Can you find love without looking?

As my friend and I once were lamenting the lack of a love life, my friend told me that, although she truly desired a serious relationship, she did not wish to seek. She wanted to be found.

It's not that my friend never got offers. She received invites for dates regularly.

She just never accepted them, finding reasons to turn down one guy because of one fault, and the next guy for a completely different fault. The criticisms generally were superficial because she never gave the guys a chance. (In the interest of full disclosure, I will confess that I once seriously considered dumping a guy because he held his fork in a really annoying way.)

But as for the not seeking, but being found: I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now. If you want something in your life -- from the trivial to the intrinsic -- don't you have to seek it at some level? Don't you have to do some research, some self-examination -- or, at the very least, some thinking?

If you want it, don't you have to work for it?

Your search might not take you down the intended path. When I met my husband, I was actually scamming for his friend. I soon found out the friend was a donkey. And my husband wasn't. Most days.

That discovery required a search.

Being found sounds magical. It seems effortless. But, in the end, I wonder if sticking with that plan would prove more effort than it's worth.

Do you measure up to love?

Want a little reality check on how you perform your relationship? Try this humbling little exercise.

Take this wedding-ceremony passage and replace the word "Love" with your name. (It's 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.) And though the words often are spoken during wedding ceremonies, the exercise can shed light on any relationship.

Let me show you:

[Alicia] is patient. [Alicia] is kind. [Alicia] does not envy, [Alicia] does not boast, [Alicia] is not proud. [Alicia] is not rude, [Alicia] is not self-seeking, [Alicia] is not easily angered, [Alicia] keeps no record of wrongs. [Alicia] does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [Alicia] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

When I first did this exercise (thanks to writer Jill Rigby for suggesting it), I became more and more disheartened every time I inserted my name for "Love."

Patient? Sometimes. Ditto for kind. Easily angered? Far more often than I'd like to admit, and the same goes for "shows no record of wrongs." But I sure try hard on protecting, trusting, hoping and persevering -- to the point of annoyance to some of my friends and family.

After doing the exercise, do I feel like an adequate partner in any relationship? Not so much.

But I do have a good starting place for improvement.

Women, spend some time with 'Money'

Ladies, if you haven't already had a "come to Jesus" talk with yourself about money in this recession, now's the time. And Liz Perle's "Money, A Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash" is just the book to start the conversation. I've been recommending it to friends and co-workers, and now I want to suggest it to you as well.

Let me tell you up front that this is not easy reading. After the prologue I had to put the book down for a day or two, to steel myself for what was to come. This paragraph is partially what did it:

"Long ago, and not entirely consciously, I made a quiet contract with cash. I would do what it took to get it -- work hard, marry right -- but I didn't want to have to think about it. I simply wanted to know I would be financially secure. This intentional avoidance eventually exacted its price. In the service of sidestepping, whenever possible, my anxious feelings (if not my facts) about money, I've signed over a lot of power to anyone or anything that promised to make me feel financially safe -- no matter what the consequences. I've left my emotions about money -- the fears and ambivalences -- largely unexamined. I've avoided facing my contradictory feelings about the whole subject, such as the fact that I want to have my own money with the independence it gives, while simultaneously hoping someone or something will step up to the plate and take care of me. I've invited these highly emotional and unstable sets of feelings into every relationship I've had, and they have silently accompanied and influenced each one -- with my father, my work, my friends, my bosses, and my husbands. (there have been two -- oddly, both named Steve.)"

Any of that sound familiar? I thought so. And that's just in the prologue. It came soon after Liz talked about how her husband decided he didn't want to be married any more ... and they'd already sold their apartment in New York and had all their belongings steaming across the ocean to join them in Singapore, where they moved for his job. Liz's husband told her to go back to the States and take their 4-year-old son with her. He gave her $1,500. And that was it.

Most women's financial problems aren't as dramatic as that, and Liz interviewed plenty of them for the book. Trust me, as messed up as you think your situation is, there are chicks in the book who will make you feel better about it. Women who get into credit card debt because they buy pretty things to make themselves feel better. Women who are the breadwinners in their family, and they resent their husbands because of it (and the husbands resent them right back). Women who steal cash from their husband's wallets to squirrel away, "just in case." Women who've grown up thinking they'll "marry well," and that's their career plan.

But there's also examples of women who have their lives together, and input from financial experts and sociologists and psychologists who offer explanations of our behavior and some guidance. And throughout, author Liz tells her own story, and shares how she overcame her own manias and misconceptions. Women, no matter where you are in your life, "Money, a Memoir" will open your eyes to your own financial foibles. Oh, and it's available for free at the library. :o)

If you left, what would you take?

While I was out for a walk today I listened to a podcast of NPR's "Fresh Air," featuring an interview with Rhett Miller, singer and songwriter for the band Old 97's.

During the interview, host Terry Gross asked Miller to recall his experiences on Sept. 11, 2001. Miller and his wife lived only a couple blocks from the Twin Towers in New York. Miller described going up to his apartment building's rooftop and seeing the first tower on fire, and people falling from above. He and his wife rushed back down to their apartment, only to be engulfed in smoke when that building fell. They managed to get away just before the second building fell, then, two months later, were allowed back into their apartment for five minutes as a National Guardsman watched from the doorway, machine gun in hand. Miller described his wife standing their closet holding six or seven pairs of high heels, crying. She was overwhelmed, and couldn't decide which pairs to take. Miller reminded her there was a man with a gun waiting on them and grabbed his guitar.

The interview got me thinking: If I had to leave my house in a hurry, what would I take? The first two things that popped into my mind were my cat, which didn't surprise me, and my passport, which did. But then it didn't. There are family keepsakes I would mourn the loss of, but most items -- clothes, furniture, etc. -- can be replaced. I've never really been big on collecting photographs or souvenirs; memories of life experiences are more important to me. So the gut reaction of grabbing my passport reinforces how important the ability to travel and gather more life experiences is to me.

What about you? If you had to leave NOW, other than your purse/wallet and family members, what would you take with you?