conference mania

Hello possums. Is there something about conferences that make people revert back to teenage behaviour? Or, is there something about human nature that we suppress in order to function as respectable citizens in our day-to-day lives that starts to ooze between the cracks when we are outside our normal social circumstances. Or is it just natural to fall in love at any stage of your life and when you least expect it?

Possums, have you ever experienced the feeling of being “stripped till you were bare of any bindings from the world outside that room” (as Missy Higgens wrote in ‘They Weren’t There‘)? At my first interstate conference last July, I was disarmed by a charming young man at pre-dinner drinks on the last night. Mid-conversation, he suddenly turned from a ‘nice boy’ to a ‘desirable man’, and it knocked me for a six because I thought that I had given up on men forever. We spent the evening in each others company on and off, and at one stage I thought he hinted about coming up to my room at the hotel. I didn’t act on this (I basically ignored it because that sort of thing isn’t really in my repertoire), but it sent me into a spin.

When I got home my husband and friends noticed a change in me. I wasn’t sleeping, started jogging everyday for stress relief, I appeared super alert sometimes and super vague others, for example my husband accused me, whilst I was sitting at my desk:

You were staring wistfully out of the window!

Was not! I replied.

But I was… I also experienced an increase in libido… I basically went hyper. Only just coming down from it now. Phew.

Colleagues of mine who were at a conference together experienced it too. But they ended up having the baby and leaving their respective partners! One had grown up children and the other had a young family of three. What pushes people over the edge to take this irreversible, life-changing step?

I put this question to another colleague of mine who said she understood it completely. She had left her family when her children were young to follow a man around Australia. If I had my time again, I wouldn’t have done it, she said, because of the affect it had on my children and my relationship with them, but at the time I’d have done anything for him.

My friend Ita’s comments on the situation reveal there could even be more at stake. Ita is a person I have enduring respect for because she is very stable and family-orientated. I generally feel very focussed and at piece after spending time with her.

One of Ita’s long term friends left her husband and family for a UK guy met at a conference. By way of explanation she said to Ita,

I wondered if I should have waited until the kids grew up before leaving my husband, but if I left it too long I would reduce my chances of repartnering.

Ita’s remark to me was,

How selfish of her! When you have a family, it’s not just about you anymore! We’ve been friends for twenty years, but now I feel like I don’t know her.

That’s one written-off friend if you ask me!

I was put onto a book by Dr. Rosie King entitled ‘Good Loving, Great Sex’. Btw, I highly recommend this book to any married couple or anyone who is thinking of a long term relationship, gay or straight. One chapter is devoted to the state of ‘limerance’. It seems that we humans are programmed for the condition of infatuation, which is analogous to being on speed…

But are conferences catalysts for this sort of thing? Would it happen if the same two people were just at a dinner party with their usual acquaintances, for example?