Category: Silly

The Problem with Love Letters

There’s a problem with love letters: they don’t work! Or at least they make things awkward. And it seems inevitable. Perhaps it’s a curse of the modern age—in the past they seemed to work just fine. Romance is dead! In the age of texting, Snapchat, and Tinder, handwritten confessions of love are simply out of style. If only I lived in Jane Austen’s time, everything would be rosy and all my romantic aspirations could be fulfilled with pen to paper!

I’m sure you’re cringing right now, and you should be. If you don’t know me, you probably envision me with a fedora, scraggly neckbeard, and Tottoro plush keychain hanging from my oversized messenger bag. ‘Let me tell you about My Little Pony—you’ve totally got it wrong! It’s 100% a show for adults!..’ But whether “m’lady” is part of my daily vocabulary or not, I’m serious about love letters. I don’t have some antiquated obsession with them, nor am I a truly hopeless romantic, I’ve just felt compelled to write them at specific times in life and I want to understand why they didn’t produce the results I expected.

In my time I’ve sent a few love letters. By love letter I mean a carefully composed collection of words that ostensibly express romantic feelings, usually delivered physically on paper, sometimes even handwritten. When writing them I probably would’ve rejected the ‘love letter’ label, but I have no problem calling them that now. I recently reread a few of mine and I can see how they’d confuse their addressee. Some of the language is confusing and vague, sometimes I dwell on pithy analogies for too long, sometimes there’s poetry that definitely seemed better when I wrote it, and on the whole the letters don’t seem romantic at all. Most of it reads more like a ‘confession of obsession’ than a confession of romantic feeling. I look back and think ‘Wow, this is kind of embarrassing. Why on earth did I send this?’ Of course it’s easy to ask that question now but I can recall the feeling of emotional pressure that led to them. Like a dam on the verge of failure, water spraying from every crack and crevice—that was my emotional state when I wrote those letters.

Honest self-examination would start with why I felt such pressure in the first place. It’s clear to me now that not everyone does. I suppose it’s a sign of emotional dysfunction to some degree. With certain girls I let the pressure get so high that when I finally released it in the only way I knew how—through words—the resulting letters were 5+ pages long, single spaced, with size 10 font. I sent a letter during my freshman year of college that wasn’t quite so long but deserves examination—it was the first of its kind. I pondered its creation for a week and composed multiple drafts on my computer before settling on its final incarnation. I included poetry that I had written days or weeks prior and when the time was right I handwrote it on high-quality stationary. Yes, the same letter I had already edited multiple times on my computer (otherwise I wouldn’t be able to review it now!) I put in a nice envelope, stamped it carefully so it was nice and symmetric, and sent it off.

This girl was a year or so my senior, and though I knew her on a first-name basis, and we had spent time together, we hadn’t engaged in anything explicitly romantic. I think I might’ve taken her on a date once or twice but had mostly just admired her for years in weekly church meetings and school activities. We interacted somewhat frequently but were never super personal. Moving up to college put me 300 miles away from her so a letter seemed like the best option. I sent the letter and entered a state of great anxiety. I couldn’t help but worry, ‘I wonder if she has received it yet…I wonder if she’s reading it right now. What’s she thinking? Is she going to send a reply? Am I never going to hear anything from her at all? I hope she doesn’t share it with her mom or her sister—that would be embarrassing…’

Here’s a selection from the letter…

 

[Following some bad poetry…] “What I’m trying to say is that I have “liked” or been into you for a long time… But alas, I wasn’t of the proper stature to even approach you in a romantic fashion, and remained in that state for a significant amount of time. Perhaps I could have at least tried, but I didn’t…I danced around in the donut shop, from maple bar to cake to cream-filled, but I never cast more than a gregarious glance towards the classic, the original donut. But I digress… To parse over every epoch with such allusion would grow tiresome, and as much as I like the study of history, it’s not nearly as interesting as the present.

I currently find myself between a rock and a hard place- namely, I want to take you on a date, but I am nearly 300 miles north of you for the next few months. I want to look in your eyes–as windows and mirrors both: seeing into you and seeing in them a reflection of what you see in me. I want to see your face–that enigmatic and stunning look that scrambles my brain. I’d hope that, unlike the moths who, mesmerized, cannot escape the searing heat of the dancing flame, I would be able to partake without endangering myself.  I wonder if this is how a magnet feels in the presence of a metal separated by a synthetic barrier—near enough to feel attraction, but unable to feel the satisfaction of contact…The time has come for me to show my hand, so there it is. Do I know what’s in yours? No, I don’t…But it matters not. All that matters is that I’ve checked and folded all game long, and now I’ve got to go all in if I even hope to win. But I’ve got four of a kind, and that’s a dang good hand.”

 

Though I’m tempted to dwell here on the quality of the letter itself (terrible!), that isn’t the point. Her reply came via text message and took all the wind out of my sails. “C…what the hell? What am I supposed to do with this?” That’s all. She said nothing else. I replied “What do you feel you should do with it?” and she, clearly flustered, said “C, you can’t just send letters like this out of the blue. I honestly have no idea what you want from me.” She was upset, and in retrospect her reaction was fair. Maybe a little harsh, but certainly fair. The letter I sent was indeed out of the blue. It was long, full of flowery language, and had no call to action. It was more like a sudden confession of romantic obsession than a meaningful declaration of love.

Reading through past letters and observing their consequences there are two main problems I’ve identified: clarifying desire and matching the tone. In the letter referenced above I didn’t do a *terrible* job of clarifying desire. I told her that I wanted to go out on a date next time I went home and that I generally wanted to spend time with her. Contrast that to a letter I sent 3 years later to a different girl… here’s a redacted excerpt I’d consider representative:

 

“To say that you’ve dominated my thoughts over these past two months and have changed my life would not be an overstatement. You have this ability (and tendency), S, to really manipulate my emotions. Never before have I experienced such acute agony and such empowering joy and so frequently shifted between the two! I’ve never been like this with someone before, S, I hope you realize that. You have made a fool out of me, for better or for worse. I write this letter with great apprehension because I know the effect that thinking so much has upon my relationships. It’s precisely because I have thought so much about S.D. that it’s difficult to interact with her naturally in a variety of ‘shallowly casual’ circumstances. I tend to depth. For every time I see her in a casual environment I tend to gaze, and every time I hear her words I tend to ponder, and every time I look in her beautiful eyes I can’t help but stand like a child with my hands on the glass looking through those windows at the vast expanse of breathtaking soul behind them. If any man on earth wouldn’t LONG to get past those windows, it would only be because they haven’t seen what I have…”

 

This stretched across three pages and there was no clear call to action on any of them. The dense metaphors and flowery language were not only difficult to understand, but the romantic implication was also unclear. What did I actually want as a result of this? If I wanted a relationship, why didn’t I just say so earlier or make a romantic move when we were spending time together? What did I want from her as a consequence of the letter? I suppose I didn’t really know myself at the time—I just had a bunch of feelings and I had to get them on paper. Then, in my desire to be understood, I delivered them to her. I suppose that was one of my fatal mistakes—assuming that by reading pages of my dense, emotional writing, the girl would understand me and know what I wanted. If I’m ever going to write something like this again and give it to a girl, the first thing I’ll do is make sure I know what I want. What do you want this girl to do as a consequence of reading this letter? Is it go on a date with you? Wipe the slate clean of earlier experiences? Commit to dating you exclusively? Marry you? I suppose what I wanted most was to be understood. Or maybe that’s just what I set as the minimum acceptable response to avoid the pain of outright rejection.

This girl and I were good friends and I could never muster the courage to make a romantic move. When I did make a romantic motion, I was hypersensitive to her response and would get scared away by the slightest intimation that she didn’t want it. There was certainly romantic potential (I wasn’t truly friend-zoned until later) but because I didn’t take action in certain romantic situations I unwittingly sent signals of clear romantic disinterest. The window of opportunity passed and when I finally got around to acting on my feelings, it was in the form of this letter with no call to action. Given the context, a good call to action for the letter would’ve been something like this: “I want you to know that I’ve had feelings for you for awhile but have been too afraid to act. I know I’ve probably sent confusing signals to you over the last couple months and I just want to clear that up. I want a clean slate. I want to take you out and I want to do so carte blanche. I know that’s asking a lot, but I promise I won’t be ambiguous this time around. If you aren’t feeling it when all is said and done, that’s fine, but just give me one chance to bring my feelings and my actions into alignment. Come to dinner with me on Thursday.”

It’s sobering to consider the high probability that those seven sentences alone would’ve done more good than the two-thousand words I labored over and sent instead. Maybe she appreciated the rawness of my letter and the flattery of its length, but it didn’t really advance my cause the way something like the above call to action would’ve. So that’s problem number one: not clarifying desire in the letter. All future letters must have a clear call to action. I did a decent job in the first letter, but where I really failed was in the post-letter execution. I did an awful job of matching the tone of the letter.

The first letter I referenced here wasn’t entirely unsuccessful. When I visited home a few weeks after sending it we ended up going out for dinner and cuddling at my house while watching a movie. But it was far more awkward than it was romantic. The letter seemed to hang in the air, just out of sight, present throughout the entire evening without being addressed. The difference in tone between the intense, obsessive language of the letter and the casual, nonchalant way I acted on the date probably produced a confusing dissonance for her. I thought I should compensate for the letter by being chill and carefree in person, giving her distance and making every effort not to make her uncomfortable. Perhaps I should’ve addressed it. ‘Hey, sorry for dropping that letter on you out of the blue. The truth is, I just was thinking about you a lot and I really wanted to spend time with you. Thanks for making time for me,’ and then I should’ve taken her hand. Perhaps I should’ve just tried to match the letter and gone for it all the way, staring deep into her eyes and kissing her passionately. She did agree to go out after having read the letter so it’s not like it would’ve been unexpected or unfair. I should’ve owned my desire from the start and taken a risk on it, but I didn’t and the whole thing was just horribly awkward. We never went out again.

The problem was that I couldn’t put my money where my mouth went. I came on strong in the letter with romantic language about how I wanted to stare into her eyes and ‘go all in’ on my shot with her, then on the date I kept my distance, made casual conversation, and applied no emotional pressure. I’m sure my behavior confused the hell out of her. The dissonance between my actions and the letter hung in the air all night and prevented either of us from becoming truly comfortable. Like someone was playing an extremely irritating high-frequency sound just on the border of the audible range, all night long. So that’s rule number two: if you’re going to write a love letter, make sure you’re ready to match the tone next time you go out. If you’re going to go all Mr. Darcy in writing, make sure you can carry it in real life. As far as I’m concerned, if you write a dense love letter about how you want to stare into a girl’s eyes and make love to her soul, and she agrees to go out with you having read it, you have a green light to push some boundaries.

So ultimately, what’re the problems with love letters? That’s unclear. What’re MY problems with love letters? Well, I just rarely have a clear idea of what I want and my actions post-letter are often the OPPOSITE of what they should be. An explanation of WHY those are my problems will have to wait for another day. It’s probably an ego thing. Maybe I just need to do more acid.

C.J.C.

The Importance of Ethos

One Sunday afternoon a couple years back, I was sitting in a Mormon chapel for sacrament meeting. It was a student ward–my ward–with about 100 college-age attendees. We had the privilege of hearing from a visitor to the ward–a high council member in his fifties. We hadn’t previously heard from this man so we didn’t know what to expect. He was the last speaker and he came out swinging. It was a full-frontal barrage of life advice and opinions about the YSA (young single adult) life. He had a lot to say, and honestly a lot of it was objectively solid advice. He told stories, he spoke clearly, and his analogies made sense. And yet, something was wrong. I had the distinct experience of his words entering one ear and going out the other. I was slightly annoyed. I wasn’t distracted–I was paying attention–but his words just slid right off the surface of my mind. Later I spoke to my roommates who reported a similar experience. I pondered it throughout the day and then it hit me–the man spent no time gaining our trust and establishing credibility. The absence was glaring. From the moment he opened his mouth it was Logos and Pathos of decent quality, but he was crippled by lack of Ethos, and it was his downfall, at least to me. I got nothing from his talk and neither did my friends.

As a general refresher, Ethos is a member of the three ‘artistic proofs’–Ethos, Logos, and Pathos–coined by Aristotle in his study of rhetoric. They represent methods of rhetorical appeal, AKA how to make an argument. Taken from Greek to English they read: Ethical, Logical, and Pathetic. ‘Pathetic’ is usually renamed ’emotional’ because that word is more accessible, ‘logical’ is straightforward enough for most people, and ‘ethical’ is often misinterpreted to mean ‘moral’. This confused me in high school English classes because the line between ‘moral’ and ’emotional’ wasn’t clearly defined. I couldn’t be bothered to clarify the meaning as a high school junior so I just conflated Ethos and Pathos for years until I began studying rhetoric in college.

Ethos is the credibility of the person making the argument. Rather, it is the perceived credibility. If I want to make an argument, I need to make logical and emotional appeals, but I also need to establish in the mind of the audience my own credibility as a speaker on that topic. Come to think of it, high school debate might be part of the reason I took so long to understand ethos. As a high school debater, I prepared cases in affirmation and in negation of a thesis and would argue both sides during a tournament, anonymously, with an anonymous opponent and judge, on a topic arbitrarily chosen by a national committee. And the topic changed every two months. I didn’t bother trying to establish credibility in any tournaments because I obviously had ZERO on any topic. It didn’t even occur to me because it was just mutually understood that I was a high-schooler, my opponent was a high-schooler, and our judge was probably a soccer mom, so credibility wasn’t even part of the equation. Only logos and pathos, so that’s all I understood.

Of course, looking back, I definitely was making ethical appeals, I just didn’t understand how. I made an effort to be eloquent and pleasing to listen to, I dressed nicely and combed my hair, and I smiled. These are all subtle ethical appeals that could influence the judge’s decision. The sacrament meeting speaker I mentioned earlier had some ethos–he was elderly, had a decent suit, and he spoke like an intelligent man–but he needed more to reach all of his audience. It wouldn’t have taken much effort on his part, but he didn’t try at all. It‘s as if he just expected everyone to soak up every word solely because he’s an adult and standing at the pulpit. It’s a shame, because what he said was actually good.

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos are a sort of rhetorical triumvirate. Each is represented equally but they’re certainly not equal in power. Over these last few years I’ve become more and more convinced that ethos is the most subtle, the most crafty, and indeed the most powerful. There is much to be said on that point (Trump won the 2016 election purely on ethos, for example, as crazy as that may sound) but that’s not the purpose of this post. Being that this is the inaugural post of this new blog, I think I need to establish my ethos. I need to show you why you should trust me and take me seriously. Or, most critically, why you should not.

I’m tempted to just vomit out my full life story and let the reader decide what’s ethically relevant. Of course, I’ll selectively leave out those parts that don’t reflect on me well. Like how I wasted a LOT of time in my youth playing video games and watching porn, or cheated on my first girlfriend and broke her heart. Maybe I’ll brag about being a ‘world-class procrastinator’ as a sort of self-aggrandizing way to introduce a serious character flaw. Of course, I’ll be leaving out the really embarrassing stuff. Like how I didn’t work more than 5 hours last week because I was playing competitive computer games online and getting really upset when I lost. Or how I spent a significant portion of my expensive undergraduate study abroad program watching movies alone in my apartment. Probably shouldn’t mention that…talk about ethos-undermining!

I’ll just draw a few arrows from my quiver of  ‘weaknesses’, easily accessible in job interviews. You see, I just have a hard time with emotional communication sometimes, ya know? That’s a real weakness of mine. Ya got me. Guilty! I’m a little insensitive sometimes. Also did I mention that I sometimes get hyper-focused on something and struggle to change tasks? And at those times I’m extremely vulnerable to being derailed by distractions or environmental changes? Geez guys, you’re really making me dig deep here. I’m embarrassed! Oh, I hope you don’t ask about the mole on my leg. It’s so embarrassing! Goodness gracious… Pay no attention to the real person behind the curtain. Sometimes he picks his nose and wipes it on the bottom of his chair. One time he watched bestiality porn and masturbated to it. And he struggles with impostor syndrome at really random times–sometimes he’s super anti-social and awkward. We can’t be taking someone like that seriously, can we?

As a formality, I’ll state some things here for context. I plan to write extensively on Mormonism, Mormon culture, and other Mormon-related matters so it’s worth mentioning that I was a practicing Mormon for the first 25 years of my life. I was all in. Served a full-time mission, held multiple callings, and attended the temple regularly–the standard package. Life has taken me in a different direction now. My current beliefs will come through my writing but suffice it to say I’m far from Mormon orthodoxy. Yet still close to it in certain ways–perhaps even more than before. I have a Bachelors of Science in Physics with a couple minors. I speak fluent Japanese, I’ve been to 15 countries for a grand total of ~2.5 years abroad, I’ve started two businesses, I play most every sport, I have a Y-chromosome, and I have no food allergies. I think that should do it.

I have quite a few posts on the docket for the next couple months. I haven’t yet decided the order but I do have some titles. ‘Missions and Mental Health’, ‘The Problem with Mormon Apologetics’, ‘For the Strength of the Eternal Youth’, and ‘The Problem with Love Letters’ are a few. Average length should be 1500-2500 words. We’ll see how that turns out. And why write any of this, you ask? The answer to that deserves its own post.

Feel free to comment and give your input–I look forward to seeing the light whenever I’m in error.

Thanks.

CJC