Love and Marriage

What a weird UFO project taught me about life ...

In June 2021, I got off the train to meet my girlfriend. I had started seeing an old friend of mine and, because of the way our lives had shaken out, the early days of our relationship were marked by some distance. Getting there took about 3 ½ hours and on this particular occasion I had just finished the audiobook of Ross Coulthart’s In Plain Sight.

Later that weekend I told her what I thought about the book. I thought it was a really interesting walkthrough of the UFO Phenomenon and, in terms of the evidence it presented, it certainly met my threshold for digging a little deeper. And when I mentioned that I was having trouble finding the kind of balanced news coverage I needed to do that, she said I should write it.

This sounds like the kind of thing your new girlfriend would say at the very beginning of a new relationship. UFOs are a pretty weird and often embarrassing topic to be associated with and I had no expectation that she was being anything other than nice.

But then I started doing some research and we would talk about it on walks. I started writing articles and she would read them. For almost two years before I launched The Other Topic, my first and only audience member was her, and I’m happy to say the reviews were positive.

This experience taught me a wholly unexpected lesson that I want to offer you in what we might call “UFO-adjacent” content. The vast majority of my relationship experience had involved dating people who didn’t respect my time, my goals or, as I came to understand later, me. This behavior actively got in my way and my 20s seemed like they were filled with a constant low-grade conflict that I thought was a normal part of dating.

You know that a house divided against itself cannot stand and I’m not telling you anything new here. But the trap that I wasn’t expecting came later when I found myself in a long-term relationship that involved a lot of polite neutrality. Because of all the conflict I had experienced in previous relationships, I came to mistake this neutrality for support until it became, absolutely, excruciatingly clear that it wasn’t.

That relationship ended and when I found myself in this new one, I still figured polite neutrality was the best I could ever hope for. That’s why I can’t overstate my surprise when I found this other thing called support that actually looks, feels, and acts like support. My girlfriend put her money where her mouth is and, with no particular interest in UFOs, got behind a project that interested me.

And the difference between polite neutrality and support is really what allowed this project to happen. I’m sure I could have done a lot of research and writing on my own, but my girlfriend is the focus group, test audience, copy editor, and art director behind this fledgling endeavor. I’m deeply grateful for her contribution and I think it’s important you know this newsletter is a team effort.  

But why am I telling you this? Because I routinely have conversations with people who tell me they want to write books, start businesses, or consider a significant lifestyle shift that they are not currently doing. The block I tend to hear usually comes from their relationships, which, as described to me, tend to lack the support I’m trying to highlight here. I’m offering you this experience of mine in the event it helps you spot the difference. I wish it had been pointed out to me much earlier in my life.

Anyways, if you’ve gotten this far, I know what you might be thinking: I should marry her, right? Just did. Married her on Saturday. You’re getting this as an automated post while I’m on a road trip for my honeymoon. I’ll be out of contact for about three weeks while my girlfriend wife and I talk about all the ways we hope to support each other’s dreams in the future. Who knows. Maybe she’s into Bigfoot.

The Other Topic will be back to a weekly publication schedule on March 12^th and, if you’re a dedicated reader, I hope you’ll forgive this (ideally rare) break in a publication schedule I take seriously. Until then.

Best,

From Mr. and Mrs. Author

of The Other Topic

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P.S. As a thank you to those of you who have stuck with us so far, please enjoy this limited time subscription discount available until March 11th:

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