Dump the emotional manure.

• Author: Taylor, Elaine
• Position: THERAPEUTIC THEORY

WHEN ANYONE ASKS my dignified, stiff-upper-lipped husband how a guy who has been an investment banker in the financial capitals of the world--London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York--ended up blissfully hitched to a broad from red-white-and-blue Texas, he deadpans in his clipped British accent, "We were channeled together by the spirit of Elaine's dead lover." That is 100% true, but not as effortlessly mystical as it sounds--even if you are into that stuff.

I grew up in redneck, blue-collar country, where a girl was a big fat nothing--less valuable than a good hunting dog. Terrified to wake up 30 years later and find they were right, I scratched out a role in the corporate testicle festival. By age 40, I earned fat, man-size paychecks.

The price?--a heart as tough as armadillo hide and my "love life" a dispiriting trail of relationship road-kill. Desperate for a peek at my future, I consulted an astrologer-psychic who fanned out her Tarot cards, did her California woo-woo thing, and assured me I someday would have the kind of love about which stories are written, "but not until you're ready." Sheesh. How much readier could one woman be?

The psychic pointed me down the path of a 1-2-3 Get-Ready-for-Love Plan:

Write a perfect mate list. Let's face it: if you are "on the market," you have some form of that list running through your subconscious 24/7, right?--and it works. My first iteration, decades earlier, was "tall, dark, and handsome," which is exactly what I got--and pretty much nothing more. This time I went beyond the kind of description found on a driver's license--and honed and refined that list over multiple years. (This was not an overnight process, but isn't the possibility of a soul mate worth the time?)

Define what "love" will look like when it finds me. Seriously? How much of a no-brainer is that? It will be, "Wonderful! Spectacular! I will be ecstatically happy!" This, of course, was just another lazy variation on the driver's license list. To my surprise I struggled with this. I could not figure out even how to start, until Emily Dickinson inspired me: "Heart, we will forget him! You and I, tonight! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light."

Unload the emotional baggage. No emotional baggage here. Okay, okay, I was a Peterbilt truck with no side mirrors, hauling a semitrailer of festering emotional manure that rocked along in my blind spot. Yeah, it probably could not hurt to drop a load. After much mewling and...