I may have been recently single on Valentine’s Day, but that will not deter me from passing along to my coupled readers opportunities like the following, where you could assist the academic community in figuring out what makes your love tick. The researcher emailed and asked if I would share this, and who am I to stand in the way of scientific progress?:

Engaged volunteers needed!

I am looking for volunteers for a study of attitudes towards marriage and parenthood among engaged couples. The study consists of a 25-30 minute online survey. To qualify for the study, you must be 20-35 years old, live in the U.S., and plan to marry or have a commitment ceremony within the next 365 days. You and your romantic partner must not have children, and this must be the first marriage for both of you.

You can:

-Help a doctoral candidate;
-Increase the pool of scientific knowledge;
-Support research on marriage and families; and
-Spend some time thinking about your relationship!

I am working with Dr. Charlotte J. Patterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. This study has been approved by the University of Virginia Institutional Review Board #2009025800.

If you and/or your romantic partner are interested in participating or want further information, please email me at survey.couples@gmail.com. I will send you a link that you can use to access the study.

Thanks!

Cristina Reitz-Krueger
Doctoral Student
University of Virginia
(434) 243-8558
survey.couples@gmail.com

I received the following touching email yesterday:

Hi, dear

Think of me always and dream of me often I am here heartsinadore.net/waityou/
You don’t know how much I really do miss you. I’ve opened up a door for love I thought I locked a long time ago. You are always in my heart and on my mind. I know we are so far apart. I can’t explain how all this distance and time apart has made my love for you grow. I don’t think anyone understands the burden I carry in my heart day by day … until I will be with you. I will be hopelessly in love with you, devoted to being with you. May God reunite us very soon. I am very hopeful that God will lead me to you. My love, I hope you feel the same, because it would be so much worse if I will be lost in this feeling alone, without you to share it with and to share the thought of us being together. I want to make up for all our time apart.

See you
J.S.

Naturally J.S. made me feel very special, until I saw that the email was also addressed to dogpile99@mailinator.com and dogpoop@mailblocks.com. I now feel slightly less special.

So January pretty much sucked. That’s as articulate as I can be on the subject. I don’t know why I was surprised at how tough that month turned out, considering recent heartbreak. But surprised I was, and while nursing a mildly annoying cold I logged more hours on Playstation 3 than I’d care to admit. Makes sense though; for a while you can be a different person, in a different world, working towards concrete, clearly delineated goals, all in the comfort etc, etc.

Playstation 3 also distracted me while I waited a few weeks to hear back from friends who were reading my book. Fortunately the feedback was all I could have hoped for, more or less, and now comes a fresh round of waiting. Today I mailed my book to the first literary agent on my list of potentials.

These days the big publishing houses won’t even read manuscripts unless they come from an agent. You could go the self-publishing route, an option that’s become much more viable in the past couple of years. But I’m a writer, not a businessman, and I could use somebody on my side to navigate the industry.

When looking for an agent, they suggest casting your net wider than one at a time. But for this first guy I’m going off my gut. One of the fringe benefits of getting my MFA at Columbia was its proximity to the publishing industry, and I met more than a few agents at horribly awkward cocktail parties. Imagine seventy desperate, insecure, socially awkward writers pitching their books to six agents. It was like six chunks of meat dropped into a shark tank.

But this guy I liked. He had a great reputation, a good sense of humor about the industry – which seems almost necessary these days – and he said he’d like to read the book when I was ready. I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be.

I sent him the first 50 pages, standard practice, with a letter that attempted to condense my 300-page memoir into a couple of sentences. And now I wait as my envelope works its way through the pile on his desk. We’ll see if he likes it enough to request the rest of the book, in which case more waiting…

I can’t quite begin to express the significance of this moment. I’ve been writing this book for over five years, and over that time I have gradually transferred all of my eggs into this one basket, fueled by little more than daydreams, blind hope, and the conviction that this is the only thing I’m really cut out for in this world. I’ve done what I can, now the rest is out of my hands.