So here I am again, now with two blogs–Consequential Strangers and MotherU–each representing a totally different part of my life.   I’ll funnel some ideas into in one blog, some in the other, and with others, such this one, I’ll be “bipostal,” contributing to both sites.   I’ll express my thoughts and hope that they resonate somewhere in the Universe, share my expertise and hope that it helps.  But I’ve let go of the expectation.

I’m not the only bi-postal blogger out there, according to some recent stats on blogging.  Approximately half of us are working on at least our second blog, and 68% have been blogging for two years or more.  To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s famous quote about second marriages, “Second blogs are the triumph of hope over experience.”

This blog, Consequential Strangers, grew out of three years of writing and research on the book of the same name.  It features real-life examples from the news and further explanation of concepts in the book, as well as my own ruminations on various aspects of one’s larger social life.  It satisfies my sociological/psychological self. I’ve focused on relationships for decades now, written about all sorts–parent and child, couples, siblings, extended family.  But this book took me beyond connections involving intimates.  The blog enabled me–for the first time in my writing career–to continue to explore a subject even after the book came out, something a traditional book doesn’t allow.  Admittedly, it was also a marketing tool–what book today is not launched withouth a blog?  But I’ve since realized that while a blog may pique readers’ interest, it doesn’t necessarily lead them to a book store.   So Consequential Strangers has become a place where I throw out ideas about relationships. I hope someone is listening.

My more recent blog, MotherU, is the resurrection of a website my daughter created nearly seven years ago.  For nearly a year I’d toyed with the idea of doing it. Then suddenly I had to get it up there, reincarnated as a blog, and it almost felt like it was the site’s idea, not mine.  Its focus is the mother/daughter relationship when the mother becomes a grandmother and the daughter a mother and both are members of the “motherhood union.”  Only a week old at this writing, MotherU represents a fundamental piece of who I am — the mother of a grown daughter and, to my amazement, a grandmother (not a term I accepted gracefully!).  I have always found stories and theories about mother/daughter relationships particularly interesting–the inspiration for 1001 posts.  But also, I believe there is a need for this conversation between mothers and their adult daughters.  So I plan to throw out some ideas, and we’ll see what happens….

Two blogs, two audiences, no expectations.  With an estimated 133 billion people writing blogs, and “only” 346 billion readers to go around, how can anyone have expectations?  I guess I will base my “success” on the criterion that 70% of bloggers use: my own personal satisfaction.  Believe me about that, because I’m also among the 75% that describe themselves as “sincere,” not the 16% who describe themselves as “snarky”!

It’s not easy here (see this post about my last trip), and the challenge has made me think about what I have to do to connect in a city–this city.  New York is different for me, not only because I speak the language there, but also because  I know the unwritten social rules of the city–how to read the “body idiom” and do what Irving Goffman called the “face work.”   But one doesn’t have to be a sociologist to see that Parisians have a different social playbook than Americans–and I don’t have a copy!  Therefore, I keep reminding myself of the basics of face-to-face connection–skills  we don’t exercise in front of our computers.

For your opening line, find common ground. Compliment (“I love your coat”), question (“How old is your dog?”  is particularly effective if you both have dogs), or share the moment (“Can you believe it’s still this cold?”  “Isn’t that a magnificent building?”)

Say something about yourself. Connection is the sum of shared disclosures. Don’t overshare, though, especially in Paris!

Pay attention to your own body language.  Are you sitting with your arms crossed, your body turned slightly away from the other person?  If so, do you really want to be there?

Be polite but real. If you are enjoying the conversation, say so–not in a gratuitously flattering way, only if you really feel it.

Respect the cultural idiom.  Even if I smile engagingly and make the kind of eye contact that works in New York, I have to accept that that strategy almost never works in Paris.  And when I find out what does–other than having a very cute dog with Gallic roots–I’ll let you know.

Stay in touch. If someone gives you their card or number, use it or lose it!   Certainly, if you walk away thinking, “What an [interesting/nice/bizarre] person.  I’d like to do that again,” then by all means follow up with a text, an email, or a call when you get home.

To be sure, these are basic social graces–and they don’t always result in rich conversations.  But depending how old you are and how much time you spend on line, you might need practice.  It’s kind of like reading books.  After spending a day absorbing a sentence here, a paragraph there, many of us have found that it’s not so easy anymore to settle down with one book.   But those of us who love books keep trying–we don’t want to lose our book-reading chops.  And so it should be with our face-to-face social skills. Some early studies suggest that the so-called Google brain might be less able to read faces and feel empathy. All the more reason to keep trying.

[My tears were] about my husband. I realized when you were talking about how these consequential strangers enrich our lives that my husband (a stay-at-home dad) hasn’t taken advantage of the consequential strangers he has access to, which has led to depression. I also realized that b/c my experiences are so rich and different from his (I get to meet people like you!) that he’s missing out and I just want him to be able to share experiences and “people” with me b/c it will enrich both of us, as a couple.

Sandy’s story brought to mind a point I often make about CS and marriage:  Outsiders can make a marriage stronger! 

Understandably, the academic literature on marriage typically stresses the importance of mutual values and interests–the couple that does things together stays together.  Still, that doesn’t preclude the fact that casual social ties outside a marriage (excluding sexual liaisons,  of course!) can also infuse a relationship with new life.  Nor does it address the reality that one person cannot be “all” to another.

Family historian Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, A History, explains: When women entered the workforce in the sixties, “overturning the cult of togetherness” that peaked in the 1950s, couples began to forge relationships outside the purview of marriage.  As she wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece, Too Close for Comfort:

Researchers soon found that men and women with confidants beyond the nuclear family were mentally and physically healthier than people who relied on just one other individual for emotional intimacy and support.

Rather than hunker down solely with our intimates, Coontz suggests, “we can strengthen our marriages the most by not expecting them to be our sole refuge.”

Similarly, psychologist Bella de Paulo, author of Singled Out questions the dominance of “intensive coupling” as the sole model for a good marriage.

No longer do Americans march in lockstep through a life path that begins in early adulthood with marriage, then continues through parenting and retirement and grandparenting. That path, even including an intensive version of the coupling, is still a possibility, but now it is only one of many options. In the 21st century, we have greater opportunities to create the interpersonal lives that best fit our unique sensibilities.

Sandy’s arrangement with her husband is a perfect example.  She’s the major breadwinner, and he’s Mr. Mom.   Ask any woman who stays at home with little kids–you need other people to get through the day!

More to the point, marriage (or cohabitation) and intimacy work best when both people are individuated–there’s no merging; each knows where he or she ends and the other begins. Each has his own set of resources.  Family therapist and passionate marriage advocate David Schnarch and is fond of using a “boat” metaphor in his couples workshops:  Rather than than imagining yourself going through life in the same boat, see yourselves in separate boats going down the same river.

In short, rather that expect your romantic partner to be your “everything,” as so many romantic songs suggest, take side trips with consequential strangers.  Talk to a variety of people, learn new things.  As a result, you become more interesting and more interested in others, including your partner! Then, when your boats come together, you are each stronger, more integrated, fuller.  Your side trips on the river bring novelty and new ideas into the marriage, and it stimulates the the relationship, which bodes well for your sex life, too.

I’m all in favor of intimacy and long-term relationships, but so many marriages end badly–the divorce rate still hovers around 50%.  So perhaps it’s time to rethink what kind of “togetherness” actually works.   For Sandy, a “light bulb went off” when she heard about consequential strangers.  See allowed me to reprint her email to “help others” who might be struggling with similar issues.  Most important, she was able to talk to her husband about it.

It was a healthy realization for me and is something I have talked about with him since. We’re on our way…

Note: This post, in slight different form, also appears on the Psychology Today website.

For a few years I’ve been going to the Village Zendo every Friday for their midday hour-long sit.  For various reasons I haven’t been able to go since before Christmas, until today.  Among all the many people who have come and gone to that session, there are four of us who have gone every Friday since I started.  Besides me there’s an older guy whose name I’ve never learned who dresses mostly in orange and seems to do nothing but ride his bike around all day; a younger guy named Larry who runs a music club and comes straight from bed (at 12:30); and a middle-aged guy named Bill who is a follower of the terribly obscure Gurdjieff.  We only talk for a few minutes before and after, and never see each other anywhere else.  I realized today that those guys mean a lot to me.  Seeing them, talking to them briefly, week after week reliably in that setting.  And I know that I wouldn’t have appreciated them with as much awareness as I did today if I hadn’t read your book.

(I posted Guy’s email in CS Stories, too, because I didn’t want it to be missed.)

This past week’s episode, “I Saw What I Saw,” highlights what hard times can do to our relationships.  It opens as docs of the two opposing gangs nervously await their turn to be questioned about an unnecessary death.  Through a riveting series of interviews and Rashomon-like flashbacks that follow, we learn that even in the face of a mass emergency–a hotel fire with multiple traumas–the newly merged staff members continue to rumble.  Every scene involves gossiping, back-stabbing, and jostling each other out of the way in order to get the “good” cases.  Yet, somehow, no one takes responsibility for the woman who died.

In the last ten minutes, this being television, the mystery unravels, and we learn that a Mercy West intern was distracted by the sight of a man with an ax protruding from his chest and forgot to check the patient’s airway.  Derek (McDreamy) questions whether it was really the intern’s “fault.”

“Maybe it’s not one doctor,” Derek suggests.  “Maybe it’s too many doctors who don’t know each other and who don’t trust each other.”

The Seattle Grace/Mercy West merger crisis is not just happening on television.

Lost jobs, reduced paychecks, and the disorder caused by downsizing impacts our relationships as much as our bank accounts. Many of us are living these stories.  The “bad guy” is often someone we don’t know–a higher-up who made a decision over which we have no control, a foreign invader from a different department or company or a consultant who’s encroaching on our territory–or we blame ourselves and walk around angry.

When people are laid off, staffs combined, or institutions overhauled to survive the digital future, insecurity and fear reverberate through the ecosystem–the network of consequential strangers who are affected by the changes.   Steps have to be taken in order to adjust and rebalance, but policies and new practices won’t create change, people will.

Whether you find yourself there by intention or accident–in a hospital, an office, or a volunteer organization where a Jets vs. Sharks battle is taking place–beware of one shortcoming of consequential stranger relationships (see Chapter 6): We are more likely to gossip or even lie about people we don’t know well.   The antidote is connection and conversation, but it’s not always easy to get there.  You might need to create an “Influence map” of the network, as explained in Chapter Two:

• Fly above the fray, for a better view of the network–in this case the personnel of both hospitals, as well as service providers, suppliers, patients and families who are affected by what goes on there.

• Ideally, take in the view with other “stakeholders.”  Their perspective might not be the same as yours, but try to grasp the idea that they’re looking at the same situation through different, but not necessarily “wrong,” eyes.  It can help ease hositilities.

• Together, look at how people are linked.  Where do alliances already exist? Where should new bridges be built?  Who’s protecting their own little corner of the network?   Who’s willing to forge new relationships?  In life, as in the TV version, sometimes there’s a split right down the middle–the home team vs. the invaders.  More often, alliances are subtle and complex.

The goal is to get the various players to be mindful of their connections and help them understand how much more can get done by reaching out, cooperating, and seeing beyond their own little fiefdoms. Otherwise–literally or metaphorically–lives will be lost in the rumble.

No, they’re consequential strangers, which is  a different word entirely.   Recently, I asked my Facebook friends (most are actually CS) for examples of similar phrases in which the meaning of the second word is completely changed by the presence of the first.  

They came up with many suggestions in which the first word modified the second, but does it completely change the meaning of the word?  A final curtain is still a curtain; a silent prayer still a prayer.  Others in that group included heavy duty, dual diagnosis, bind date, jump shot, bathing suit, and sponge bath.  (I came up with will power, which is still a power of sorts.)

They also offered other oxymorons, like jumbo shrimp (suggested by two people), along with civil war,  invisible ink, and amicable divorce.  But in each of those cases, the meaning of the second word is really just modified.  However ironcially, they’re still shrimp, ink, and divorce.  Granted, consequential strangers start out as strangers–all relationships do–but then they become something altogether different.   

The best suggestions, I think, were friendly fire, jazz fiend, smart cookie, trail blazer, military intelligence, and, when meant as an exclamation, good grief!   In each case, the second word takes on an entirely different meaning than if it stood alone.

Is there a name for such phrases? I’d really love William Safire to weigh in here.  Consequential stranger is an oxymoron, but these relationships–in scholarly circles, “weak ties” and in everyday parlance “acquaintances”–are people we know.  So if you’re listening, Mr. Safire or any other experts in our language, your input would be greatly appreciated. 

In the meantime, just remember:  Consequential strangers are not strangers! 

And if you’re wondering whether a particular person in your everyday comings and goings is a friend or consequential stranger, take this test.