Every relationship has rules. There's a sort of standard set of them (monogamy, financial sharing, modicum of care) that is the basic template for modern, American relationships. Individual couples work out the details of their particular relationship and apply variations of these rules, or chuck them completely and start from a blank slate, building as necessary.
Many relationships break down when the rules aren't followed. Many others break down because the rules were never explicitly defined, and so one party or another violates them unknowingly or someone starts pushing for a defined set of rules which is often casually referred to as "labeling" the relationship and the other person freaks the fuck out because defined rules mean they have to follow them, too, and not having any rules to follow is so nice.
I've got very little problem chucking the basic template and building from scratch. Most things in my life are negotiable. I don't have a great many strong convictions about anything (although, to be fair, the few things I do have strong convictions about are pretty much iron-clad and you will never get me to negotiate on them) so I'm willing to compromise a great deal.
What I have a hard time dealing with is uncertainty, or operating without a defined set of rules. I am a person that needs to know where the lines are, and why they are there, and how important each one is. This is equally so that I don't unintentionally cross any boundaries, and so that if I do cross a line, I know what the likely outcome will be. I like to rebel with purpose, you see. If I'm going to set something on fire, I will be very careful to pick the thing that will produce the exact impact I'm going for.
I really do weigh things that carefully; it's the natural consequence of being a worrier. I calculate risk with an internal scale that is so finely calilbrated it distinguishes between 6 hours of sleep and 5.5 hours of sleep; between a margarita and a manhattan; between $20 and $25; between "I love you" and "I am in love with you."
But all this calculation depends on data, on having the information necessary to weigh risk, and so in relationships with undefined rules, I have no data on which to make decisions. This is how I get hurt. When I don't know what I'm leaping into, I tense and hit the ground hard and shatter. When I can see, I can relax and roll with the punches.
Maybe what I'm supposed to be learning right now is how to roll with punches while blind. Maybe what I'm supposed to be learning right now is the value of the undefined, the freeing nature of letting go of risk calculation, the joy of floating even if there's a 100-foot waterfall just up ahead pulling you inexorably toward the precipice.
Mostly it feels like walking a tightrope without a net, and falling every other step. I'm not ready for this. I need some rules to work with, I need some data on which to make decisions. I need to calculate whether the tightrope is worth walking.
Showing posts with label dating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dating. Show all posts
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Rejection is a Lesson
I think the hardest lesson in compassion is this: accepting that not everyone will want you. And, that's ok.
My struggles with trust and intimacy remain ongoing, and probably will for the rest of my life. These are not things that you ever stop really wrestling with, once you've started. Maybe they'll simmer on the backburner more often as years go by and I become more comfortable with the terrifying notion of letting someone else in on my life, but they'll still need to be revisited. I know this, I've known this, I was prepared for this.
What I was not fully prepared for was rejection. In my hubris and megalomania, I glossed over the fact that other people are people and will have feelings and ideas of their own, and needs and wants of their own, and I am not guaranteed to be something that anyone else either desires or needs. In fact, odds are I will not be someone that even most people want or need in their life.
It makes perfect sense, when I see it in black-and-white like that.
But still, but still, but still.
When you're struggling through just the idea of letting your guard down, it's really hard to do it and then be rejected. It's really hard to let someone in only to have them walk right back out. It hurts. A lot.
But hurt is not a reason to lash out. Sadness is not a reason to stop exercising compassion. Other people get to do what they need to do, and be with the people they need to be with, in order to make their own lives better, in order to round out their own internal spaces. Other people, also, get to build airy light palaces in their hearts and minds and populate those glass castles with the people that bring them the most joy.
And I don't get to assert that I have to be one of those people, simply because I want to be.
And if I want to bring someone deep into the heart of my airy light glass castle, but they'd prefer I remain in the outer ring of theirs, I don't get to smash things because I'm not getting my way. Compassion is being there for people in the ways that they want, and the ways that they need, at the times of their choosing. I get to make my choices, yes, but others get to make their own, and if there's a mismatch or a disconnect, compassion demands that we continue to do what we have done, even if we wanted more.
Rejection is the right of every person. Every person is self-determining. And no matter how much it aches, respect for those determinations is the heart of compassion. Self-determination is not an excuse for wretched self-centeredness.
My palace is dimmed, but I'll find another way to light it up. And in the meantime, I will not throw stones. I will practice compassion.
My struggles with trust and intimacy remain ongoing, and probably will for the rest of my life. These are not things that you ever stop really wrestling with, once you've started. Maybe they'll simmer on the backburner more often as years go by and I become more comfortable with the terrifying notion of letting someone else in on my life, but they'll still need to be revisited. I know this, I've known this, I was prepared for this.
What I was not fully prepared for was rejection. In my hubris and megalomania, I glossed over the fact that other people are people and will have feelings and ideas of their own, and needs and wants of their own, and I am not guaranteed to be something that anyone else either desires or needs. In fact, odds are I will not be someone that even most people want or need in their life.
It makes perfect sense, when I see it in black-and-white like that.
But still, but still, but still.
When you're struggling through just the idea of letting your guard down, it's really hard to do it and then be rejected. It's really hard to let someone in only to have them walk right back out. It hurts. A lot.
But hurt is not a reason to lash out. Sadness is not a reason to stop exercising compassion. Other people get to do what they need to do, and be with the people they need to be with, in order to make their own lives better, in order to round out their own internal spaces. Other people, also, get to build airy light palaces in their hearts and minds and populate those glass castles with the people that bring them the most joy.
And I don't get to assert that I have to be one of those people, simply because I want to be.
And if I want to bring someone deep into the heart of my airy light glass castle, but they'd prefer I remain in the outer ring of theirs, I don't get to smash things because I'm not getting my way. Compassion is being there for people in the ways that they want, and the ways that they need, at the times of their choosing. I get to make my choices, yes, but others get to make their own, and if there's a mismatch or a disconnect, compassion demands that we continue to do what we have done, even if we wanted more.
Rejection is the right of every person. Every person is self-determining. And no matter how much it aches, respect for those determinations is the heart of compassion. Self-determination is not an excuse for wretched self-centeredness.
My palace is dimmed, but I'll find another way to light it up. And in the meantime, I will not throw stones. I will practice compassion.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Adventures in Internet Dating, REDUX
So lately, my OKCupid profile has been languishing. I've been in full-blown hermit mode, spending my evenings snuggled into my (brand-new, absolutely beautiful, and far-too-expensive) sheets (from anthropologie) with Netflix and hard cider. (I'm twelve episodes into the first season of Roswell. Also, The Man Who Cried is currently streaming, and I highly recommend everyone out there watch it. It's a gorgeous little gem of a movie that was terribly under-advertised and under-rated, probably because it was directed by a woman, but it is intense and beautiful and it has a great cast.)
But my profile is active and everything, so I still get email notifications of certain kinds of things, and I totally got an email when this guy that's friends with this guy that I maybe kissed a lot a month ago was checking out my profile.
I may have laughed inappropriately loudly and for an unacceptable length of time.
But it did get me to go back to the site to see what else had been up lately, and WOW. Apparently, September is the month where people scope the dating site profiles of people they peripherally know in real life.
Stop it, people. YOU ARE CREEPING ME OUT. Also making me feel like a loser. Why do I have a profile on OKCupid again? Weeks like this, I forget. Seriously. Why do I? All I want to do is lie in bed and watch Netflix. And I am not going to invite some random internet stranger over to do that with me. I mean, real talk, I've had entire relationships during which I wouldn't have invited the person I was dating over to do that. Netflix in bed is serious business. Netflix in bed is more or less the absolute pinnacle of intimacy.
But OKC. Right. It's a little disconcerting to look at my visitors list and see so many familiar faces. I mean, it's funny and all for about 30 seconds and then I rapidly go into a shame spiral for even having the damn profile to begin with, and then I become concerned that these familiar faces might want to sleep with me, and then I get all nervous and all it does is reinforce my decision to become an agoraphobic hermit shut-in who watches Netflix in bed every night.
I'm sure in a week, when my extroverted tendencies have again conquered my introverted tendencies (I am constantly at war with myself, it's really unpleasant) and I'm all social butterfly again, I will be flattered by all these creepers. But right now, I'm just weirded out.
P.S.- You should probably keep a throw-away OKC profile with no pictures so you can scope out your friends and your friends' friends without causing existential meltdowns in the people you're checking up on. I mean, I totally understand curiousity, I'm more curious than a cat that's only got one life left, but really. A little courtesy, here. It's the internet. You can TOTALLY BE ANONYMOUS if you just put a little effort into it.
But my profile is active and everything, so I still get email notifications of certain kinds of things, and I totally got an email when this guy that's friends with this guy that I maybe kissed a lot a month ago was checking out my profile.
I may have laughed inappropriately loudly and for an unacceptable length of time.
But it did get me to go back to the site to see what else had been up lately, and WOW. Apparently, September is the month where people scope the dating site profiles of people they peripherally know in real life.
Stop it, people. YOU ARE CREEPING ME OUT. Also making me feel like a loser. Why do I have a profile on OKCupid again? Weeks like this, I forget. Seriously. Why do I? All I want to do is lie in bed and watch Netflix. And I am not going to invite some random internet stranger over to do that with me. I mean, real talk, I've had entire relationships during which I wouldn't have invited the person I was dating over to do that. Netflix in bed is serious business. Netflix in bed is more or less the absolute pinnacle of intimacy.
But OKC. Right. It's a little disconcerting to look at my visitors list and see so many familiar faces. I mean, it's funny and all for about 30 seconds and then I rapidly go into a shame spiral for even having the damn profile to begin with, and then I become concerned that these familiar faces might want to sleep with me, and then I get all nervous and all it does is reinforce my decision to become an agoraphobic hermit shut-in who watches Netflix in bed every night.
I'm sure in a week, when my extroverted tendencies have again conquered my introverted tendencies (I am constantly at war with myself, it's really unpleasant) and I'm all social butterfly again, I will be flattered by all these creepers. But right now, I'm just weirded out.
P.S.- You should probably keep a throw-away OKC profile with no pictures so you can scope out your friends and your friends' friends without causing existential meltdowns in the people you're checking up on. I mean, I totally understand curiousity, I'm more curious than a cat that's only got one life left, but really. A little courtesy, here. It's the internet. You can TOTALLY BE ANONYMOUS if you just put a little effort into it.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Don't Settle, or, There's Enough Happiness To Go Around
Today, a friend of mine dug up a three-and-a-half-year-old piece from the Atlantic called "Marry Him!: The Case for Mr. Good Enough." I have a vague recollection of there being some kind of stir around it back in 2008, but in the early part of 2008 I was heavily pregnant and also completely in love, so I wasn't really paying much attention to tomes with dating or marriage advice.
Today, a single mama with a case of the lonelies, I read through the whole thing. Actually, I've read through the whole thing three times now (my boss really loves me today, guys) because the first time was full of so much emotional reaction that I had to read it a second time to get a rational read on it, and the second time was so full of incredulity at the terrible analytic capacity and also the extreme sense of over-privilege on display that I had to read it a third time to make sure I wasn't emotionally over-reacting again.
It's HORRIFYING. Really, truly horrifying.
The basic premise of the piece is that if you're looking to create a stable family unit, you don't need grand passion in your choice of partner. And on its face, that's a true and valid statement. A stable family unit is not the primary goal of most people out there looking for a life partner, though. The author takes issue with this fact, reflecting on her own dating experiences and those of her friends, and finally coming to the conclusion that a stable family unit is the goal that everyone OUGHT to have. Those that have made the trade off of passion for stability and complain about it now are lucky to have made the choices they did, and the author can't believe that it took her own self so long to figure out what she ought to want.
And that's where everything she says just breaks down and becomes the kind of drivel that I hate to read but can't stop myself from compulsively looking at.
Moral prescriptives about what people ought to want are always fraught with logical inconsistencies and mental acrobatics. Ms. Gottlieb is no exception. She starts with the realization that she's not happy. She then constructs an argument for why she'd be happier if she'd made other choices earlier in her life. The whole thing is the study of an acute case of Frost syndrome, in which "the road less traveled" is held up as some sort of saving grace.
But some of the ways in which she attempts to justify her position are interesting to me, a single mother in my 20s (rather than my 40s) who is also single, and also gets powerful lonely on occasion. The subtext of many of the most offensive statements in the piece make it clear that I am not the target audience for this piece. And I can't help but feel that perhaps if I could infuse some of my own perspective into Ms. Gottlieb's thought processes, I might be able to help her out a bit.
For starters, what is a stable family unit? Why is a stable family unit irrevocably and for all time a man, a woman, and two point three children living in a house with a white picket fence and a rose garden and a dog? On paper, I'm a single mother, but I live in a house with my parents (both my biological parents, in their 25th year of marriage), my biological child (concieved in a foreign country and born out of wedlock and with no legal father) and the two adult children of my oldest sister, who is actually my half sister (the product of my father's first marriage). No dog, no white picket fence. We're pretty stable, despite the tensions that sometimes erupt. I would even go so far as to call us a stable family unit. And my daughter certainly gets the advantage of all that stability and also all that attention.
The idea that two married, hetero-sexual people raising a child is the only thing that qualifies as a stable family unit is tied to the statistics about the children of single parents (specifically single mothers) that exist out there, and I'll be the first to admit that such statistics sound dismal. But I have always questioned those statistics, and not just because statistics can be manipulated to show just about anything. No, I've never been fully convinced that the relationship between single-parent households and under performance at school or behavior problems wasn't completely spurious. Because here's a little secret: most single-parent households are also POOR.
Yeah, shocking, I know. But true. And poverty carries it with a whole host of issues that might affect things like school performance and behavior a whole lot more than not having a daddy. Like, hunger. It's really hard to concentrate when you're hungry. Also, malnutrition in infants can and does lead to diminished mental capacity, period. And I've never seen a study that controlled completely for the variables that come with poverty when trumpeting the ills of single parenthood.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Gottlieb doesn't have to worry about poverty. So I think she can probably settle down a little on the desire to find a husband so that she can create a stable family unit. I'm pretty sure she can do that just fine on her own. Isn't that empowering?
But I don't really think that this woman wants to find a husband so desperately so that she can create a stable family unit. I think she's lonely.
And hey, I have a lot of sympathy for that condition. I suffer from it myself.
But here's what I don't get: she also acknowledges that most of her married friends are ALSO LONELY. SO, she's single and lonely, and her married friends are married and lonely, and it's better to be married and lonely because it's easier to manage kids when you've got a partner to help you out.
SO, a stable family unit is not actually one that's best for the kids, it's the one that minimizes stress on the parents. And sure, as someone that has a lot of help with her daughter in the form of the very non-traditional stable family unit I enjoy, I'll be the first to say that help with kids is a godsend. But again I say unto you: Help with kids doesn't come only in the form of a husband that watches them while you eat lunch and takes the trash out. (Seriously, these are her desired traits in a mate.) You've got lots of single parent friends, you imply. Why don't you all get together and crowd-source the kid watching while you go on dates and have lives?
Because the thing this woman says that offends me the most is this: "With my nonworking life consumed by thoughts of potty training and playdates, I’ve become a far less interesting person than the one who went on hiking adventures and performed at comedy clubs."
Why don't you still do some of those things? You can. I promise.
You don't give up your life to have a child. You don't have to, and the kid will be a better person for you being an interesting, complete, well-rounded person than they will by you being a slave to them. They will be a better person even if they spend a weekend at "Auntie Em's" house now and again, or spend a week with Grandma while you go to Colombia. Really, I promise. It's not child abuse to get away from your kid now and again.
The rest of Gottlieb's dating advice, and exhortations to settle, spring from a complete misunderstanding of the difference between "lust" and "romance." Yeah, that biker that runs guns in his spare time probably gets your motor running in a way that the mild-mannered accountant with allergies to everything under the sun doesn't. But your choice is not dichotomous. Life is not black and white. And the lust you feel for the biker is not "romance." It's ADRENALINE.
Romance comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. For that matter, lust comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. And while you may not fall in love with everyone you fall in lust with, to go from that to the idea that you don't need any sexual attraction to your partner is a leap of logic that I can't even really quite follow. Yes, it's a cliche that long-married people don't have a lot of sex, but to turn that into the support for the argument that marrying someone you never want to have sex with is a good idea is just a little... off. To put it mildly.
So Gottlieb takes her own loneliness, her own frustrations with her (self-chosen, I must say) single parenthood, and turns that into a prescriptive for women everywhere. Marry a man so you don't do what I did? Settle for a man that's good enough so you don't choose to go to a sperm bank so you can have kids? Settle for Mr. Right Now so that you can be lonely with someone later on? I don't really get it.
Here's a better idea: be happy. Stop comparing your life to the lives of your friends and appreciate your life for what it is. Has it ever occured to you that you and everyone you know are unhappy because you're all desperately trying to impress each other instead of enjoying yourselves? Stop competing for happiness, because happiness isn't a pie that the world will run out of. There is more than enough happiness for everyone, more and much more than enough to go around, and you can be happy and they can be happy and I can be happy and we can all be happy. Even if we're lonely sometimes, even if it's hard sometimes, we can be happy. And if we took the road less traveled, there would still be dark places and you, Ms. Gottlieb, would have written a piece called, "Don't Marry Him!: The Case For Holding Out For Mr. Right."
Some people are never happy, and I'm sorry for that. But playing to the insecurities of single women, and exhorting young women to "settle" simply to avoid a fate that in your case actually looks pretty rosy from where I sit, is a pretty awful thing to do. Your life is wonderful. Deal with it.
Today, a single mama with a case of the lonelies, I read through the whole thing. Actually, I've read through the whole thing three times now (my boss really loves me today, guys) because the first time was full of so much emotional reaction that I had to read it a second time to get a rational read on it, and the second time was so full of incredulity at the terrible analytic capacity and also the extreme sense of over-privilege on display that I had to read it a third time to make sure I wasn't emotionally over-reacting again.
It's HORRIFYING. Really, truly horrifying.
The basic premise of the piece is that if you're looking to create a stable family unit, you don't need grand passion in your choice of partner. And on its face, that's a true and valid statement. A stable family unit is not the primary goal of most people out there looking for a life partner, though. The author takes issue with this fact, reflecting on her own dating experiences and those of her friends, and finally coming to the conclusion that a stable family unit is the goal that everyone OUGHT to have. Those that have made the trade off of passion for stability and complain about it now are lucky to have made the choices they did, and the author can't believe that it took her own self so long to figure out what she ought to want.
And that's where everything she says just breaks down and becomes the kind of drivel that I hate to read but can't stop myself from compulsively looking at.
Moral prescriptives about what people ought to want are always fraught with logical inconsistencies and mental acrobatics. Ms. Gottlieb is no exception. She starts with the realization that she's not happy. She then constructs an argument for why she'd be happier if she'd made other choices earlier in her life. The whole thing is the study of an acute case of Frost syndrome, in which "the road less traveled" is held up as some sort of saving grace.
But some of the ways in which she attempts to justify her position are interesting to me, a single mother in my 20s (rather than my 40s) who is also single, and also gets powerful lonely on occasion. The subtext of many of the most offensive statements in the piece make it clear that I am not the target audience for this piece. And I can't help but feel that perhaps if I could infuse some of my own perspective into Ms. Gottlieb's thought processes, I might be able to help her out a bit.
For starters, what is a stable family unit? Why is a stable family unit irrevocably and for all time a man, a woman, and two point three children living in a house with a white picket fence and a rose garden and a dog? On paper, I'm a single mother, but I live in a house with my parents (both my biological parents, in their 25th year of marriage), my biological child (concieved in a foreign country and born out of wedlock and with no legal father) and the two adult children of my oldest sister, who is actually my half sister (the product of my father's first marriage). No dog, no white picket fence. We're pretty stable, despite the tensions that sometimes erupt. I would even go so far as to call us a stable family unit. And my daughter certainly gets the advantage of all that stability and also all that attention.
The idea that two married, hetero-sexual people raising a child is the only thing that qualifies as a stable family unit is tied to the statistics about the children of single parents (specifically single mothers) that exist out there, and I'll be the first to admit that such statistics sound dismal. But I have always questioned those statistics, and not just because statistics can be manipulated to show just about anything. No, I've never been fully convinced that the relationship between single-parent households and under performance at school or behavior problems wasn't completely spurious. Because here's a little secret: most single-parent households are also POOR.
Yeah, shocking, I know. But true. And poverty carries it with a whole host of issues that might affect things like school performance and behavior a whole lot more than not having a daddy. Like, hunger. It's really hard to concentrate when you're hungry. Also, malnutrition in infants can and does lead to diminished mental capacity, period. And I've never seen a study that controlled completely for the variables that come with poverty when trumpeting the ills of single parenthood.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Gottlieb doesn't have to worry about poverty. So I think she can probably settle down a little on the desire to find a husband so that she can create a stable family unit. I'm pretty sure she can do that just fine on her own. Isn't that empowering?
But I don't really think that this woman wants to find a husband so desperately so that she can create a stable family unit. I think she's lonely.
And hey, I have a lot of sympathy for that condition. I suffer from it myself.
But here's what I don't get: she also acknowledges that most of her married friends are ALSO LONELY. SO, she's single and lonely, and her married friends are married and lonely, and it's better to be married and lonely because it's easier to manage kids when you've got a partner to help you out.
SO, a stable family unit is not actually one that's best for the kids, it's the one that minimizes stress on the parents. And sure, as someone that has a lot of help with her daughter in the form of the very non-traditional stable family unit I enjoy, I'll be the first to say that help with kids is a godsend. But again I say unto you: Help with kids doesn't come only in the form of a husband that watches them while you eat lunch and takes the trash out. (Seriously, these are her desired traits in a mate.) You've got lots of single parent friends, you imply. Why don't you all get together and crowd-source the kid watching while you go on dates and have lives?
Because the thing this woman says that offends me the most is this: "With my nonworking life consumed by thoughts of potty training and playdates, I’ve become a far less interesting person than the one who went on hiking adventures and performed at comedy clubs."
Why don't you still do some of those things? You can. I promise.
You don't give up your life to have a child. You don't have to, and the kid will be a better person for you being an interesting, complete, well-rounded person than they will by you being a slave to them. They will be a better person even if they spend a weekend at "Auntie Em's" house now and again, or spend a week with Grandma while you go to Colombia. Really, I promise. It's not child abuse to get away from your kid now and again.
The rest of Gottlieb's dating advice, and exhortations to settle, spring from a complete misunderstanding of the difference between "lust" and "romance." Yeah, that biker that runs guns in his spare time probably gets your motor running in a way that the mild-mannered accountant with allergies to everything under the sun doesn't. But your choice is not dichotomous. Life is not black and white. And the lust you feel for the biker is not "romance." It's ADRENALINE.
Romance comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. For that matter, lust comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. And while you may not fall in love with everyone you fall in lust with, to go from that to the idea that you don't need any sexual attraction to your partner is a leap of logic that I can't even really quite follow. Yes, it's a cliche that long-married people don't have a lot of sex, but to turn that into the support for the argument that marrying someone you never want to have sex with is a good idea is just a little... off. To put it mildly.
So Gottlieb takes her own loneliness, her own frustrations with her (self-chosen, I must say) single parenthood, and turns that into a prescriptive for women everywhere. Marry a man so you don't do what I did? Settle for a man that's good enough so you don't choose to go to a sperm bank so you can have kids? Settle for Mr. Right Now so that you can be lonely with someone later on? I don't really get it.
Here's a better idea: be happy. Stop comparing your life to the lives of your friends and appreciate your life for what it is. Has it ever occured to you that you and everyone you know are unhappy because you're all desperately trying to impress each other instead of enjoying yourselves? Stop competing for happiness, because happiness isn't a pie that the world will run out of. There is more than enough happiness for everyone, more and much more than enough to go around, and you can be happy and they can be happy and I can be happy and we can all be happy. Even if we're lonely sometimes, even if it's hard sometimes, we can be happy. And if we took the road less traveled, there would still be dark places and you, Ms. Gottlieb, would have written a piece called, "Don't Marry Him!: The Case For Holding Out For Mr. Right."
Some people are never happy, and I'm sorry for that. But playing to the insecurities of single women, and exhorting young women to "settle" simply to avoid a fate that in your case actually looks pretty rosy from where I sit, is a pretty awful thing to do. Your life is wonderful. Deal with it.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Adventures in Internet Dating Sites
I have a profile on OKCupid. (Really. Stop laughing. Ok, keep laughing, it's pretty funny. But can you at least keep it to belly laughs and giggles, and dispense with the snickering? Snickering makes me feel judged. Thanks.)
In the year or so I've been using this only-slightly-less-cess-ridden-than-Craigs-List pool of humanity, I have met in person exactly one man. He (read: his dick) was not right for me. Really, really not right for me. Wow. Nice guy, honestly. Just not for me.
Anyway, I've had the usual barrage of online dating adventures: the polyamorous guys that are sort of sweetly earnest about wanting to maintain multiple relationships, the completely illiterate bros who refer to me as "shorty" and/or "gurl" and like to ask if I like to give head, the intensely earnest single father's who gravitate toward me because I already have a kid and then ask me why I don't talk about her at all, because obviously a child is the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE and is the only thing a parent should ever talk about.
(Side rant: I actually had one of these guys tell me I was a bad mother when I calmly tried to explain to him that being an unhappy, boring person by giving up every part of my life to a three-year-old would be a terrible thing for her. He honestly didn't get it. What in the flipping hell is wrong with people these days?)
Oh, and then there was the guy who is, by his own admission, about three hundred pounds over weight and always cranky because he's in "chronic pain" but felt that introducing himself by telling me that he's better than me was a good idea. No, I'm not joking. This happened.
Lately, I've been exchanging rather pleasant, intellectual messages with an English major-turned-Army enlistee. The nature of our communiques being what it is, I sometimes spend several hours in between doing minimal amounts of work while I sit at my desk and get paid composing responses. He's really rather intelligent, and I enjoy a good verbal jousting match more than most people. We almost maybe kind of sort of worked out the nature of evil last week.
Anyway, this requires me to be logged into the OKC site for (on occasion) hours on end. Since the site design is horrificly bad, there seems to be no way to consistently turn off the built-in chat function. Every time I think I'm safe, it randomly turns itself back on (sometimes when I haven't even clicked anything).
How do I know it has turned itself back on? I get an instant message.
Some of these are too mundane and/or vulgar to even be funny, but every once in awhile I hit comic (and secret internal mean-streak gratifying) gold.
Like the other day. I got hit up by this guy. Who knows how much of what he was telling me was the truth. Being a somewhat reticent person, I have a hard time believing people that just out with all sorts of really bizarre and personal details of their lives to another person without any provocation, warning or prompting.
So this guy. He's been with one woman his whole life. She's now refusing to sleep with him anymore, so he's trolling OKC looking for no-strings-attached sex so that he can get his jollies. But he loves this woman. Oh, and they're both in their mid-20s. So, it's not like it's weird that she's refusing to sleep with him or anything. In the course of this convesration (which, I'll confess, I dragged out for some considerable amount of time because this guy was amusing) I gave him relationship advice, told him about the time I was the other woman, and apparently made him so horny with my dry, intellectual treatment of his problems that he had to go rub one out in the bathroom.
What. The. Hell.
Why are people so goddamn NUTS?
But these are all pretty standard for the wild and woolly world of looking for love in the internets, right?
Please tell me yes. I really don't want to have to face the reality that I'm just a freak magnet.
(Side note two: My paranoid-android self took over for about half this conversation because some of those questions were just too pointed for my taste and I still think maybe it was someone I know or know of that was trying to get me to admit something or otherwise embarrass myself.)
(I'm crazy, too. xoxo!)
In the year or so I've been using this only-slightly-less-cess-ridden-than-Craigs-List pool of humanity, I have met in person exactly one man. He (read: his dick) was not right for me. Really, really not right for me. Wow. Nice guy, honestly. Just not for me.
Anyway, I've had the usual barrage of online dating adventures: the polyamorous guys that are sort of sweetly earnest about wanting to maintain multiple relationships, the completely illiterate bros who refer to me as "shorty" and/or "gurl" and like to ask if I like to give head, the intensely earnest single father's who gravitate toward me because I already have a kid and then ask me why I don't talk about her at all, because obviously a child is the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE and is the only thing a parent should ever talk about.
(Side rant: I actually had one of these guys tell me I was a bad mother when I calmly tried to explain to him that being an unhappy, boring person by giving up every part of my life to a three-year-old would be a terrible thing for her. He honestly didn't get it. What in the flipping hell is wrong with people these days?)
Oh, and then there was the guy who is, by his own admission, about three hundred pounds over weight and always cranky because he's in "chronic pain" but felt that introducing himself by telling me that he's better than me was a good idea. No, I'm not joking. This happened.
Lately, I've been exchanging rather pleasant, intellectual messages with an English major-turned-Army enlistee. The nature of our communiques being what it is, I sometimes spend several hours in between doing minimal amounts of work while I sit at my desk and get paid composing responses. He's really rather intelligent, and I enjoy a good verbal jousting match more than most people. We almost maybe kind of sort of worked out the nature of evil last week.
Anyway, this requires me to be logged into the OKC site for (on occasion) hours on end. Since the site design is horrificly bad, there seems to be no way to consistently turn off the built-in chat function. Every time I think I'm safe, it randomly turns itself back on (sometimes when I haven't even clicked anything).
How do I know it has turned itself back on? I get an instant message.
Some of these are too mundane and/or vulgar to even be funny, but every once in awhile I hit comic (and secret internal mean-streak gratifying) gold.
Like the other day. I got hit up by this guy. Who knows how much of what he was telling me was the truth. Being a somewhat reticent person, I have a hard time believing people that just out with all sorts of really bizarre and personal details of their lives to another person without any provocation, warning or prompting.
So this guy. He's been with one woman his whole life. She's now refusing to sleep with him anymore, so he's trolling OKC looking for no-strings-attached sex so that he can get his jollies. But he loves this woman. Oh, and they're both in their mid-20s. So, it's not like it's weird that she's refusing to sleep with him or anything. In the course of this convesration (which, I'll confess, I dragged out for some considerable amount of time because this guy was amusing) I gave him relationship advice, told him about the time I was the other woman, and apparently made him so horny with my dry, intellectual treatment of his problems that he had to go rub one out in the bathroom.
What. The. Hell.
Why are people so goddamn NUTS?
But these are all pretty standard for the wild and woolly world of looking for love in the internets, right?
Please tell me yes. I really don't want to have to face the reality that I'm just a freak magnet.
(Side note two: My paranoid-android self took over for about half this conversation because some of those questions were just too pointed for my taste and I still think maybe it was someone I know or know of that was trying to get me to admit something or otherwise embarrass myself.)
(I'm crazy, too. xoxo!)
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