Relationships are like tennis; you can only hit the ball on your side of the net!

When I had first encountered Dr Jackie Black two things stood out for me. The first was of course the most obvious, being her book "Meeting Your Match:Cracking the code to successful relationships." Specifically the claim that Meeting Your Match "is the only book you need if you are ready to know yourself; ready to identify exactly what you are looking for in a partner; and ready to learn and practice the essential relationship success skills you must have to build a happy and long-lasting love relationship!" I have of course been fortunate to interview a number of interesting and insightful people who have written and spoken about the sweet complexity of relationships between men and women. So being the only book you will need, even with the prescribed caveat "if you are ready" might be a stretch I thought. Then, I viewed Dr Jackie's profile on Facebook zeroing in on what she had listed as her Favorite Movie - The American President. The film, in which a widowed President played by Michael Douglas who besides running the country is also raising a young teen-aged daughter, meets a passionately committed lobbyist by the name of Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening) under circumstances that can best be described as being at crossed purposes is interesting. Surrounded by an all-star cast of characters played by Michael J Fox, Martin Sheen and an irascible Richard Dreyfus whose character's primary utterance is " I am Bob Rumsen and I want to be President," the story steadily and reliably ebbs and flows between the contradictory demands of public office and the pull of personal desires culminating in an unpredictably, predictable outcome. If this is Dr Jackie's favorite movie then I can hardly wait to hear what she has to say about relationships.