little more and not have to deal with the commercial aspect of the insurance. I really believe that in the corporate system that I’m stuck with, there’s almost nothing I can do, including more research, to find myself a more agreeable plan. And unless I get some job with an awesome group plan, or the government decides we can implement universal health insurance, I guess this will have to do.

Then I started thinking about what other people might be going through. Keep in mind, I’m a college graduate, I have the time to sit down and read the small print, I have the time to call up the insurance company and complain, I have the time to look around and research and use the internet, and write about the experience on my savvy chic blog. There are millions of people in the US that have none of those things, who aren’t as capable as I am to make sure they’re not getting screwed.

Even I was confused by the most basic explanation of the plans. There are people out there that are getting screwed on a daily basis, who have loved ones who require serious medical care, and they’re being stalked upon in the time that they need the most help, getting fucked because they and their loved ones want to live. They’re being asked to overpay hundreds or thousands of dollars a month, not because they owe it, but because the insurance company has profiled their less capable customers and realized they’ll pay whatever is asked of them, bleeding them into complete bankruptcy and ultimately condemning to death the people that need the help.

COMING SOON: Tips for getting health insurance.

CARING FOR YOUR HEALTH

If there’s one thing you don’t fuck around with, it’s your health. Face it, there’s no reasoning or arguing with it, if you don’t take care of your physical well-being, you’re basically screwing yourself from the back end of your life. Our physical bodies are a base factor that all humans must deal with, and everyone in human history has had to deal with it. Unless you’ve found some way to exist without being slave to your physical needs, you better take good care of your body, it’s the only one you’ve been given.

Slave to my body? That’s right, that’s what happens when you don’t take care of your body. Ever hear about those people who obviously didn’t pay attention to their diets and got so overly obese that they can’t even get out of their homes, or get out of the bed/couch they last collapsed onto before their legs gave out to their massively overweight bodies? Or people who have smoked so much that they lose a lung or get a hole put into their throats so that they can scare the hell out of little children? These are only a few extreme examples of what may happen when you extremely mistreat your physical self, but the point is even if these people woke up and decided to stop mistreating their bodies, their past decisions have put them into complete enslavement that they’ll have to free themselves of before they can start getting better.

But for most of us, we enslave ourselves through small mistreatments of our bodies, such as not eating a well rounded diet, overeating, under-eating, not exercising often enough, drinking too much alcohol, not sleeping enough, doing harmful drugs, smoking, not keeping ourselves clean, stressing ourselves out and staying in stressed states, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. But not to worry, our bodies give us signs to remind us of how we mistreat it so that we may recognize them and fix the problems. Such signs may be headaches, pains, upset stomaches, upset anything, lack of energy, blood shot eyes, more susceptibility to catching illnesses, being out of breath going up a small flight of stairs, hangovers, coughs, etc, etc. You get the idea, you already know what these signs are, as you’ve most likely already felt many of these symptoms before.

STRESS, THE AMERICAN DRUG!

Studies show that a particularly common type of male pattern beer guts have a strong correlation with stress. While it’s not indicative that stress directly causes beer guts, the much more troubling suggestion is that stress causes people to be self-destructive, especially to their bodies. Ever walk into a meeting of corporate middle-managers? It’s like the beer gut is part of the uniform, just like the cups of coffee-sludge they’re drinking. The physical effects of stress have become the badge that good American workers can complain about while being patted on the back proudly. They’re “sacrificing” for their families and nation. What bullshit. How many people do you know talk about how stressful their work situations are? If you work with many people in many fields, you’ll notice how common it is. But it’s become an accepted thing, in fact when you and I think stressful job we usually also think “important” job. Notice how easy it is to make that connection, even though there’s actually none whatsoever.

But the problem I see in most of my “peers” in their twenties and thirties, is that most of us learn to ignore the symptoms of our bodies, and continue to mistreat ourselves physically. And this may be very tempting to do while we’re young and hip, and keeping up with the fashionable zombie/methamphetamine look and partying or drinking every night, trying hard to show how independent we are in our Gen-Y web 2.0 infused lifestyle. And if you don’t fall into that label, maybe you’re building up your “career,” working hard today, reading this at 10PM in your office while you finish up a project, but neglecting your sleep, diet, and health, so you won’t have to work so hard sometime in the future, whenever that future may be. They’re equally bad, especially in the context of our generation’s propensity for eating chips, drinking soda, and treating hamburgers, fries, and pizza as social food, or as “rewards.”

It’s easy for these ideals to become more important to us than health, we’re young, we don’t have to worry about slowing down until we’re older, right? After all, that gnawing feeling you have of “I’m making a bad choice for my body” most likely comes in the tone of voice that your parents talk to you in when they’re disappointed. And we all know we don’t need to listen to them, right? After all, we only live once, and why should we waste our young and beautiful years worrying about those things that only older (and therefore less free and probably fuglier) people worry about, right?

Well, sometimes the choice of responsibility is the hard choice to make, especially when it comes to being good to yourself. For as much as we talk about how awesome we are, there’s no such thing as a 20-something that doesn’t at least subconsciously harbor feelings of self-destruction. Sure, you may have just heard that french fries are more carcinogenic than cigarettes, but damn they taste good and they’re cheap, so fuck it. You can live your carefree party days today and worry about whatever harm you did to your body later. But if you want to actually attain your goals and become more than the person you are today, to become a more intelligent and successful person, to live consciously and act consciously, to achieve those dreams you have in doing something that adds to the world and is new and fresh and represents you, you’re going to have to start with the basics, and the most basic is your body.

OVERCOMING RESISTANCE

If you’re like me, you’ll scoff at the idea of changing now so suddenly, since after all you’ll “eventually” get to it. There isn’t any time now to worry about eating good diets every day, or getting to the gym often enough, or sleeping, who really needs to do that? I’m young now and I’m paving a road with my daily sacrifices on my body so that one day I can truly devote the right time and mental attitude to fully accomplishing these physical goals. I had this attitude for years, cranking out money with hard, stressful, unsatisfying days at work, learning to use my bank account and property as the only sign of my success in life. It was hard to break out of it, but I realized I was absolutely wrong in the decisions that got me there. I wasn’t paving a road for a better career with more money so I could later work on improving the parts of me that I don’t like. I was paving myself into a hole directed straight for mid-life crisis.

You’ve heard of that term, mid-life crisis. Maybe your uncle went through it and bought a Lamborghini, maybe your parents even got divorced in their forties after a mutual falling out, it happens a lot. A lot of 20-somethings look at being middle-aged as if it were a millennium away, its vague promises of stature and wealth and “adult” problems beyond the horizon. I thought that way too, being middle-aged is what I’ll be when I’ve “made it,” as if the clock was ticking and it was a slow steady race to finish before the time was up. A lot of my friends have this attitude as well, as if the ages of 25-40 are kind of just a gliding period where stuff happens, small successes mounting towards a large success later when you’re middle-aged.

Of course, middle-age is the age in which you’d start working out and taking care of your body, right? So just put that off, wait until then. Maybe you’ve got some big scheme you’d like to try, you can put that off until then too, right? Hey, maybe you have an idea for a novel, or want to go to Europe, or want to start a business. When you have the money, you can do those too, so just put them off too. Well, the thing is, in putting things off, you’re getting very good at doing one particular thing, and that’s putting things off.

When you get good at putting off your dreams and compromising your life goals, you do it over and over again easily, for decades until one day you wake up, you’re middle-aged, and you look back on your life and wonder what the fuck happened. Won’t happen to you? Then don’t let it happen, the seeds for mid-life crises are planted when the person is in their early twenties. See, delaying and procrastination is a skill, the more you do it, the better you are at it, coming up with even more convincing and elaborate excuses to stop yourself from doing things. Soon, your goal-making is automated, and you don’t even have to think about it, you’re just flowing through life, climbing up the corporate ladder, working at that dead-end job, or maybe even sucking money out of other people.

“I need money! Who can argue with that?”

I’ve been saying this, and things like this, all my adult life and I’m no better for having a bunch of goals that I never get around to accomplishing. I would find out topical stuff about things I really wanted for myself, and put them on my list of “life” goals, waiting for some day that I might actually take action on them. And I realized as I was growing more and more unhappy with myself, fear was crippling me, because I had allowed it to, using my own weaknesses and limitations as excuses, creating more weakness. Weakness in my body and mind. The excuses I was coming up with, that had become part of my life, that seemed even at the time to make me stronger, were all holding me back.

I could do one of two things to make myself feel better:

1. Keep ignoring the negative symptoms my body, emotions, and mind were sending me till I was totally de-sensitized to it, and hope I wouldn’t forget to accomplish my goals someday when I really felt I had the time to devote to my life goals, or

2. Achieve my life goals no matter how scary it was.

I decided I had enough of option #1 and that I was fed up with with it, so I’d try #2. So I decided, intellectually, to move ahead with #2, but what I found was that I had built up a huge amount of resistance (ie. excuses) to actually taking action towards accomplishing my life goals. I cried and got stressed out, sat around doing nothing for days, got mad at myself, and lashed out at people close to me, blaming them for holding me back. I acted like an ass. Eventually, the internal turmoil I was going through quieted down enough for me to be able to act, and after I got past the initial struggle, I started making small steps of progress.

I started sleeping more hours, and I lost those circles under my eyes. I felt more energetic, I felt less stressful. I got a gym membership, I went to the gym, I got even more energy, I built some muscle, I lost 10 pounds. I ate more regularly and in the right proportions and nutrients, I got even more energy, I weakened the Hangry Monster so he has trouble visiting or even showing up. I went to the doctors to make sure I was as healthy and as efficient as I could be and that I wasn’t hiding some cancer in my body, I got immunizations to make my body stronger, I got cavities removed from my teeth, I got better prescriptions and Lasik for my eyes so I could see more efficiently, I got warnings from my doctors of what I needed to look out for in my health. In other words, I was suiting up, charging the warp coils, and training the armies to continue in my journey to bring the ring of power to Mount Doom, to face Darth Vader and the emperor and bring peace to the galaxy, or whatever my life journey would lead me to.

I didn’t quite understand what I was doing when I was doing it, but in hindsight, I realize I was freeing my body. It had been enslaved, drained of energy, unable to feed my mind the nutrients it needed. Worse yet, I had been plagued with guilt and worry of my possibly deteriorating health, due to ignorance, due to lack of information, but mostly due to fear. It had been a slow process and it’s still an ongoing struggle to keep up the exercise, diet and sleep, but I’ve now put in motion so many changes in my physical well being, that they’re becoming easier to do. Beyond that, change and betterment are themselves becoming habits, skills that I’m practicing and making stronger. I know that the other goals I’m aiming for will not be far from being accomplished at most, and attempted at least.

CONCLUSION

Take care of yourself, and if nothing else about yourself, at least take care of your body. Your body will in turn give you the energy to look around and prioritize the other problems in your life. Your body is like a self-diagnostic tool, it tells you when you’ve fucked up, and when it’s stronger, your ability to meet and deflect obstacles — physical, mental, or emotional — becomes more active. Exercise, take vitamins or at least eat nutritious food, and develop a healthy sleep pattern (this article can help you reach that goal). If you can muster enough change in your physical self, you’ll be able to feel the benefits of it and have the physical power to start doing the stuff you really want to do with your life. People recommend that you start somewhere if you want to improve yourself, I say start with the physical, you’ll be surprised how you feel when you really take care of your body, and that even those seemingly small changes can help you realize how you can move forward. Ultimately, those life goals you may be leaving for later will never get accomplished until you say you’re going to tackle it today.

What the hell do you do at this point? Some part of me wants to rip into the movie and analyze it down to a nub of its former self, ultimately the purpose of which is to make the other person cry. Some part of me wants to surrender in favor of camaraderie, backpedaling “sucked” into “I have loose opinions against specific elements.” Of course, me being the chick magnet with asshole-to-nice-guy ratio of 60% nice, 40% asshole, often go with some sort of in between route. The movie still sucked, but there were scenes that were “entertaining.” I use the old standby: “That one character/scene was funny/awesome.” Even the shittiest of movies have something entertaining (ok, maybe not the shittiest, watch some direct-to-dvd independent films, mmbleh).

Often, I feel pretty good about my ability to sidestep social awkwardness, allowing for a generous dosing of compassion for people I’ve just met. In the situation described above, there’s of course the point at which the other person describes what they liked about the movie, maybe even acting out some part. But then a funny thing happens, often the person stops talking about the movie, but still thinks they are. I mean this as in they’re talking about themselves and other related things, but they think they’re talking about the movie.

Let me explain. Fandom (as bastardized from fanaticism) can loosely be described as an intense yearning to experience and re-experience a specific performance/art because of its quality.

However, this isn’t the type of enjoyment many people talk about when describing what they liked about a movie. Often, people enjoy movies/books/whatever because of familiarity masturbation. It’s starkly different from being a fan of the work. Familiarity masturbation arises when you say you like something simply because it’s familiar, or it espouses an idea/style similar to something you’re more familiar with.

For example, many people talk exclusively about comic book movies using terms of familiarity masturbation. They’re more interested in the work being something similar to what they already know and like than in actually being good. This is fine when what they’re familiar with and what’s “good” are the same thing, but it’s an abomination when they differ.

The problem stems from the fact that people enjoy things (like comic books) for a whole load of reasons, most of which are based in unreasonable subconscious balancing, projections of their own inadequacies. This is fine. But when that book/play/comic they like is adapted into a new piece of work, they judge that new work based on context-removed elements that are of little or no value, but which the fan identifies with as “quality.”

Here’s an example. Batman Begins is judged against “Dark Knight Returns”. Because it resembles it in many surface way, such as the car, the “dark look,” the brooding character, it is therefore judged as good. A lot of retorts in defense of Batman Begins involve a belief that only a true understanding of “Dark Knight Returns” and other arbitrarily chosen uber-canon allow for a legitimate opinion of the film. Notice how many “fans” of Batman Begins cling onto its connection to previous canon as if they were absolute indicators of its quality.

The problem is, these people aren’t enjoying the film. They walk out and go “That film was great.” But they’re not really even paying attention to the film itself. Instead, they’re enjoying the thrill of being able to say “That’s familiar, that’s what I like,” or “I knew that before it even showed up on screen,” or “Now everyone will get it right, this is the true depiction,” This isn’t enjoying the film, this is masturbating over how familiar something is.

“But shouldn’t people be allowed to judge a film based on their connection to it?” That’s not what I’m talking about. In fact, familiarity masturbation is the exact opposite of personal connection to a film, it’s connection by proxy, filtered through an idolized external medium, then reappropriated as personal preference. It has nothing to do with personal connection, in fact it’s a rejection of the value of personal preference.

Why do people do this?

I think people do this because they feel compelled to create objective rulers of quality and judgement. When watching a Superman movie, they compare it against prior versions of Superman they’ve encountered and are familiar with. When it differs, that’s “bad,” when it’s similar, that’s “good.” This is a lot easier than coming up with more ethereal personal subjective reasons as to why something is good or not. It’s more difficult to say “The story was strong, tight, and compelling for these reasons…” than it is to say “It was exactly like the book, let’s go jack each other off!!!!”

In short, people do it because they’re scared. Scared of creating an opinion they’d have to explain. Oftentimes, I’ll explain the subtle intricacies of how a story worked or didn’t, and somebody will answer with “Yeah, but why?” After some prodding, I realize what they’re really asking is for me to reference some previous comparable piece of work. They’re trying to enforce familiarity masturbation as the only legitimate ruler of quality.

Well it’s not. Putting your opinion out there based on what you understand to be compelling or not in your gut is scary, but it’s very powerful. It defines you as a unique person, who takes chances, is brave and noble. When you enjoy something and give your opinion, your heart soars, you feel lifted, as if the world has become a better place to live in. When you don’t enjoy something and want to give your opinion, you think hard about what could have been changed, you do mental gymnastics to figure it out, learning all the way, becoming invested in making the story/movie/book/song/whatever better.

But when all you do is express familiarity masturbation, the world is an enclosed place, whether you enjoyed the thing you’re talking about or not. Possibilities are built on top of precedence, unknowns are scary, and since most of the world is unknown, you’re scared most of the time.

In defense against the world, many of these people hoard their structures of “objective authority,” becoming familiar with every facet of a character or franchise, in an attempt to create order out of the chaos so that when asked, they have rulers by which to speak authoritatively. We all know them, uber-nerds who can speak Klingon, know the name of every Pokemon, or can recite the yellow scrolling text of all the Star Wars movies word by word. There’s communities of these people in which there’s epic struggles to determine which things are authoritative over others. If Star Wars Episode 2 novelization refers to a Z-95 as having ion cannons, but Star Wars Incredible Cross-sections says Z-95s have laser canons only, WHO DO WE TRUST AND IF WE TRUST ONLY ONE WHAT ELSE FALLS INTO QUESTION AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!!?!?

I know, I used to judge about 98% of the world using familiarity masturbation. However, that was when I was 16, I’ve since moved on. But many my age and even older haven’t. With objective authorities to judge the world against: “Kevin Smith liked it so I have to too, but if I don’t what’s wrong with me, AHHHHH!!?!?!??!” many people are inclined to live their lives through proxy, never really having opinions of their own, but being compelled constantly by a celebrity interview, comic book release, movie release, video game release, book release, or heated internet debate as the only igniter to change their view of the world.

Of course, this is no new theory of the world. It’s a type of sheep mentality, but it’s extremely unique in one way: People who use familiarity masturbation to talk about work they enjoyed or not will always enjoy most things. Have you noticed that no matter how shitty a piece of shit movie is, there’s always somebody somewhere who speaks favorably of it, how it’s a true or better depiction of this or that thing. Have you noticed that often the newest edition of a movie is referred to by people as being “the best yet!”

This is a property of familiarity masturbation, the toleration of shittiness. After all, if the movie referred to specific familiar things, how could it be shitty? That’d mean those things were shitty too, doesn’t it, and how can Batman Begins be shitty if the car in it is cool??!?!?! That’d mean “Dark Knight Returns” is shitty and that’s IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!

We encounter arguments like this all the time when we’re trudging through the wilds of the internet, but perhaps it’s a good lesson. Don’t identify yourself so much with specific works, or else you end up sounding and being crazy. Don’t idolize a specific movie/book/character/whatever as being pure unmitigated goodness, or else you end up sounding and being crazy. Instead, just chill out, pay attention to the world around you, take small steps of bravery and let your opinion loose. Take chances, you enjoy work that takes chances, so go out and do the same and people will be inspired to follow.