At Last, a Step out of the Rut; or, Why I Love My Boss

The job is going splendidly overall -- there's a vast array of Things I Have to Know, which makes for some bad days when I either never knew or forgot them, but on the whole, it's great. All the more so because of my boss.

In the days before his marriage and taking the bar, he was a priest, and that priestly concern for others' wellbeing still permeates his character. It was his insight which convinced and freed me, finally, to rid myself of the Millstone in late August. He speaks his mind, speaks the truth, never hedges, and has excellent insight into the natures of other people.

We've had discussions in the past about the state of marriage (or non-marriage) in our society today, and why it's the way it is, and we've generally concluded that one of the reasons why people of our generation are marrying less and less and cohabiting more and more is that most of us have seen our parents screw it up in one way or another and instead of determing to do it better, have rejected the idea altogether.

Further discussions along those lines this morning led me to express my own frustration with and cynicism toward marriage, since my own propensity is to fall for guys who are, in my boss's words, losers. Particularly losers who need a great deal of mothering. Some tendency in myself, fostered as I grew up by both the model of my parents' marriage and the expectations laid on me as a kid to take care of the emotional wellbeing of everyone around me, inclines me to want to take care of guys, when that's the last thing I should do, since the guys who need the most care are the worst ones for me, and being with them leads me to exhaustion and emotional exploitation.

So I was talking with my boss about solutions to the problem. He said that that "spark" which attracts me to guys will most naturally flare up toward the losers, but that there is hope, and that while I should not choose a guy out of purely rational motivation (which would probably lead to a cold marriage), I should rationally decide what kind of guy I want, and begin to socialize with guys of that caliber. The more I associate with them, the more chance of a spark flaring up somewhere -- and, while it might need a little more fanning on my part for it to burst into flame, it will still truly be there. Meanwhile, the sparks that flare up on their own I should probably distrust and douse with a lakeful of cold water.

He then said, as he's been after me for awhile to catch a young lawyer, "Do you want a lawyer?"

I said, "Well, there are pros and cons. The pros being that they're generally intelligent, well-read, articulate, self-motivated, hardworking, attentive to detail, and ambitious. The cons being long work weeks and a lot of time away from home..."

"And they're very aggressive," he said.

"Well, I've thought for awhile that part of marriage is being able to fight well," I said. "And I'm no passive daisy myself; and I don't want a man who will fold up and back down just because I'm mad."

"Which losers would," he said. "All right. I think I need to give you some research projects in the Notre Dame Law Library. I understand that if you're not a law student, you have to have a special reason to be there. So let's give you a few."

And with that, he pulled out a legal pad and scrawled a few topics onto it and handed the paper to me.

"I need this information like I need a hole in the head, you understand," he said, "so if it takes you a few months to complete the research, that's fine."

I clasped the proffered paper and grinned at him.

"Sometimes you can float around peacefully waiting for God to cast you the worm on the hook," he said, "but a lot of times you need to be the hunter and decide what you're looking for, and determine where to find it."

And this is one of the reasons why I love my boss. Now I need to go sharpen my arrowheads (a/k/a plan out my outfits, put on makeup, look friendly and studious and utterly fabulous, and wander into the law student lounge asking promising young lawyers where to find information on Judicial Estoppel in Michigan and Indiana).