Musings & Observations / Barry Halpin

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the covers begin to move. Suddenly, my wife bolts upright like the Bride of Frankenstein after receiving a mega-dose of electricity, eyes dancing the tarantella and hair standing straight up.

"Barry, are you awake?"

It's just like the old days, when one of my daughters would wake up crying in the middle of the night and we would both feign sleep and lay as still as possible, hoping the other would be the one who couldn't take the crying anymore. Ah! The joys of sandbagging and watching your spouse begrudgingly get out of bed, mumbling and grumbling, as they head down the hall.

"I can't sleep and I figured if you were up and wouldn't mind chatting we could discuss some things."

My internal dialogue cries out, "No, not another late night bedroom chat. Please, have mercy, just lie down and go back to sleep!" I roll over, fake my best deep sleep type of groan and throw in some flailing arms for good measure.

She would not be denied. She gives me a playful elbow nudge, "Barry, I know you're up. You can't fool me."

I am busted! "OK dear, what's on your mind?"

"What did you think of the halibut tonight? I thought it was absolutely incredible. New Wave has the best seafood! I loved the fact that you kept it simple, just butter and some herbs; it was perfect."

"You woke me up to wax rhapsodic about the halibut? I know there's something else going on when you lead off by buttering me up."

"Come to think of it, there's something else I wanted to bring up. I really wish you would write down for me all the info about the money we still owe on our credit cards and outstanding college loans. If you just tell me, it goes in one ear and out the other."

It's 3 a.m.: I am sleep deprived and can barely carry on a conversation about the virtues of New Wave's halibut, let alone the convoluted details of our finances.

"I promise I'll write it down for you. Now, can we just go back to sleep?"

"Barry, it would really help me if you wrote it down. What's the big deal? Easier, put it in a spread sheet."

I give one of my most sincere, "Yes dears," and smile, thinking how we've been doing this dance for years.

All marriages are made up of patterns, some more deeply embedded into the fabric of the relationship. One of the patterns of our marriage is that my wife has these early morning revelations about everything from New Wave Seafood to our finances as well as the advantages of shopping at IKEA, my voluminous CD collection and the hidden meaning in a recent episode of "Lost."

As I am about to fall back to sleep, my wife whispers in my ear, "I hope you didn't forget about that promise you made last month to clean out the garage. Sweet dreams, honey!"

My wife has just committed the cardinal relationship sin of dredging up the past, unaware that according to the best seller "A Comprehensive Guide to Making Relationships Work" there is a moratorium on holding your spouse responsible for things said more than a week ago. I resist the temptation to send her to the relationship penalty box.

Lately, another pattern has emerged in my life. For some unknown reason I am being sought out for relationship guidance by women I know. A friend tells me it's because I am a more highly evolved male, whatever that means, and I understand the simplistic inner workings of the male brain.

I may not be a Neanderthal looking to drag a woman back to his cave, but the idea of being more highly evolved freaks me out and makes me think of space aliens with enormous foreheads.

I never let on that I was an amateur matchmaker back in college and hooked up four couples who eventually got married, and then divorced, one after only a week. I will never forget Mark coming up to me a few minutes before he walked down the aisle, "Barry, I don't know why I'm doing this." Neither did I, but at that moment there was nothing I could say.

Most of the time giving relationship advice is easy, we've all done it, solicited or not. Accepting advice is extremely difficult, as no one likes to be told, even by a friend, who is right or wrong for them.

Whether she's attracted to a Wall Street stockbroker in an Armani Suit or a rough-and-tumble, Harley-riding, tattooed free spirit and whether he's attracted to the `girl next door' who reminds him of his mom or that wild lead singer in a rock band, there seems to be a distinct pattern to the hormonal attraction component of our relationships.

In helping my friends navigate the dating minefield on- and off-line, one of my cardinal rules is never mess with anyone's dating dos and don'ts. They usually come from years of dating experience and since it's always been about perception, not reality, if they think they work, so be it. What follows are some dating dos and don'ts of a friend:

"¢ Only go out on a date if you're blemish free. Small pimples can take on gargantuan proportions the night of a date and you will not be able to get the pimple out of your mind all evening.

"¢ Never go anywhere where you might run into an ex.

"¢ Never go out with anyone who is too good looking or too ugly.

"¢ If you meet a guy while walking your dogs in Central Park and the relationship is hellacious, run away anytime a guy with a dog heads in your direction.

"¢ Never go out with a guy whose online photo shows a bed filled with stuffed animals.

"¢ Hair has to be perfectly coiffed and you have to be the right weight.

"¢ If you go out with a guy who brings up problematic past relationships and always blames it on the woman, quickly exit stage right.

"¢ Dos and don'ts become meaningless when the planets are properly aligned.

We are living in the "way too much information age." As my women friends occasionally share too much information about their love lives, people all over are sharing on cell phones, Facebook and in e-mails and texts what they feel are interesting and exciting things about their lives, usually finance and romance and their important thoughts and observations on anything and everything.

Life imitates art and lately it seems life is an ongoing reality show.

Barry Halpin is a prevention specialist for Liberation Programs, a substance abuse health care agency based in Stamford that provides substance abuse counseling to adolescents and their families in Darien. He's also the director of the county-wide Peer Players, an adolescent theater company. E-mail him at barryhalpin@aol.com.