Didn't work for Black Beauty ... and it doesn't work for me, either.

When I was a little girl, I loved my storybook records. I suppose they were the '60s equivalent of the movie version of a beloved book, but I like to think they didn't suck all the imagination out of reading a story the way movies can.

At any rate, I remember listening to my recording of Anna Sewell's "Black Beauty" over and over, long before I could read the book or even the edited version of the story that accompanied the big, bright picture "book" in the album.

One particularly dramatic bit that has stuck with me lo these 40+ years comes when the master of the house has to ride desperately for the doctor in the middle of the night. For some reason, the doctor has to ride Black Beauty, already exhausted, back to the house to save the life of the mistress.

The young stableboy, not knowing any better, gives the horse all the cold water he can drink, brushes him down and turns in for the night. Meanwhile, Black Beauty is chilled and sickened by the cold water and his cooling sweat, nor has he been walked to cool him down. The groom finds the sick horse the next morning, and erupts with anger at the stableboy.

The master -- or someone -- registers a mild protest, observing that it was "only ignorance" that caused the stableboy to act as he did. Then the groom erupts with anger again. I can still hear the fury in the voice of the actor reading these lines:

"Only ignorance! only ignorance! how can you talk about only ignorance? Don't you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness? -- and which does the most mischief heaven only knows. If people can say, `Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm,' they think it is all right. I suppose Martha Mulwash did not mean to kill that baby when she dosed it with Dalby and soothing syrups; but she did kill it, and was tried for manslaughter."

"And serves her right, too," said Tom. "A woman should not undertake to nurse a tender little child without knowing what is good and what is bad for it."

"Bill Starkey," continued John, "did not mean to frighten his brother into fits when he dressed up like a ghost and ran after him in the moonlight; but he did; and that bright, handsome little fellow, that might have been the pride of any mother's heart is just no better than an idiot, and never will be, if he lives to be eighty years old. You were a good deal cut up yourself, Tom, two weeks ago, when those young ladies left your hothouse door open, with a frosty east wind blowing right in; you said it killed a good many of your plants."

"A good many!" said Tom; "there was not one of the tender cuttings that was not nipped off. I shall have to strike all over again, and the worst of it is that I don't know where to go to get fresh ones. I was nearly mad when I came in and saw what was done."

"And yet," said John, "I am sure the young ladies did not mean it; it was only ignorance."

Of all the rampaging ignorances around, I have to believe the inability to communicate clearly and accurately one's thoughts and feelings to others causes the most heartache. No, let me amend that: the inability to know/understand/identify one's thoughts and feelings and THEN communicate them clearly and accurately to others causes the most heartache. Especially in this part of the world, where we take a perverse pride in being uncommunicative.

I've dated three people this year; tried three times after the bloodbath of February 2007 in which the man who vowed he loved me and with whom I was planning to spend the rest of my life called me out of the clear blue and announced he'd met someone else and wanted to be with her. And in each of these three situations, the men (who I met on Match.com and who were, in theory, serious enough about meeting someone to shell out hard earned cash in order to do so) were not willing or ready to be in relationships. Certainly not with me, at any rate, but actually, perhaps not with anyone.

The first gentleman lived over an hour away. I couldn't come to his house because of his ailing cat and my four dogs, so he came to see me on a few weekends, but couldn't stay because he had to get home to care for the aforementioned ailing cat. Although I lived at least 90 miles from him and had just rented a campsite in Wisconsin an hour in the opposite direction, my inviting him to join us two weekends in a row proved "smothering" and he wanted out. He didn't check with me to see if he'd gotten the wrong idea or if there was a compromise to be worked out: he was GONE.

Gentleman #2 also lived 90 miles away up on the Range. He could/would not travel because 1) he'd grown up in Duluth and hated it 2) he lived on a lake out in the middle of nowhere and home was where the ATV was (and it was grouse season. Then deer season.) 3) He couldn't be away any length of time after it got cold because the wood boiler had to be fed twice a day. So as long as I was willing to drive three hours, be on his turf, do his stuff, talk about him -- and expressly NOT talk about anything I cared about -- everything was a-ok. We probably broke up at the beginning of November, but nothing was ever said because then it was deer season and no conversation of any kind was allowed about anything not pertaining to hunting deer. Actually, I think in the end I was dumped for a black lab, because this man felt he was incapable of having a dog AND a girlfriend at the same time. Since I loved the dog, I found this weirdly palatable. Plus he was anal-retentive and controlling to a fault, not to mention, in the immortal words of my therapist, "a prick." Perhaps the right man for some woman with no life or interests of her own ... but certainly not me.

Gentleman #3 - another fella from an hour or more out (another Ranger - maybe that's the problem) and we'd been dancing around one another on Match for a couple of years. He'd always act interested but not follow up; finally, at the beginning of the month, we had lunch and decided we kind of liked each other. Unlike the other guys, he likes Duluth and gets here often on business, so I figured the getting together thing would be eased quite a bit right there. And I was more than willing to go out and see him on weekends when I didn't have the child. But between work, and his farm, and his family in the southern part of the state, he hasn't been able to get together all month, and I finally said "let me know when you have time for a girlfriend, but until then, quit shining me on - it hurts."

See, I'm one of those funny people that if a man says "I'll take you to the hockey game," or I'll call you tonight" or "we'll see each other this week" or "I want to spend the rest of my life with you." I'm gonna believe it. Even after two failed marriages, a broken engagement and two devastatingly serious relationships that blew up in my face. And no matter how much sweet talk I get, if all I get is talk and no action, I start figuring that I fell for the old bait-and-switch once again: a one-night stand disguised as a potential relationship.

Now no one put a gun to my head; if I want to be the kind of girl who, in the immortal words of Ado Annie "cain't say no," I have no one to blame for that but myself. The hard part comes with the damn stories afterward: the stories about how I am never enough. I'll never forget the man I met online and thought I clicked with until he discovered I had a daughter; said he knew himself well enough to know he was not father material. Got an email from him a year ago and yup, he married a lady with a child N's age.

But beyond my own stories, there is the issue of ignorance. And responsibility. And the kind of behaviour that, as painful as it is when it happens in high school, can at least be excused (maybe explained is a better word) because the participants were teenagers and didn't know any better. But we're talking grown men here; men in their late 40s or early 50s. Pardon my crudeness, but these are men that can't even get it up half the time, so it's obvious (to me, anyway) that just getting laid is not what's driving them. When someone says I live in Duluth and have a ten year old child, why decide AFTER the date that you just don't want to date someone with a kid? If you refuse to leave your house or you hate Duluth, why decide to date someone who lives an hour away, knowing that the interests of fairness will demand that you travel occasionally to see her? If you have a history of women "smothering" you, why go through the motions of wanting a real relationship over and over instead of signing up for Casual Sex.com? And if your schedule is full to the brim with work, home and family committments that take precedence, why pretend to have time to spend with someone when you don't?

Hey, if I wanted to feel as though I was at the bottom of someone's priority list, or wasn't valuable enough to waste time on, I'd still be married.

I know I'm taking this stuff too seriously. I cringe when I realize how I must appear to these people, how I am wearing my heart on my sleeve and no doubt being waaayyy too intense. But as careful as I have tried to be, I still have to explain to my daughter where these people went and comfort her when she bursts into tears about it (I'm not the only one who gets attached too much too fast). I still have to go through the soul-sucking motions of trying to stop the stories and trying not to let the despair overwhelm me. And with every broken relationship, I end up that much more crippled, that much more hung up and that much more unloveable.

"Only ignorance" indeed.