Sometimes it’s just a matter of timing. Today I discovered Radical advice-columnist blogger CokeTalk of Dear Coke Talk via Calico Lane. Yesterday I wrote a post I wasn’t really satisfied with about how valuing relationships that are hard to is almost inherently alienating. If I’d done those things in reverse order I think the post I wrote would have been a lot shorter and I would have felt less uncertain about it.

Here’s CokeTalk’s post, very lightly edited to look more Q&A in quotes, and with emphasis mine.

On the best girls.

Q: WHY, oh, WHY, must all the best girls be straight?

A: Gay girls bitching that all the best girls are straight is just as silly as straight girls bitching that all the best boys are gay.

In either case, it usually means the girl doing the bitching has a taste for forbidden fruit. Is that it? Is there a ripe, delicious peach just out of arm’s length? Mmm. It looks so good up there, glistening and ready to be plucked. If only you could reach up and grab it.

Oh please, straight pussy doesn’t taste any sweeter than gay pussy. If you think it does, it’s all in your head. Maybe you love a challenge. Maybe it’s a bit of self-sabotage to prevent you from being in a position where you’re truly vulnerable.

Whatever it is, chill the fuck out and recognize that you’re the one making a problem for yourself. After all, the best girls are the ones that love you back.

She said it here.

Call me a prudish libertine if you like, but at the end of the day wanting to be lovers with someone for reasons other than their ability to love you back… being partners with someone for any reason beyond their ability to be your partner is inherently alienating.

Someone who’s structurally hard to get (e.g. he or she is straight and you’re gay, she or he is gay and you’re straight, they’re both happily and monogamously married, he or she is a “free spirit” who will never commit, he or she is so emotionally damaged you might be able to “rescue” but never reach) may feed all manner of needs for you, but a) if in fact you do ever leap the high hurdle and “get” them they’ll turn out to be approximately the same as someone who’d just say “I’d love to” if you just asked them out. And meanwhile, while you’re crawling across all that burning sand and swimming through those shark-infested waters to “prove” yourself… you’re very, very likely crawling or swimming past more people who could love you back than you could possibly imagine.

It’s not that I don’t think people should dream impossible dreams. Becoming a doctor, or performing at Carnegie Hall, “ever walking again” or running a marathon are all laudable, challenging, and fulfilling goals that, if they move you and shake you you should strive for.

I just think other people are people and impossible dreams are things.

Once you get that a lot of other stuff about relationships falls into place. I’m not positive I’d follow all of CokeTalk’s advice but her last line in that post is solid gold.