Hello, Sharp11Girl! Please know you’re welcome to write to me as “Lee” instead of “author”, but if you prefer author, that’s fine too. It reminds me of something I heard about why servers at restaurants tell customers their first names. If the server is de-personalized, with no first name, customers might be more apt to talk to them in a more derogatory, scathing, unkind fashion than they might talk to “Suzy” or “Lee” or “Robert”. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s interesting.

Let’s see…the first thing you mentioned in your comment was your belief that I need to “learn some self-reliance”. Well, I guess I did rely some on my colleagues in law enforcement and military to save my butt a time or two, but since they relied on me for that, I like to think it was inter-reliance, not just me relying on them. And I guess I did rely on loan-lenders to lend me money for all of my education, since I didn’t rely on anyone—not a parent, spouse, significant other, friend, family member, taxpayer—anyone—to pay for my education, including tuition and living costs, or help me pay back all those loans (which I’ve done). I guess it could be argued that I relied a bit too much on all of my employers to give me money in exchange for my labor to pay for every single one of my expenses since age 16, including all living costs, rent/mortgages, utilities, vehicles, vacations, clothing—everything I’ve ever had, with zero monetary assistance from a parent, spouse, significant other, friend, or family member. Maybe you meant I should learn to rely on myself more instead of on my dearest, lifelong friends for the emotional and social support they’ve provided me for years? If you’ve read the other pieces I’ve written, then you know I definitely relied on my careers way too much for my identity, sacrificing marriage and relationships for those careers. I just want to be careful that I don’t accidentally mis-interpret what you’ve written, so just to check: Did you mean I needed to learn some self-reliance in some other regard?

Ok, you also commented that you perceived me as “incredibly clingy” and feared that men might find me terrifying immediately upon meeting me due to this incredible clinginess. Thank you for looking out for me! Coincidentally, I just published a piece a few days ago regarding the word clingy; it’s one about the physical touch love language. I wrote that some men may label some women as clingy if the women tend to want more physical affection than the man. It seems the disconnect might occur because their love languages differ. If he doesn’t personally prefer that much physical touch, a man might be prone to labeling a woman who prefers more than him as clingy. Of course it works the other way, too. Some women who don’t like as much physical touch may label a man who likes it more than her as clingy. It makes me wonder: Is ‘clingy’ just a description of how someone is, especially if the person calling someone clingy is different from the person being called clingy? In your use, I don’t think you meant clingy in terms of physical affection, but I can see the same application. Maybe clingy is just a word we use to describe someone who is different from ourselves. Some other readers of this piece I’ve written—women and men—indicated that they, too, have some of the same reasons for wanting to get re-married. I suppose that means they, too, might be labelled “clingy”, but overall, it just means people that feel and believe this are different from people who don’t feel and believe these are valid reasons for re-marrying. It’s kind of like…lasagna. Those of us who like lasagna eat lasagna. If you don’t like lasagna, you don’t eat it, and that’s quite ok. Are we ‘bad’ for eating lasagna just because you don’t agree that lasagna is good? Are other people who like lasagna going to be terrified of me because I like eating lasagna?

Let’s see. You also perceived me as being someone who "feels incomplete without a partner". That’s some interesting word choice. I guess, having prioritized my career over relationships for decades, working 70+ hour weeks most of that time, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I’d like to put a bit more effort and priority into my personal life and having a relationship. I’ve been thinking about a future relationship in terms of seeking love and belongingness in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy—that it’s healthy to seek and find love/belongingness on the way to self-actualization, especially since that’s an area of my life that I have neglected. But Shark11Girl, I completely understand that there’s no way you could know enough about me from this snippet of a reading to know my more complex views on such a complex topic. We may actually be saying the same thing but using different verbiage: You may call it, “not feeling complete without a partner” whereas I may call it “looking forward to having a partner to meet some of my needs for love/belongingness as part of my self-actualization”. Neat that we’ve come to the same conclusion, huh? It’s interesting though how one phrasing might be seen as an insult in the common vernacular, yet the actual feeling may be a healthy pursuit of self-actualization. Word choice is an interesting thing. I certainly do look forward to finally getting to prioritize my personal life and relationships, and I certainly do think it’s ok for everyone to figure out what is missing/not missing (complete/incomplete?) on their way to becoming a bit more self-actualized.

Thank you for recommending that book by the Shel Silverstein. I noticed that you called her ‘Shel’ instead of ‘author of the book titled...';) Have you ever read a book called “True Enough”? One of the points is that people tend to read the material that they tend to agree with. If you tend to lean more towards the points of view that Shel has written, yet you were willing to read my points of view that may not be in agreement with your personal beliefs, then I’m very impressed with you! That seems to mean you were willing to read my stuff, too, to take into consideration all viewpoints, even if they’re not the ones you personally believe in or that Shel would approve of. That’s what I’m enjoying so much here on Medium—that we’re all interacting even when we don’t share the same views. It’s so cool when we’re able to learn more about each other’s points of view, yet still say, “It’s ok for you to feel and believe what you feel and believe, and I’m not going to try to say what you SHOULD feel and believe.” Ok, Shark11Girl—I’m definitely a long-winded sort, so add that to my descriptors of being insufficiently self-reliant, clingy, and incomplete without a partner. I’m going to go pet my dog and hope he’s not too terrified of me for relying on him for snuggles:):)