people are islands, she said. They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate

11. Take four minutes and tell your life story in as much detail as possible. 

    last child of the family. Loved school, playing outside, and reading. Late to develop, a little kid quite a bit past when my friends became big kids. Silly, boy-crazy, energetic. Loved science. College turned that upside down; love history. Met H, who became my husband 2 years later. 4 years of living in The Mitten, 15 years on the Flat, a professional degree and another academic degree. Divorce. Long-term dating. Short-term dating. Moving house x17. Profound loss. Now, back to the hometown.

12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? 

    lottery prediction. 

    Or, if it has to be something real, I'd choose "not squeamish."

23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?

    80% of my immediate family is close and relatively warm, and the other is an iceberg covered with camouflaged shards that will both freeze and cut if you are anywhere near. 

    My childhood was happy, which is not solely a function of the closeness and warmth of the people with whom I lived. Childhood is about more than just that. Anyway, there are plenty of people whose upbringing was far less happy than mine.

24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother? 

    good

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why? 

    this is literally unanswerable, and I think it's kind of awful to think about it

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen. 

    this is the final prompt in the series, and the one that's demanded the most thought before I respond. Usually I've just read the prompt, adapted it to the blog (turning it outward and making it general, rather than the couple-facing and specific intention of the exercise), and drafted my answer. This one, though... I've looked at it a dozen times without getting past the question itself.

    My inability to answer, and discomfort with it, is as telling as anything else could be. I'm out of practice with sharing a personal problem with a partner and asking advice for how they might handle it. It happened a lot at first, and then slowed to every now and then, mostly related to work decisions. At some point (OK, it was a very obvious point) it became apparent that it wasn't right anymore.

     As for reflecting back how I seem to be feeling, that's another hard truth. Understanding, accepting, and accurately reflecting what my emotions might be... that, specifically, is not going to happen.

 

[based on "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings" by Arthur Aron, et. al, and adapted from "The 36 Questions That Lead to Love: Modern Love" by Daniel Jones, published January 9, 2015, a 9-year-old article that remains behind a paywall here but is republished in plenty of other places; the title quotation is by Ian Fleming, from Casino Royale]