Recently in Relationships Category

1. My demand for gold stars. Oh, how I crave appreciation and recognition! I always want that gold star stuck to my homework. But my husband just isn't very good at handing out gold stars, and that makes me feel angry and unappreciated.

I figured out a good strategy. I used to tell myself I was doing nice things for him - "He'll be so happy to see that I put all the books away," "He'll be so pleased that I finally got the trunk packed for camp" etc. - then I'd be mad when he wasn't appreciative. Now I tell myself that I'm doing these things because I want to do them. "Wow, the kitchen cabinets look great!" "I'm so organized to have bought all the supplies in advance!" Because I do things for myself, he doesn't have to notice. This sounds like a more self-centered approach, but it's really much better.

2. Using a snappish tone. I have a very short fuse and become irritable extremely easily - but my husband really doesn't like it when I snap at him (big surprise). I've done a lot to try to keep my temper in check. I don't let myself get too hungry or too cold (I fall into these states very easily); I try to keep our apartment in reasonable order, because a mess makes me crabby; when he tries to make a joke out of my temper, I try to laugh along; I try to control my voice to keep it light and cheery instead of accusatory and impatient. Confession: I haven't made much headway here.

3. Getting angry about a fixed trait. This is very, very tough. One of the things I've learned from my happiness project is that you can't change anyone but yourself, and while there are some things I'd love to change about my husband, those things aren't going to change. He isn't going to get better about answering my emails. He is going to keep making rich desserts that tempt me. Etc. Instead of getting all worked up, as I often do, I'm trying to remind myself of HOW SMALL his flaws are, in the scheme of things.

4. Score-keeping. I'm a score-keeper, always calculating who has done what. "I cleaned up the kitchen, so you have to run to the store" -- that sort of thing. I've found two ways to try to deal with this tendency.

First, I remind myself of the phenomenon of unconscious over-claiming; i.e., we unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people's. This makes sense, because of course we're far more aware of what we do than what other people do. According to Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis, "when husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent."

I complain about the time I spend organizing babysitting or paying bills, but I overlook the time my husband spends dealing with our car or food-shopping. It's easy to see that over-claiming leads to resentment and an inflated sense of entitlement. So now when I find myself thinking, "I'm the only one around here who bothers to..." or "Why do I always have to be the one who...?" I remind myself of all the tasks I don't do.

Second, I remind myself of the words of my spiritual master, St. Therese of Lisieux: "When one loves, one does not calculate." That precept is the basis for my 11th Personal Commandment: No calculation.

5. Taking my husband for granted. Just as I find it easily to overlook the chores done by my husband (see #4), it's easy for me to forget to appreciate his many virtues and instead focus on his flaws (see #3). For example, although I find it hard to resist using an irritable tone, my husband almost never speaks harshly, and that's really a wonderful trait. I'm trying to stay alert to all the things I love about him, and let go of my petty annoyances. This is easier said than done.

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If I had to summarize my grandmother in one word, it would be "fascinating." She never went skydiving or spelunking or anything else that would signify "fascinating" in the big boffo-socko sense, but to me her very being was fascinating.

Just look at her picture - the drape of her skirt, the sparkle in her eye, the ever-so-casual way she holds her sunglasses. Isn't this a woman who should be called "fascinating?" All of our elders, who live in different times and places, should fascinate us, I think. I feel like my Gaga was the fascinating-est of them all, but I hope you're thinking of your fascinating relatives and how much impact they have on your life.

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In the ancient forest on the Right Bank of Paris lies a jewel-like island where Napoleon, just back from the Alps, built a Swiss chalet. Emerald lawns and ruby flowers shimmer beside a sapphire lake as peacocks stride by. On a sunny Sunday morning in May, I am ensconced on the chalet's terrace, now a café, replenishing more energy than my leisurely jog has exhausted. Around me, lazy hands stir sugar cubes in slow circles and spread butter on crusty baguettes. These are the only signs of industry in a city where the principal exercises are digestion and strolling, where laissez-faire is practiced and preached, where intermission is the pace of life.

I saunter through the woods toward my apartment as the ladies of the night flee daylight like vampires stumbling upon a cross. I know one of the Brazilians by name, since I pass her most mornings as she's wrapping up her night's work in tissues. Alexandro has just become Alexandra. Like her, I came to Paris to reinvent myself three years ago. Although I had no surgery, I did change my name, and while no one calls me a prostitute, sometimes I feel like one, admittedly, in another old and unlofty profession, advertising.

I've been relocated from headquarters in New York to tackle a marketing emergency for an important toiletries client-- the launch of France's first sorely needed antiperspirant. Our team on the Seine--ninety-nine people smoking and loitering above a gas station--won the coveted assignment (code-named Stink-o) even though they've failed for a decade to browbeat their countrymen into American bar soap. Which is why someone very high up at bar soap headquarters, someone with a good nose but a rarely used passport, smells an untapped market for deodorants over here, and although I can imagine the logic that led to this conclusion (and my relocation), the person who reached it hasn't had to sit through forty focus groups in unventilated conference rooms in the provinces. Getting the natives to "adopt" a roll-on, stick, or spray will require "a paradigm shift," I'm learning, a long and winding road that's synonymous with a huge media budget and then, usually, failure. What would make the French--who relish the bleu on their cheese and their skin, who have a whole class of things they fondly call "stinky"--what would make them plug up their pores with wax to placate and enrich our big American client? This is the onerous marketing dilemma I face daily in my otherwise idyllic life in the City of Light.

To help me think through the Stink-o conundrum, I have the Semis--a squadron of French semiologists, not just translators but also linguists and cogitators, who are deconstructing the semantics of our antiperspirancy muddle. Not solving it exactly, just scrutinizing it in the Gallic way, ad nauseam. For my edification, the Semis are writing a treatise on perspiration, its cultural heritage, its evolutionary value, its distillation of primeval body essences. My task is to develop a successful campaign against sweat, when it rivals the madeleine in the collective olfactory unconscious.

Tucked behind a manicured garden in the Sixteenth Arrondissement is the elegant rue where I live--in a Beaux-Arts town house with a tiny filigreed elevator, where I would imagine Maurice Chevalier crooning to Leslie Caron even if "Gigi" weren't playing on the concierge's stereo. From my apartment on the top floor--four rooms with high ceilings and crown moldings, eight times the size of my New York studio, thanks to the value of the dollar under Reagan--there's a postcard view of the tip of the Eiffel Tower, which I am admiring through open windows, when my phone rings.

The connection has a bad echo, so it's an overseas call, although it's two in the morning in the States.

Surely, as the poet said, some revelation is at hand.

My brother, Ben, weeping hello, sounds both frantic and measured. He tells me he has "terrible news." He says I'd better "prepare" myself.

I have never had any idea what to do after someone says "prepare yourself," since the warning itself is an angst infusion.

"Sssxxzzz is dead," Ben says, but the ocean is sloshing against underwater cables, making puddles of noise in his words.

"Who? Who's dead?" This is the moment when time collapses, when what hasn't yet been said feels like déjà vu.

"DAD!" he shouts. "DAD is dead."

The echo repeats his words. "Dad is dead--dad is dead."