Relationships and the New Car smell

There are several smells that are universally loved, smells that make everyone take a deep breath and sigh, "Oh that is good". Fresh bread, babies, puppies, and new cars are a few of those, and I am know there are more, many more, flowers for example, but those four are absolutely wonderful by anyone's standards. Find me someone who does not like the smell of a new car, for example, and I will show you a person who is either a liar or a smoker. It's a great smell.

I remember the first car that I had that had that smell, and I remember it so well its embarrassing. It was a brand new Black Jeep Cherokee with tan leather-like interior. My god, I thought I had truly arrived when I got that. I thought I was unstoppable, and clearly a man to be reckoned with if anyone were to pay attention, which they weren't. But the smell was what tipped the scales when I was thinking about whether to fork over that much money, or to go get a nice sensible used car. The smell was more convincing than the salesman, and let me tell you he was a shark. I was way out of my league when I was dealing with this fellow, then when he so carefully introduced me to the intoxicating aroma, the 'buy-me I am better than heroin' smell, I was lost. I bought it. Damn him. He was my first drug dealer and I am still addicted.

I loved that smell so much I used to keep the windows up just to try to preserve it. I opened and closed my doors as quickly as I could, just like I do with my refrigerator at home trying to keep the cold air inside. Something kids just don't understand, do they? I would spend as much time in that rig as I could, driving everyone everywhere. It didn't matter how far it was, or who it was. Hell I would have picked up a hitchhiker and taken them to ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Iowa for all I cared. Just to be in that truck, my truck.

It wasn't just the smell of course. I loved the new toy for being a new toy. I wanted to push every button, use every feature. I wanted the four wheel drive to be tested out, to dig the knobby wheels into some mud and escape where a Prius would sink, drown and die much like the dinosaurs in the La Brea Tar Pits did. Some archeologist would dig it up and find a pencil necked geek, with his graphing calculator and inhaler in a thousand years and think that we all drove cars made out of aluminum foil, and all had breathing difficulties. It's the same way rumors get started. Seeing, or hearing just a piece and making assumptions. Its also the way Threes Company's plot line ran every week, and it seemed to work for them so maybe I should not knock it.

Eventually, and you already know where I am going with this, the shiny black rig with the knobby tires, and chrome trailer hitch became just a tool to get from one spot to another. It became mundane. Useful, pretty to look at, but mundane. It seems that no matter how nice anything is that we may buy, it won't help us when we are having a bad day. When we need a hug, or a person to talk to. Every new thing in our lives will quickly find itself put into the category of mundane as soon as we are having troubles that it cant fix. That beautiful new truck of mine did not care that I was struggling to make the payments, or that while I was driving it, I was stressed out because life at home was not great. The Jeep, couldn't help me when my mom was sick. It became just a car at that point that got me from where I was to where I needed to be and back. It just became only useful.

This brings me to a question. When does a partner stop being greatest joy in our lives, and just become reliable, dependable…useful? It seems the newness of a purchase works on us about the same way as the newness of a new love. You buy a new Jimmy Choo purse (yes he has purses too, expensive ones of course), and you will love it for how long? Quite a while probably. I would expect you would take great care of it, and hope you are seen with it out in public because you are proud to be seen with it. You will for a time find yourself staring at it from across the room, or casually setting it down on a chair and looking at it out of the corner of your eye trying to imagine what others see when they look at it. Can they see the tag? Can they see how beautiful it is?

Purses may not be your thing and you may find yourself confused. This could be uhm… well it could be shoes (yes a lot more of you understand the obsession with 'new' now), could be a horse, could be a dress, or almost anything. Personal tastes being what they are, I cant even scratch the surface of the variety of things that might 'do-it' for you. But you get it, right? New is good, old is well…still good, just not as exciting. Dependable maybe.

Currently I have two cars, one I drive for work, most of the time, and the other I bring out in the evenings or on weekends. Not too uncommon I don't think. Make one car the work horse to preserve the other one a bit longer than it would last otherwise. The weekend car is more enjoyable to drive in, a bit more flashy (not a lot), and has a lot more gadgets to play with, some I still don't fully understand. Anyway, the weekend car has been having some problems lately and has cost me quite a lot of money just to keep it going. Now I find that I am nervous when driving it, listening more intently for unusual clicks, thumps or creaks. Every time hearing something or feeling something that seems odd, I get nervous thinking about the mechanics greasy hand taking my credit card and smiling. However my older work car, with well over one hundred and seventy thousand miles on it, which enough to drive around the planet just over seven times, has an 'old reliable' feel to it. I get in, and know exactly when its going to bump or thump, and I know if there is a problem later on, it wont be an issue. Simple problems for a simple car. I can trust my old car, where my new one does not give me the sense of peace of mind, at least not yet. Trust comes with time. The less problems and the easier to fix they are when they arise, over the most amount of time equals the most trust. Marriages work the same way.

I remember being married, it was quite a long time ago now, but still I remember it well. I remember not just the tough ending, the last two dark years, but I remember the good times too. These are the memories that make me think positively about finding a new wife. I remember after the initial excitement (and endless sex that comes with any new relationship) we settled into a very nice groove, one where trust was building, and peace of mind was growing. Years and years we spent together and I remember going to sleep at night, and waking up in the mornings feeling like I was the luckiest man on the planet. I was so grateful to be in such a great place with her I really could not have imagined a better life. Life was, it seemed, perfect. Even though I am a man and notice other beautiful women I had no interest in attempting to be with them. I was more than content with what I had.

Life being what it is, however, means that good things don't always last. And some of us are/were not mature enough, to ride out what might have been just a long, but temporary dark tunnel. The newness had worn off, and I was seeing her as she was, nothing more than a person. She had desires, and aspirations that were unique to her, that changed as she got older. Not everything was part of our partnership and not every bump was something she was willing to ride out with me, nor I with her. I began to see her, not as the princess that I married, but just as a person who leaves a smell in the bathroom like any of my two hundred and fifty pound male friends. She was just a person. Sometimes likeable, sometimes not but nonetheless reliable and trustworthy. As was I. But can that be enough?

I think whenever this point hits us, a lot of us anyway, we begin to look and wonder what life would be like if we were single. We listen to our friends bragging about the parties, and see good looking young guys hitting on bikini-clad girls at the beach and reminisce remembering that we were once playing those one of those roles maybe both if you live on Capital Hill. We begin to miss the excitement, and accept the knowledge that there will never be another First Kiss, which is the most passionate, tender and exciting of all the various kisses ever invented. This can make us sad, and if things are not going well at home already, the place that should be our one true sanctuary, where we should be able to come back and find only love, warmth and support waiting, then its natural to feel a bit claustrophobic in a relationship. The little ring on your finger might begin to feel like it has more weight. Might feel like there are tiny but unbreakable chains attached to it leading back to a person that you would just as well not see today, much less interact with.

I checked last week at Wal-Mart for crystal balls for just this time in our lives but they were out. Seems the witches who make them are demanding health benefits and Wal-Mart is not coming up with a good offer, so they are on an indefinite back-order. Without this soothsaying ability how will know if we have hitched our wagon to the right horse or not? How will we know how much longer this darkness will last, or if it's just like we fear and is never going to get any better? How can we know that it will get better, that we will fall back in love, but love for the right reasons this time if we just give it more time and effort? How can we know? Do we have the stamina to run this marathon when so many are dropping off to the side and leaving the race? I didn't and being where I am today, a single and relatively happy man, I can only council my friends that life is not all good with a new car, and it's not necessarily better with a new person either. Maybe at first, when the polish is still fresh and the bathroom still smells like soap, but each of us, and everyone around us has issues that will pop up at some point in the relationship, and the decision needs to made. Listen to the slick car salesman waving intoxicating smells your way, or stick it out and make what you know can be reliable work forever.