Mar 26
SquidHumor, Relationships dating
I’ve never been great at picking guys who are ‘good on paper.’ Despite my two very expensive degrees from a reputable university, I’ve never dated someone who has put in more than a few semesters of community college. Despite the fact that I’ve been pretty much on my own since 18, I’ve dated many, many men who still live at home and whose mothers still do their cooking, dishes, and laundry. While I often spend summer evenings enjoying a bottle of wine and a good book in my backyard surrounded by my potted plants, I generally date men who would rather be playing Xbox with a six-pack of PBR in their parents’ basement.
Select friends tell me that my choice in men is a reflection of my being white trash (which, for the record, I am not). I’ve gone out with men who are ‘good on paper-’ who grew up in Connecticut, went to Ivy League universities, and are given lucrative stock options at their corporate firms… but these guys just aren’t my cup of tea. I mean, I’m the child of a foul-mouthed cop who always had a case of Bud in the fridge and a pack of Marlboro reds in his pocket… I can’t bring any-old pansy-ass home to mom and dad, and I wouldn’t want to.
Admittedly, when it came time for college, I packed up and moved away from my hometown to live in the city, and I do have quite the collection of designer clothes (from Filene’s Basement and Marshall’s, of course), and I do enjoy an al fresco Sunday brunch on Newbury Street or a night at the theatre… but that doesn’t mean that I want to date, in the words of the Governator, a ‘girly-man’ who does the same. I would much rather a man who can pinpoint the strange noise that my car is making, who can build a shelving unit for my books, and who wants to throw back a few pints after we do some yard work on a Sunday afternoon.
Perhaps when I hit my thirties my priorities will have shifted and I will be looking for a man who can’t take one hand off his blackberry to take his suit off and f*ck me, but for now, I’ll be at the neighborhood bars looking for every unshaven, Guinness-breathed, Boston-accented mechanic, carpenter, and state DOT worker who will mow my lawn and give it to me good once he’s already worked up a sweat.
Aug 05
JeremyLife in Digital, Relationships dating, dating advice, internet personals, online dating
It always amuses me when people pretend to be horrified that their friends are trying online dating. It even amused me ten years ago, when it was still a relatively new concept. After all, you’re just as likely to meet an axe murderer squeezing melons in the produce section as you are on match.com; he’s just probably going to be a more outgoing axe murderer. Even though some won’t admit it, my guess is that nearly everyone I know has given internet personals a try. The trick is, however, to do it well. Here are a few things to avoid when putting yourself out there:
Don’t be the jerk without a photo. Okay, in 1998, it wasn’t a big deal to not have a picture of yourself on an online personals ad. You had the one friend with the digital camera, sure, but getting them to take a picture and email it to you over dial-up was just a hassle. But c’mon people…it’s 2008. There’s no excuse. Even your phone has a built in camera! So what does it say about you if you lack a photo? Well, it’s online dating site code for “I’m hideously deformed” or “I’m so fucking lazy that I can’t be bothered to post a photo, let alone answer your email and set up a date.” Or possibly “I’m creepily stalking exes on here and had to set up a profile, but I don’t want them to know.”
Fill in the profile. Nothing is more annoying than an empty profile. The profile is your chance to create a first impression on others. Don’t write an autobiography, but at least try to give some impression of who you are and what kinds of activities and people you enjoy.
Don’t look for reasons not to talk to people. This is about meeting someone new and chances are that the person who will work out for dating won’t have every single thing you want. They will be too short, too brown-haired, too shy, too something…but there still might be some magic anyway. Push your boundaries and try talking to someone new, even if you aren’t sure about them. When others write to you, be polite and respond, even if your response is “Thank you for writing, but I don’t think we would be compatible.”
Just suck it and up make a date. Talking online forever is not a way to build a relationship or to build trust. Do not spend weeks and weeks emailing and IMing. It just creates unrealistic expectations in the end. Go with your gut and if a person seems interesting, suggest coffee (or whatever beverage you enjoy).
Everyone is lame on a first date. Everyone. Unless a person is hideously offensive (and yes, that has happened to me), a second date is probably warranted. Everyone is nervous on date number one and that usually ends up hiding some of one’s better qualities. On a second date, you can relax a little bit more and actually start getting to know one another. At this point, you can start to figure out if you want to pursue future dates.
Okay, have you got the 101 down? Good. Go out and try it and let us know how it works out. The advanced course will be coming up sometime soon.
Aug 30
JeremyTelevision dating, Gender roles
Having just watched an episode of Lifetime’s Gay, Straight or Taken?, I have come to the conclusion that very few humans pay attention to each other closely enough to derive any useful information from their interactions. If you have not watched this delightful bit of trashy television, the basic premise involves a woman trying to choose among three men to win a little romance and a dream vacation.
The twist? One of the gentlemen vying for her affections is gay and another is straight, but already in a relationship. If she picks either of these two, he and his significant other get the trip. Not apprised of the twist ahead of time, two strangers phone in the early minutes of the show to inform her. Through a series of one on one activities with each of the men, apparently designed to show of the macho man or the feminine spirit, she collects information to make her final decision. To keep us entertained, we get running commentary on which man she thinks falls into which category.
Okay, intellectual fare this is not. On the scale of good taste, it probably rates a little bit better than a FOX show. But the choices of the women who participate demonstrate a lot about human behavior and how stereotypes become ingrained in us. Very few of the woman are able to accurately identify the leanings of each man, though a lucky handful do manage to spot the single one (and win the trip with him at her side.) Of course, I watch the show to see if I can do a better job making my selections than she can. I don’t keep track formally, but I’m pretty darn sure that my record is good--or at least better than the contestants! I spot the gay guy nearly all of the time (while she usually falls for a red herring) and sort out the available and taken straight guys more often than she does.
A lot of it has to do with body language and erroneous assumptions that the participants make. Here’s a tip girls: if he’s gay, he’s probably NOT afraid to touch you. There’s simply nothing intimidating about it because he’s not going to get turned on and experience physical embarrassment. The other frequent mistake is choosing the guy with whom she is able to make some kind of emotional connection in the short hours they are together. Again, since the gay man has no vested interest in her as a woman, she will not be anything more than friend material at best. Hence, he can cut past the BS and get to the genuine person, whereas his straight counterparts are more likely to be worrying about whether or not she likes them. Somehow, though, she frequently confuses his friendly interest with a sincere love connection (or even sexual connection.)
These women also make critical mistakes in identifying the men who are “taken” as well. Most of their decisions in determining whether a man is taken revolve around what he should and should not be comfortable doing with another woman as a man in a relationship. This is a game, though, where the man knows the rules and knows that if he wants to win, he has to put on as good a show as possible. Moreover, his girlfriend also knows the score and has the same stake he does. If a man is worried going into this game that his girlfriend will be jealous of his actions on the show, then he has given up before the opening gambit. This type of relationship security will lead to the same traits discussed above for the gay men. There is also one simple fact: a man in a steady relationship is going to be more practiced (in general terms) at meaningful interaction with the opposite sex. He is better prepared to tell her what she wants to hear and to know which decisions to make. In short, he can play the game.
The female contestants frequently fall back on stereotypes when making their decisions. On just about every episode, one of the men has something about him that stands out as stereotypically gay. He might have been a cheerleader in college or wears fabulous shoes, but on this show, he’s not the gay one. Automatically choosing this contestant as gay demonstrates a sad lack of strategy on the part of our fair heroine. The women fall back on similar stereotypes when choosing the taken man; if he is well-groomed (though not well enough to be taken as gay,) he must have a girlfriend making sure of that. In fact, hairstyle frequently seems to play a big role in the final decision, though last I checked, the National Institutes of Health have not funded a study on the matter.
This show provides an entertaining half hour, and as the person who gets to see the edited copy, rather than the actual hours the contestants spend together, perhaps I have the upper hand. But this program is also a fascinating study into how women make their decisions in the dating game, giving us a glimpse into a world of shallow choices based on stereotypes that puts the traditionally superficial male to shame. A female contestant who achieves total success on the show sees past the trappings and gets to know the men. Most, however, remain woefully misguided, making women look as bad as men (who must clearly lie in order to achieve their aims with women.) Thanks, Lifetime, for teaching us that women and men aren’t so different after all. We all rely on stereotypes, rather than getting to know the real person. Even me — after all, my judgments are simply based on more subtle ones.
Jun 08
AndrewRelationships dating
A weird, irrational desperation kicks in as I watch my close friends one by one get married and settle in the routines of their adult lives. I have started to think, what is wrong with me? Why am I still single? Why do all my dates end like the last scene in Freddy vs. Jason, a severed head and a cutesy wink? Why didn’t I just settle when I had the chance?
In my twenties, conversations about dating inevitably were conversations about settling. Settling, in romantic terms, is finding the most convenient partner who is otherwise currently single and also willing to settle, and mutually deciding that “This is the best offer I’m going to get.” Settling is commonplace, seemingly unfulfilling (I can only guess, having never taken the step) and typically results from one of three scenarios.
Scenario 1: I have never dated anyone else and I’m not about to start now.
Scenario 2: I almost settled with someone else before you came along.
Scenario 3: A weird desperation came over me as all my friends got married and I spent my nights alone eating chicken I made on the Foreman and watching MTV during prime time. Then one day, a guy smiled at me and we talked and even though it was clear we had nothing in common, we slept together and woke up ten years later in a common law marriage not recognized by the state.
Settling, by its very nature, is a negative. Because in acknowledging the act of settling, you are endorsing the idea that there is someone out there who is a better fit for you over the long term and it is only a matter of identifying this person and introducing yourself. So your other options are eternal celibacy (impractical for any number of reasons) or waiting out the time until you find the perfect partner, the one who compliments you and people can see and know that you genuinely fit together, all the while peeling through the dating orange with your game face on because you hate citrus.
Though it seems on the face of it that I sit in condemnation of those who settle and that I made a conscious decision for myself to keep looking, the truth is that being a perpetual bachelor was never an intentional arrangement. Like most everything that happens to me, I sort of fell into it. I make a lot of decisions this way, random, without evidence or investigation, little forethought, accepting the consequences and wondering later on if I ought to have gone down a different road.
I suppose the truth is that there is nothing wrong with settling as long as it doesn’t make you miserable. So what does that say for singlehood? What does it say that the harassment for me to find someone quick and make it permanent is self-inflicted? Haven’t I learned better? Why am I tortured by the idea that I could have done it…not better, but faster? Sooner! The idea that my opportunity is rapidly. slipping. away?
I could say all sorts of bad things about marriage, but I have seen examples that allow me to believe that romance is real, love is possible, and not everyone has buyer’s remorse on their long-term relationships. So the act of waiting itself is no more a negative than rushing to lock someone in (be it contractually or blackmail.) It’s all what you put into it. And even knowing that intellectually, I still “yeah but” myself to death.
These are the kinds of things you can’t talk about to your married friends. The feelings of abandonment and disorientation, the self-flagellation. They get it, but the empathy is gone, squashed by all the emotional vagaries of marriage that I can’t speak to but I know dominate the behavioral patterns of my married friends.
Call me crazy, but I can’t decide which of us is better off. I say that I hate, emphatically, being single because I feel like I’m missing out on some chance enlightenment, but I think that is disingenuous. There are a lot of relationships not worth being envious of, and anyway, I can’t say I would be happier but for being single. All that leaves is the weird, irrational desperation I just can’t seem to shake. Call me crazy, but…call me?
Mar 12
AndrewRelationships dating, Hook up, Sex
I went through a whole period in my mid-twenties where I had one atrocious date story after another. Oh, did I have my friends rolling on the floor as I described the time where my date took off with the umbrella and left me in the pouring rain exactly half way between the T stop and the restaurant we were going to.
Or the one where my date swore, swore that his car wouldn’t get towed if he parked in the apartment complex parking lot across the street from the restaurant. Or the one where we were sitting having a great first date at Marche in the Prudential building (it closed a few years ago) and I dropped a piece of chicken on the ground, picked it up and put it in my mouth without thinking about how that might look to a stranger.
For a while, my dating life was beginning to resemble a sitcom, and not all ended well by the end of the night. There is always that momentarily thrill when your date shows up for the first time -- in my opinion half the battle really -- and then the deflation when the evening starts to spiral out of control. I am not the kind to hold my breath until the balloon pops, but I also can’t help noticing when it happens.
All of this, of course, comes with an added complication of to hook or not to hook. I can’t speak for all daters, but I know generally on mine that I usually only make-out with guys on the first date when I know I will never speak to them again. Maybe the sexual attraction will change my mind (or their mind, as it goes) but as someone who greatly trusts my own instincts, I am usually pretty sure when it is over before it is over.
In fact, for my personal track record, I have never become a couple with a man if we coupled on the first date. Sex on the first date is a gay stereotype, but I like to think I rise above the stereotype, usually, though I can’t explain why this rule is such a constant in my dating life.
Let’s just get this out of the way. Yes, it could be because
I have bad breath
I am a bad kisser
I like it frisky
or any number of horrifying personal defects that I am blithely unaware of. But I would like to think for the most part, it is none of those things. I would like to think it is just the nature of dating that my own expectations are higher than could ever possibly be fulfilled. And imagine two individuals in the room who are both hoping for Prince Charming and disappointed when it is only Prince He’s Funny But…
So for me, every date reaches the inevitable point of asking the question, does my date deserve the hook (up)?
This might sound horribly cynical, but I am not the kind of person that subscribes to the theory that sex is better if you wait. I just don’t buy it. Sex is better if there is a mutual attraction; that is the biggest determining factor. If one person isn’t into it, then now or later does not make that much of a difference. But sex is the balloon popping for most people. It is the point where the evening spirals out of control, if it hasn’t already. Sure, if expectations are met, you got lucky, but in most cases it is exactly the opposite. Or worse, new, higher expectations are there waiting to be fulfilled.
I am not sure that my rule that a hook-up on the first date equals zero chance at a relationship really makes that much sense. After all, it is basically a mental path to self-fulfilled disaster. But maybe I am inadvertently showing some character by resisting the hook-up and that might make me more attractive to my date. So far my track record for second dates comes after holding off on the first date. And the first-date failures all ended with the hook (up.)
And those sitcom-like date stories? The guy with the umbrella? I was soaked to the bone by the time we got to the restaurant, chasing after him while the rain belted down my back. He called the date off as soon as we were inside. The guy who swore his car wouldn’t get towed? It did, and we took a cab to the tow company where I offered to pay for half of the release fee. The guy who watched me drop a hunk of food on the floor of the restaurant and then eat it? We dated for four months, and that very first date ended with simply a single kiss.
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