Wednesday, 15 June 2011

• The Heist

  
  Say you are in a steady relationship, and you find yourself feeling a bit bored. For whatever reason, perhaps because you are both so busy the the conversation has eroded and sex has become more of a nightcap, you find yourself wishing to shake things up a bit. When this moment comes, as it inevitably will, there are all kinds of tricks and strategies for reigniting the flame. But there is one strategy that tops all the rest in risk as well as reward. This strategy, when properly executed, can lift a tired relationship to the airy heights of bliss and discovery. But when it backfires, it doesn't backfire once before relenting to let you lick your wounds. It continues to backfire, again and again in quick succession, until you're left bruised and irritated and wishing you had never read this blog post in the first place. The strategy can be loosely equated with kidnapping, and here it will be referred to as the Heist.

  Now, I want to make a small disclaimer and say the the Heist is not for everyone. It requires patience, time, and resources that many people believe they don't have or can't afford. Beyond this, is takes imagination, courage, and conviction. But it also takes a little faith in yourself as an individual entity, which can get lost when you share everything with someone for so long. When you are in a relationship, you are used to having an ally and confidante for everything. Things become easier because you can divide and conquer, because many hands make light work and all those other adorable cliches. The Heist denies you these advantages and leaves the challenge solely to you,along with the added stress of keeping the plot a secret from your partner. This is why, if the Heist fails, it can be especially disheartening. It is not for the feint of spirit. If you are ready to take on an intensely personal challenge (and its potential consequences),

  THE HEIST

  My experience with the Heist stretches back to when I was nine years old. My mother woke me up for school on a dark winter morning, and I trudged downstairs to eat the breakfast she had laid out for me and my two siblings. We were eating, tired and grumpy and dreading another day of school, when my mother announced that we had to finish quick if we wanted to be on time for the car. Car? What car? We have our own car, we mumbled. No, not that car. The car that was arriving in ten minutes to take us to the airport - so we could catch the plane that would take the five of us to Disneyworld for the week. Whaaaaat?!

  Needless to say, my introduction to the Heist was a salient one, and it made its mark on my imagination as well as my conception of what is possible.

  Now, the Heist is a small crime of sorts, and as such it involves intense preparation and foresight. My mother had been gradually sniping our favorite articles of clothing from the laundry for weeks in advance of our Floridian adventure (and even helped me "look" for a certain t-shirt for ten minutes, even though she knew it was stored in our luggage under the stairs). She had spoken with our teachers, coaches and principal, and gotten all of our homework assignments in advance. Granted, she was the mother of the people she was kidnapping, which gave her a certain authority that a girlfriend or boyfriend doesn't really have. But if you want to perform the Heist for your SO, here are some things to consider:

  1. TIME. People have commitments and schedules, and they are the biggest hurdles to the Heist. The successful kidnapper will become intimately acquainted with these hurdles, and will open the lines of communication with the people that have sway over them - far in advance of the execution date. These lines must extend not only to the boss, but also to the co-workers, who will be the ones picking up slack for the week (an especially important consideration if your SO's job involves client relations). Talk to whoever knows the answers, and get them on your side. It helps to have flexibility with the specific dates, which will be more or less difficult depending on the flexibility of your own work schedule.

  While you may think that it would be totally unreasonable for you to request a meeting with your boyfriend's boss to discuss the possibility of taking him away from work for a week, the fact is that bosses are human like the rest of us, and the heart is what connects humans to each other. If you prepare a small speech, taking care to reference your SO's dedication to his job while also stressing how important this time would be to the both of you, there are few people who would not be moved by something so human, unless they are totally inhuman, in which case you're on your own. 

  2. MONEY. Most people think they don't have enough. But in many cases this is because we're saving for something else, something hazy and restricted to the nebulous future. If you can say "I can't afford to spend $x on this thing because I'm saving everything for ________" then the Heist might not be for you. But if there's not a definite thing that could fill in that blank, then your priorities are flexible enough to consider it. What keeps us feeling that we don't have enough money is that we don't know how much enough is. The successful Heist executor will do the research and come up with a (reasonably) accurate estimate of how much the trip will cost, with the most obvious expenses coming in under transportation, accommodation, and food.

  If you own a car and a tent, for example, this is what a seven-day round-trip road trip to a beach campground 300 miles away will cost you:

  (2)(300/mpg of car)(price of a gallon of gas) + (camping fee per night)(6 nights) + (food) + (7 days)(misc).

  This will give you a ballpark, base line of expenses. The MISCELLANEOUS expense is VERY important: there are bound to be some expenses that pop up, and allotting a certain amount (say $20) per day to that which is unforeseeable makes it a whole lot less stressful to shell out money in the face of surprises. In that vein: always, always, always round UP. Once you replace the mysterious x with a solid number that you are comfortable with, you know the value of enough and it becomes easier to digest: "I can afford to spend $700 on this trip while still saving for other things."
  

  3. ANTICIPATION & LOGISTICS. Once time and money are taken care of, there is little else to hold you back from performing the Heist except the doubt that comes with venturing into the unknown. So this is where you do all the extraneous research and packing, which is very detail-oriented. Part of the fun of pulling off the Heist is the ability to respond to their protests with "I've got everything we'll need." So, if you've never seen your SO in a bathing suit, inquire casually as to whether he owns one, and if not, add that to the expense list. If you are going to the beach for the first time all winter, consider adding a bikini wax to the expense sheet as well. If he likes to read, bring some good books. Call ahead to make reservations and talk to the people where you will be staying - what's the forecast? Are there a lot of bugs? Are they tiny enough to fit through the mesh screen of your tent windows? If you don't have a cooler for beer-storage, do you have a friend that would lend you theirs? Etc, etc. 

  4. UNVEILING. How to break the news to your SO that you are kidnapping them for a certain amount of time varies significantly according to the context of your relationship. If he loves surprises, don't tell him until after he's been blindfolded in the passenger seat for thirty miles. If he hates surprises and likes to be in control, being confronted with a sudden vacation could be very stressful and unpleasant for him. Consider dropping hints or alluding to a date, or telling him a couple days in advance of lift-off. Putting yourself in their shoes can prevent the kind of unnecessary stress that causes the Heist to go awry.

  5. EXECUTION. Once the bomb has been artfully dropped, get in the car and go. Let go of your need to check cell phone, email and time. Greet everything openly, laugh together when things go wrong, and see what you discover about each other.

  What do you think about the Heist? Is this something you've done or considered? Have you ever pulled it off? How did it impact your relationship?

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