So you’re a good-looking guy or girl. You care about things like carbon footprints and global warming and slapping “Gas prices are my fault!” stickers on the back of a Yukon. Okay, maybe you don’t care THAT much, but you get the picture. And maybe you went out to find a green lovely on an eco-friendly dating site. (Didn’t know there were eco-friendly dating sites? Check ‘em out!)  All seems to be going swimmingly until your new flame arrives to pick you up in a Yukon – sporting one of your bumper stickers.

So do you send him right off to the Island of Bad Relationships? (Located somewhere off the Continent of Awesome Carbs.) Or do you try to change him? Do you try to take a full-grown man (or woman…..just take everything I’m saying and add organic Stella McCartney kicks) and go to work on all the self-identity traits he has come to identify as his very soul and being?

Of course you do! If you are single, you dream the dream that every green girl or boy has from time to time. That someday, you too will meet your organically-clad prince or princess and that you’ll set up a solar-powered house complete with exterior rear composting bins and a kid or two playing “let’s be wind turbines” in the front yard.

But more often than not, a green relationship can be more like this. (Substitute “vampire” for “meat-eater” and “angst-ridden teenage girl” with “vegan” and this about explains it.)
 

Yeah, I know. Now I’ve gone and confused everyone with over-hyped melodrama that makes no real sense. Okay, so maybe making a green relationship work is actually more like this.

As the Mrs. Ed Begley Jr. points out, it’s not easy when one person is greener in the relationship than the other. A recent survey from Treehugger asked “Could you marry someone who is not green?” 58% of the respondents said “only if they promise to buy carbon offsets in the pre-nup,” while 23% claimed “yes” and 10% piped up “I already did.” And sure you can accept that you and your significant other are never going to agree on everything, and that you may not be the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt or Ellen DeGeneres/Portia De Rossi super couple of the green movement. After all, you can't force another human being to completely give up plastic or to eat vegan all the time.

But you can subtly bully and cajole them into green submission! There are little ways that greenies keep this interesting and eco-friendly in relationships. Planet Green recently asked the question, “Can an eco-friendly pet name improve your relationship?” No “angel” or “babe” or “sweet cakes” for the eco-minded! Such sweet green names are: Sir Saves-a-lot, Smoochie-tree, Captain Planet, eco-Sweet Cheeks, and my personal favorite, Snuggle Furnace.

And don’t forget all the natural aphrodisiacs that are just a Whole Foods trip away. Did you know that dripping cornstarch on your skin can jump start bed time? As Planet Green reported, “Just the initial sensation of cornstarch dropping on the skin mimics the sensation of liquid silk.” Try a few drops on yourself and you'll see what I mean.” Tomatoes and avocados are also apparently sexy. Go salad! And then there’s the old standby of chocolate. Chocolate is a natural source of phenyl ethylamine (PEA), the same la-la chemical that the body naturally produces during those first moments of falling in love.

Sure, there are ways to green up even the brownest relationships. Me? I ended up with a wonderfully green “snuggle furnace” who makes living green a priority in his life. (And who is probably emailing me this instant to tell me to never refer to him as Snuggle Furnace again.) But who is greener of the two of us? You’d think it would be the one who currently draws a paycheck writing for the environment. But sometimes, said green writer will toss a cardboard take-out container in the trash. Or she will leave a toilet paper roll in the garbage. Inevitably, it is not the green writer who picks through the trash, pulling out cardboard, and reminding his significant other that “the recycling goes under the sink, not in the trash.”

To which I just eat a lot of organic chocolate and smile at my Snuggle Furnace.